The Scorpio Races

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Out here on the cliffs, the red stallion moves constantly. His nostrils flare to catch the sea wind that lifts my hair from my forehead. When I was younger and I’d ride Dove bareback and bridleless and filthy in her paddock, I’d use the fence or a rock outcropping to scramble onto her back. Today, with Corr, it’s no different, only the outcropping we stand by is taller than the ones I’d need for Dove. Sean maneuvers him into place and says, “That’s as still as he’s going to get.”

My heart is already galloping. I cannot believe that I’m really about to get onto a capall uisce. And not just any capall uisce, but the one whose name is on the top of the board at the butcher’s. The one who has won the Scorpio Races four times. The one who tore out David Prince’s throat yesterday morning. I grab a fistful of his mane and struggle to keep from being tugged off the rock as he dances. Finally, I pull myself on his back, clutching his mane with both hands like a little kid.

Sean says, “I’m going to give you the reins now. I’ll need you to hold him while I get on or you’ll be on your own. Can I trust you to hold him?”

The way he says it makes me realize just how much he’s risking right now, putting me on his horse, giving me the reins.

“Could others hold him?”

His face remains the same. “There are no others. You’re the only one.”

I swallow. “I can hold him.”

Sean drags his foot in a semicircle before Corr and spits in it. Then he quickly loops the reins over Corr’s head and hands them to me. If I had never seen or touched Corr, this would be the moment when I realize just how large he is, how unlike Dove. Through the reins, I can somehow feel how powerful he is. They’re spiderwebs anchoring a ship. He tries my hold and I try him back. I don’t want him to try harder.

Sean settles swiftly behind me, and I’m startled by the sudden closeness of him, my back suddenly warm against his chest, the press of his hips against me.

I turn to ask him a question, and he jerks his face away from the proximity to mine. I say, “Oh. Sorry.”

“Are you all right with the reins?” He’s all black and white in this light, his eyes hidden in shadow beneath his eyebrows.

I nod. But Corr won’t go forward; he only backs, shaking his head. When pushed, he lifts his front feet a little off the ground. Not rearing, but warning me. Sean says something that’s lost to the wind.

“What?”

“My circle,” Sean says, right into my ear, his breath warm. I shiver, hard, although the wind is no colder than before. “He won’t want to cross it. Go around.”

As soon as we’re free of the circle, Corr is like a bird in a gale. I can’t tell if he’s walking or trotting, only that we’re moving, and that all directions feel possible. When Corr jerks to the side, I press my legs into his sides to straighten him and Sean’s arms go around me to grab his mane.

I know that Sean only did it to steady himself, not me, but suddenly, I feel more grounded. I turn my face, and again, he moves his head to give me room. But I don’t know what I was going to say.

“What?” His mouth makes the shape of the word although I don’t properly hear it. “Is it -?” He starts to withdraw his arms, and I shake my head. My hair whips across my forehead, and he winces as it lashes him, too. He says something again, and once more, the wind steals his voice.

When Sean sees that I didn’t hear him, he leans forward to my ear again. I can’t think of the last time I was so close to another person. I can feel the rise and fall of his chest when he breathes. His words are warm in my ear: “Are you afraid?”

I don’t know what I am right now, but it’s not afraid.

I shake my head.

Sean takes my ponytail in his hand, his fingers touching my neck, and then he tucks my hair into my collar, out of the reach of the wind. He avoids my gaze. Then he links his arms back around me and pushes his calf into Corr’s side.

Corr springs into the air.

When Dove moves up from a canter to a gallop, sometimes the only way I can tell the difference is because her hooves pound a four-time rhythm instead of a three.

But when Corr moves into a gallop, it’s as if it’s a gait that’s just been invented, something so much faster than all the others that it should be called something else. The wind roars savagely across my ears. There are uneven stones standing watch in the field, but they’re nothing to Corr. He barely lifts his knees and they’re behind us. Each stride feels like it takes us a mile. We’ll run out of island before he runs out of speed.

We’re giants, on his back.

Sean says into my ear, “Ask him for more.”

And when I squeeze my legs around him, Corr bounds forward again, as if we’d been merely straggling before. I can’t believe that any of the horses on the beach are faster than this. I can’t believe there’s a horse in the world faster than this. And this is with two people on him. With only Sean during the race, how can he lose?

We are flying.

Corr’s skin is hot against my legs – clingy, somehow, like when the current pushes your toes deeper into the sand. I feel his pulse in my pulse, his energy in mine, and I know this is the mysterious, terrifying power of the capaill uisce. We all know it, how it seizes you and confuses you and then you are in the water before you know it. But Sean leans forward, hard, against me, in order to reach Corr’s mane, and ties knots in it. Three. Then seven. Then three again. I try to focus on what he’s doing instead of his body pressed against mine, his cheek against my hair.

I lay the rein against Corr’s neck and he gallops to the left, away from the line of the cliffs. Sean is still tightly against me, the fingers of one hand pressing into one of Corr’s veins while the other grips his mane. The magic becomes a dull hum through me. My body warns me of the danger of this capall uisce beneath me, but at the same time it screams that it’s alive, alive, alive.

We wheel back the way we came. I keep waiting for Corr to flag, to show some signs of tiring, but there’s nothing but the pounding of his hooves across the turf, the snort of his breath around the bit, the wind blowing across my ears.

The island spools out beneath the moonlight. We gallop parallel to the cliff edge, and beyond it I see a flock of white birds keeping pace with us. Gulls, perhaps, soaring and gliding on air currents that send them violently upward as they get close to the rocks. This is Thisby, I think. This is the island I love. I suddenly feel I know everything about the island and everything about me all at the same time, only I know that it will go away as soon as we stop.

We are back to where we began, and reluctantly I slow Corr. My heart is crashing in my ears, galloping even though Corr has stopped.

I slide off and step a few feet away, turning to watch Sean dismount as well. He reaches into his pocket and gets a handful of salt or sand from it, then drops it in a circle around Corr and spits in it while I watch. Once this is done, he walks over to me, dark and silent. He’s looking at me like he looked at me at the festival, and I know I’m looking back. Something wild and old spins inside me, but I don’t have any words.

Sean reaches out between us and takes my wrist. He presses his thumb on my pulse. My heartbeat trips and surges against his skin. I’m pinned by his touch, a sort of fearful magic.

We stand and stand, and I wait for my pulse against his finger to slow, but it doesn’t.

Finally, he releases my wrist and says, “I’ll see you on the cliffs tomorrow.”