The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater [57]
“Well, your face looks like it remembers a smile,” Holly says. He looks down at my clothing; I’m wearing the island all over my left side.
I kick on the hose pump with my knee and begin to rinse the bucket over the top of the drain. “I lost a horse today.”
“That sounds careless. What happened?”
“She jumped off a cliff.”
“A cliff! Is that normal?”
In the barn, Edana lets out a keening, impatient wail, hungry for the sea. This time last year, Mutt was already pounding the hell out of his chosen mount on the beach. Right now, the yard seems quiet without him: the blue sky before a storm. I think about the Scorpio Festival tomorrow, how the riders’ parade this year will be me and Mutt and insane Kate Connolly.
I shut off the water pump and regard him. “Mr. Holly, nothing about this month is turning out to be normal.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
PUCK
So tonight is the night of the great Scorpio Festival.
I’ve only been to the Scorpio Festival once; Mum took us one year while Dad was out on the boat. Dad didn’t approve of the festival or the races in general. He said that one bred hooligans and that the other gave those hooligans two more legs than they could steer. We’d always thought Mum didn’t approve, either. But still, that year, when it became clear that Dad wasn’t going to be back that evening, Mum told us to fetch our hats and coats and told Gabe to kick the Morris into life (it was dodgy, even back then). With illicit fervor, we piled in: Gabe took the coveted passenger seat while Finn and I fought and slapped each other in the backseat. Mum shouted at us and tore along the little road to Skarmouth, bent over the steering wheel like it was a troublesome horse.
And then, Skarmouth! Everywhere there were costumes and the Scorpio drummers and the wail of the singers. Mum bought us bells and ribbons and November cakes, which made my hands sticky for days. Everywhere, noise, noise, noise, until Finn, who was just a little urchin then, had started to cry from it. Dory Maud whirled over from nowhere with one of the terrifying curse masks and put it on Finn. Hidden behind the flat-toothed monster mask, he became as fierce as my mother.
Over the years that I knew Mum, I more often saw her mucking Dove’s lean-to or cleaning pots or painting pottery or leaning up against the roof to smack a shingle back on with a hammer. But for some reason, now, when I call up thoughts of Mum, I remember that night at the festival, her dancing wildly in a circle with us, a mouth full of glinting teeth, face strange in the firelight, singing the November songs.
And now it’s years later, and it’s the day of the festival, and we can go if we want to because there’s no one alive to tell us otherwise. It’s a strange and hollow feeling.
“I got the Morris running,” Finn says now, coming into the house. He regards my dish washing with more interest than dish washing warrants. “It took awhile.” I believe him. He’s grubby and black.
“You look like homemade sin,” I tell him. “What are you doing?”
Instead of heading to the bathroom to clean up, he’s fetching his coat, which has fallen onto the floor behind Dad’s sitting chair by the fire.
Finn rubs his forehead, leaving a black smear. “I’m afraid to turn the Morris off or it might not start again.”
“You can’t let it run all night.”
My brother puts on his lumpy hat. “I can’t believe Mum called you the clever one.”
“She didn’t. She called Gabe that,” I say. As he puts his hand on the door, I realize where he thinks he’s going. “Wait — you think you’re going to the festival?”
Finn just turns and gives me a look.
“Gabe’s not even here. Why do you think we’re going? I have to be up early.”
“Because you have to go finalize your registration,” Finn says. “That’s what your rule sheet says.”
Of course he’s right. I feel foolish for not remembering