The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater [68]
“Sheep’s,” Elizabeth says. “Or maybe horse. I don’t remember.”
“That’s barbaric!” I’m aghast. Finn looks like he may throw up.
Elizabeth shrugs just one shoulder. Ian Privett watches her do it. “Fifty years ago, it was a man they killed up there, just like every year before. The man who will not ride.”
“Why?” I demand.
Her voice is bored; there’s a real answer, possibly, but she’s not interested in knowing it. “Because men like to kill things. Good thing they stopped. We’d run out of men.”
“Because,” cuts in a voice that I recognize instantly, “if you feed the island blood before the race, maybe she won’t take as much during it.”
Elizabeth turns to Peg Gratton with a sour look. I blink at Peg — she’s barely recognizable under her elaborate headdress. It looks a little like one of the scary tufted puffins that you can sometimes find on the island: It has a great pointed visor that forms the beak, and ropy yellow tassels that come off over each ear like long horns. I search for signs of Peg’s curly hair, but it’s hidden securely under the fabric lining of the headdress.
“Don’t expect them to be friendly to you, Puck,” Peg Gratton tells me, as if Elizabeth’s not there. “A lot of them consider a girl on the beach bad luck. They won’t be happy to see you.”
I press my lips together. “I don’t need them to be friendly. Just need them to let me go about my business.”
“That would be a kindness,” Peg says. She turns her head, and it’s a strange, jerky motion with the bird head on top of hers. If I wasn’t unsettled by anything that I saw tonight, that motion would’ve done it. She says, “I have to go.”
On the rock, a woman wearing a real horse head stands over the place where the man poured the blood. Her tunic is soaked in blood; her hands run with it. She faces the crowd, but with that massive head, it doesn’t seem like she’s looking at us but at some point in the sky. I feel swimmy and feverish from the heat of the bonfire, from the sight of the blood. I’m dreaming, but I’m not.
There’s murmuring from the people assembled. I can’t pick out individual words, but Elizabeth says, “They’re saying no one got the shell. She didn’t drop a shell this year.”
“The shell?”
“For the wish,” Elizabeth says in her impatient way. “She drops a shell and you get a wish. Probably she dropped it down in Skarmouth and they were too dull to find it.”
“Who is it?” Finn asks Elizabeth, the first thing he’s said in a long while. “In the horse head?”
“The mother of all horses. Epona. Soul of Thisby and those cliffs.”
Finn, patient, clarifies, “I meant, who is the woman?”
“Someone with more up front to look at than you,” Elizabeth replies. Finn’s eyes instantly go to the horse-woman’s breasts, and Elizabeth laughs, high and wild. I scowl in defense of Finn’s virtue, and she gives me a healthy shove. “They’re calling for the riders.”
They are. The woman with the horse head has gone, though I didn’t see her going, and Peg Gratton has climbed the rock and stands in her place. A dozen or so men are gathered around one end of the rock, waiting to go up, and still more are moving restlessly toward the group. I am a small, motionless animal.
Elizabeth clucks her tongue. “You can wait if you like. They go up one at a time.”
My hands aren’t very steady, so I fist them. I watch closely to see what’s expected of me. The first rider walks up the natural steps at the end of the rock. It’s Ian Privett, who looks older than he is because of his hair, gone gray when he was a boy. He storms across the rock toward Peg Gratton.
“I will ride,” he tells her formally, loud enough for us to hear clearly. Then he thrusts out his hand toward her, and she slices his finger with a tiny blade, the motion too fast for me to see it properly. Privett holds his hand out over the rock and blood must fall, though I’m too far away to see it.
He doesn’t seem to be in pain. He says, “Ian Privett. Penda. By my blood.”
Peg answers in a low voice not hers. “Thank you.”
Then Ian is off the rock and the next rider is mounting the steps. It’s Mutt Malvern, who repeats the process,