The Scorpio Races (43 page)

Behind me, the ocean says
shhhhhhhh, shhhhhhhhh.

There’s a thin, long wail. I keep walking, my bare feet slow on the uneven stones.

The wail comes again, low and keening. Puck and Holly are looking past me, so I turn around. Still at the shoreline, Corr has noticed my going, and he stands where I left him, looking back at me. He lifts his head again and keens to me.

The irresistible ocean sucks around his hooves. But still he looks over his withers at me and he wails, again and again. The hair on my arms stands with his call. I know he wants me to go to him, but I can’t go with him where he needs to go.

Corr falls silent when I do not come to him. He looks back out to the endless horizon. I see him lift a hoof and put it back down. He tests his weight again.

Then Corr turns, stepping out of the ocean. His head jerks up when his injured leg touches the ground, but he takes another labored step before keening to me again. Corr takes another step away from the November sea. And another.

He is slow, and the sea sings to us both, but he returns to me.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

As a teen, I was always intrigued when I read articles about authors mulling over story ideas for months or years before they knew how to write them. As a teen writer who scribbled down novel ideas as soon as they came to her, this seemed quaint and foreign.
How could you not know how to write your own story?
I thought, as I dashed out another terrible novel in a month.

Well, here I am, being one of those authors. I have wanted to write about water horses for a very long time. I’ve actually attempted it several times. First while in college, then again right after. I’d almost given up, but a few years ago — after I’d published three novels and really should’ve known what I was doing — I threw myself at the legend one more time. And failed again.

The only difference to this failure was that it was not a bang, as before, but a whimper.

The problem was that the myth was both complicated and plotless, with no inherent narrative to guide a daunted author. There were rather a lot of variations: a Manx version called
glashtin
; Irish versions called
capall uisge, cabyll ushtey,
and
aughisky
; Scottish versions called
each uisge
and kelpies. Apart from being nearly universally impossible to pronounce (the name I went with,
capall uisce
, is pronounced CAPple ISHka), the main feature of each was a dangerous fairy horse from the water.

There were many magical elements that appealed to me: The horses were associated with November; they ate flesh; if you lured them away from the ocean, they made the finest mounts imaginable … unless they touched salt water again.

But then there was also an eerie shape-shifting element to the myth. Some versions involved a water horse turning into a handsome young man with chestnut hair. The newly minted young man would wander by the waterside, luring maidens closer — because of course there is nothing more irresistible than a strange redheaded boy who smells vaguely of fish — and then drag the victims down into the water to devour them. Lungs and liver would wash up later.

It was this second half that slayed me. Every time I tried to work in the creature both man and horse, I realized I was telling a story I didn’t want to tell. It wasn’t until I wrote the Shiver trilogy with its rather corrupted version of the werewolf legend that I realized I didn’t
have
to take the water horses at face value. I could be as choosy as I liked with my mythology.

I threw out absolutely everything that I didn’t need about the water horses, and ended up with
The Scorpio Races,
a story that isn’t really about water horses or fairies at all, now that I think about it.

Now, if you’d like to find out more about the creepy redheaded water boys with kelp in their hair, I urge you to hunt down a copy of Katharine Briggs’s
An Encyclopedia of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures,
which is an excellent starting point for all things fairy.

I suppose it’s still possible I might one day write the other half of the legend.

No, actually. No, it’s not.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I could probably keep these acknowledgments pretty short by saying merely: I would like to thank everyone who enabled me to visit cliffs in the last year and a half.

But I suppose it would be lazy, and in any case, they deserve mention by name: my first publicist at Scholastic, Samantha Grefé, who moved my schedule around so that I could visit cliffs in California. My lovely foreign rights team, Rachel Horowitz, Janelle DeLuise, Maren Monitello, and Lisa Mattingly, who coordinated my overseas tours so that I had time to visit cliffs in Normandy. My Scholastic UK publicists, Alyx Price and Alex Richardson, who did their absolute best to make sure I got to cliffs in the south of England. And my very dear friends Erin and Richard Hill, who endured UK cliff hunting with me not once but twice, once facing south and once facing east.

I should thank those involved with the writing as well: my long-suffering editor, David Levithan, who didn’t panic when I told him my next book was about killer horses. My passionate agent, Laura Rennert, for paving the slightly crooked way for this book. Tessa Gratton and Brenna Yovanoff, my critique partners, for playing Spot the Travesty! Carrie Ryan, Natalie “Good Point” Parker, Jackson Pearce, and Kate Hummel for plot commentary and stories about jockeys’ locker rooms.

As always, I’m eternally grateful to my family for holding down the fort during deadlines — forts that have many movable parts, and deadlines that are often painted with holiday colors. I’m also grateful for my parents in particular, who protested, but only gently, when we rode our horses bareback.

And most of all, of course, I have to thank Ed, my husband, who always climbs cliffs with me.

About the Author

MAGGIE STIEFVATER is the #1
New York Times
bestselling author of the novels
Shiver, Linger, and Forever.
She is also the author of
Lament: The Faerie Queen’s Deception
and
Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie
. She lives in Virginia with her husband and their two children. You can visit her online at www.maggiestiefvater.com.

Copyright

Copyright © 2011 by Maggie Stiefvater
Cover art & design by Christopher Stengel

All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc.,
Publishers since 1920.
SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS,
and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

First edition, October 2011

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

eISBN: 978-0-545-38827-6

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue: Nine Years Earlier

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Chapter Sixty

Chapter Sixty-One

Chapter Sixty-Two

Chapter Sixty-Three

Chapter Sixty-Four

Chapter Sixty-Five

Chapter Sixty-Six

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright