The Kelpie (Part One)

Part One - Apollo

I was nine when I met the kelpie.

People think, if you live on the coast of Cornwall, you must spend a lot of time at the beach. You are probably thinking of an adventurous waif with the Cornish sea in her eyes. You're painting a picture of her in your head right now, I can tell. Her hair is fair to start with, and bleached further by sun and salt until it is lighter than her nut-brown tan. She's been able to swim since she could walk. She is out in all weathers, surefooted on the rocks and at home around boats.

You're thinking of Tera. Her family moved to the area from London, and Tera joined my class at school when we were both eight. She fit right in straight away. Everyone loved her.

My parents moved to Cornwall when mum was pregnant with me, and I can admit, here, in secret, that I was a little jealous that Tera sort of looked and acted like she belonged on the coast more than I did.

I'm Jen. At eight, I was small for my age, fair skinned with straight black hair and nearly black eyes. Even now, I burn if I even sit near a window on a sunny day, and I barely know one end of a boat from the other. (I think the pointy bit must be the front?) I love animals. We had a lot of pets when I was growing up, and I went pony riding as often as I could (which wasn't as often as I would like). I liked curling up in the warm indoors and reading or drawing. I used to dream of being a wildlife conservationist, which mum said meant being outside. I would tell her, when I felt brave enough, that if there had been a panther outside I would absolutely go out and pet it. (The moral here is this: don't tell your mum your dreams, because she will use them against you.)

Tera's family were the kind of people you imagine must live in Cornwall, if you just know a little bit about the place. I remember them being all reclaimed wood, boats, and expensive white teeth. Her mother (blonde, of course) lived in yoga clothes and gillets. They spent lots of time at the beach. Her brother won surf competitions and looked like he belonged on an Australian soap.

The truth is, a lot of us don't go to the beach that much, considering we live right by it. I guess, when it's always there, it's never special. It's always something we can do any time we like, and "any time" never comes. My family didn't usually go anywhere near it in the summer. It was always crawling with emmets. Emmet means ant. I liked that, because they really do sort of swarm over everywhere and leave when it rains. I can hear mum, inside my head, telling me not to be rude. That tourists bring a lot of money to the area. I see what mum was getting at, but I remember feeling like home wasn't really home at the top of the holiday season. As a child, it was hard not to feel something about that.

Mum was especially careful whenever I was in the sea that a grown up must be keeping watch, and she practically had a photographic memory for when the tide would be up. When she was nine, her best friend almost drowned, so maybe she was a bit paranoid, or maybe all mums worry too much about one thing or another. She calls it "healthy respect for the ocean", but surely if your friend drowned, that makes you terrified, not respectful, so I don't know. My swimming skill was barely average, and I have never been what you would call over-confident in the sea. Maybe my mum was just really good at hiding abject terror.

Tera was my friend for a while. For two whole weeks. She called on me every day before school so we could walk together, sat next to me at lunch, and gossiped with me about boys and make-up and who said what about who. (I didn't like boys or make-up or gossip.) It meant I got to spend less time with my actual best friends, and I felt stupid a lot of the time because I didn't know much about the kind of things she likes.

Have you noticed that, once you get that idea in your head, "I'm so stupid", it won't shift? Your tongue and brain obey that horrible thought and get slower and clumsier. I swear, I could say interesting or funny things sometimes, it just never seemed to happen when she was around. I always felt mousey and dull next to her, and I blushed even more easily than I burned.

Everything about her was a constant reminder of how different we were. She could throw something on and use a comb sparingly on her blonde waves and she looked like a stylish free spirit. If I tried that I looked like a black sheep got dragged backwards through a hedge and then got dressed in the dark. Even her name sounded exotic and exciting. To me anyway. Tera. I thought mine sounded like a lump. Still, for all our differences, and even though I felt boring and stupid around her, I was secretly thrilled that the most popular girl in our class wanted to be friends with me.

Anyway, after about two and a half weeks, and a LOT of drama, she'd dropped me and latched on to someone else. I mended my friendship with Lottie and Bam and watched her work her nasty magic on another close friendship group. Why do people like horrible people? It makes no sense. She randomly tried to be friendly again about a month later, but I wasn't fooled this time. I told mum, and she hugged me tight and told me I had her permission to use a rude word. I won't repeat it here, but you put the word "off" after it. This is the same woman who has always reminded us all to be polite the rest of the time. My mum was weird like that. Be nice, she says, but not so nice you lose your spine.

Life felt heavy that January. It was a perfect storm of boredom, disappointment, and sadness. Mum said the word was "anti-climactic" - the opposite of the build up and excitement around Christmas. But it was more than that. I was a little bit sad that Christmas was over, of course. but that was only one layer. I remember feeling like I'd missed something, like everyone else had a merry Christmas and the whole thing just sort of slipped by me. I've never been a girly girl, so apparently that makes me hard to buy presents for. I knew, even then, that I shouldn't be ungrateful, but that year's haul had been kind of dull. I know what you are thinking, but it really wasn't like that. It was like.... the start of the end of childhood or something. On top of that, return to school was looming. Plus, it was grey and wet and gloomy outside, and all the Christmas lights had been packed away.

Mum wrapped me up warm, put the dog lead in my hand and pushed me out into it. She does that sometimes. "Fresh air!" she would say, "that's what you need to blow away the cobwebs!" Or, "If you want to be a conservationist, you have to go outside!"

I tried not to mutter that a lot of it will probably be a lot of working on websites and social media (indoors, where it's warm), and sloped off in the drizzle, bundled up in a hoodie and rain coat, with a shivering Apollo.

Apollo was the ugliest, scrubbiest, oldest, naughtiest little dog you can imagine. He had fine blonde fur that stuck out in all directions, scrawny legs, bug-eyes and an underbite. He would fight anything, chase anything, and hump anything. My dad grudgingly called him "a character", which was, for him, probably a polite a way of saying "a bit of a pain in the arse". He can also get out of anywhere, no matter how carefully you lock him in. We used to call him Houdini. But we all loved him. Especially Mum. Her dad rescued him when he was an abandoned puppy, and after Grandad died, Mum sort of inherited Apollo.

That day, I took him to the beach. There would be no one there in that weather, and maybe I could let him off his lead. He'd like that. He didn't always come back straight away, but he was aging and could only run so far before he tired enough I could catch up with him.

The beach was deserted, and no wonder - the drizzle was fine, freezing and coming in sideways.

I let him loose and he ran full pelt along the sand. No more shivering. Not even trying to go anywhere in particular. Just running. Enjoying the freedom. His grinning mouth clipping open and shut on the salty spray off the receding sea.

To be a dog! They are such happy creatures. I know now my mother was a wise woman after all. She knew just the things that would shake the doldrums off me, and they were usually just the things I resisted. An early night. Colourful vegetables. Being outdoors. Catching happiness, like a virus, off a little dog who loved to be free.

I don't know how it happened exactly. One minute he was there, and the next minute he was not. He was such a little terror that I didn't even panic at first. I sighed, and quickened my pace to a jog. Surely - surely - he would be around the next bend. He would be sniffing among those rocks.

He was not around that bend. He was not nosing about at the foot of the rocks.

I scrambled up, freezing hands and sneakered feet both slipping on the wet stone. I scanned the beach from my vantage point, sure I would see him panting hard and running out of steam.

He was... nowhere.

He couldn't have gone further than I could see - he was too small. His legs were too short. He was too old. He had to be there. Somewhere. He had to.

He wasn't.

He wasn't on the beach at all. That only left one place he could be. My eyes were drawn to the dull grey sea. I ran along the spine of the rocks that still jutted into the ocean. As surefooted, today, as the Cornish waif your mind conjured earlier. It was like fear sharpened my senses that day, honed my reflexes. I glanced from one side to the other, hoping to see a tuft of his signature scraggly blond fur. Panic built in my chest.

For a moment I thought I saw the red of his collar in the steely water, but it must have been a trick of the light. I stared hard, willing to see it again. I think that's how I spotted it. There was no red... but... the water in that area was not quite the right colour. That sounds crazy, I know. Of course the ocean's colours shift. But this was different. It was almost right, but there was a very subtle hint of purple, outlined by an even subtler green. And... there was something else. This patch of wrongness was moving. Not quite in time with the pull and suck of the waves, and divorcing from it further all the time. Moments later, it was like it stopped any pretense of pretending to be a wave, and was moving towards me.

Here is my second shameful confession: the next moment, I forgot about poor little lost Apollo. The thing rose out of the water, like a deliberate wave. Instead of breaking against the rocks and retreating, it kept rising, and kept coming.

Her serpentine neck arched over me, a salty waterfall pouring from the seaweed-like mane to drench me from head to foot. My feet rooted to the rock, and my jaw gaping, I took in every detail of the beast before me. The head was distinctly horsey, except for the slitted nostrils. These were widening, even as I watched, until the nose really did resemble one you might see on a fine boned pony. The gills on her neck were settling and closing, and the longer her body remained out of the water, the darker and more solid she appeared. The purple hue seemed to have gone, and even the faint green at the edges of her throat, like a frog's belly, was barely visible. She looked, for all the world, like an oversized horse with a long neck. Grey, with pretty dark dappling on her coat, and a black mane. But horses are prey animals, and I cannot imagine what would prey on her.

She looked like water. Like if I reached out my hand to pet her shoulder, my fingers would disappear under the surface. The sea-mist coming off her flanks puts me in mind of the way the ponies at the stables steam at the end of a ride in the middle of winter.

Her legs were shaggy and sort of wrong-looking, though I couldn't quite put my finger on how. The hooves looked too wide, and they seemed kind of prehensile - like they could grip the slick rocks.

I did not know, then, that you are not supposed to ride a kelpie, nor that this one must have been very, very far from home. All I knew was that a beautiful, if slightly mis-proportioned horse had mysteriously risen from the waves to greet me. I wondered if I was dreaming. I shook my head and blinked to wake myself up. When that didn't work, I pinched myself, and dug my nails into my palms.

Would she let me pet her? I reached out, low and slow, to let her get the smell of me, and the feel of her hot breath huffing on my skin stretched my mouth into a wide grin. When my palm met her shoulder, she felt reassuringly solid. My hand didn't pass through, as if she were water or mist, or a bit of my own brain. Instinctively, I spoke softly and slowly, the way you do around horses. Her liquid eyes cast a spell over me, and I was lost.

Poor Apollo.

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TO BE CONTINUED

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Thank you for reading! I reciprocate genuine reads, and I welcome feedback. Did anything pull you out of the story?

Edit: A note from me: You can find part 2 here 👇