The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater [2]
That’s just the way things are. There are the Connollys, and then there’s the rest of the world — though the rest of the world, when you live on Thisby, is not very large. Before last fall, it was always this: me, my younger brother, Finn, my older brother, Gabe, and our parents. We were a pretty quiet family altogether. Finn was always putting things together and taking them back apart and saving any spare parts in a box under his bed. Gabe wasn’t a huge conversationalist, either. Six years older than me, he saved his energy for growing; he was six feet tall by the age of thirteen. Our dad played the tin whistle, when he was home, and our mother performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes every evening, though I didn’t realize what a miracle it was until she wasn’t around.
It wasn’t that we were unfriendly with the rest of the island. We were just friendlier with ourselves. Being a Connolly came first. That was the only rule. You could hurt all the feelings you liked, so long as you weren’t hurting the feelings of a Connolly.
It’s midway through October now. Like all autumn days on the island, it begins cold but warms and gains color as the sun rises. I get a currycomb and a brush and I knock the dust out of Dove’s dun hide until my fingers warm up. By the time I saddle her up, she’s clean and I’m grubby. She is my mare and my best friend, and I keep waiting for something bad to happen to her, because I love her too much.
As I pull up her girth, Dove pushes her nose into my side, just shy of a nip, and pulls her head back quickly; she loves me, too. I can’t ride long; soon I’ll have to come back and help Finn make cookies for the local shops. I also paint teapots for the tourists, and since the races are coming up, I have more than enough orders backed up. After the races, there’ll be no more visitors from the mainland until spring. The ocean is just too uncertain a thing when it’s cold. Gabe will be out all day, working at the Skarmouth Hotel, getting the rooms ready for the race spectators. When you’re an orphan on Thisby, it’s hard work making ends meet.
I didn’t actually realize there wasn’t much to the island until a few years ago, when I started reading magazines. It doesn’t feel it to me, but Thisby’s tiny: four thousand people on a rocky crag jutting from the sea, hours from the mainland. It’s all cliffs and horses and sheep and one-track roads winding past treeless fields to Skarmouth, the largest town on the island. The truth is, until you know any different, the island is enough.
Actually, I know different. And it’s still enough.
So I am up and riding, my toes cold in my scruffy paddock boots, and Finn is sitting in the Morris in the drive, carefully applying black tape to a rip in the passenger seat. The rip was a gift from Puffin, the barn cat. At least Finn has now learned to never leave the windows rolled down. He’s pretending to look annoyed with the repairs, but I can tell that he is actually cheerful to be doing it. It is against Finn’s code to reveal too much happiness.
When he sees me riding Dove, Finn gives me a funny look. Once upon a time, before last year, that funny look would’ve changed into a sly smile and then he would’ve gunned the engine and we would’ve raced, me on Dove, him in the car, though he was technically too young to drive. A lot too young. It didn’t matter, though. Who was going to stop us? So we would race, me through fields, him on the roads. First to the beach had to make the other’s bed for a week.
But we haven’t raced for nearly a year. Not since my parents died on the boat.
I turn Dove away, making little circles in the side yard.