November Horses

Chapter 4 - Rhyse

Rhyse

I don't bother taking Libby to the beach with me. Her and Quinn stay at home together, and neither argues to go. The grullo mare is too content chewing her hay to even wish me a goodbye when I ask her for one, and it makes me feel cross. I'm leaving to go stand with creatures that could kill me with one breath, and she doesn't care. I know Quinn cares, because when I leave on the old bicycle I see him peeking out of the curtains looking forlorn.

Regret strikes me then. I hadn't even considered what would happen to him if I died in the Races. Or even if I lost. Either way, cruel Thomas Stonrach would kick us out on the streets like dogs who did something horrible and smile the whole time we walked down the lane.

The image makes me shudder. The brisk breeze doesn't help, either. It slides through the knitted holes in my sweater and chills me to the bone. Something seems dreadful, but I can't help to shake the feeling. I try to think of our lives-Quinn's, Libby's, and I's-after I won the races and how Libby would eat alfalfa from the mainland for breakfast and grain for dinner and roam in green pastures like the Aglionby Yard, and how Quinn and I wouldn't eat beans all year and the November cakes that silly tourists hadn't bought from Jennings's but red meat and loaves of fresh bread and Quinn could go into Jennings's any time he wanted and buy a cinnamon twist or two or three, but my mind keeps wondering back to me dying or losing.

When I reach the beach, I realize that I don't even have a plan. I don't know what I'd been relying on to get me a mount-definitely not my short fuse or jangling coins. The bowler hats would probably turn me away the moment they recognized me as a Collinsey girl.

I frown. The beach is reckless and wild-every man for himself in the salty spray of deadly ocean and gritty sand. Huddled near the cliffs are the horse mongers, with several uisce adorned with bells and ribbons and iron breast plates. They are furious and stamp the ground; the red lining of their nostrils showing with each violent breath, but they do not leave the circle so hastily drawn around their hooves. The bowler hats seem proud at their accomplishment, and gossip of how next year they'll be better than Aglionby at keeping in the capaill-but the men around them know better and scoff at the men with the water horses.

Those same men then leap back up onto the backs of their capaill uisce and continue tearing up the sand. Those same men then jump back into the fray of biting teeth and gleaming bells and the lathered dull skins of something about to eat you.

Suddenly I don't understand why I'm here. I check around me for Libby and her cart-to see if I am here to deliver knickknacks to anyone, but I find only myself.

I don't want to believe it. That I'll be thrown into the war down on the beach. That I'll sit on the very creature that ate my parents for breakfast. That I'll win enough money that I'll never pay for the house or food again. But a scream and hushed whispers drags me out of my denial. Someone had let their dog off leash, a pretty collie. It chased after a November bell rolling down the cliff and ended up in front of a sea-mad uisce.

There's only a stain and fragments of fur left of him.

I cringe.

"That could've been you if you went after him!" Someone is yelling.

That could've been you. Me.

I'm thinking now. Watching the scene again; except instead of a dog-it is me. Me rolling down the hillside. Me crouching, dazed, at the feet of an unruly horse with a thirst for blood. Me bleeding, dying, with bones cracking under strong jaws.

Parts of me being swallowed. I shudder.

"Hey, girl! Get out of a way!" A wheel barrow grazes my calves and I jump out of my daze.

I turn around and see an old man with a smoky pipe protruding from his lips. Old wisps of hair is scattered on his head. He looks brutal or maybe drunk.

Probably both.

I get out of the way and suck in a breath. He starts down the hill. I consider the options: face death or lose the house.

You lose something either way, don't you?

I make my decision when he slams into a rock, short of half way down the hill, and run after him.

"Excuse me, uh, sir?"

He whips around with a crazed face and I feel like crawling under our house and not coming back out for several centuries. "Could I... Uh, follow you down? Maybe?" I manage to say.

The old man with the wheel barrow doesn't say anything that I can hear, just lets out an animalistic grunt and maneuvers around the rock. I tread lightly in his path, and people glare at me as I pass them on my way. Recovered, I glare back.

* * *

Three hours into it, and I've not gotten on a horse yet. Not even an island pony. I sit and frown from my perch on a small boulder as I watch the scenes playing in front of me. The old man that I'd followed down the hill returns every time something's blood is spilled. I think he might be some sort of doctor, because he stares at it's face and then calls someone over to either lift it into his wheel barrow or take back to it's home. At least business has slowed down-it's now 10 am and the sun is much higher in the sky than earlier. Sweat is more common on the backs of men and horses than the sea, and the tide is cramping man, horse, and death against the rocks. I know if I want to go anywhere today, I should do it before noon. By then, the sea will be all the way up against the cliffs, caressing the rocks while it hums lullabies to anyone who cares to listen. The only beach not swamped by the ocean will be swamped by its horses, and I don't feel like dying just yet.

So I make my mind and get up off my bum. The bowler hats have already stared me down enough today, so they're unlikely to strike any sort of deal with me, but there's no one else here trading horses. They're all crowded in a tightly knit group except for one, and so it is that one lone horse monger that I go to.

He is short but thin, with a beard and hair on his upper lip. His cheeks are jaunt until he puffs them out on the cigarette he holds delicately between his fingers. Cold, grey eyes like the sea watch my every move, and I start to feel wary of him, and more wary of the sea.

[b]

So this has been a little crazy writing this. I've gone through a lot of different versions but none of them were it. So, this is what I've got. Give me any ideas you've all got... I know where I'm going with this story it's just that getting there is difficult. So, thanks. [/b]