The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater [131]
“My father’s house is an hour’s walk from here, on the northwestern cliffs. If I was free to live anywhere, that’s where I’d live.” I can’t quite remember living in my father’s home, though I’ve ridden by it before. My memories of the space inside are fragmented: me in bed, me at a window, my mother in a chair. It’s quite run-down now. It’s still in my name, but it’s too far to serve me well working for Malvern.
“That’s where you would keep the broodmare I just bought until she had a lovely red colt by your stallion?”
I reach for my socks on the radiator and the boots beneath them. “I didn’t say I would start a yard.”
“You didn’t have to. I’ll come back next year and you’ll have a nest of horses outside your window and Puck Connolly in your bed and I’ll buy from you instead of Malvern. That’s your future for you.”
“The future sounds much kinder in your accent.” I sigh and reach for my jacket.
“Where are you going? I’m not nearly done with my prognostication.”
I shoulder on my jacket. “To the beach. You’ll never get that colt of yours if I don’t win Corr.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
PUCK
In the night, I’ve shrunk and everyone else on the island has grown. They’re all nine feet tall and men and I’m four feet and a child. Dove, too, is a toy or possibly a dog as I lead her through the throngs of people. The cliff road is already seething; the early races began hours ago and fifths are running the short skirmishes down on the sand. I hear groans and laughs from the spectators on the cliff. The wind tears at us all.
I peer up at the clouds, but they’re lackluster clouds, the sort that stay for a moment, not a day. I’m relieved; I’d thought it might be as ill as the day that we’d found Tommy dead on the beach. It is cold, but it’s November. I expected cold.
Everyone’s watching me and I keep hearing my name, or keep thinking that I hear it, anyway. Someone spits at Dove’s hooves, or maybe my feet. I hear exclamations in broad mainland accents and comments about my breeding in Thisby’s clipped one. I feel, strangely, like I’m the stranger and the tourist, come to visit a friendless island. Everyone’s touching Dove, and she’s flighty and uncertain. At one point, she lifts her head and whinnies, though there’s no one on this side of the island to answer her. Far down on the beach, a capall uisce screams back. Dove shivers and drags me at the end of the lead; it takes my heels several feet to find traction again.
I hear laughter and someone asks if I need help, not in a nice way. I snarl, “What I need is for your mother to have thought a little harder nine months before your birthday.”
“She bites!” says someone.
I seal my mouth shut and push farther on. Somewhere in this mess is Gabe, possibly, with my colors, and Finn, possibly, with my lunch.
“Kate Connolly, do you mean to change the establishment?”
I blink and step backward. There’s a man directly in front of me, dressed in a brown suit that looks like it cost more than our house, and he holds a notebook. Behind him stands a photographer with a massive flashbulb. There is an edge of people behind me and Dove. I feel cornered.
“I’m not trying to change anything but my own situation,” I say.
“So you wouldn’t say you were inspired by the women’s suffrage movement?”
I crane my neck around, looking for my brothers or for Dory Maud or for anyone that I know. I’ve never seen so many bowler hats in my life. “I’m just a person with a horse, same as anyone else on this island. Do you mind? You’re making my horse nervous.”
The reporter asks, “What would you say to those on Thisby who say you don’t belong in the Scorpio Races?”
“I don’t have a clever answer for you,” I say crossly.
“Just one more, Miss Connolly. Where do you think you’ll end up? Do you think you stand a chance of finishing?” They trot to keep up with me as I turn Dove’s shoulder toward them. I’m oddly undone by the reporter and the photographer, more than anything I’ve encountered so far. I hadn’t considered eyes on me, much less eyes all the way from a mainland newspaper.
I scowl at him. “Go