The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater [67]
“You are lost, aren’t you? Dory Maud said you wouldn’t lose your way but I knew you would.” Elizabeth’s expression is pure disdain.
“Lost means I know where I’m going,” I snap. “I’ve never been to the parade before.”
“Don’t bite me,” Elizabeth says. “It’s this way. Finn, boy, are you catching midges? Close your mouth and come on.”
Her fingers are claws in my upper arm as she guides me up, up, up to the cliff above the racing beach. Finn trots after us, as twitchy as a puppy.
“Where is Dory?” I shout.
“Gambling,” snarls Elizabeth. “Of course. While I do the work.”
I’m not certain how guiding me to the top of the cliff counts as work, but I’m grateful for it. I’m also not certain I can imagine Dory Maud betting on the horses. Certainly not in any way that justified Elizabeth’s snarled of course. I do my best to imagine Dory Maud in the butcher’s, placing a bet, but the best I can imagine is her in the Black-Eyed Girl. In my imaginings, she manages it better than I do, swaggering up to the bar like a man.
Elizabeth snaps at me to wake up and propels me with great confidence through the crowd at the cliff top. Only after several long minutes does she stop to catch her bearings. But I can see now that we’re in the right place. Because I spot a point of stillness in the seething crowd: Sean Kendrick. His clothing is dark, his expression darker, and he looks off into the black night in the direction of the sea. He is unmistakably waiting.
“There,” I say.
“No,” says Elizabeth, following my gaze. “That is not where you’re headed. I think the race is dangerous enough without that, don’t you? This way.”
Sean turns his head just as Elizabeth jerks me in the opposite direction, and our eyes meet. There’s something sharp and unprotected in his expression, and then I have to look down to keep Elizabeth from hauling me off my feet.
Finn scoots up beside me, hands shoved in his pockets against the cold. He casts a doleful look toward Elizabeth.
I turn my head and whisper to him, “You’d think this is the race by the speed she’s going.”
Finn doesn’t smile, but his eyes do. Then Elizabeth comes to a halt. “Here,” she says.
We’ve come around to a third bonfire, and before it is a great, flat rock, splattered and streaked with brown. It takes me a moment to understand what I’m seeing. It’s old, old blood, stained all over the rock. Finn’s face is pinched. There’s a huge crowd of people circling the rock, waiting as Sean was waiting, and already I recognize a few of the riders a short distance away: Dr. Halsal, Tommy Falk, Mutt Malvern. Ian Privett. Some of them are talking and laughing with each other — they’ve done this before, and there’s a sense of familiarity. I feel suddenly ill.
“What’s the blood from?” I whisper to Elizabeth.
“Puppies,” Elizabeth says. She’s caught Ian Privett looking at her and she bares her teeth at him in something that I don’t think is supposed to be a smile. Taking me by both my upper arms, she holds me in front of her like a shield. “It’s the riders’. You’ll go up and put a drop of your blood on there to show you’re riding.”
I stare at the rock. That’s a lot of blood for just a drop from each rider over the years.
Now a man’s climbed onto the rock. I recognize him as Frank Eaton, a farmer my father knew. He’s wearing one of the weird traditional scarf-things that the tourists like to buy — it wraps over his shoulder and pins at his hip and looks utterly ridiculous with his corduroy trousers. I have a very strong association of sweat-smell with the traditional costume and he doesn’t look like he will change that impression. Holding a small bowl in his hands, Eaton shouts to the crowd, which is a little quieter now, “It falls to me to speak for the man who will not ride.”
Eaton tips the bowl and blood splashes down over the rock at his feet. He doesn’t stand back, and so drops of it mist his pants. I don’t think he minds.
“Rider without a name,” he says. “Horse without a name. By his blood.