My first horse was technically a consolation prize. I was eight years old, all pointy elbows and knees, already swearing like the sailors on the Bayou boats and fisherman on the Thisby docks, twisted together into my own foul-mouthed language. I was folded into my mother’s side while she did her best to lean away from me, never actually touching me, while Dad walked toward us with the most beautiful horse I’d ever seen next to him. Silently, he handed me the reins, and in that moment, I could’ve died happy.

Then he told me that he was staying on Thisby from now on and every spring and summer, I would join him. The other six months, I would be allowed to stay with Mother and Grandma Isabelle in Lafayette, Louisiana. Dad’s eyes said everything that his mouth didn’t; protest and you’ll live on Thisby for good. Make a scene and you will never leave his side or Mother’s.

Scream, and you will never have this horse.

So I held the reins in one hand and, with the other, shook my father’s fist like we’d just made a business deal. I suppose, in a way, we did. But I still named the horse Lincoln, flaunting my American side. Spiting my father has been a hobby from an unbecomingly young age. It still hasn’t changed.

That was ten years ago, but today, with the Thisby’s breath in my lungs and the early autumn grass scratching at my pants, it feels like it could have been yesterday. Dad walks toward me with the same squinty-eyed expression that everyone on this damn island seems to have, and, like every other man on Thisby, he has a horse at his side.

No. Not a horse. A water horse. A Capall Uisce.

Just like before, this horse is meant for me.

“Her name is Umha,” Dad says in his calm, professional voice. “This is her second year from the sea, and her first year in the races.” Like me. “Why have I never seen her before?” My voice is steel and broken glass. He owns this barn. For six month of the year, I live in it, yet I have never laid eyes on this golden bronze mare.

Dad busies himself with tying Umha’s reins to a post before answering. “She was with another rider last year.”

For all intents and purposes, this means that one of Dad’s rich and stupid clients-slash-riding-students tried to treat Umha like a regular horse, so Umha showed him exactly how Uisce horses should be treated.

I wonder idly how dead this person is as we speak.

Dad shoots a glare like he can read my thoughts. “Umha is perfectly capable of winning these races without damage, Grace.” Again, his face speaks for him. Just like you are. Just like you should be, with all your training.

I don’t respond. I let my eyes roam over the gray sea sky and the church steeple in the distance, the distinguished wooden barns that make up my father’s yard and how completely at odds it is with every weather-beaten thing on this island. It strikes me that I probably look like I belong here just as much as these buildings do.

I’m not a local. I’m not a tourist. I speak with a strange accent that’s the product of a Thisby father and an over-rich Louisiana Mother. Beatrice O’Riley had no trouble shedding her married name to become Bea Hamilton once again, like a snake shedding its skin, suddenly invisible to anyone who’s actually looking for the woman she was. There aren’t many of those; just me.

Jimmy O’Riley stopped trying to please Mother ten years ago, and, just as comfortably, slid back into Skarmouth’s charcoal-colored streets as if he’d never left to marry an American girl he met at the races one year. My father has a one-track mind, excellent for business, awful for raising a daughter. I cut off all my hair right before I left Lafayette, just to piss off Mother and to see what Dad might say. He didn’t say anything.

Neither gave much thought how I might turn out, given the circumstances. But here I stand on Thisby soil, wearing my mother’s face, and feeling terribly homesick for a place I never liked much to begin with.

Dad clears his throat quietly, yet it commands all of my attention while scolding me for ignoring him. More business magic tricks. “Umha will be your mount in the races this year. You know the law, so she won’t be able to go home”-his voice sours the word- “with you, but she’ll be here for you next November.” He doesn’t say any of the warnings that he should, to a client, to his daughter, to anyone, all that ‘don’t fall off, don’t get eaten, don’t drown, don’t die’ stuff. Dad doesn’t have time to waste on such things, especially with all the work he’s put in to make me impervious to the Side Effects of the Scorpio Races. 

He smoothes a hand over the flat cap he wears out of vanity more than warmth- he started balding around the time my parents started arguing, which is fifteen years or so. “You two should get acquainted before the festivities start,” he says, and then turns on his heel and is gone.

Umha is restless in all the ways that my father is still. Now that he’s left, I realize that all the extra room in the atmosphere wasn’t being vacuumed by him; it was simply containing her. She snorts and blinks and shuffles, all with a calculated intelligence behind her eyes. I wonder if she hates Dad.

I peek quickly to make sure that the grooms and hangers-on are out of hearing distance, trace the iron that encircles my neck underneath my collar and the bells in my sleeves. Then I look straight into a Cappall Uisce’s eyes.

“Do you hate him?” I ask her.

There’s a moment of silence in which I feel more like an idiot than I ever have, then Umha tips her silky black mane over her bronze skin, and gives me the ghastliest, most horrible grin.

I feel the corners of my mouth lift as I mimic her expression. “So do I.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“I’m not like that. Like him,” I say.

Big browns eyes blink once, twice. I smile again.

I walk toward the tracks, then stop and untie her reins from the post. Umha jerks from the iron on my wrists and I don’t feel sorry. We are partners now, but I will not let my guard down. Together we will win these races. Together we will spite my father. Together we will be free.

People scatter as we make our way to the main stable, and I don’t realize until much later that we still wore our crooked, awful, capall grin, and it scared them.

Good, I think. Let them be scared.

@thescorpioracesfestival