Now, closer to the surf, I see why the girl’s so brave. Her horse is just an island pony, with a coat the color of the sand, legs black as soaked kelp. I see from her belly that the poor Thisby grass has stuffed her but not fed her.
I want to know why she’s on my beach. And I want to know why no one’s confronting her. All of the horses are aware of her, though. Ears pricked, necks arched, lips curled up in her direction. And of course there’s the piebald mare among them, wailing her hunger and desire. I should have known Gorry wouldn’t let her go.
At the sound of the piebald capall, the dun island mare lays her ears back to her neck with fear. She knows that she’s a meal here, that the sound the piebald makes is a plea for her death. The girl leans and pats the dun’s neck, soothing her.
Reluctantly, I turn to go about my business. My mouth tastes of salt, and the wind finds me wherever I lead the horses. Today’s one of those days where no one will get warm. I find a crevasse in the cliffs, a giant’s axe mark, and lead the mares and Corr into it. The wind makes a muted scream at the apex of the crevasse, like someone dying out of sight. I draw a circle in the sand and spit into it.
Corr watches me. The mares watch the ocean. I watch the girl.
My thoughts turn the mystery of her presence over and over as I flip open my leather bag and remove the wax-paper bundle I put in there earlier. I toss the bits of meat into the circle, but the mares don’t touch them. They’re watching the pony and the girl in the ocean, a more interesting meal.
With the bag over my shoulder, I return to the mouth of the crevasse and cross my arms, waiting for a gap in the murder of horses and men to open so I can see the mare and girl again. There’s nothing special about the mare, nothing at all. A fine enough head, good enough bone. As a pony, she is a beauty. As a capall uisce, she is nothing.
The girl, too, is nothing special — slight, with a ginger ponytail. She looks less afraid than her mare, but she’s in more danger.
I hear one of my mares scream, and I turn long enough to flip open my bag and throw a handful of salt in her direction. She jerks her head up as some of it sprinkles her face; she’s offended but not hurt. I look her in the eye long enough that she knows there’s more where that came from. She’s a bay, no white markings on her anywhere, which is supposed to speak to her speed, but I’ve yet to get her going in a straight enough line to find out.
I turn back to the ocean, and the wind throws sand in my face, hard enough to offend but not to hurt. I smile a thin smile at the irony and turn up my collar. The girl circles her pony through the water again. I have to appreciate that she’s chosen the only place she can be sure that no one will approach her today. Of course, it’s not just the capaill uisce on the beach the girl has to worry about, but I can tell that she’s already considered that. She glances toward the curve of the incoming surf every so often. I can’t imagine that she’d be able to see a hunting capall uisce — when they swim parallel to the breakers, fast and dark beneath the surface, they’re almost impossible to see — but I also can’t imagine not looking.
Somewhere close by, a man is moaning; he’s been trampled or thrown or bitten. He sounds resentful or surprised. Did no one tell him that pain lives in this sand, dug in and watered with our blood?
I watch the girl’s hands on the reins, the certainty of her seat. She can ride, but so can everyone on Thisby.
“I’ll bet you haven’t seen that before,” says Gorry’s gritty voice. “Their clothes don’t come off with your eyes, Sean Kendrick.”
I glance at him just long enough to see that he still has the piebald mare, and then a second longer so that he sees that I am looking at how he still has the piebald mare, and then I look back to the ocean. There is a knot of fighting horses in front of us, growling and pawing like tomcats. Bells ring sharply. Every water horse on this beach is hungry for the sea, hungry for the chase.
I glance at the piebald mare again. Gorry’s knotted her halter with copper wire, which does nothing but look impressive.
“She’s entered in the races,” Gorry says. He’s smoking, and he gestures toward the girl in the surf with his cigarette. “On that pony. That’s what they’re saying.”
The smell of his cigarette stings worse than the wind. She means to race on that pony? She’ll be dead in a week.
The piebald mare paws at the sand; I see her digging out of the corner of my eye and hear her grinding her teeth. That bridle’s her curse, this island her prison. She still smells of rot.
“I can’t sell this mare — thanks for that,” Gorry says. “Your expert opinion, heh.” I don’t know what to tell him. When you traffic in monsters, that’s the risk you run, that you’ll find one too monstrous to stomach.
Bells jangle again, and I look away from the beach, trying to find the sound with my eyes. It is not my mares; it’s not the piebald. It’s just one horse in a throng of horses, but there’s a sharp urgency to the sound that calls to me. Danger sings on the breeze, throws echoes off the sheer white cliffs. There are too many people on horseback today trying to prove themselves, trying to prepare, trying to get faster. They haven’t discovered yet that it’s not the fastest who make it to race day.
You only have to be the fastest of those who are left.
Suddenly, there’s a shout and a terrible screaming whinny, and I turn in time to see Jimmy Blackwell throwing himself from his white-gray stallion as it leaps into the pounding waves. Blackwell rolls narrowly out of the way of another pair of spooking uisce mares. He’s older, defter. He’s survived a half-dozen Scorpio Races.
“And you thought this mare would be trouble,” Gorry says. He laughs.
I’m listening, but I’m watching, too. Blackwell is still pulling himself clear of the rioting mares. It’s just a petty disagreement between two savage horses, but they’re all teeth and hooves. One of the men tries to tear them apart, but he’s too cavalier. There’s a snap of blunt teeth and just like that, his fingers are gone. Someone shouts “Hey!” but nothing else, moved by the need to speak but having nothing else to say.
My eyes flick beyond all of them to the water to where Blackwell’s stallion half leaps, half swims, the water frothing white beneath him. His eyes are on that dun island pony and the girl on her back.
I hear a wail, and at first I think it is a scream, but then I hear my name. “Where’s Kendrick?”