#stiefvatersource

“Tell me what it’s like. The race.” What it’s like is a battle. A mess of horses and men and blood. The fastest and strongest of what is left from two weeks of preparation on the sand. It’s the surf in your face, the deadly magic of November on your skin, the Scorpio drums in the place of your heartbeat. It’s speed, if you’re lucky. It’s life and it’s death or it’s both and there’s nothing like it.

Adam Parrish - The Magician

"For luck," I say to his startled face. (insp.)

He is slow, and the sea sings to us both, but he returns to me.

                                    we are dreamers • listen here

I think, just then, that this is why Norman Falk asked for Sean to be there. Not because he was the only one who could perform the ritual. But because Sean Kendrick, looking like that, is the races, even if no race was ever run. A reminder of what the horses mean to the island — a bridge between what we are and that thing about Thisby we all want but can’t seem to touch.

being Adam Parrish was a C O M P L I C A T E D thing.

“It’s about wanting,” I say eventually, after some considering. “The tourists always seem to want something. On Thisby, it’s less about wanting, and more about being.”