“Oh, what have we here?” Thomas Gratton says. It takes me a moment to spot what he does, which is a lone dark figure picking its way parallel to the road. Gratton stops the truck and rolls down his window.
“Sean Kendrick!” Gratton calls, and I start at that. And it is Sean Kendrick, his shoulders hunched against the cold, dark collar turned up to the wind. “What are you doing without a horse beneath you?”
Sean doesn’t answer right away. His expression doesn’t change, but something about his face does, like he’s shifting to a different gear. “Just clearing my thoughts.”
Gratton says, “Where are you clearing them to?”
“I don’t know. Hastoway.”
“Well, you can clear your thoughts in the truck. We’re headed the same way.”
For a moment I am completely struck by the injustice of this, that I’ve been offered a ride and now I have to share it with Sean “Keep Your Pony Off This Beach” Kendrick of all people. And then I see that Kendrick, too, has seen me, and is uncertain about getting into the truck, and that pleases me. I would like to be terrifying. I glower at him.
But Gratton’s expression must counteract mine, because Sean Kendrick glances back the way he’s come and then starts around to the other side of the truck. My side. Gratton opens his door and tells the dog to get in the back, which she does, shooting us all a filthy look. I move into the seat she’d been occupying — now that I’m sitting right next to Gratton, he smells like the lemon throat lozenges whose wrappers are scattered on the floor. All the while, I’m madly trying to come up with something catchy to say when Sean opens the passengerside door, something that will at once indicate that I remember what he said to me on the beach and also carry that I am not impressed or intimidated, and possibly convey the message that I’m more clever than he thinks, as well.
Sean Kendrick opens the door.
He looks at me.
I look at him.
This close, he’s almost too severe to be handsome: sharp-edged cheekbones and razor-edge nose and dark eyebrows. His hands are bruised and torn from his time with the capaill uisce. Like the fishermen on the island, his eyes are permanently narrowed against the sun and the sea. He looks like a wild animal. Not a friendly one.
I don’t say anything.
He gets into the truck.
When he shuts the door, I am squeezed between Thomas Gratton’s great leg, which I imagine is as ruddy as the rest of him, and Sean Kendrick’s rigid one. We are shoulder to shoulder due to the size of the cab, and if Gratton is made of flour and potatoes, Sean is made of stone and driftwood and possibly those prickly anemones that sometimes wash up on shore.
I lean away from him. He looks out the window.
Gratton hums to himself.
From the back of the truck, the border collie whines. The vibration of the truck makes it a broken, intermittent whistle.
“I hear that Mutt — Matthew — is having a bit of an upset over the horse you’ve picked for him,” Gratton says pleasantly.
Sean Kendrick looks at him sharply. “And who’s saying such things?”
I’m surprised by his voice, for some reason, the way it sounds when he’s speaking instead of shouting over the wind. It makes him seem softer. I notice that he smells of hay and horses and that makes me like him a bit better.
“Oh, he is,” Gratton says. “Threw a tantrum right in the shop earlier. Says you want him to lose and you can’t stand competition.”
“Oh, that,” Sean replies dismissively. He looks back out the window. We’re passing by one of the pastures that Malvern owns, and there is a splendid spread of broodmares grazing among the green.
Gratton taps his fingers on the steering wheel. “And then of course Peg went off on him.”
Sean looks back again. He doesn’t say anything, but just waits. I see how it pulls the words out of Gratton and gives Sean a subtle upper hand, and I vow to learn how to use this technique.
“Well, he was saying that if he was on that red stallion of yours, he’d be a four-time winner, too. So Peg told him he didn’t know a thing about horses if he thought all there was to the race was the horse under you. She had a short fuse this morning, because it was a day that ended with y, you see.”
I laugh, which reminds Gratton that I’m there, because he says, “And of course, you don’t need Mutt Malvern for competition. You’ve got your hands full with Puck right here.”
I vow to poison Thomas Gratton slowly, later. I want to sink into the seat and disappear. But instead I glare at Sean, daring him to say something.
But he doesn’t. He just looks at my face, frowning a little, as if somehow my reasons for disrupting his training will reveal themselves. Then he glances back out the window.
I can’t decide if I’m insulted or not. To not say anything at all seems worse than saying something awful. I turn to Thomas Gratton, ignoring Sean Kendrick. “You said you were looking for an apprentice?”
“That’s the truth.”
“What about Beech?”
Gratton says, “Beech is going to the mainland after the races.”
I open my mouth but no sound comes out.
“He and Tommy Falk and your brother Gabriel are all going at the same time. I should thank you, Puck, for giving us a few more weeks with him. I hear that your brother’s staying until after the race because of you being in it, and that held them all up.”
I feel, sometimes, like the rest of Thisby knows more about my business than I do.
“That’s the truth,” I say, repeating what he said. I feel darker, for some reason, now that I know that Gabe’s not going alone. “Tommy’s racing, though, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, he decided to, since he’s going to be here for it.”
“Are you upset about Beech?” After I say it, I realize it might not be the most sensitive thing to ask, but I can’t un-ask it.
“Ah, that’s the way of this island. Not everyone can stay, or we’d fall off the edges, wouldn’t we?” Thomas Gratton’s voice doesn’t match his light words, though. “And not everyone belongs to this island. I can tell you do, don’t you?”
“I’d never leave,” I say fervently. “It — it’s like my heart, or something.”
I feel silly for being so sentimental. Outside the window, across the water, I can see one of the tiny rocky islands near us, a little blue silhouette too small to be inhabited. It’s beautiful in the sort of way that you never get used to.
We’re all quiet, very quiet, and then Sean Kendrick says, “I have another horse, Kate Connolly, if you want to ride one of the capaill uisce”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
PUCK
Finn eyes me as he slowly uses his fingers to rend a biscuit into a pile of crumbs.
“So Sean Kendrick’s going to sell you one of the water horses?”
We’re sitting in the back room of Fathom & Sons. It’s a claustrophobic room lined with shelves of brown boxes, the floor barely big enough for the scratched table that stands on it. It smells less like the butter scent of the rest of the building and more of musty cardboard and old cheese. When we were small, Mum would park us here with some biscuits while she chatted with Dory Maud out front. Finn and I would take turns guessing what was in the brown boxes. Hardware. Crackers. Rabbit paws. The private parts of Dory Maud’s invisible lovers.