The Scorpio Races

CHAPTER EIGHT

The monger leads the mare up to one of the kelp-covered boulders for me to use as a mounting block. She fidgets around and around, never quite close enough to it. She won’t stop looking at the dog that’s hovering around interested in someone’s rejected breakfast near her hooves. The wind is cold on my neck and my toes are numb little stones in my boots.

“She’s not getting any stiller than this,” the monger says. “Are you on or off?”

My hands are balled into fists to keep them from betraying me. All I can think of is those massive teeth pulling my parents down into the ocean. It’s not even fear that’s stopping me right now. It’s imagining them watching me from wherever they might be – Can they see this beach from heaven? Maybe the cliffs block the view – and thinking about what they would say. They’d always scoffed at the races and the horses had killed them in their boat and now here I was going to get on one of them to ride in the races. I can just imagine Dad’s face and the way a small semicircle wrinkle appeared on his upper lip when he got disgusted or disappointed.

The mare jerks her head up; the gnome is nearly lifted from his feet.

There has to be another way. There has to be something I can do that will keep me off this horse. But how can I ride in the races without her?

I realize then that Finn has appeared from nowhere to stand beside the boulder I’m balanced on. He doesn’t say anything. His fingers are pinching his upper arms over and over again as he looks up at me, but he doesn’t seem to notice them.

“Stop that,” I tell him, and he stops. I think I’ve made up my mind.

“Girlie,” the monger says. “Come on now.” The mare’s muscles shudder beneath her skin.

This isn’t who I am.

I say, “I’m sorry. I’ve changed my mind.”

I just have time to see him roll his eyes when everything becomes a blur of motion. There is a surge of black and white, and a shove pushes me from the boulder. My breath gasps out in two massive puffs as my back slams the ground. Part of my face goes warm and wet. As the mare rears above me, I realize that there is something screaming at the same time I realize that the wetness on my face is blood, coming from above, not from me. Draining from the thing in the piebald mare’s jaws.

I roll out of the way of the hooves, scrubbing sand from my eyes, trying to straighten. Trying to get my breath back. Trying to see. The mare crouches, shaking her dark quarry. She’s ripping it, holding part down with a hoof. The sand pools blood.

I scream Finn’s name.

Now the mare tosses part of her victim at me, ears flattened back. I half gasp, half sob, jumping back from the bloody joint. There’s something stringy coming out of it, like jellyfish tentacles. I want to just kneel down and stop thinking.

The piece in front of me is covered with short, dark hair, matted with sand and blood. It’s a ruin, almost unrecognizable. I am in danger of throwing up.

It’s the dog.

People are shouting, “Sean Kendrick!” but I’m shouting, “Finn!” and there he is. He is a copy of the weird carvings on the church doorway in Skarmouth, little old men with big round eyeballs.

He says, “I thought -”

I know, because it’s what I was thinking, too.

“Please don’t ride her,” Finn says, fervent. I can’t quite remember the last time he’s asked me something and sounded like he really meant it. “Don’t ride one of them.”

“I’m not,” I say. “I’m riding Dove.”