The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater Page A

smell are probably unnecessary for most of the year.
    Today is no exception; I take a deep, slightly hungry breath as I open the door. Inside the shop, the sisters are fighting, as usual. I have no sooner gotten inside the doorway and into the dim clutter than Dory Maud thrusts a catalog into my hands.
    “There,” she says. “That. You’d buy from that, wouldn’t you, Puck?” The sisters call me Puck instead of Kate because all three of the sisters agree that you should be called what you want to be called instead of simply falling into what you were given at birth. I don’t remember ever telling them I wanted to be called Puck instead of Kate — both of them are my names — but still, I don’t mind it.
    “She’s got no money at all,” Elizabeth says dismissively from the stairs at the back of the shop. The stairs lead up to the second story, which the sisters share. I’ve never been up there and I harbor a secret wish to. I think it must be all shoes and beds. And butter.
    Elizabeth continues, “Of course it’s going to look good to her.”
    I glance at what Dory Maud has thrust into my hand. To my surprise, it’s a neatly printed catalog for Fathom & Sons. When I tip my hands, it falls open to a random page with stylish black-and-white illustrations of a woman in a knitted sweater and a pair of hands wearing crocheted gloves and a disembodied neck bearing one of the rock cross necklaces that tourists love. The tidy letters describe each in uncompromising detail while a banner declares SEIZE YOUR HERITAGE! STRETCH YOUR PENNY WITH FASHION THAT LASTS! It looks like a real catalog that the post boat brings, only it has all the things from the store in it. My bad mood melts away.
    “This is amazing!” I say. I move slightly so the dusty antique fertility statue by the door will stop poking my shoulder with her stone fingers. She’s been for sale for a long time. “How did you do it? Look at the letters! They’re so perfect.”
    “Mr. Davidge the printer did that,” Dory Maud replies, pleased, looking over my other shoulder.
    “Because Dory Maud did Mr. Davidge,” Elizabeth says from the stairs. She’s still wearing her nightgown and her invented curls are two days old.
    “Oh, go on back to bed,” Dory replies, without heat. I don’t want to think much on this. Dory is what Mum used to call a “strong-looking woman,” which meant that, from the back, she looked like a man, and, from the front, you preferred the back. Elizabeth is the pretty sister, with long straw-colored hair and a nose turned up by lineage and habit. No one notices what the third sister, Annie, looks like, because she’s blind.
    I page through the catalog. I know that I’m being stalled but I discover that I’m rather happy to be stalled. “Are our teapots in here? Who will see this?”
    “Oh, the three people who read the adverts at the very end of the Post ,” Elizabeth says. She’s gone up two more stairs but is far from back in bed. “And who are willing to wait a few years for shipping.”
    “The Post ? On the mainland!” I exclaim. I’ve found our teapots — there is a very precise line drawing of one of the stout pots with my utilitarian thistles on the side of it, and now I can see that the illustrations are in the same hand that draws the adverts in the back of our own little Skarmouth newspaper that comes out each Wednesday. The printing says that the teapot pictured is a “representative design” and that “supplies are limited.” It also says that they are signed and numbered, which my teapots are not. It is strange to think of something of mine heading over the ocean without me. I point to the signed bit and ask, “What’s this?”
    Dory Maud reads the description. “That makes them more valuable. It won’t take you but a moment to sign and number them. Come in and have tea. Elizabeth will stop grousing. Where is your brother?”
    “I can’t stay,” I say regretfully. “I need to take — Dove