The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater Read Free Book Online Page B

the summer, children sometimes catch dragonflies and tie strings round them, just behind their eyes, and lead them like they are pets. Those dragonflies are what these grown men look like with the capaill uisce. The horses drag them around like they have no weight whatsoever. What would they do to me?
    I look out across the sea. Close to the shore, the water is turquoise in places where white rocks have fallen from the cliffs into the water, and black where dark brown kelp covers the boulders. Somewhere across all these buckets of water are the cities we’ll lose Gabe to. I know we’ll never see him again. It won’t matter that he’s still alive somewhere; it will be just as bad as Mum and Dad.
    Mum liked to say that some things happen for a reason, that sometimes obstacles were there to stop you from doing something stupid. She said this to me a lot. But when she said it to Gabe, Dad told him that sometimes it just means you need to try harder.
    I take a deep breath and head back toward the only bowler hat who doesn’t avoid my eye. The gnome. He has only one horse in his hands now: the piebald mare that screamed earlier.
    “Heh, you!” He says this as if I’m about to pass him by.
    “I think we need to talk,” I tell him. I feel unfriendly and messy. Any charm I had when I started this is back at home with the makings of a sandwich.
    “I was thinkin’ the same thing. I’m about to be off. I’d rather not be back tomorrow and you’d rather have a capall. What will you give me for her?”
    My first reaction is to think, Well, how much do I have? and then I come to my senses and remember his unhelpfulness from earlier. “Nothing up front,” I say. I have to be firm on this. If Gabe really does leave us to fend for ourselves, we’ll have nothing at the end, either. “I’m just looking for a fifth.”
    “This mare is amazing,” the gnome says. “Fastest thing on land at the moment.” He stands back so I can see her, restless on the end of the lead, a chain wrapped over her nose and fed through her halter. She is drop-dead gorgeous and absolutely giant. I feel I could stack Dove on top of Dove and only then be able to look the piebald in her wild eye. She stinks like a corpse washed up after a storm. She eyes one of the loose dogs that darts around the beach. Something about her gaze is deeply unsettling.
    “Then you wouldn’t mind taking a gamble on her,” I say. I feel petulant but I try to sound businesslike. It’s not the easiest thing in the world trying to be treated like an adult during a negotiation when the idea of driving a successful bargain is making you a little sick to your stomach.
    “I’m not in the mood to come back and collect,” the monger says.
    I cross my arms. I pretend I’m Gabe. He has a way of looking both unimpressed and disinterested when he’s really both of these things. I sound as bored as possible. “Either she’s everything you say, or she isn’t. If she’s the fastest thing on four legs, don’t you trust her to win more than you could sell her for?”
    The gnome eyes me. “It’s not her I don’t trust.”
    I glower at him. “I was just thinking the same thing.”
    He grins suddenly.
    “Get up on her, then,” the monger says. “Let’s see what you got.” He jerks his head toward his saddle, tipped up on its pommel on the sand.
    I take a deep breath and try not to remember her scream from earlier. I try not to think about how my parents died. I need to think about Gabe and his face when he said that he was leaving. I feel like my hands are fluttering, but they’re quite still at my sides.
    I can do this.

PUCK
     
    The monger leads the mare up to one of the kelp-covered boulders for me to use as a mounting block. She fidgets around and around, never quite close enough to it. She won’t stop looking at the dog that’s hovering around interested in someone’s rejected breakfast near her hooves. The wind is cold on my neck and my toes are numb little