The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater [16]
I try to breathe through my mouth and not think about it. There are dogs careening around my legs and nobody is looking where he’s going. Horses are clawing at the air and men are hawking insurance and protection to the riders. They’re more riled up than terriers in a butcher shop. I’m glad that Finn’s stormed off because the idea of him seeing me totally bewildered seems unbearable.
The truth is, I have a very rough idea of how to go about securing a horse for the race without money up front, but it’s mostly based on things that we used to talk about in school, when the boys would all boast that they were going to ride in the races when they grew up. They never really did; mostly they just moved away to the mainland or became farmers, but their big plans were a good source of information. Especially since my family was one of the few that didn’t follow the races.
“Girl!” snarls a man holding a roan horse that is pawing and charging, galloping without moving an inch. “Mind your damned feet!”
I stare down at my feet, and it takes me a second too long to realize that there was a circle drawn in the sand, and my boots have scuffed a line through it. I jump out of the circle.
“Don’t bother,” shouts the man as I try to retrace the line of the circle. The roan tugs toward the break in the line. I back up and get shouted at again for my trouble — two men are carrying an older boy away between them. He’s bleeding from his head and he swears at me. I whirl away and almost trip over a scruffy dog with sand in its fur.
“Curse you!” I snap at the dog, just because it won’t say anything back.
“Puck Connolly!” It’s Tommy Falk with his pretty lips. “What are you doing down here?” At least, that’s what I think he says. It’s so loud that other people’s conversations drown out most of his words and the wind robs the rest.
“I’m looking for bowler hats,” I say. Black bowler hats are supposed to mean dealers — on the rest of the island, someone wearing one is called a monger, after the horsemongers, and it’s not the nicest of names. Sometimes the boys wear them if they want to be seen as rebels. Mostly it just means they’re pissers.
Tommy shouts, “I didn’t hear you right.”
But I know he did. He just doesn’t believe what he heard. Dad once said people’s brains are hard of hearing. It doesn’t matter if Tommy’s stone-cold deaf on a plate, though, because I catch a glimpse of a bowler hat, on the head of the little gnome-man who had the piebald mare earlier.
“Thanks,” I tell Tommy, though he hasn’t really helped. I leave him behind and wind through the crowd toward the gnome. Up close, the man does not look quite so short, but he does look like his face has been hit solidly a few times with a brick, twice to really squish it and once more for good measure.
He is arguing with someone.
“Sean Kendrick,” spits the monger, which is a name that sounds familiar for some reason, especially said in that disdainful note. The bowler-hatted gnome doesn’t have a gnome-like voice at all. His voice is lined with cigarette smoke and he puts gritty h’s at the beginning of his words. “Heh. His head’s half full of salt water. What’s he saying about my horses, now?”
“I don’t like to repeat it,” replies the other figure politely. It’s Dr. Halsal, with his shiny black hair parted neatly on the side. I like Dr. Halsal. He’s very levelheaded and he’s a very compact, tidy sort of person, who reminds me of a drawing of a person instead of an actual person. I wanted to marry him when I was six.
“He’s crazy as the ocean,” says the bowler-hatted monger. “Come now, if you back her, you’ll want her.”
“All the same,” Dr. Halsal says, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to pass.”
“She’s fast as the devil,” the gnome says, but the doctor is already retreating, and his back doesn’t listen.
“Excuse me,” I say, and my voice sounds very high to me. The gnome turns. His mismatched face is fearsome when matched with an irritable expression. I try to organize my thoughts into a respectable-sounding question. “Do you do fifths?