Chapter Text
Sean
It always smells like the sea here. It’s so different from the states, far away from the sound of shouting in the yard and horses being exercised. There is nothing quiet about a racing barn, no silence to fill your thoughts with. But here, the sea beats at the coastline, ever-present and ceaseless. It makes me feel at ease, and I wonder if it will ever fade to background noise the way the pounding of horses’ hooves had.
Even at my mother’s home, the sound of the sea is ever-present. The stone cottage is on the edge of a meadow at the end of a long dirt road, and it’s so different than the house I grew up in. I had expected to miss it, to miss my father, but I only miss the sounds of the barn. The door to the cottage opens without any resistance, and the rooms are tidy when I step inside. It doesn’t look like a home where anyone lives, and I wonder what sort of woman my mother is. I don’t remember anything at all about her, except that she and my father fought often.
The house is silent and motionless, and it makes my skin prickle. This is not a place I can imagine calling home. I put my things in the empty room upstairs and linger there, staring out the window. At the edge of the moors, I can see a strip of blue on the horizon, and when I open my window the faint sounds of the ocean flood in. I feel both settled and on edge, and when I leave for a walk the window stays open.
I head down a different road than the one to the docks, strolling past neatly trimmed hedges and low stone walls. I feel like I’m holding my breath, but for what I’m not sure. I hear the barn before I see it, the faint sounds of hoofbeats breaking through the trees. A horse whinnies, and the corner of my mouth lifts.
The barn is smaller than the racing barns I grew up in. In the ring, a boy jumps a piebald mare. She’s striking, the black parts of her coat impossibly dark and shining in the sunlight. Her rider is clumsy though, and she tips an ear backwards when he lands heavily on her neck after an oxer. For just a moment, a shadow passes over her face and she looks monstrous, her lip curling up to reveal sharp teeth.
“That’s Mutt Malvern,” a voice says, and I turn to see two boys about my age. One of them is tall and the other is short, but they look related; same hair, same nose. “I’m Brian Carroll,” the shorter one says, “and this is Jonathan.”
“We’re brothers,” Jonathan adds.
I don’t point out how obvious that is, but Brian makes eye contact with me and shrugs like he knows what I’m thinking. “Sean Kendrick,” I say, uncrossing my arms.
“You’re new here, aren’t you?” Brian says.
I jerk my hand towards the path I’d come down, “Moved in with my mother today.”
Across the barn, a sharp cry sounds and the Carroll brothers both start in the exact same way. A boy with fair hair jogs up to us, his oddly shaped lips pursed. “Corr’s loose,” he says, “and Mutt’ll have all our heads if we don’t find him.”
“You’ll help, won’t you Kendrick?” Brian says, and I nod.
“Corr’s a big red stallion,” Jonathan says, looking pleased to have said it before his brother.
The boy with far hair chuckles, “And he’s a terror. Be careful of him.”
The three of them split off in different directions and I am left alone, to search wherever I see fit. I don’t know the horses here and I don’t know the island, so I pick a road and follow it. I don’t realize I’m heading towards the ocean until the path turns to sand and the sound of waves breaking is louder than before. The beach gleams against the dark of the ocean, so blue it’s almost black, and the air bites into my jacket fiercer than it had a moment ago. Above me, seagulls cry and wheel about. The sand shifts under my feet, and the soft waves of the sea pool around my ankles, so cold I can feel the water’s bite even through my boots.
I am alone, but I still feel watched.
Far down the coast, I hear a cry, loud and wailing. It sounds like a baby screaming, but there’s no one here but me. The cry sounds again, and I turn towards the noise.
The sound of hoofbeats is familiar. I grew up on a racetrack; the sound of a full gallop is background noise, something I’ve been used to my whole life. So when I turn and there’s a brilliant red stallion charging towards me, I don’t flinch. Instead, I digs my heels into the sand and throw up my hands, shout “Woah!” as loud as I can.
The stallion rears and I take in his conformation, the slant of his head. There’s something hungry in his eyes, in the flare of his nostrils that I’ve never seen before in a horse. I feel more awake than I have in months. The stallion drops onto the sand, heavy and I cluck at him.
The horse’s rust-red ears prick, slender and narrow. He looks like no horse I’ve ever seen, and it’s invigorating. There’s something thudding in my ears and takes a moment to realize it’s my heartbeat, loud and heavy and making my blood sing. I feel so, so alive.
“Corr,” I say, and the stallion takes a step towards me. This close, I can see something threaded through his halter, a strand of scarlet cord twisted around his noseband. Distantly, I hear a car rumble down the road and pull up onto the sand. Corr makes a low sound in his throat and I echo it back to him. The waves crash against the shore, water pooling around our ankles and Corr shudders when the water touches him. He keens and twists his neck away from me, staring out to the sea.
I want so badly to understand what he’s thinking.
“Shhhh,” I say, soft like the ocean. Corr’s head snaps away from where he’d been staring out at the horizon and he turns to regard me with his left eye. Further down the beach, one of the doors of the car opens. This close, I can feel the warmth of Corr’s breath and see the slight tremble in his limbs.
I think of the way my father had looked right before he died. Even from the side of the racetrack, I had been able to feel the fear coming off of him in waves, had been able to see the whites of the stallion’s eyes and know that something was going to go wrong. He would have been terrified right now, I’m sure of it.
But I am not my father, and so I reach a hand out and rest it on Corr’s head. His face is damp, and the smell of the ocean is overpowering, stronger than it had seemed before. The air is thick with the smell of salt and the brine of the water, so pungent that it’s suffocating. Corr paws at the ground with a front hoof and I close my hand around his halter, “Easy.” I untie the red cord and cast it off to the sand. The shaking in Corr’s limbs subsides and I trace a counterclockwise circle on his cheek, lean up to whisper in his ear.
“Hey, you!” Someone shouts, further down the beach, “Get your head away from his face!”
I do not think that Corr will attack me, but I take a step to the side anyways, keeping a hand on his halter. There’s two men standing further down the beach, one holding a lead rope and the other a syringe. At the sight of them, Corr neighs, the sound high and uncertain amongst the crashing of the waves. I tighten my grip on his halter and think back to how deadly he had seemed only a moment before. Reason tells me I should not trust him, but my father didn’t trust any of the horses he exercised and he still ended up dead.
One of the men - well dressed, in expensive breeches and with perfect hair - steps forward, “Thanks for that. We’ll take him from here.”
He takes another step closer. At my side, Corr tenses and twists away and I go with him, letting him spin before jerking his head down. “Easy,” I say again, tracing circles on his neck. He shudders, but stays in place.
I want to tell the men that they’re upsetting the stallion and that he’d been calm before they’d gotten here, but instead I just meet their gaze, steady. “I can lead him back,” I say instead.
The younger one’s mouth quirks, and I recognize him as the boy with fair hair from the barn. “You’ll be wanting this,” he says, and tosses me his lead rope. It hits the sand to the right of us and Corr jerks away from the noise. I cluck at him and push him over a step. Instinct prickles at the back of my skull, telling me not to turn my back on this horse or bend down in front of him. I am certain he is faster than me.
Corr keens and I clamp a hand over his nose. “Corr,” I say, a warning in my voice. He doesn’t do it again, and I whisper into his ear before reaching down and picking the rope up off the ground. I don’t take my eyes off of him, but he makes no move to go after me. He jerks when I clip it onto his halter, and I turn towards him to whisper into his ear again.
“We’ll follow behind you in the car,” the first man says, the well-dressed one.
I turn Corr away from the ocean. He keens again, high and loud and I wish I understood what he wanted. It takes a moment, but he follows me, his steps becoming less tentative with every step away from the sea.
Corr is silent the way back to the barn, or as silent as he can be, anyways. I’m learning that he dislikes being still, that he’s beautiful to watch in motion, prancing at the end of the lead rope. He could be like any racehorse back in the states, except for the memory of how utterly unhorselike he looked only moments ago.
I feel eyes on us, on me, as we walk into the barn. Corr snorts at one of the other horses and pins his ears back, and I snap his lead rope.
“Sean Kendrick!” Jonathan calls, “You found Corr!”
I'm beginning to wonder if Jonathan ever says anything that isn’t obvious. At his cry, other people appear around the barn. A girl with red hair and a smear of freckles across her face peers out from an office, and a boy with a square jaw looks up from the ring, the same one who had been poorly jumping the piebald earlier.
I glance over my shoulder at the boy with fair hair as he jogs to my side. He points me towards a stall for Corr, and when I have him settled he calls for me, the sound piercing against the quiet of the barn. He sounds like no horse I’ve ever heard before.
I latch the stall door behind me and the spell hanging over the barn is broken. Conversations snap to life again, and the boy from the beach loiters outside of the stall. “I’m Tommy,” he says, extending a hand. “Tommy Falk.”
“Sean Kendrick,” I say, taking his hand.
Tommy opens his mouth as if to say something else, then looks at something over my shoulder and nods. “I’ll be seeing you, I’m sure,” he says, heading towards the ring.
The boy with the square jaw that Brian identified as Mutt earlier takes his place in front of Corr’s stall. His eyes flick over mine and his mouth is a harsh slant against his face. “Kendrick,” he says, spitting out my name like it’s a swear. “I’m Matthew Malvern. I hear you’re the one that brought back my horse.”
“Didn’t seem like your horse on the beach,” I say, and Mutt laughs. He’s smiling, but there’s murder in his eyes. He doesn’t deserve Corr.
“Watch your tone,” he says, “my father practically owns these stables.”
And now I know that Mutt is the sort of person who would rather flaunt his father’s name than earn any respect of his own. He's not the first of the like that I've met. I cross my arms and tip my head back to watch a bird, wheeling high above me in the sky. There's nothing more to say to him
“Watch your back, Kendrick,” Mutt snarls. He stalks off, shoving past me and I allow myself to smile for a moment.
I glance at Corr, pacing back and forth in his stall and then turn towards my mother’s house. She’ll be angry if I’m not back soon, I’m sure. As I’m leaving the well dressed man who had been with Tommy at the beach stops me. “Ho!” He says, “Sean Kendrick! You saved us a load of trouble with Corr earlier.”
His smile is broad and lopes across his face. Everything about him seems tailored, from the lilt of his voice to the way his hair is styled. “Where’d you learn to calm a horse down like that?” he asks, clapping me on the back.
I shrug and meet his gaze. He smiled when he asked the question, but there’s a strange light in his eyes and something tells me he sees more than he lets on, that he knows about my conversation with Mutt only moments ago.
“I’m George Holly,” he says, continuing on as I’ve replied to anything he’s said. “I expect we’ll be seeing you around here from now on.”
“Seems like it,” I say, and he laughs and slaps me on the back again before walking away.
I linger a moment longer, taking in the barn and everything about it before turning and heading back towards my new home, taking my time down the path that only leads to an empty home at the end of it. If I have a barn nearby, this might not be as awful as I thought it might be.
From the bushes at the side of the path, there’s a rustling, and then a duffel bag is thrown in front of me. A girl climbs out after it, her red curls a shock against the green of the bushes. She freezes when she sees me.
Is this a regular occurrence around here? I want to ask, but instead cross my arms and stare at her impassively. She picks the bag up off the ground and smooths her hair down, the movement wasted since the wind only whips it into a frenzy once more. She scowls, and the expression suits her more than her shock from when she first saw me. “I’m Puck,” she says.
I want to ask her why she’s climbing out of bushes instead of leaving the barn any other way, but there’s a slant to her eyes that says she’s daring me to. “Sean.”
“I know,” she says. Her hand tightens on her bag, and I wonder what’s inside it that’s so precious. “You brought Corr back.”
I nod, not taking my eyes off her bag. Her scowl deepens, “You can look inside it, if you like,” she snaps. “Since I’m obviously up to something with it.”
I want to point out that she obviously is up to something, that she’s just climbed out of the bushes and is clutching her bag like it holds the key to the universe. The weight of her gaze reminds me of Corr though, of how it had felt to have his full attention. Just like with him, Puck seems like she’ll bite my hand off if I make the wrong move, so I shake my head and step to the side.
Her mouths quirks as she hoists her bag onto her back, “See you around, Sean Kendrick.”