Water Horse

Inspired by The Scorpio Races by Maggie Steifvater

It comes every November,
like a howling winter storm,
battering the headlands for a day before
stillness
They call it a race
but no race I've ever known asks as much of the human soul.
Twenty men line up on the beach
---for only men are foolish enough to take this wager with Mother Nature---
astride great beasts that look for all the world like horses.

But these are no more horses than the Devil is a man
and fifteen of these fools will be dead by sundown.
These are creatures of the deep, dark ocean beyond our ken,
that man thought, in his folly, he could tame.
The water horse, with a green-weed mane
and sea foam round the bit it chomps,
drowning on land, desperate to return to where it belongs.
This close to the surf, where even I can taste the brine,
the water horse is at it's most deadly;
They want nothing more than to return to the ocean from whence it came
and they'll go through you to get there.

Between the starting gun and the finish line
time stands still for those on the edge of oblivion,
astride destruction.
Four fraught minutes as the horses fight to free themselves from their riders
and the riders frantically fight to hold on
and hope for the best.
Bitten, bloody, bucked off,
trampled beneath a dozen steel hooves,
dragged towards the waves and drowned.
The sand grows dark and the sea turns red
as man fights against nature and the beast
til one is crowned victorious,
last man standing more often than not.

If I had my way
I'd have nothing to do with these races.
But there's only one path to freedom on this blood-soaked isle
that asks men for their lives and breaks beasts' souls.
I can see my future, there, at the finish line
beyond the blood and the churn.
I focus on nothing else.
Not the crash of the waves as the tide crawls in
nor the vibrating excitement of the beast beneath me
nor the smell of fear from the other nineteen fools
all lined up for the slaughter.

My heart beats wildly in my chest
pounding like hooves against the sand.

Four minutes to freedom,
if I can hold my nerve.
If I can stay astride.

If I survive.

The starter raises his gun.
I take a deep breath
and
GO!