The Scorpio Races

by Maggie Stiefvater

I am here on firm ground, but part of me is already down on the beach, and my own blood is singing I’m so, so alive.

And then I see him. A dark-haired boy who is made of all corners. He is standing next in line by the counter, silent and still in his blue-black jacket, his arms folded across his chest. He looks out of place and wild in here: expression sharp, collar turned up against the back of his neck, hair still windblown from the beach.

Something about his expression and his wind-torn hair makes my heart go thump thump stop. “Puck Connolly,” says the old man. “Don’t be looking at him like that.”

But he’s got one foot on the land and one foot in the sea. You steer clear of him.”

Somewhere close by, a man is moaning; he’s been trampled or thrown or bitten. He sounds resentful or surprised. Did no one tell him that pain lives in this sand, dug in and watered with our blood?

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.

“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 think brothers are the most inexplicable species on the planet.

I’m curious about him in a way that puzzles even 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 don’t know what exactly it is I want him to say, only for it to be something that gives me an excuse to stay here watching him for a few more minutes.

When Sean sees that I didn’t hear him, he leans forward to my ear again. I can’t think of the last time I was so close to another person. I can feel the rise and fall of his chest when he breathes. His words are warm in my ear: “Are you afraid?” I don’t know what I am right now, but it’s not afraid.

He’s looking at me like he looked at me at the festival, and I know I’m looking back. Something wild and old spins inside me, but I don’t have any words.

he looks over his shoulder at me and he smiles at me, just a glancing, faint thing before he turns back to Tommy. I’m quite happy for the smile, because Dad told me once you should be grateful for the gifts that are the rarest.

I say, “I will not be your weakness, Sean Kendrick.” Now he looks at me. He says, very softly, “It’s late for that, Puck.”

“You leave nothing to assumption,” Dory Maud says. “You swallow her with your eyes. I’m surprised there’s any of her left for the rest of us to see.”

Then Corr turns, stepping out of the ocean. His head jerks up when his injured leg touches the ground, but he takes another labored step before keening to me again. Corr takes another step away from the November sea. And another. He is slow, and the sea sings to us both, but he returns to me.