Apparently I took this photo in September 2013, which seems like a long time ago. Being one of our more famous landmarks, I’m sure the content needs little introduction as being one of the two giant kelpie sculptures. They really are quite something to see in person, so if you’re into mythology at all and find yourself in Scotland, get yourself over to Falkirk.
Obviously, these behemoths are larger than ‘life’, but the thought immediately struck me, ‘What if they’re not?’
Water foamed and churned. Grant had expected that. You don’t summon a mythical sea-being without doing your homework. Kelpies were the most wild and powerful of all the water-spirits. Of course there would be a disturbance.
What he wasn’t prepared for was the shear area it covered. He frowned down at the ancient book. It was quite specific. The ritual would summon a single kelpie. Just one. But the seething waters filled the bay he’d chosen for the summoning, fully three-hundred metres across. The book had said that deep water was best for calling a kelpie, and this sheltered bay was the deepest water he could get to without a boat. For the first time it occurred to Grant that ‘best’ might not have been the correct term.
A silver-grey muzzle broke the surface, followed closely by a pair of nostrils so large that Grant could have walked into them without ducking. The kelpie snorted out a stream of sea-spray and foam that would have made a whale slink off to nurse its puniness. Grant shivered from a chill that had nothing to do with the frigid salt water soaking through his clothes. He was in trouble.
The Kelpie’s head rose high into the sky, blotting out the sun as it arched over to survey its situation. Massive hooves thudded on the narrow pebbled beach like a mountain landing. White foam and dark seaweed dappled its rippling hide as the beast hauled itself out of the water. Grant scrambled back as fast as the sudden false-tide from the kelpie’s departure dragged the bay’s water out to sea.
He hadn’t meant for this. He’d only wanted to show the other kids that it wasn’t nonsense. That his book of magic was real. That it worked. That he wasn’t just some weird nerd that liked reading too much and believed in more than he should.
The Kelpie was fully out of the water now. It took a first step forward, trampling the community boathouse with one massive hoof. Grant had no doubt his classmates would believe him now. He didn’t think it would win him any friends.
At last he looked up from the wreckage surrounding the car-sized hoof. The creature’s skin shimmered like waves on the sea. Not so much wet flesh and fur as it was a slice of oceanic depths, bound to an equine form and unleashed on an unsuspecting land. The kelpie’s rippling neck told of power beyond the mere muscles mimicked in its shape.
His heart stopped when he finally met the creature’s eye. An orb of captured fire burning with disdain for dry land and all that it held. A silent scream slipped through Grant’s tension-closed throat. The spell book, his only real hope of fixing this, tumbled from numb fingers. Water lapped at its bindings as the tide returned to the bay.
Brandon Lim 