11. Pippi
No … no … no…no , no , no , no , no .
I pivoted, dragging my knees against the coarse surface as I drank in my surroundings.
Two long horns curved out from either side of me, their tips pointing toward the sky. Short, spiky scales cascaded down the length of the rock, tapering off between two slotted nostrils, which were currently blowing steam into the air.
No. It couldn’t be.
A series of twitches and spasms rolled under my hands, as though the rock had been tickled by my frenzied crab-crawling.
I stilled, resting on my hands and knees, struggling to keep my breathing steady as realization thrashed my bones.
This isn’t a rock! It’s …
The Loch Ness Monster!
Had to be. Its head, at least.
The nostrils flared again, making a soft flutter as they shot another jet of steam.
Stars above. I was sitting on the Loch Ness Monster’s head .
“GAHHHH!” I bellowed.
The monster flinched. “Must you be… noisy ?”
And that voice .
The phantom brogue, the one that’d haunted me since the ship ride, had been coming from him ?
“No…nope, nope, na-ah.” I shimmied down the narrowed tip of his snout and nosedived— literally —back into the water.
Because in that moment—that wild, panicked moment—I decided the sea was less terrifying than the beast.
But what I didn’t realize?
How far down the sea actually was.
I’d expected to plop right into it. Instead, I plummeted—ten feet, at least—screaming the whole way, until…
Swish .
Back under the water I went, choking when my last wail opened the floodgates and saturated my lungs.
It hurt. I sobbed, exhausted and frantic, but the ocean guzzled my tears.
Big, blotchy white spots blossomed in front of my eyes.
“That…” A voice thrummed between my ears. “Was…s-s-si… silly .”
Thwack .
Something big and solid bashed into my bottom and pushed me up, lifting me clean out of the water.
I was right back where I’d started, on the head of the beast.
I didn’t know why I expected that to go any differently. The Loch Ness Monster was a whopping “ forty American feet .” Even if I were an Olympic-level freestyler, all bedazzled in my gold medals, I’d never outswim him.
“Why?” the voice demanded while I barfed up lungfuls of ocean—and half my dinner. Probably all the wine.
“Why what ?” I gagged. “Why did I try to swim away? Why am I crying? Or p-puking? Because of you .”
Beneath me, the monster shuddered.
In anger? Or hunger?
I was probably like a decadent slice of cheese to him—a delicious morsel of taste and texture—just enough to satisfy a craving that’d been itching at him.
I pictured him gnawing me between his teeth, savoring the squirt of juices (my blood) over his tongue, closing his eyes in ecstasy at the satisfying crunch of my bones as he chomped them.
A great hiccupping sob surged out of me.
The monster made a low sound, like a growl, as his flesh rippled beneath me. And I figured this was it. This was the moment he flung me into the air and macerated me between his teeth. Like a dog catching a treat off the tip of its nose.
“Can you…h-hear me?” That thick, aristocratic voice inundated my brain again.
My sobs stuttered. “I…ummm…uh…Yes. And listen, I’m really sorry I snapped at you.
Really. I’m not a snapping person. Usually.
I’m just…” My lower lip quivered, mashing my words.
“Please don’t eat me. Please . I’m sorry I disturbed your slumber.
I didn’t mean to…We were…Jackson and I….
It was shallow…and then the wave came and…
” My breath hitched. “Please don’t eat me. It was an accident.”
“Why would I…eat?”
Those rumbling words might’ve sounded kind, if they hadn’t been so resonant—the deep timbre of a creature fifteen times my size—and so strained.
“Because that’s what monsters do , isn’t it?
Stars, and I had flipping fish and chips tonight.
I should’ve had the burger. Listen, I know I might smell like your regular diet, but I promise I won’t taste the same.
I’ll probably be tough too—I spend most of my time sitting at a desk.
Or…Oh no. That’d make the meat more tender, wouldn’t it? Forget I said that. I—AGGGGHH!”
The monster whipped his head to the side—not harshly enough to send me tumbling, but quickly enough to have my belly catapulting.
“ Noisy ,” he grunted.
“Please, please, please— Ooompfh !”
His head paused and gave a sharp, downward slant, a very “get the frick off” motion that sent me skidding down the tip of his nose and plopping onto his back.
I stood, swayed, and yelled when my feet flailed, struggling to get traction on the slimy slope.
“Hold”—he blew out a long breath and bumped his muzzle against the spikes on his spine—“here.”
I grasped on to one of those spikes just in the nick of time.
A wave smacked into him, its foamy crest nearly swallowing the hump of his back.
Icy water chomped at my toes and pulled, trying to rip me back into the sea.
I clung to that spike for dear life and…
Ugh . It was squishy . Not a spike at all, more like a pliable pillar, with translucent flesh webbed in between…
A dorsal. He had a webbed dorsal.
“Better?” Warm, briny breath fanned across my body as the Loch Ness Monster stared down his nose at me.
And no . This was not better.
Because he looked absolutely massive from this angle .
The slope of his back rivaled the size of a ship—and this was only the top of it. Several dozen feet of scaly flesh remained concealed beneath the churlish waves. The webbed dorsal dotting his spine stretched clean over my head. And his neck …
I didn’t even want to take a guess at how long his neck was, and he currently had it all smooshed into a U-shape so he could keep his eyes fixed on me.
His cold, mean-looking orange eyes.
Mean-looking because the exaggerated downward curve of his brow hung a permanent scowl over his snout. And that snarling face, partially shrouded by the wispy fog, was framed by those two wickedly sharp horns, which curved from either side of his temple.
The Loch Ness Monster was a colossal titan. Master of these violent seas.
And I was this teeny, tiny, little spec on his back.
A morsel. A cookie crumb.
The shiver had started in my lower back and spindled up my spine, fanning out along my shoulders. When the icy water grabbed at my feet again, the shakes exploded across my whole body.
The monster made a low noise and puffed another breath at me. Which smelled foul —oh my goodness, that was an odor to rot my stomach—but was blessedly warm. And it seemed deliberate, as though he was trying to thaw my frozen limbs.
“I won’t eat you,” he said. His mouth didn’t move, though. “What were you doing ?” he asked. Still no mouth movement.
My skin prickled.
The Loch Ness Monster cocked his head slightly, his nostrils fanning.
The waves pummeled the side of his body in quick succession, each one getting a little bigger. A little angrier. He didn’t flinch.
“What were you doing?” he asked again, softly.
I stared up into his big, orange eyes, trying to ignore how impossibly and pathetically small I felt.
And how very, very, very exposed I was.
I glanced down at myself. At the bruising already splashed over my ribs and breasts, the blood seeping from the jagged gash in my thigh, the tangled mass of hair knotted over my shoulder, and the slick length of my bare skin.
Another uncomfortable prickle danced over me. Go skinny-dipping, they said. It’ll be fun, they said. Stupid.
And it was stupid to be so worried about this.
Considering the situation I was in, my bare-naked bottom was the least of my problems. But it bothered me all the same.
Being naked before an enormous sea monster made me feel more vulnerable.
Like I was a doe-eyed maiden set upon a sacrificial altar for the beast to ravage.
I crossed my arms over my chest and hunched my back when a cooling breeze tickled places that should never be exposed to a chilly sea breeze.
But then another wave splashed over the monster’s back and tried to ensnare my feet, and I had to abandon modesty for security as I clung to his dorsal.
The wave receded, but not before it barfed up a steaming vat of seaweed over my feet.
And gosh…I was going full stupid tonight.
Because I snatched the seaweed up and slathered it over my front, trying to use it to cover my breasts and crotch in a makeshift bikini.
Which…didn’t work. At all.
“Did you just…attempt to…clothe yourself w-with… weed ?” the monster asked.
“ No. ” I sniffed as the seaweed oozed down my boobs. “Okay, yes. But in my defense, I’m trying to work with what I have. And I don’t have much.”
A vibrating laugh rolled through the monster’s body.
I made a panic-snatch for his dorsal, and the seaweed bikini gave up the ghost and slid off my body completely, fleeing into the next wave. Probably scarred for life now that I’d debauched its innocence.
The monster chuffed.
“That bikini worked way better in my head.” I watched the last treacle of seaweed sidle down my thigh. “But then again, most things work better in my head.”
“Why clothes…Why don’t you have clothes?” He cocked his head again. Which helped a little, to soften the harsh shape of his face.
“Uh…” I blew out a breath. “It’s really dumb, but I was skinny-dipping…”
“Skinny…dipping.”
“Yeah. Y’know. Dipping into the water in your skinnies.” I waved an arm down my naked front, wincing when the movement jiggled my breasts.
The monster saw it too. His eyes might’ve been bigger than my torso, but it was easy to tell when they hyper focused on something. They went still, and the black slits narrowed. Lovely.
Maybe getting eaten was off the table, but getting ravaged was still a card in play.
The monster’s eyes shifted up, focusing on my face. “Why would you…?” He let the question hang.
“Because my boyfriend thought it would be fun…”
“B-boyfriend?”
“…and romantic. Like in the movies, y’know?”
“Movies?” He dragged this word out, “ Mooooovies ?”
“But it was awful ,” I hucked. “So cold, and the water was too rough. But I tried, y’know?
Because he was enjoying it, and I wanted to enjoy it too.
But I didn’t. And then…and…My side hurts…
” It did. All of a sudden. In mid-sentence, the bruise on my side gave a deep, bone-aching throb.
“I didn’t even wanna be here. I wanna go home. ”
“Huh-h-home?”
It might’ve been annoying, having someone parrot my words. But when the monster did it…my heart gave a little tug.
He sounded the words out the way a toddler would. Like he’d heard them before, but had never attempted to say them, and maybe didn’t fully understand their meaning, so he let them soak on his tongue for a bit before he attempted to string the syllables together.
“I’m sorry.” I mopped at my face, before the salt water from the sea and my tears could dry into crusties on my cheeks. “I talk a lot and fast when I’m nervous.”
The monster’s nostrils flared as he blew another heat puff over me, chasing the cold from my skin. “Where were you…skinny-dipping?” he asked.
“Ummm. I’m not 100 percent sure. Jackson said it was an inlet? The tide was out when we went in, so it was shallow.”
“Ah.”
“You know where that is, then?”
“Yes. I can’t go there.”
“Oh, I wasn’t?—”
“The storm will make it d-d-dangerous . For you. The waters will be r-rough. And you would need to climb…”
“Storm?” I angled my head back, peering up through the fog. It was impossible to tell what the sky looked like, with all the misty film covering it, but there wasn’t any rain. No rolling thunder or flashes of lightning.
The monster tilted his head, gesturing toward the frothing waters. “The waters feel it.”
This time, it was my turn to go, “Ah.”
The storm was coming , and the ocean was throwing a rabble-rouser party in anticipation.
“I can take you near…the…” Tension rippled down his back. “I don’t know its word. “You walked it. When you left the…” He trailed off with a sigh. “You walked it. To arrive on land.”
“The…Are you talking about the dock?”
“ Yes.” There was joy in that word, as though I’d given him the answer to a puzzle he’d been laboring over. “Yes. The dock. I can take you near it. But I can’t go close to it. Even under…I can’t get close. You’ll have to swim.”
“You’re…you’re helping me ?” I asked, shocked.
He tucked his chin in a nod.
“I… Thank you , really. I-I thought Jackson was going to be taking me home in a body bag?—”
“Body…bag?”
“It’s a saying. Body bags are what they wrap dead people in. Although to put me in one, they would’ve had to find me, and the sea might not’ve left any of me behind. So, thank you.”
The monster whuffled. “We should go now. Would you feel…” He paused again. “S-s-safe… er. Saf er , on my head?”
I stared up at his devilish face.
No. The answer should have been no . I shouldn’t have felt safe anywhere near him.
But he asked the question so gently, as though he was genuinely trying to figure out how to best calm my nerves.
It soothed me and had a broken, “Yes,” tumbling from my lips.
He whuffled and gingerly lowered his head until the tip of his nose brushed my hip. “Climb,” he said.
But I didn’t. Not immediately. Because when I reached out, touching my fingers to the tip of his nose, something curdled my insides.
Sadness . The kind that destroyed—swept over you like a black plague—ravaging your body and leeching the life from your bones.
I ripped my hand back. The sorrow faded.
“What’s w-wrong?” His nostrils fanned.
You’re in pain, aren’t you? I’m so sorry.
Who do you grieve for? Is there anything I can do to help?
If he’d been human, I might’ve asked those questions.
But they seemed far too intimate to hurl at a sea beast. So I swallowed them down and said, “Nothing. It’s just..
.D-do you have a name?” A slightly less prodding question to start with.
“If you’re gonna be wearing me on your head like a naked human hat…
I mean, in my book, that’s pretty personal, no?
I like to know what to call people—or, well, you’re not people , but you get the idea—when things get personal.
And I’ve just been calling you ‘monster’ in my head.
But it doesn’t seem right to keep calling you that.
So I figured I’d ask…Do you have a name? ”
The monster made a low rattle, a noise that visibly traveled along the length of his throat, making his scales vibrate.
“Or, if that’s too personal, I?—”
“Alistair,” he said.
“Alistair.” Golly, no wonder he had such a posh-sounding accent. The voice had to live up to the posh-er name. “It’s beautiful.”
“And you”—Alistair nudged his nose against my hip—“have a name?”
“Pippi.”
“Pippiiii,” he dragged my name out. “Pippi.” A laugh burbled in his throat. “Yours is b-b-beautiful too.”