“Good night to be on land,” Brian Carroll says. Not lightly, like his brother would have said it. I think of the smell of fish he brought with him and think of the plain way that he asked me if I was riding. Riding in the races might not seem so impossibly brave to someone who fishes the November sea for a living.
“If I were catching one, I’d catch that chestnut,” Jonathan says. “The red ones always win.”
Brian says, “You mean Sean Kendrick always wins.”
Jonathan shuffles in his seat. “I reckon chestnuts look faster.”
“I reckon,” Brian says, “Sean Kendrick makes them look that way. Have you met him, Kate?”
Finn looks amused at the “Kate,” probably because when Brian says it, it sounds like I’m more responsible than I really am.
“Yes,” I mutter. I’ve seen him twice since we raced, but nothing about him suggested that he wanted to speak to me. In fact, sort of the opposite. He’s not the kind to say “Ho!” either.
“Queer sort,” Jonathan says.
“Only a water horse knows the capaill uisce better than him.” Brian Carroll’s voice is admiring. “You could make worse friends than him, Kate, right now. Though I ’spect you know that already.”
All I know is that Sean Kendrick rode that bay mare and waited until he was nearly over the cliff edge before saving himself, and that the dead speak more than he does.
“I’d bet on you,” Jonathan says generously, “if I wasn’t betting on him.”
“Jonathan.” This is Brian, warningly. As if I care who his dim brother is betting on.
“Or Ian Privett,” Jonathan concedes. “He’s got that wicked fast gray from last year.” He slaps a Scorpio drumbeat on the back of Finn’s seat and then leans forward to speak to me. “Betting’s crazy on you down at the pub. On whether you’ll show up tonight for the parade. Gerry Old says that you haven’t been on the beach for days and you’ve given up. Whatshisface says that you’re dead, but obviously that’s not true. So what do you think, Kate, are you a good bet?”
Brian sighs noisily.
I say, “If it was my horse against your mouth, not a chance.”
Brian and Finn laugh. Jonathan tells me I’m made of piss. I think it’s a compliment.
I look out the window. The sky’s turning black quickly under the stripes of clouds. There’s a red glow in the distance where Skarmouth crouches, but the rest of the island is black and mysterious. In the dark, there’s no difference between the sea and land. I remember riding Dove on the cliff top this morning. The way the air bit my cheeks and the smell of the sea set my heart pounding. I know I should be terrified of tonight and of tomorrow and of the next day, and I am, but I can feel something else, too: excitement.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
PUCK
“The riders’ parade will be at eleven,” Brian Carroll says. “I suppose you know that already.”
I didn’t, but now I do. Eleven seems like a long way away, hours filled with the noise of the festival. “I need to find my brother,” I tell Brian. “My other brother.”
In reality, what I need to find is my footing. I’m standing in this festival of Mum’s, but I don’t have Mum. Finn and Jonathan Carroll have vanished off into the crowds, leaving me with Brian, whose lungs I know better than the rest of him, and a pit of snaky nerves in my stomach.
I thought my statement was a good-bye, but Brian says, “All right. Where do you think he’ll be?”
If I knew the answer to that, I would’ve spoken to him three days ago. The truth is I don’t know anything about my older brother these days. Brian cranes his neck to look over the crowd, scanning faces for Gabe. We’re standing at the head of the main street of Skarmouth, and I can see clear down to the pier. There’s people filling every inch. The only bare bit is where the Scorpio drummers make their way through, far down near the water. Something smells delicious, and my stomach growls.
I say, “Someplace I won’t think to look, probably. Do you have any other brothers?”
“Sisters,” Brian says. “Three of them.”
“Where are they tonight?”
“The mainland.”
He says it without force, and I wonder if it’s stopped stinging or if it never stung at all. “Okay, if they were here tonight, where would they be?”
“Well,” Brian says, thoughtful and slow, hard to hear above the shouted conversation around us, “the quay or the pub. Shall we look?”
Suddenly, I feel strange having this conversation with Brian Carroll. He’s standing close enough to be heard, looking at me, and he seems enormous and square and grown-up with his curls and his fisherman’s muscles, and the steady way he looks at me is not like I’m used to. Part of me thinks he’s just humoring me, me a kid, him most of the way to man, but then part of me sees my hands in front of me. They’re Mum’s hands, not a little girl’s hands, and I know I’m wearing Mum’s face, too. I wonder how long it will take for me to feel as adult inside as I look outside.
“Okay,” I agree.
We strike off down the street. Brian’s broad shoulders plow a way through the people. Tourists, a lot of them, wearing unfamiliar faces. There is something subtly different about them, like they’re a different species. Their noses are a little straighter, their eyes a little closer together, their mouths narrower. They’re related to us like Dove is related to the water horses.
There’s no sign of Gabe. But how would we find him among all these people anyway? Brian keeps pressing on, though, downward in the direction of the pier.
There’s noise, noise, noise. Drums and shouts, laughing and singing, motorbikes and fiddles.
We push our way down to the quay, which is a little quieter, flanked by ocean on one side instead of people. The water moves restlessly against the wall, closer than usual, reaching up toward us. It’s quiet enough that I hear commotion from the cliffs above the town.
“What’s going on up there?” I ask. “The bonfire?”
Brian squints up as if he can see anything but the buildings glued to the side of the incline. “That, and the sea wishes.”
The only thing I know of the sea wishes is that Father Mooneyham told us not to do them. I’d been unable to get more information out of Mum. “Have you made a sea wish before?”
Brian looks stricken. “No, indeed.”
“What are they?”
“It’s a bit of paper you write on with charcoal from the bonfire. You write something on it and toss it over the cliffs.”
“That doesn’t sound bad.”
“A curse, Kate. They’re curses. You write them backward and throw them to the sea.”
I’m thrilled and horrified. Immediately I try to imagine if there is any curse that I can see myself throwing over the cliff. I pose a striking figure in my mind, silhouetted by the bonfire, hurling something foul into the ocean.
“You’re wild, Kate Connolly,” Brian says. “I can see it in your face.”
I’m not sure about that, but when I look up at him, he’s studying me intently. Suddenly and terrifyingly, I get the idea that he’s going to kiss me, and I shy backward several feet before I realize that he hasn’t moved an inch. He laughs at me, a kind, safe laugh. Maybe I am wild after all.