Dory Maud reads the description. “That makes them more valuable. It won’t take you but a moment to sign and number them. Come in and have tea. Elizabeth will stop grousing. Where is your brother?”
“I can’t stay,” I say regretfully. “I need to take – Dove – tothebeach. Do you think Finn can leave the cart behind the shop when he’s done unloading?” I run all the words together to avoid being asked about it, but the sisters aren’t paying any attention, so I needn’t have bothered. Dory Maud has opened the door and found Finn standing there holding Puffin, who has followed us all the way to Skarmouth after all.
“I hope you enjoy the taste of poverty in your bowl,” Elizabeth is saying. “The price of that advert was dear enough, but have you thought of what it will cost to ship those catalogs out to mainland wives?”
Dory Maud says, “They pay for the catalog. It says that right in the advertisement that I showed to you not an hour ago. If you didn’t have shingles for eyes, you might have seen it. Finn Connolly, come in here. Why do you have that cat? Is she for sale as well? Has it come to that?”
Finn says, “No, ma’am,” as he enters the shop, where he gets poked directly in the chest by the fertility goddess. I move a step backward so he can get away because the last thing I need is for Finn to suddenly decide to become fertile.
“I really have to go,” I say. I don’t want to seem rude.
“Where are you going again?” Dory Maud asks me.
“Perhaps I should ring Mr. Davidge, too,” Elizabeth says from the stairs. “Then I might not mind the bills, either. How is it done, sister? ‘Mr. Davidge, will you set my type?’”
Dory Maud turns to her and thunders pleasantly, “Shut up, you cow.”
Finn wears his wide-eyed expression. So does Puffin. Dory Maud seizes his arm with great enthusiasm and begins to propel him toward the back of the shop, where the teapot waits.
“Bye,” I whisper to him. I feel a little bad about abandoning him to their clutches, but at least he’ll get tea out of it.
I let the door close behind me.
Dove, patiently waiting by the door, looks up as I step out. Finn has unfastened the cart but she still wears her harness. She doesn’t look much like a racehorse.
I pull my hair back into a new ponytail; two or three dozen strands had already begun to escape.
I probably don’t look much like a jockey, either.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
There’s a girl on the beach.
The wind’s torn the mist to shreds here by the ocean, so unlike on the rest of the island, the horses and their riders appear in sharp relief down on the sand. I can see the buckle on every bridle, the tassel on every rein, the tremor in every hand. It is the second day of training, and it’s the first day that it isn’t a game. This first week of training is an elaborate, bloody dance where the dance partners determine how strong the other ones are. It’s when riders learn if charms will work on their mounts, how close to the sea is too close, how they can begin to convince their water horses to gallop in a straight line. How long they have between falling from their horses and being attacked. This tense courtship looks nothing like racing.
At first I see nothing out of the ordinary. There is the surviving Privett brother beating his gray capall with a switch and Hale selling charms that will not save you, and there is Tommy Falk flapping at the end of the lead as his black mare strains for the salt water.
And there is the girl. When I first see her and her dun mare from my vantage point on the cliff road, I am struck first not by the fact that she is a girl, but by the fact that she’s in the ocean. It’s the dreaded second day, the day when people start to die, and no one will get close to the surf. But there she is, trotting up to the knee in the water. Fearless.
I make my slow way down the cliff road to the sand. Any wicked thoughts Corr might have had this morning have been jolted out by his trot earlier. But the two mares are neither as tired nor as tame as Corr. Their hooves jangle every time they dance sideways; I’ve tied bells around their pasterns, reminding me every moment that I cannot let down my guard. The worse of the two mares wears a black netted cloth over her haunches. The cloth, passed down from my father, is made of thread and hundreds of narrow iron eyelets: part mourning cloth, part chain mail. I hope it weighs her to the ground. It’s the sort of thing I’d never use on Corr – it would only make him irritable and uncertain, and in any case, we know each other better than that.
Now, closer to the surf, I see why the girl’s so brave. Her horse is just an island pony, with a coat the color of the sand, legs black as soaked kelp. I see from her belly that the poor Thisby grass has stuffed her but not fed her.
I want to know why she’s on my beach. And I want to know why no one’s confronting her. All of the horses are aware of her, though. Ears pricked, necks arched, lips curled up in her direction. And of course there’s the piebald mare among them, wailing her hunger and desire. I should have known Gorry wouldn’t let her go.
At the sound of the piebald capall, the dun island mare lays her ears back to her neck with fear. She knows that she’s a meal here, that the sound the piebald makes is a plea for her death. The girl leans and pats the dun’s neck, soothing her.
Reluctantly, I turn to go about my business. My mouth tastes of salt, and the wind finds me wherever I lead the horses. Today’s one of those days where no one will get warm. I find a crevasse in the cliffs, a giant’s axe mark, and lead the mares and Corr into it. The wind makes a muted scream at the apex of the crevasse, like someone dying out of sight. I draw a circle in the sand and spit into it.
Corr watches me. The mares watch the ocean. I watch the girl.
My thoughts turn the mystery of her presence over and over as I flip open my leather bag and remove the wax-paper bundle I put in there earlier. I toss the bits of meat into the circle, but the mares don’t touch them. They’re watching the pony and the girl in the ocean, a more interesting meal.
With the bag over my shoulder, I return to the mouth of the crevasse and cross my arms, waiting for a gap in the murder of horses and men to open so I can see the mare and girl again. There’s nothing special about the mare, nothing at all. A fine enough head, good enough bone. As a pony, she is a beauty. As a capall uisce, she is nothing.
The girl, too, is nothing special – slight, with a ginger ponytail. She looks less afraid than her mare, but she’s in more danger.
I hear one of my mares scream, and I turn long enough to flip open my bag and throw a handful of salt in her direction. She jerks her head up as some of it sprinkles her face; she’s offended but not hurt. I look her in the eye long enough that she knows there’s more where that came from. She’s a bay, no white markings on her anywhere, which is supposed to speak to her speed, but I’ve yet to get her going in a straight enough line to find out.
I turn back to the ocean, and the wind throws sand in my face, hard enough to offend but not to hurt. I smile a thin smile at the irony and turn up my collar. The girl circles her pony through the water again. I have to appreciate that she’s chosen the only place she can be sure that no one will approach her today. Of course, it’s not just the capaill uisce on the beach the girl has to worry about, but I can tell that she’s already considered that. She glances toward the curve of the incoming surf every so often. I can’t imagine that she’d be able to see a hunting capall uisce – when they swim parallel to the breakers, fast and dark beneath the surface, they’re almost impossible to see – but I also can’t imagine not looking.