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The Kelpie (Part Four)

A girl, and her stormy friendship with a water-horse. Please read parts 1,2&3 first if you haven't already!

By L.C. SchäferPublished 2 years ago Updated 11 months ago 11 min read
3
The Kelpie (Part Four)
Photo by Vincent Botta on Unsplash

THE STORY STARTS HERE

PART THREE

Part four - Tera

My baby brother dangled from her jaws, blood trickling from where a fang pierced his arm.

When I reached forward, she jerked back away from me, out of my reach, her eyes wide and accusing. She was poised to run, her mane whipping and her hooves churning the sand to mud where it mixed with the baby's blood. Her jaw tightened. I heard a brief crunch, and I winced. I begged her to give him back but she wheeled around and galloped away from me down the beach. I tried to run after her, but it was like trying to run in water. Then I was trying to run in water - the waves were coming higher, which only meant she flew all the faster. I screamed after her.

The waves were red, and my mother was floating in them, bleeding and glassy-eyed. I was sure that if I could just catch up with the horse, and save my brother, Mum would sit up and smile again. But the water was thicker, like tar, and I couldn't move at all. I couldn't follow her, except with my voice.

I screamed and screamed, but she galloped faster and further, the baby hanging limply between her poisonous teeth.

++++

The light snapped on, stinging my eyes, and my dad's gruff voice roused me from the hell-pit I'd found myself stuck in. Wordlessly, he handed me a glass of water. I struggled upright and sipped it. My throat felt raw.

It was always jarring to see him without his glasses on. He sat on the edge of my bed in his boxers and a white t-shirt and watched me.

"Same dream?" he asked quietly.

I nodded.

"Don't tell your mother."

I didn't say anything to that. I wasn't stupid. No way was I going to tell Mum about my gruesome nightmares. She'd "had a funny turn" right after meeting Guinevere, and then she'd miscarried. She claimed not to know what I was talking about when I tried to talk about the horse on the beach. If I let on, to either of my parents, that the horse in my dream was real, and I thought it might have really caused the miscarriage, I didn't dare speculate what they might think or what they might do.

They would think I am crazy. That's what they would think.

I wanted to get up. I didn't want to risk falling back to sleep, and falling into another suffocating nightmare. But I'd dozed off in class again yesterday, and I didn't want the teachers to start hassling Mum about me.

"How's your hand?" Dad asked.

"Hurts," I croaked.

He brought me the antibiotics, and some paracetemol for the pain.

"Are you OK?"

I nodded.

(I was not OK.)

He tucked me in and left, telling me he would be right back if I needed him.

I stared up into the dark and tried to guess what time it might be. Dad still wouldn't let me have any kind of alarm clock in my room. I wondered, idly, achingly, if Guinevere was on the beach waiting for me.

For several days, I'd found myself drawn to leave the house, and go down to meet her. I could resist it, kind of. For a while, anyway, if I was paying paid attention. Sometimes the pull caught me off-guard, and I'd be halfway out of the house before Mum or Dad brought me back. Dad had confiscated my alarm clock, but I still found myself waking early, and in a daze, dressing and going downstairs, hooves beating an insistent tattoo on my eardrums. Guinevere called me as insistently as I'd ever called her. Dad put a padlock on the front door. Mum and Dad whispered urgently out of my earshot and stopped suddenly when I entered the room.

And then... without me being fully aware of when it happened... that pull dissipated. Without fanfare, or greater effort from me. It just... went. I didn't find myself half-sleepwalking out of the house. I didn't long for the company of the mysterious and beautiful horse anymore. I couldn't even remember her being beautiful. When I thought of her, the image was mis-shapen and ungainly, with legs that looked like they'd been bolted on wrong. And here is the weird part: I missed it. That peculiar draw had been all I'd had left of her. It had been proof of something special, a connection between us. It had been proof that maybe I was special. I wasn't just a bland lump, blending into the background. Now it was gone.

I knew, without knowing how I knew, that she was not waiting for me on the beach. She was not waiting for me at all.

The room got gradually lighter and lighter, and I wondered if my parents might let me start drinking coffee.

++++

"I've got a new horse," I heard Tera bragging in class that day.

Don't be silly. She always says things like that. It doesn't mean anything.

But I had a nagging worry that wouldn't leave me.

I looked for her at lunchtime. I hadn't been very friendly since she had split apart my close friendship group, and I wasn't sure whether she would talk to me. I didn't really want to draw her attention to me at all.

I found her in the dining hall, surrounded by hangers-on. I was still unsure what I was going to say, but I was sure I had to say something.

I said, not very imaginatively: "Hey,"

She turned to look at me, and straight away I thought she looked bored. Oh no. Having to acknowledge my existence. Surely the most dull thing she could possibly be doing.

"I, er... I heard you have a new horse...? What's it like?"

I waited for her to say something funny, but a bit mean. Maybe about me not being able to afford one of my own or something like that, and then go back to whatever fascinating thing her friends were talking about.

Instead her face lit up in a broad smile. "Oh! She is beautiful! Really, really beautiful! And huge! A grey. Her markings are just glorious. She is so intelligent. I can just tell. The way she looks at me, like she knows exactly what I'm saying. She even has this look sometimes, if I do something she doesn't like, like she's telling me off..."

Her friends looked completely uninterested and were beginning to chatter amongst themselves. Tera's attention was fully on me, and she kept up the happy babbling about her wondrous new pet, not noticing her group drifting away. She kept step with me and kept talking right through the bell. I tried to make the right noises at the right times.

"Mm? Yeah. Oh. That's nice. That's good."

My guts felt heavy. I guess, in a way, she could have been talking about any horse. But it really did sound like she was talking about Guinevere. If someone had known about her and asked me about her, I would have responded just the same. I could have talked about her non-stop for hours. It would have pulled me out of the lethargy I felt when I was apart from her.

Inspiration struck me while we filed into our classroom, and I interrupted her with what I thought was quite a clever question. It sounded kind of ordinary, at least to a horsey person. But her answer would tell me whether she was talking about a regular pony in a stable. Or... not.

"What are her teeth like?"

Tera stopped talking very abruptly. There was a pause which lasted just a beat too long. She forced a light laugh.

"Oh, I don't know much about teeth really. Anyway, yesterday when I went to see her..."

I butted in again, this time leaning close and dropping my voice to a whisper.

"Where does she live? Like, in a field or something? Or... on a beach?"

There was no mistaking it this time. Tera's eyes widened, and she looked a bit pale.

"You - you've met her, too?"

I nodded. Jealousy gnawed at me. I saw it mirrored in the surprise on Tera's face. I think maybe we were both thinking the exact same thing. There hadn't been anything special about me at all.

I didn't know how to warn her. I didn't even know what I should be warning her of. Images from my nightmare flicked through my brain relentlessly: the baby impaled on those teeth, jolting and flopping like a ragdoll to her strides, his blood dripping on the sand, her wicked hooves cutting through red waves... Interspersed with blurry recollections of stumbling out of the house at all hours and being forced back inside by my parents. They probably thought I was losing it, even without me telling them a horse-shaped water demon took my unborn baby brother. (I was always sure he would have been a brother, I don't know why.)

"Tera, I think she might be dangerous."

"Oh, no," she said, "She isn't! Not at all, I promise. I guess she might look a bit odd to some people - " she looked a bit uncomfortable saying that, but pressed on, "but she's clever and gentle. Come and meet her when I'm there, you'll see."

Tera still thinks they have a special connection. But Guinevere just wants someone to feed off.

"Come on everyone, settle down please, find your seats..."

The teacher had arrived, and our conversation was cut short. I had to find a way to make Tera see how dangerous Guinevere was, but I honestly do not know, to this day, whether my intentions were noble or not. Was I genuinely concerned for her safety? Was I just jealous? I knew Guinevere just wanted to feed. But, knowing that, did I want it to be me?

If I went with Tera to the beach, there was a chance I might be enthralled all over again. I don't know how I felt about that. I was a bit scared of it. But I also kind of wanted it, at the same time. It made me reckless.

I caught Tera's eye across the classroom, and nodded.

++++

After school, Tera was waiting for me by the school gate.

"Come on. There's something I need to pick up before we go down there."

The "something" was a carrier bag hidden under a hedge.

We went down to the beach together. Tera seemed thrilled to have someone to talk to about "Bonnie" (stupid name), but at the same time possessive. She did not want to share her.

But you don't own her. She owns you.

While we walked, Tera told me enthusiastically that she chose the name because it means "beautiful". (Pfft.)

When we got to the beach, my heart sank. I'd not been paying attention to the tides. The water was pretty high. I was nervous, but I didn't want to show it. Mum didn't know I'd come here. This was all wrong, every bit of it. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

No one was about, with the water so far up, and we waited almost no time at all for Guinevere. It's because the tide is so far in, and there's no one about. And there's two of us - a real feast. It's not because she likes Tera better than me. Like everyone else does.

Tera carefully took out the carrier bag and unwrapped it and I got another clue why Guinevere had appeared so readily. She liked dead pigeon even better than congealed pork chop.

Tera fed it to her carefully, beaming all the while.

"It's not as fresh as you'd normally like it, I know. I'll do better tomorrow."

There was not a hint of revulsion, no fear of the fangs. Just adoration poured into every syllable she uttered. My hand throbbed painfully.

I might as well have been invisible. She definitely likes her better.

"Oh, I would love to, I would really love to," she was saying, and I remembered Mum saying almost the exact same thing.

Guinevere nudged Tera lovingly, with blood and feathers still hanging from her lips, and turned sideways on, swishing her tail. She looked round quizzically at Tera with those spellbinding eyes and Tera pulled herself up. She didn't use her heels against Guinevere's flanks like I expected someone who had ridden before to try to do. She leaned forward, embraced her with arms and legs, and trusted her.

It looked, for all the world, like a fox with a gingerbread man sitting on his head.

I lunged forward, realisation coalescing into horror.

"Please, Tera. Don't! Get down! You can't!"

Tera, turned her face to me, smiling and gentle.

"Yes, I can", she said. "I want to."

For the first time that day, and only for a moment, Guinevere locked eyes with me, and I swear they grinned. Her mouth didn't move and she didn't show me those awful teeth, but I could see it. She was the cat that got the cream. I hadn't been able to stop her. But then, she'd never enticed me to ride her, so maybe I was more than just a snack to her. Maybe she did like me pretty well after all.

We knew one another at last.

She started forward in a gentle canter, carrying Tera away down the beach and drifting sideways into the ocean spray. Tera stayed on her back, limpet-like and unmoving.

I screamed, and this time no one came to wake me.

+++++++

You can read Part Five here 👇

Series
3

About the Creator

L.C. Schäfer

Book-baby is available on Kindle Unlimited

Flexing the writing muscle

Never so naked as I am on a page. Subscribe for nudes.

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Sometimes writes under S.E.Holz

"I've read books. Well. Chewed books."

Reader insights

Nice work

Very well written. Keep up the good work!

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  1. Compelling and original writing

    Creative use of language & vocab

  2. Excellent storytelling

    Original narrative & well developed characters

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