The Scorpio Races

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Finn eyes me as he slowly uses his fingers to rend a biscuit into a pile of crumbs.

“So Sean Kendrick’s going to sell you one of the water horses?”

We’re sitting in the back room of Fathom & Sons. It’s a claustrophobic room lined with shelves of brown boxes, the floor barely big enough for the scratched table that stands on it. It smells less like the butter scent of the rest of the building and more of musty cardboard and old cheese. When we were small, Mum would park us here with some biscuits while she chatted with Dory Maud out front. Finn and I would take turns guessing what was in the brown boxes. Hardware. Crackers. Rabbit paws. The private parts of Dory Maud’s invisible lovers.

“Not necessarily,” I say, not looking up from my work. I’m signing and numbering teapots while nursing a cup of tea that’s gone regretfully cold. “I’m just looking. He didn’t say ‘selling,’ really.”

Finn looks at me.

“I didn’t say ‘buying,’ either,” I shoot back at him.

“I thought you were riding Dove.”

I sign my name on the bottom of a pot. Kate Connolly. It looks like I’m signing a school paper. What I need is more flourish. I add a curl to the bottom of the y.

“I probably still am,” I say. “I’m just looking!”

I’m blushing, and I don’t know why, which infuriates me. I hope that the little bit of light from the bulb above us and the narrow windows over the shelves doesn’t reveal it. I add, “I only have two more days to change my horse. I might as well make sure.”

“Are you going to be in the parade of riders?” Finn asks. He’s not looking at me now. Having completely taken apart the biscuit, he’s begun to squish the crumbs back together into something lumpier and smaller.

Every year the Scorpio Festival is held a week after the horses emerge. I’ve only been once, and even then, we didn’t stay long enough for the parade of riders, which is the culminating event of the night, when the riders declare their official mounts and betting goes crazy.

I get a little pit of nerves in my stomach thinking about it.

“Yes, are you?” Dory Maud’s voice carries into the room. She stands in the doorway, one of her eyebrows arched. She’s wearing a dress that looks like she stole it. It has lace sleeves and Dory Maud does not have lace sleeve arms.

I frown at her with bad temper. “You aren’t going to try to talk me out of it, are you?”

“The parade, or the race?” Dory Maud pulls out the third chair at the table and sits down. “What I don’t understand,” she says, “is why such a clever and useful girl as yourself, Puck, would waste so much time looking like an idiot or being dead?”

Finn smiles at his biscuit.

“I have my reasons,” I snap. “And don’t tell me that my parents would be so sad about it, either. I’ve already heard it. I’ve heard it all.”

“Has she been this short all week?” Dory Maud asks Finn, who nods. To me, she adds, “Your father would be displeased, but your mother – she wouldn’t have much room to talk. She was a hellion and the only thing she didn’t do on this island was ride in the races.”

“Really?” I ask, hopeful for more information.

“Probably,” Dory Maud replies. “Finn, why are you eating that? It looks like cat food.”

“Brought it from home.” Finn sighs heavily. “At Palsson’s, they were setting out cinnamon twists.”

“Oh yes.” Dory Maud begins scratching something on a piece of paper. Her handwriting is so utterly illegible that I have to believe she works at it. “Even the angels could smell them.”

Finn’s expression is wistful.

I feel guilty about the load of hay and grain I just bought. I’m not sure it’s a better investment than cinnamon twists would’ve been.

“Could I get an advance on some teapots, Dory Maud?” I ask. I push a signed and numbered one toward her so she is convinced of my dutifulness. “Horse food’s expensive.”

“I’m not a bank. If you help me set up the festival booth Friday afternoon, I’ll do it.”

“Thanks,” I say, without feeling much gratitude.

After a moment, Finn says, “I don’t know why you aren’t just riding Dove.”

“Finn.”

“Well, that’s what you said.”

“I’d like to have a chance of winning money,” I say. “I thought it might actually help to ride, you know, a water horse in a race for, you know, water horses.”

“Mmm,” remarks Dory Maud.

“Exactly,” Finn says. “How do you know they’re faster?”

“Oh, please.”

“Well, you are the one who told me that they don’t always go in straight lines. I just don’t see why you’re changing your mind now just because some expert told you.”

I feel my cheeks warm again. “He’s not some expert. And he didn’t tell me anything. I’m just looking.”

Finn presses his thumb into his pile of crumbs, hard, so that the tip turns white. “You said that you weren’t riding one of them on principle. Because of Mum and Dad.”

His voice is even because Dory Maud is there and because he’s Finn, but I can tell he’s agitated.

I say, “Well, principle won’t pay the bills.”

“It’s not much of a principle when you can just change it like – like that. Overnight. Like -” But he must not be able to think of what else it’s like, because he stands up and storms past Dory Maud’s chair and out of the room.

I blink after him. “What? What?”

I think brothers are the most inexplicable species on the planet.

Dory Maud brushes invisible crumbs from her paper and studies what she’s written. “Boys,” she says, “just aren’t very good at being afraid.”