The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater [106]
Sean says, “Don’t apologize. I was being too free.”
And now I feel even worse, because that wasn’t what I meant at all.
Beside Sean, Corr abruptly shifts his weight and the motion of his head seems more lupine than equine. Something in his expression makes Sean spit on his fingers and press Corr toward the wall again.
I’m afraid that he’s going to ask me to leave the stall now, so I ask hurriedly, “What is the spitting? I saw you do it before.” I don’t have to fabricate interest. It appeals to a part of me that has been repressed by years of studious effort on the part of the adults in my life.
Sean looks at his fingers as if he means to spit on them to demonstrate, and then he simply opens and closes them. He studies Corr as he thinks, as if Corr will somehow provide a way for him to frame his answer. “It’s — spit. Salt. Me. It’s a part of me, it’s a way for me to be somewhere. When the rest of me can’t be.”
I remember how Corr stilled for Sean as he would for no one else on the beach. How the scent of Sean on his shirt calmed him when nothing else would.
I reply, “Something tells me my spit wouldn’t mean as much to Corr as yours would.”
There’s a long pause before Sean speaks. He says, “Maybe not yet.”
Yet! I don’t think I’ve heard such a fine word before.
I say, “And the whispering. What do you tell him?”
Sean stands at Corr’s shoulder, and for the first time he smiles at me. It’s the smallest of things, and it’s not amusement or humor, so I’m not sure what it means. He’s younger when he has it on, easier to look at, which is maybe why he avoids it. He leans his cheek against Corr’s withers and says, “What he needs to hear.”
One of Corr’s ears flicks back to him; the other stays trained on me. I don’t want to look away from Sean leaning on Corr. There’s something about it — this massive red giant that killed a man and slight, dark Sean Kendrick beside him as if they are friends — that fascinates and terrifies me.
Sean watches me watching him and then says, “Are you afraid of him?”
I don’t want to say yes, because I’m not afraid of him right now when he looks more like a horse and less like a fiend, but I don’t want to say no, either, because yesterday morning, on the beach, I was horrified and terrified. I would just say no anyway, but I feel certain that Sean Kendrick with his lacerating gaze would see right through me to the vagaries behind that no. So instead I reply, “You said you didn’t trust him.”
“I don’t trust the ocean, either; it would kill me as soon as not. It doesn’t mean I’m afraid of it.”
I frown at him. I’m thinking again of that image of Sean crouched tightly on top of the red stallion, galloping bareback on the top of the cliffs. Of Sean, unable to watch Mutt Malvern on Corr’s back. For once, I don’t look away from his narrow gaze. “But you aren’t just unafraid. You love them, don’t you? You love Corr.”
Sean Kendrick flinches as if I’ve startled him. He is quiet so long that I notice the sounds of the yard outside the stable, the calls and whinnies and water running and doors shutting. Then he says, “And you love the island. Tell me how it’s any different.”
As soon as he says it, I know that I can’t counter his argument. Of course, it’s true the island would just as soon see me dead as alive and it’s also true that I love it despite that. Possibly because of it.
“I don’t think I’d like to argue with you,” I say. “I think it would be a very dissatisfying pastime.”
He looks out the window, as if in reply, and he studies that hopeless landscape so