Free The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater Page B

soft, slow night noises, and the dark, knowing walls of this place hold me close, I clean out the three stalls. I wipe down the surfaces in the feed room. I give the water horses their meat, though I think they’re too wound up to eat it. And all the while, I imagine that this massive stable is mine, that these horses I care for are in my name, that the buyers who try them will nod approvingly at me instead of at Benjamin Malvern.
    The Malvern stables are not truly the Malvern stables, after all, but a complex of stone barns that housed horses on Thisby long before the Malvern name existed on the island. The only thing that can match these buildings in stature, especially the main stable, is St. Columba’s in Skarmouth. The barns were constructed with the same spiritual fervor. The ceiling is held up with carved columns that depict wide-eyed men whose hands support the feet of men whose hands support the feet of other men in turn and again in turn, and at the top of all of them are men with the heads of horses. Like the church in Skarmouth, the sloped ceiling of the main barn is supported with ribs of stone, and in between, the surfaces are painted with complicated animals whose limbs knot around each other. The walls, too, are painted, with small, twisted figures jotted into the oddest places: a corner of a stall, in the center of the floor, along the left side of windows. Men with hooves for hands, and women coughing up horses, and stallions with tentacles for manes and tails.
    And the most impressive painting of all covers the wall at the end of the main stable. In it, there is the sea, and a man — a forgotten ocean god, perhaps — dragging a horse down into it. The water is the color of blood and the horse is red as the sea.
    It’s an old animal, this stable, the oldest on the island.
    Everywhere in it are clues to the stable’s previous life. The stalls are so large that in all but three, Malvern has put up dividers so that he can accommodate more of the sport horses that he sells on the mainland. The door frames are iron, the door handles will turn only counterclockwise, and there is something written in red runes above one of the thresholds. The floor of the teind stall, the stall closest to the cliffs, is stained with blood, the walls arced with a spattered spray like sea foam. Malvern has repainted it many times, but when the morning light comes in full and strong, the stains are still visible. One of them is the print of a human hand, fingers splayed near the door handle.
    It was not always stylish sport horses that were housed in this barn.
    I finish with the stalls and the feed room and every other chore that I can think of performing, and then I shut down the lights so it’s just me in the dark, ancient stomach of the stables. One of the capaill uisce makes a clucking sound and another one replies. Even though I know the horses, the sound instinctively makes the hairs on my arms rise. Every other horse in the stable has gone silent and watchful at the noise.
    The thing is, I don’t actually want the Malvern stables, not in either of its forms. I don’t want Malvern’s rich buyers, coming each October to watch the races and buy his thoroughbreds. I don’t want his money and his reputation and his ability to come and go as he pleases from Thisby. I don’t need forty head of horses to feel complete.
    What I want is this: a roof over my head that is my own, accounts at Gratton’s and Hammond’s in my name, and, most of all, I want Corr.
    For the first time in nine years, I lock the door to my flat, thinking of Mutt Malvern’s purple face and fisted hands. I lie awake for a long time, listening to the ocean violent against the rocks of the northwestern shore of the island, and thinking about the piebald mare.
    Finally, I sleep, and when I do, I dream of a day when I can turn my back on Mutt Malvern and keep walking.

PUCK
     
    The morning is raw and pink as I make my way out to Dove’s pasture. Cold as