The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater [32]
We’ve played this game before and we both know the outcome.
Corr drops to the ground.
Holly lifts his eyebrows. He hands me the lunge line and wipes his palms on his slacks. “First time behind the wheel. At least I didn’t wrap her around a tree.”
He’s not at all fazed.
“Welcome to Thisby,” I say.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
PUCK
After Peg Gratton leaves, Finn and I pack up to go into Skarmouth. I find this pretty disagreeable, being once again denied the proud, lonely entrance on Dove, but we need to bring all of the teapots into town and the Morris won’t start. So in the most discouraging turn of events so far, I have to hitch Dove up to our little cart. My future embarrassment makes me cross and I make a lot of noise while loading up the pottery.
I have a sudden thought. “How are you going to get the cart back home?” I ask Finn, who is working on carefully aligning the boxes in the cart so the corners match perfectly. His side of the packing looks like he is laying bricks, but it’s taking him a long time. I don’t care if the largest boxes go on the bottom or the top so long as they aren’t going to crash around. “I’m taking Dove down to the beach and the cart is not going down there.”
“I’ll bring it back myself,” Finn says pleasantly. He feathers two of his fingers on the edge of a box in order to move it the distance of a butterfly’s breath.
“Yourself?”
“Sure,” Finn says. “It’ll be empty then.”
I get a momentary image of my brother trudging out of Skarmouth with a pony cart behind him, an emaciated troll in a giant sweater, and I wish that I, too, could disappear to the mainland where no one knew my name. But it’s that or get to the beach after the tide has come up. The mist is still clinging to us, but it’s starting to brighten, reminding me of time passing.
“Maybe Dory will let us leave it behind the shop,” I say. “I’ll pick it back up with Dove when I’m done.”
Finn scratches Dove’s rump with one finger, which makes her stamp her back hoof like he’s a fly. He says, “Dove says she doesn’t want to pull a cart after you make her run away from sea monsters.”
“Dove says you’ll look like an idiot pulling a pony cart.”
He smiles vaguely at his stack of pottery boxes. “I don’t mind.”
“Obviously!” I snap.
We haven’t come to an agreement by the time we load up, but there’s no more time, so off we go, me leading Dove and Finn trailing behind. Puffin the cat follows us for a while, with Finn shooing at her, which only makes her longing to join us more intense.
Partway into town, I smell something like rotten meat on the wind, and Finn and I exchange glances. The island is no stranger to terrible smells — storms throw up great fish onto the beaches to rot, fishermen’s spoils go bad on warm days, a cross-eyed wind brings the smell of brine and wet things in the evening — but this is not a sea smell. Something’s died that shouldn’t have and has been left where it shouldn’t have been left. I don’t want to stop, but it could be a person, so I make Finn stand by Dove’s head as I climb up over the stone wall in the direction of the scent.
The wind is coming straight toward me — the wind manages to cut through the mist instead of pushing it out of the way — and I crumple over myself to stay warm as I step around sheep poo. All the while I am wishing that I could have sent Finn to investigate the smell, but he’s queasy and useless with blood. So I am the lucky one to discover the source, which is a pile of parts that used to be a sheep. There’s not much left but hooves, a bob of its short tail, a lump of its innards, which is what smells, and its furry skull, which is mangled and crushed around the eye socket. What’s left of the wool at the back of the neck is spray-painted blue, to mark it as one of Hammond’s flock. There isn’t much back of the neck left to be painted, though. My skin prickles with an automatic tickle of fear, though I doubt that the capall uisce responsible is anywhere near. Still — this is far inland for one of the horses to come.
I return to Finn and Dove. They’re playing a game