Rider Challenge #2: My reason
@thescorpioracesfestival Itâs our weekly family dinner and Polly has glared at me since she started chewing on her first potato. She tries to burn me with her eyes until I give in and ask her whatâs wrong and I ignore her and pretend everything is fine.
If I give in, sheâll have the higher moral ground because Iâd admit there could be something wrong.Â
Eventually, she stabs a piece of meat with her fork and hisses: âWhy are you racing again?!â
I look up at her. Yes, why am I racing? Because I donât know any better. Because my heart, against all better knowledge, yearns for a capallâs body stretching beneath me, for me to feel its muscles work, for the speed and salty wind to stroke my face. Because I yearn for the risk. For the adrenaline that rushes through my veins and goes to my head faster than the cheapest wine.
âWe could do with the money.â Thatâs no lie. Gavin is doing alright but not great. Pollyâs dress is a little too short because sheâs grown another ten centimetres out of nowhere. The food on this table has been a little better once before.
The first and last time Adamante and I won the races.
âYou need to win to get the money.â Sheâs got an honest mouth, that girl, and I can do nothing but shrug.
âThe grey one is fast.âÂ
âWhat if Pebbles kills you?âÂ
My nose scrunches up at the name sheâs given the uisce mare, but Iâve long ago learned that you donât argue with Polly about things so insignificant. âAdamante didnât kill me in four years.â He was not the grey one though. I still canât get myself to call her by her name. I donât trust her.
I think again about Pollyâs question. Why do I race? I know why I love the festival. Itâs linked with all the memories of my father â the only ones I have of him. Every year for the festival heâd come to Thisby to visit me and my mother. Every year until I was thirteen. Then he suddenly didnât show up anymore.
He had always visited the races with me and when I caught Adamante a few years later, I felt that my father would come back if I were to race. That he could not miss his son giving himself to the mercy of waves and storms and the deadly horses.Â
Of course he did not show up but by then I had fallen madly in love with the white stallion I had pulled out of the waves.Â
The next year we won the races. It was a stormy day, the waves too high, the wind too rough, too many riders lost their capaill or their lives. But Adamante stayed with me no matter how the sea yelled into his ears for him to follow her and we won.
When I saw the grey one, I felt the same as the night I had caught a snow white capall uisce at the beach years ago. I felt like maybe, she could be a little like Adamante. Of course she canât replace him but maybe, maybe she can fill up the hole he left in my chest just a little.
Thatâs why Iâm racing.Â















