As I watch Mutt’s face light up with anger and listen to the murmur of amusement from the onlookers, I remember, too late, Dory Maud’s advice.
“Where’s your pony, then?” Mutt snaps back. “Plowing fields?”
I’m more embarrassed by the attention than by the insult. Probably because when I’m done down here, I’ll be back in Dory Maud’s booth selling baubles to tourists. It occurs to me that Mutt Malvern doesn’t know me well enough to say something to properly hurt me.
It’s not me that Mutt wants to hurt anyway. He calls, “I have to say I’m pleased for you, Kendrick. Is she a better ride than you’re used to?” He pretends to caress Corr’s rump. I feel my cheeks go hot. Sean’s face doesn’t change and I wonder at it — is it practice? Is it that he’s heard all these things too many times for them to prick his skin?
Beneath Mutt, Corr moves restlessly. He pushes his nose toward Prince, nuzzling into his chest. Prince scratches his forehead and pushes back.
“Steady, old lad,” he says. Prince tilts his head back to face Mutt. “Are you taking him out, then? Before the tide gets up on us?” As he speaks, Corr presses again, more insistently, so that the bells ring again, and Prince pushes back.
“Yeah, indeed,” Mutt replies. He wiggles one of the reins to get Corr’s attention; Corr still nuzzles and pushes at Prince. I see the shudder of Corr’s skin beneath the ironbound breastplate they’ve put on him.
“Okay, now,” Prince says. Corr’s muzzle is at his collarbone, like Dove does when I scratch her mane and she’s feeling fond. Prince lays his hand flat on Corr’s cheek as Corr’s breath whuffs against Prince’s neck.
Sean’s feet kick up sand even as he shouts. “David!”
Prince looks up.
Quick as a snake, Corr’s flat teeth crush into his neck.
Mutt Malvern hauls back on the reins; Corr climbs into a rear. The crowd shouts and scatters. The other two men who were with Mutt leap back, uncertain if they should defend themselves or help Mutt. Sean jerks to a stop, face turned from the spraying sand. On the ground, Prince arches his back, his feet scrabbling. I can’t look away.
Corr rears again, and this time, Mutt can’t keep his hold. He rolls out of the reach of Corr’s hooves and comes up bloody. Prince’s blood, not his. The stallion’s eyes are white and rolling as he spins. His gaze is on the surf. Everyone else’s gaze is on him and on Sean, but none of them is moving.
When Corr circles another time, I dart across the sand to where Prince lies. I can’t tell how badly he’s hurt; there’s too much blood to see his skin. I’m afraid that Corr will trample him, but I don’t know if I can move him. The best I can do is stand between him and the hooves and try to press down this horror inside me.
Corr turns and cries out again; this time it’s like a choked sob. There’s a spiderweb of veins standing out on his shoulder.
“Corr,” Sean says.
He doesn’t shout it. It doesn’t seem loud enough to be heard above the sound of the hoofbeats and the surf or the sound of Prince’s gagging, but the red stallion stills. Sean holds his arms out and approaches slowly. There’s blood on Corr’s lower jaw; his lips quiver. His ears are flat back against his head.
“Hold on,” I whisper to Prince. Up close, he’s not as young as I thought; I can see every line carved around his eyes and mouth. I don’t know if he can hear me. He holds fistfuls of sand and his eyes on me are a terrible, terrible thing. I don’t want to touch him, but I reach down. When he feels my fingers, he clutches my hand so hard that it hurts.
Near Corr, Sean shoulders off his jacket and abandons it on the sand, then tugs his shirt off over his head. Underneath, he’s pale and scarred. I’ve never given much thought to whether broken ribs healed straight before now. Sean speaks to Corr in a low, low voice. Corr shakes, his eyes rolling toward the ocean.
Prince’s blood is all over me. I’ve never seen so much blood before. This is how my parents died. I tell myself not to imagine it, but it doesn’t matter; I can’t picture it. There’s just no way to make my mind accept the possibility of it, and I’m sorry that I can’t. Because as terrible as imagining that might be, it has to be better than living in this current reality with Prince’s shaking hand gripping mine.
Sean slowly approaches Corr, speaking in the same low voice all the way. He’s three steps away. Two. One. Corr lifts his head, pulling back, his teeth bared and bloody; he’s shaking as much as Prince. Sean balls up his shirt and then presses it to Corr’s muzzle. He waits a long moment until Corr smells nothing but Sean Kendrick, and then Sean wipes the blood from Corr’s mouth. As the stallion stands, rigid, Sean folds the shirt so that the blood faces the sky, then wraps the fabric over Corr’s nostrils and eyes.
“Daly,” Sean says. Beside him, Corr’s nostrils suck the fabric of his shirt against them, showing the outline of his muzzle through the shirt, and then blow it back out again. One of the men who’d come with Mutt jerks at his name. He looks terrified. Sean’s eyes flit away, disappointed by whatever he sees in Daly’s face, and then they find me. “Puck.”
I don’t want to leave Prince as long as he’s holding my hand so tightly, but I realize suddenly that somewhere along the way it switched to me holding his hand and not the other way around. Horrified, I drop his fingers with a start and climb to my feet.
Sean gestures to the reins that trail from Corr’s bridle. “Hold this. Will you hold this? I need …” The red stallion still quivers beneath the mask Sean’s made. I can’t seem to feel afraid — it’s like my fear has fled somewhere deep inside me. Someone needs to hold the horse. I can hold the horse. I wipe my bloody palm on my pants and step forward. Taking a deep breath, I hold out my hand.
Sean puts the reins and a bunch of fabric in my fist, whether or not I’m ready. This close, I hear a faint metallic humming, and I realize that it’s the bells around Corr’s bridle and pasterns. The stallion shakes so subtly and constantly that the metal balls inside the bells whirr like metal grasshoppers.
Sean checks my grip and then, swift and certain, he crouches and slides beneath the red stallion. He produces a knife from his pocket, and runs his palm down Corr’s foreleg.
“I’m here,” he says, and Corr’s ear trembles and turns to catch his voice.