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her ear, and all the while my inside hand turns her in smaller and smaller circles, each one away from the water. Nothing is sure.
    As we charge across the sand, the magic in her calls to me, insidious. Precious little of my bare skin touches her — a wrist against her neck, perhaps, though my leg is guarded inside my boots. But still, her pulse hums through me. Lulling me to trust. Compelling me to join her in the sea. It’s only a decade of riding dozens of the water horses that allows me to remember myself.
    And only barely.
    Everything in me says to abandon the struggle. Fly with her into the water.
    Threes. Sevens. Iron across my palm.
    I whisper: “You will not be the one to drown me.”
    It feels like minutes to slow her, to bring her back toward Gorry, but it’s probably only seconds. And all the while her neck still feels snaky to me and her teeth are still bared in a way that no land horse would present them. She’s trembling beneath me.
    It’s hard to forget how swift she was.
    “Didn’t I tell you she was the fastest thing you’d ever ride?” Gorry asks.
    I slide off her and hand him the reins. He takes them with a puzzled expression on his already puzzling face.
    I say, “This mare is going to kill someone.”
    “Hey now,” Gorry objects. Then: “They’ve all killed someone.”
    “I want no part of her,” I say, even though part of me does.
    “Someone else will buy her,” Gorry says. “And then you will be sorry.”
    “That someone else will be dead,” I reply. “Throw her back.”
    I turn away.
    Behind me, I hear Gorry say, “She’s faster than your red stallion.”
    “Throw her back,” I repeat, not turning around.
    I know he won’t.

PUCK
     
    I didn’t reckon that it would be awful.
    But the whole island is crammed onto the beach, it feels like. Finn convinced us to take the Morris, which promptly broke down, so we arrived after just about everybody else. In front of us, there are two seas: one far-off ocean of deep blue and one seething mass of horses and men. All of them are men, not a girl among them unless you count Tommy Falk because his lips are so pretty. The men are a thousand times louder than the ocean. I don’t see how they can train or move or breathe. They’re all shouting at the horses and at each other. It’s like a big argument, but I can’t tell who’s mad at who.
    Finn and I both hesitate on the long sloped path down to the beach. The ground beneath our feet is uneven with divots from horses that have been led down already. Finn frowns as he looks at the collection of people and animals. But my eye is caught instead by a horse galloping at the faraway edge of the sucked-out tide. It is bright red, like fresh blood, with a small, dark figure crouched low on its back. Every few strides, the horse’s hooves hit the very edge of the surf and water sprays up.
    The sight of the horse galloping, stretched out, breathlessly fast, is so beautiful that my eyes prickle.
    “That one looks like two horses stuck together,” Finn says.
    His observation pulls my gaze away from the red horse and closer to the cliffs.
    “That’s a piebald,” I tell him. The mare he’s gesturing to is snowy white splashed with big patches of black. Near her withers she has a small black spot that looks like a bleeding heart. A tiny little gnome of a man in a bowler hat is leading her away from the others.
    “‘ That’s a piebald,’ ” mimics Finn. I smack him and look back to where the red horse and rider were, but they’re gone.
    I feel strangely put out. “I guess we should go down,” I say.
    “Is everybody down there today?” Finn asks.
    “Sure looks like it.”
    “How are you going to get a horse?”
    Because I don’t exactly have an answer, the question annoys me. I’m annoyed even more when I notice we’re both standing in exactly the same position, so either I was standing like my brother or he was standing like me. I take my hands out of my pockets and snap, “Is