A kelpie, a water horse, a nuggle, a tangie; so many names for the same thing. I recognise it only from Maura’s stories for you don’t see them in the sea or ocean, they don’t like salt water, but I’m far from that now. Lakes and rivers, ponds and streams… fresh water, fresh danger...
The kelpie has eyes that look like whirlpools – Maura said they were always pits of fire but it’s probably hard to keep flames alight underwater. Impractical. They are the same deep shade as the river, not quite blue, not quite black, but a little of both with some green thrown in for good measure, with white swirling around the outer edges. He – for it’s definitely male – smiles and all his teeth show in a wide splitting of lips.
The kelpie bows too, which is nice, but the dead men called me ‘Miss’ very nicely too and they meant me ill. This monster, if I’m not mistaken, has eaten my poor horse. Anyone can have good manners, but appalling appetites. Around his neck are the remains of a bridle, the leather and silver bits wound round with straggling river weed. The halter is ragged but clearly cannot be removed by the kelpie’s own hands.
‘Good morning,’ I say, wary. Maura said they ate children. Maura said they offered to carry travellers across rivers and drowned them for dinner. Maura said they sometimes steal brides to live beneath the water in dank caves and give birth to horrors that are neither one thing nor the other, but all rage and damned by more than one god. Maura said a lot of things, things that scared me as a child, and which make me nervous now. But I’m also annoyed.
‘You are wishing to cross?’ he asks and the voice is a strange thing, like water rushing across my ears. It’s not unpleasant.
‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘Which you’ve made extremely difficult.’
‘My apologies. I was hungry.’ There’s that smile again, and the strangeness of the voice; it makes me feel a little faint and I think how easy it must be for him to convince people to ride with him.
‘But you didn’t eat me, even though I slept.’
‘You would not… agree with my digestion, salt daughter.’
‘Why do you call me that?’ My hand goes to the silver bell beneath the collar at my throat.
He cannot see it, but the creature nods towards my fingers as if he knows what they seek. ‘Not entirely human, are you? I can sense it in your veins.’
‘Of course I’m human!’ It was foolish to speak so loudly, now he knows I’m suddenly uncertain. ‘What do you know of my blood?’
‘Only its composition, salt daughter.’ He bows again.
‘What... what am I? What’s in me?’
‘I only sense the salt. My apologies, I cannot say more.’
I notice the careful phrasing he uses. Perhaps he knows more but will not say. Perhaps he knows nothing.
‘You’re wishing to cross?’ he asks again.
I nod.
‘I’ll not offer to carry you—’
‘Then why did you come when called?’
‘—in my usual fashion, but rather I propose a bargain.’
‘Indeed.’
‘So non-committal.’ He laughs and it’s a splashing, booming thing. ‘I would beg your assistance and in return I will grant you a boon.’
‘What would you ask of me, sir?’
He gestures to the bridle twisted around his face and neck. ‘Remove this vile thing.’
‘Who placed it there?’
‘A man, long dead.’
‘By your… hand?’
He shakes his great head. ‘I wish. He tricked me into thrall. Had me build a castle for him’ – he gestures towards something I’d not noticed before, a broken tower peeking through the canopy of the forest on a mountain side – ‘then he forced me to plough fields like some common nag. He and his heirs are gone but this shackle remains and so must I. I would be free of this place.’
‘I thought your kind did not shift from your home?’
He shrugs and droplets scatter from his skin. ‘Not in the usual way of things, but when we are caught… why stay where your shame has been displayed? Do you know how many folk would come and watch as I worked? The villagers brought picnics and sat with their children while I sweated in the sun and hauled stones, and could do nothing to retaliate.’
‘From that village? The ruin?’
He nods, grins again.
‘Did you have something to do with its destruction?’
He puts a hoof-hand against his chest. ‘I swear not. When the flood came – and I do not know from where or why or how – and washed out the bridge, it also covered the fields, swept away most of the villagers and those who survived the deluge did not stay here. There were bodies, too, come down from wherever the flood began, men and women, their throats cut, bloodless all.’ The creature shakes his head as if he, eater of men, had never thought to see such a thing. ‘I wonder if anyone looked for them.’
‘But if I release you, you’ll eat travellers wherever you make a new home.’
‘It is my nature,’ he says truthfully.
‘And if I don’t help?’
‘Then I shall remain trapped.’
Yet I can’t quite bear the thought of him chained here.
‘Promise me you’ll only eat the wicked.’
He pouts. ‘How can I tell such a thing?’
‘If you can sense salt in my veins, surely you can sense a darkness in someone’s soul.’
He grins and laughs and bows again, all those teeth. He nods. ‘That does not diminish my food supply unduly, salt daughter. I agree to your terms.’
I hold up a finger. ‘Yet here’s the thing: you’ve left me without the means to finish my journey.’
He looks at me like a sulky child. ‘What do you propose?’
‘In addition to the boon you owe me from freeing you, you
