The Scorpio Races

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I get back to the yard and find it in disarray. Half the horses didn’t make it out for their exercise on time. Mettle is up in the paddock by the stable, chewing and sucking steadily on the top board of the fence. Edana hasn’t been taken out at all, and there’s no sign of Mutt. If he’s thinking that he means to challenge me and Corr at the races this year, he’s going about it the wrong way.

I keep feeling I’ve forgotten to do something, until I realize that I’m disconcerted by leaving with two horses and returning with one. I’ve no horse to un-tack, no saddle to put away.

George Holly finds me just as I’m walking back into the yard, a blood-streaked bucket in my hand from feeding the capaill uisce. He’s found a brilliant red flat cap to hold his hair down and a smile to hold his face on. “Hullo, Mr. Kendrick,” he greets me brightly, falling into step with me across the cobbles of the yard. “You look in fine spirits.” “Do I?”

“Well, your face looks like it remembers a smile,” Holly says. He looks down at my clothing; I’m wearing the island all over my left side.

I kick on the hose pump with my knee and begin to rinse the bucket over the top of the drain. “I lost a horse today.”

“That sounds careless. What happened?”

“She jumped off a cliff.”

“A cliff! Is that normal?”

In the barn, Edana lets out a keening, impatient wail, hungry for the sea. This time last year, Mutt was already pounding the hell out of his chosen mount on the beach. Right now, the yard seems quiet without him: the blue sky before a storm. I think about the Scorpio Festival tomorrow, how the riders’ parade this year will be me and Mutt and insane Kate Connolly.

I shut off the water pump and regard him. “Mr. Holly, nothing about this month is turning out to be normal.”