I push into the butcher’s. As always, it’s the cleanest place in Skarmouth, and it’s lit to a bright, daylight white inside. Two birds have somehow gotten into the building, and as I press my way in, the lights seem to flicker and dim as their wings flash in front of the bulbs.
I don’t see Peg Gratton behind the counter, so it could have been her in the horse costume. I feel lighter. Less called.
I stand at the counter and Beech Gratton sullenly takes my order. It’s not me he resents, but the job, keeping him in when he wants out to the festival.
“Your face is a ruin.” Beech grunts with admiration, and I remember the woman smearing my face with blood. “You look like the devil.”
I don’t reply.
“I’ll be out of here in twenty minutes,” he tells me, though I didn’t ask.
“Thirty! “ calls Peg Gratton from the back.
I taste blood in my mouth. An eye made of shale blinks at me.
Beech jots down my order, and as he does, I look up at the board behind the counter. There is my name, and Corr’s, and beside us are our current odds: 1–5. Below us are also the names of a score of new entrants from the mainland who have found mounts in the first few days of training. They’ll crowd the beach bad as the first day of training, inept and over-brave. I scan down the list to find Kate Connolly; I see her pony’s name first, and then her name. Her odds are 45–1. I wonder how much of that is because of her pony and how much is because of her gender.
I let my eyes trail down the list to find Mutt’s name on the list. There it is, and his horse’s beside it. By all rights, the name written beside his should have been Edana, the horse that he has not touched for two days, the bay with white markings. The horse that I told his father to put him on.
But it doesn’t say Edana.
The word printed beside Mutt’s is Skata. A good name for a horse, hard and short. Skata is a local name for the magpie. A bird known for its cleverness, for its affection for shiny things, for its black-and-white coloration. There’s only one thing on that beach that’s black-and-white.
Skata is the piebald mare.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
SEAN
I find him by one of the bonfires.
The flames strive high into the black sky, tangled with the night. I can taste the smoke on my tongue.
“Matthew Malvern,” I say, and it comes out a snarl, a call to battle, no more friendly than one of Corr’s screams across the sand. Mutt is a giant, a mythical creature outlined in black before the bonfire, charcoal in one hand and a scrap of paper in the other: a sea wish. If he has a face, I cannot see it. I shout, “Is it a death wish you have written on that?”
Mutt twists the paper just long enough for me to see my name on it, written backward. Then he lets it fly over the edge of the cliff. It disappears into the black.
“That horse will kill you.”
Mutt swaggers up to me. His breath is dark, the underside of the sea. “And when, Sean Kendrick, have you ever cared for my safety?”
He stands closer, and closer, until our shadow is the same. I don’t flinch. If he means to fight tonight, I mean to fight him back. The storm’s inside me already and I can see Fundamental go under again, fresh as the minute it happened.
“It might not be you she kills,” I say. “And no one deserves to die because of you.”
The fire is hot on my skin.
“I know why you don’t want me on her.” Mutt laughs. “You know she’s faster than him.”
For so many years I have taken every precaution to keep Mutt alive for his father: put him on the safest horse I can manage, trained the hell out of that horse to make it impervious to the ocean, watched him in training to make sure that no one else interfered with him. I have two healed ribs that should be his.
Now he’s put himself so far outside my ability to protect him that it’s almost relieving. On the piebald, I can do nothing for him.
I put my hands up. “Do what you want. I’m done.”
I see figures at the corner of my eye; they’re here to bring us over for the riders’ parade. The night’s nearly over, and then the training really begins. It’s hard to imagine, right now, a day after this night, which seems like it could go on forever.
“Yes,” Mutt says, “you are.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
PUCK
The riders’ parade is not really a parade at all.
There’s a man calling over the crowd, “Riders? Riders! To the rock!” He clearly means for us to follow him. I keep waiting for it to sort itself out into something more organized, but it never does. The only time it looks anything like a parade, kind of, is when I spy a few of the riders all heading in the same direction, up to the cliff top. The crowd parts for them, and I hurry after them, Finn trailing as best he can. No one moves for me, however, so I get a mouthful of wayward shoulders and a rib cage full of elbows.
By now it’s blacker than black, and the only light comes from two bonfires, one burning high and furious, and the other smaller and spitting. I’m not certain where I should be.
“Kate Connolly,” someone says, not in a nice way. When I turn my head, I see nothing but eyes glancing away and eyebrows pulled together. It’s a strange thing, to be talked about instead of talked to.
A hand grabs my arm, and I turn, hissing and spitting, until I see that it’s Elizabeth, Dory Maud’s sister. Her hair is fair, even in this dim light, and she’s wearing a red frock the color of Father Mooneyham’s car. She makes a sour face. Her lips match Father Mooneyham’s car, too. I’m sort of surprised to see her here; I’ve never seen her outside of the booth or Fathom & Sons, and I thought, possibly, that she would melt or disintegrate if she crossed into the real world. Each of the sisters has her realm: Dory Maud’s is the widest, including the whole island, and then Elizabeth’s is the building and booth, and then Annie’s is the smallest of all, only the second floor of Fathom & Sons.
“You are lost, aren’t you? Dory Maud said you wouldn’t lose your way but I knew you would.” Elizabeth’s expression is pure disdain.
“Lost means I know where I’m going,” I snap. “I’ve never been to the parade before.”
“Don’t bite me,” Elizabeth says. “It’s this way. Finn, boy, are you catching midges? Close your mouth and come on.”
Her fingers are claws in my upper arm as she guides me up, up, up to the cliff above the racing beach. Finn trots after us, as twitchy as a puppy.