The stick isn’t long enough to touch him, but it’s got a length of red leather fixed to the end, and it snaps to remind him of his place.
“Me neither,” Holly announces broadly, putting his hands in his pockets like a boy. He rotates on his heel as I turn, watching Corr circle around us. “Just a horse lover.”
Now that he’s said his name, I know exactly who he is. I’ve not met him before, but I know his agent, who comes over each year to import a yearling or three. Holly’s the American equivalent of Malvern, the owner of a massive breeding farm known for show jumpers and hunters, wealthy and eccentric enough to come all the way to Thisby for a chance to improve his stock. “Horse lover” is a stark understatement, albeit one that makes me like him better.
And Malvern has me babysitting him. I should be flattered. But still, I’m wondering how difficult it will be to hand him off in order to get down to the beaches.
“Do you think Benjamin Malvern would part with this beast?” Holly asks. He’s watching Corr’s tireless stride and imagining it, I think, on his home soil.
My breath’s uncertain. For the first time, I’m relieved by the answer to that question, though it’s caused me sleepless nights before. “Malvern won’t sell his water horses to anyone.”
Also, it’s illegal to transport the capaill uisce from the island, but that doesn’t seem like something that would stop someone like Holly. If he were a horse, I think I’d have to trot him around this round pen for a long time to take the edge off.
“Perhaps he hasn’t been offered the right price.”
My fingers tighten on the lunge line enough that Corr feels the tension and flicks an ear toward me, always sensitive to my mood. “He’s had good offers.”
At least one very good offer. Everything I had saved over the years, everything from my share of the winnings. I could buy ten of Malvern’s yearlings, ten of any of his other horses. Just not the one I want.
“I expect you would be the one to know,” Holly says. “Sometimes it’s not money they’re looking for.” He doesn’t sound upset; a man so used to both buying horses and being refused them that neither scenario surprises him. “I sure do like the look of him. Malvern horses! Sh-ite.”
He’s so clearly delighted by it all that it’s hard to fault him.
I ask, “How long are you here?”
“I’m on the ferry the day after the race, with whatever Benjamin Malvern has convinced me I can’t live without. Want to join me? I could use a boy like you. Not a jockey, but a whatever you call yourself.”
I allow him a thin smile that reveals the impossibility of this.
“I see how it is,” Holly replies. He gestures his chin toward Corr. “Can I hold him for a moment? Will he let me?”
He is so polite about it that I hand him the lunge line and my stick. Holly takes them delicately, his feet automatically moving apart to give him a better base of support. The stick rests lightly in his right hand, an extension of his arm. The man must have lunged hundreds of horses.
Still, Corr immediately tests him. He tosses his head up and moves in, and Holly has to flick the stick at once. Corr keeps pushing inward.
“Snap,” I say. I’m ready to take him back if I must. “It has to snap.”
Holly flicks the stick again, this time hard enough to audibly snap the leather, and Corr twists his head, more conciliatory than ill-tempered, before trotting back out to the wall. Holly’s smile is broad and pleased. “How long has it taken you to get him like this?”
“Six years.”
“Could you do this with the other two mares I saw?”
I had tried the lunge line, in fact, with the pure bay mare, and though it hadn’t been a disaster, it hadn’t been pretty, either. Surely I wouldn’t have wanted Holly or anyone else with me in the round pen that day. I’m not entirely certain that six years with either of the mares would end up the same way that six years with Corr has. I’m not sure, after all this time, if it’s because he understands me better than they do, or merely because I understand him better than them.
“Who taught you this? Surely not Malvern.” Holly glances at me.
In that brief moment of distraction, the bare second it takes for Holly to look toward me, Corr surges away from the wall toward us. Swift and soundless.
I don’t wait for Holly to react. I snatch the stick from his hand and jump to meet Corr, pressing the tip of the stick into his shoulder. Corr rises up, away from the pressure of it, but I follow him. As he rears, I lay the red leather against his cheek, daring him to test me as he tested Holly.
We’ve played this game before and we both know the outcome.
Corr drops to the ground.
Holly lifts his eyebrows. He hands me the lunge line and wipes his palms on his slacks. “First time behind the wheel. At least I didn’t wrap her around a tree.”
He’s not at all fazed.
“Welcome to Thisby,” I say.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
PUCK
After Peg Gratton leaves, Finn and I pack up to go into Skarmouth. I find this pretty disagreeable, being once again denied the proud, lonely entrance on Dove, but we need to bring all of the teapots into town and the Morris won’t start. So in the most discouraging turn of events so far, I have to hitch Dove up to our little cart. My future embarrassment makes me cross and I make a lot of noise while loading up the pottery.
I have a sudden thought. “How are you going to get the cart back home?” I ask Finn, who is working on carefully aligning the boxes in the cart so the corners match perfectly. His side of the packing looks like he is laying bricks, but it’s taking him a long time. I don’t care if the largest boxes go on the bottom or the top so long as they aren’t going to crash around. “I’m taking Dove down to the beach and the cart is not going down there.”
“I’ll bring it back myself,” Finn says pleasantly. He feathers two of his fingers on the edge of a box in order to move it the distance of a butterfly’s breath.
“Yourself?”
“Sure,” Finn says. “It’ll be empty then.”
I get a momentary image of my brother trudging out of Skarmouth with a pony cart behind him, an emaciated troll in a giant sweater, and I wish that I, too, could disappear to the mainland where no one knew my name. But it’s that or get to the beach after the tide has come up. The mist is still clinging to us, but it’s starting to brighten, reminding me of time passing.