“Warmer than I expected,” Holly remarks. “Why aren’t you trying to catch another horse, then? Since you lost one the other day?”
The truth is that there’s precious little reason to catch another capall uisce now that Mutt Malvern has put himself on Skata. There’s not much reason to have Edana, either, at this point. “I don’t need another horse. I have Corr.”
Holly prods one of the urchins with a stone. “How do you know there isn’t a faster horse than Corr out there? Waiting to be caught?”
I think of the piebald and her tremendous speed.
“Maybe there is. I don’t need to know. I’m not tempted,” I say. Of course, it’s not just the winning. I don’t know how to explain that I know his heart better than anyone’s, and he mine. “I don’t need another horse. I just —”
I close my mouth and pick my way to the other access point on this otherwise inaccessible beach. Drawing a handful of salt out of my pocket, I spit on it before throwing it across the mouth of the other path. I tip some of Corr’s manure out. Then I head back up the path without another word.
Holly follows me, and though I don’t turn around, I hear his voice clearly.
“It’s just that he’s not yours.”
I’m not certain I want to have this conversation. “It’s not that he’s not mine. It’s that he’s Benjamin Malvern’s.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It makes all the sense in the world, on this island.” Thisby is defined by things that are Malvern’s and things that aren’t. “It matters, like this: I belong to Malvern. You don’t.”
“So, freedom.”
I stop what I’m doing and regard him. Holly stands there below me on the path, gazing up, looking incredibly well kept and domesticated in his clean sweater and his pressed slacks. But his expression is anything but vapid. I still don’t think that freewheeling George Holly, American investor, has ever been anything but freewheeling George Holly, American investor, but for the first time, that doesn’t matter. I think he understands me regardless.
“So why don’t you buy Corr from him?”
I smile thinly.
Holly reads my expression. “Is it the money? Ah, he’s not willing. Do you have no leverage? Surely he needs more from you than to win the races. I’m sorry. I’ve overstepped. It’s not my business. Let’s go. Pretend I didn’t say anything.”
But he did say something, and it can’t be unsaid. The truth is this: For eleven months of the year I make myself valuable to Malvern, and then for one month, I make myself invaluable. Would he be willing to give up that one month to keep the other eleven? Am I willing to risk it?
We stand back on the high ground; Holly is white against the green and I am black. I knock out the bucket, glad to leave the contents behind, and Holly wordlessly watches me scoop up a handful of clean dirt and whisper to it before scattering it back over the ground again.
“Magic,” says Holly.
“Is a snaffle bit magic?” I ask him.
“All I know is that when I whisper to dirt, my conversations are less than meaningful.”
He watches me treat the other two paths up from the cliffs. He doesn’t ask how I do it, and I don’t tell him, and then, after we’ve started back and the quiet seems long for him, I tell him, “You can say what you’re thinking.”
“No, I can’t,” George Holly says immediately, glad to be invited to speak. “Because it’s more of not my business. And seeing as I’ve poked a stick in my eye once already, I don’t want to do it again.”
I raise my eyebrow.
Holly scuffs off his hands as if he’s been handling something dirtier than water from the tide pool. “All right, then. So what’s going on between you and that girl? Kate Connolly, right?”
I let out a breath, stack my buckets, and head back down the road toward the yard.
Holly says, “If you think by not answering that you’ll convince me there’s nothing, it won’t work.”
“That’s not why I’m not answering,” I say, as he catches up to me again. “I won’t say there’s nothing. I just don’t know what it is.”
I can see her clearly, standing on the rock beside Peg Gratton, unflinching before Eaton and the rest of the race committee. I can’t remember when I’ve been that brave, and it shames me. The truth is, I feel myself being fascinated and repelled by her: She’s both a mirror of myself and a door to part of this island that I’m not. It is like when the mare goddess looked into my eye; I felt that there was a part of myself that I didn’t know.
“I’ll tell you what it is in American,” George Holly says, “but you might not want to hear it.”
I cast him a withering glance and he laughs with good humor.
“This is worth every day away from home,” he says. “Should I gamble on her, then?”
“You should save your money for hay,” I mutter. “It’ll be a long winter.”
“Not,” says Holly, “in California.” And he laughs, and from the distance of his laugh I realize he’s stopped walking. I turn.
“I think you’re right, Mr. Kendrick,” George Holly says, eyes closed. His face is to the wind, leaning forward slightly so that it doesn’t tip him. His slacks are no longer pristine; he’s tracked bits of mud and manure up the front of them. His ridiculous red hat has blown off behind him, but he doesn’t seem to notice. The wind has its fingers in his fair hair and the ocean sings to him. This island will take you, if you let it.
I ask, “What am I right about?”
“I can feel God out here.”
I brush my hands off on my pants. “Tell me that again,” I say, “two weeks from now when you’ve seen the dead bodies on the beach.”
Holly doesn’t open his eyes. “Let no one say that Sean Kendrick isn’t an optimist.” After a pause, he adds, “I feel you smiling, so don’t deny it.”
He’s right, so I don’t.
“You going to try Benjamin Malvern for that horse, or what?” he asks.
I think of Kate Connolly standing before Eaton, her face brave, looking like a sacrifice on that old killing rock. I feel the mare goddess’s breath on my face, and it carries the scent of thunder in it.
“Yes,” I say.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
PUCK
I don’t bother tacking up Dove on Sunday after church. Everyone and their grandpa will be tacking up their capaill uisce after they get out of Mass, and I think it might be a good opportunity to learn something about my competition. I’ll bring Dove up to the cliffs this evening, maybe, after she’s had the day to eat expensive hay and get used to the idea of being fast.
I leave Finn and Gabe alone back at the house — Gabe came to service with us, though he looked at his watch and left halfway through, which made Father Mooneyham stare first at him and then at us. Father Mooneyham’s homilies are not generally painful, but you’re meant to suffer through them nonetheless. If your leg falls asleep, you don’t move. If the tea you drank before Mass has you dreaming of toilets on the way to Damascus instead of epiphanies, you pinch and burn and bear it. If you are Brian Carroll and you have been night fishing, you tip your head back so that holding your eyes open is not such an impossible task.