The Scorpio Races

“Meddling,” I answer, because it’s an answer that is difficult to argue with. I look back at the boy at the counter. He turns then, so he’s in profile, and suddenly, I think I know him from on the beach: the rider on the red stallion. Something about his expression and his wind-torn hair makes my heart go thump thump stop.

“Puck Connolly,” says the old man. “Don’t be looking at him like that.”

Such a statement is too tantalizing to ignore. “Who is he?”

“Lord, that’s Sean Kendrick,” the old man says, and I lift my eyebrows as I half remember hearing the name. Like a bit of history you’ve been told a few times in school but don’t quite need to recall. “No one better than him for knowing the horses. He rides every year and I reckon he’s the one to beat. Always is. But he’s got one foot on the land and one foot in the sea. You steer clear of him.”

“Of course I will,” I say, though I don’t know at the moment where I intend to steer. I look back to him, attaching the name. Sean Kendrick.

He steps up to the counter then, and Peg smiles at him very brightly — too brightly, I think, like she’s proving a point. I can’t hear what she says, but I can’t stop watching as he leans slightly toward her, uncrossing his arms to make some sort of small gesture with his fingers as he speaks. He has two fingers held up and he presses them against the surface of the counter, tapping them twice like he’s counting. I can tell that he, for one, is not in love with Peg Gratton. I wonder if it’s because he doesn’t know that she could cut his heart out neat or if he does know and is just unimpressed with the knowing.

Peg turns around with the chalk and stretches all the way up and I see now that the space just underneath JOCKEYS was left there intentionally, because she doesn’t hesitate as she writes Sean Kendrick at the very top of the list above everyone else. There are a few whoops from the crowd around me as she finishes writing his name. Sean Kendrick doesn’t smile, but I see him nod to her.

One of the other men pulls him aside to talk and the line moves up. I’m one step closer to signing up. My guts do a small little dance inside me. Another step up. I’m wondering if it’s nerves or the pressing heat of all these bodies that’s making me light-headed. Another step up.

My stomach is an ocean of trouble as the man in front of me places a bet. And then it is me.

Peg smiles at me, like she smiles at everyone. She doesn’t look scary at all. She looks plain and friendly. “Hi, love, what do you need? You’ve picked quite a night to come out.”

I realize that she thinks I’m here for meat. I feel my cheeks warm and try to sound firm. “I’m here to sign up, actually.”

Peg’s smile remains in place, but it’s like a picture of a smile someone has hung on her face instead. It is utterly motionless and her eyes don’t match it. “Your brother told me not to let you sign up. He wanted me to find a rule against it.”

She means Gabe, of course. My stomach surges in a whole new way. I try not to sound frantic as I lean across the bloodstained counter. And right after that I realize that she knew all along what I was here for and still asked me the first question. Which I think means I need to change how I’m thinking of her, but I can’t, because she still looks just plain and friendly. “There’s no rule, is there? There isn’t any reason I can’t.”

“There’s no rule, and I told him that for sure. But —” Her smile is gone and suddenly I can imagine her cutting out my heart, in a hard, blank way that means she wouldn’t even notice the blood. “What would your parents think? Have you thought this through? People die, love. I’m all for women, but this isn’t a woman’s game.”

For some reason, this irritates me more than anything else I’ve heard all day. It’s not even relevant. I give her the fierce look I practiced in the mirror. “I’ve thought it through. I want to add my name. Please.”

She looks at me a beat longer, and I don’t let my face change. Then she sighs, picks up the chalk, and turns to the board. She starts to write a P and then rubs it out with the pad of her hand. She glances back at me. “I can’t remember your real first name, love.”

“Kate,” I say, and I feel like everyone in Skarmouth is suddenly staring at my back. “Kate Connolly.”

There are moments that you’ll remember for the rest of your life and there are moments that you think you’ll remember for the rest of your life, and it’s not often they turn out to be the same moments. But when Peg Gratton turns around and chalks my name on the list, white on black, I know, without a doubt, that it’s an image I’ll never forget.

When she turns back around, one of her eyebrows is raised. “And your horse’s name?”

“Dove,” I say. The word comes out too quiet. I have to repeat it.

She writes it down, no questions asked, but of course — why would she doubt that Dove is a capall uisce?

I chew my lip. Peg is waiting.

“It’s fifty, Puck,” she says. “To enter.”

I feel a little ill as I dig the coins out of my pocket. For a sickening moment I don’t think I have enough, but then I find the money I’d been carrying to buy flour. I hold it out, not releasing it into her waiting hand.

“Wait,” I say. I lean across the counter, voice low. “Are there, um, any rules about the horses?” If I get disqualified and lose the fifty, I really will be sick. “About them …uh …?”

Peg says, “You want a rule sheet?”

She has to look for it. I feel like everyone is staring at my name on the board while she does. When she offers it to me, a rumpled piece of paper, I scan the front and back. There are only two lines about the horses: Jockeys must declare their mount by the end of the first week at the Scorpio Festival riders’ parade. Swapping of mounts after that date is not permitted.

I scan for anything at all, but there’s nothing. Nothing to say that I can’t enter Dove.

I finally let Peg have the coins. “Thank you,” I say.

“Do you want to keep that?” Peg asks, gesturing to the rule sheet. I don’t really care, but I nod. “Okay,” she says. “You’re official.”

I’m official.

As I push outside into the dark, I take big breaths of the cold air. The briny smell of earlier has been mostly replaced by the faint scent of exhaust lingering in the air, but in comparison to the sweat and raw meat smell of the butcher, it’s heavenly. My head feels all spinny and elated and terrified, and I feel like I can see every single little bump on the street in front of me, every bit of rust on the rail before the quay, every ripple in the water. Everything is black — the depthless sky and the inky water — and butter yellow — the streetlamps and light pouring out from the shop windows.

I realize that there is a discussion going on, a few yards away, and I recognize Sean Kendrick’s jacket. Mutt Malvern faces him, looking massive and sweaty in comparison to Sean. It’s clear from the way that a few people have paused nearby that what’s being said is not pleasant.

It’s like birds worrying a crow. I’ve seen them in the fields, when the crow has gotten too close to their nest or otherwise insulted them. The other birds dive-bomb and scream and the crow merely stands there, looking dark and still and unimpressed.

So it’s just this: Sean and Mutt, heir to the island’s fortune, and Mutt’s spit glistening on Sean’s boots.

“Nice boots,” Mutt says. He’s looking down at them, but Sean Kendrick isn’t. He watches Mutt’s face with the same looking-but-not-looking expression he had in the butcher’s. I’m kind of horrified and fascinated by what I see on Mutt’s face. It’s not anger, but something like it.

After a long moment, Sean turns as if to go.

“Hey,” Mutt says. He has a smile on his face, but it means the opposite of a smile. “Are you in such a hurry to get back to the stables? It’s only been a few hours since you’ve gotten your fix.” He pumps his hips enthusiastically.

I would have felt bad for Mutt’s goading if I hadn’t seen Sean’s smile then. It’s barely a wisp of a smile, only there for a second — not even really making his mouth move, just flattening his eyes a bit — and it’s canny and condescending and then it’s gone. And I realize that what’s on both their faces, in two entirely different shapes, is hatred.

“Say something, horse-stroker,” Mutt says. “Did you like my present to you?”

But his fists are clenched, and I don’t think it’s speaking he wants out of Sean Kendrick.

And still Sean says nothing. He looks weary, if anything, and as Mutt shifts his feet to circle him, Sean simply begins to walk away.

“Don’t walk away from me,” Mutt snarls. He catches up to Sean in three uneven strides, and when he catches Sean’s upper arm with his big hand, he spins Sean around as easily as a child. “You work for me. You don’t walk away from me.”

Sean puts his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “Indeed, Mr. Malvern,” he says, and his tone is so deadly calm that Dr. Halsal, who’d been watching, frowns and ducks back inside the butcher shop. “And what can I do for you this evening?”

This momentarily stumps Mutt Malvern, and I think that he might just hit Sean Kendrick now and rustle up a good reply later. But then, it comes to him, and he says, “I’m having my father let you go. For theft. Don’t say it’s not so. I had that horse, Kendrick, and you let him go. I’ll have your job for that.”

Money’s not something many people have on this island. Talk of axing someone’s job is not a thing to toss around lightly. It’s not even my employment, and I already feel the pinch in my stomach, the same one I get when I open up the pantry door and see the shrinking contents.

“Will you now?” Sean says softly. There’s a long pause, full of the sound of muffled voices in the butcher’s. “I saw you signed up for the races. But there’s no horse there beside your name. Why is that, Mutt?”

Mutt’s face purples.

“I think,” Sean says, and as before, his voice is so quiet that all of us are holding our breath to hear him, “it’s because, like every year, your father is waiting for me to pick a horse for you.”

“That’s a lie,” Mutt says. “You’re no better than I am. My father lets you put me on the wasters. He lets you put me on the nags and the leftovers and you take the best for yourself. I have no say in the matter or I’d be on that red stallion. I’m not going to have you put me on a loser this year.”

The door opens and now Dr. Halsal has returned with Thomas Gratton. They stand in the doorway and Thomas Gratton wipes his hands on his butcher’s apron as he surveys the situation. Sean Kendrick’s low voice has somehow made the argument both quieter and more impressive — a silent night ocean full of restrained power. The space between Sean Kendrick and Mutt Malvern seems charged.