24. Pippi #2
I’d never think of it, speak of it, or acknowledge it.
With one exception: I’d confront Alistair tonight.
Only because I had heard him before I fell asleep, and I wanted to make sure he wasn’t planting pornos into my head.
My gut was telling me he didn’t, though.
That all the R-rated imagery had been my own imagination.
Which was maybe proof that I needed my head examined.
Regardless, I screwed a smile onto my face, banished the bad thoughts from my brain, and went to the show determined to be a happy-go-lucky tourist. Even if I was pretending happiness, maybe that was the gateway to feeling happiness.
“Oooh my gosh!” I shrieked with laughter and clung to Jackson’s arm as the kelpie rose out of its pond. “It’s terrifying!”
“It’s awesome.” Jackson chuckled.
The tall, sickly-looking horse slunk its way out of the pond, swiveling its pale yellow eyes over the rows of bleachers ringing around its waters in a half-moon shape. Its spindly teeth gnashed. Moisture oozed off the stringy moss dangling from its pale green fur.
There wasn’t any fog coverage inside this dome at the base of the mountains, and I actually missed those misting clouds. They would’ve, at least, softened the monstrous, unnatural appearance of the kelpie.
Around us, children squealed. Adults gasped.
I leaned more fully into Jackson, my skin prickling when the kelpie’s eyes landed on me. It stared for a heartbeat. Two. Then slithered away, zeroing its gaze on a little girl, who screamed and buried her face into her mother’s shoulder.
The kelpie flicked its seaweed tail and bellowed—a trumpeting whinny that had half the people in the stands, including me, clapping hands over our ears. Then it slapped its forehooves into the water, creating a big, splashing wave, and it…
Transformed.
The strings of moss twined around its shifting body and twisting limbs. The splashes of water glittered over its paling flesh. And when it straightened up out of the water, shaking droplets out of its hair, it was no longer a horse, but a lovely, long-legged woman.
“Oh wow.” Jackson laughed.
The woman chuckled and blew a kiss at the audience, wagging her finger at the men who whooped a little too loud.
“I wonder if that hurts her?” I asked. “Changing forms like that?”
“I’m sure it doesn’t.” Jackson drummed his feet against the bottom of the bleachers.
The woman bowed and waved her arms, summoning four more kelpies from the pond. They flanked her, two on either side, as she stretched her hand over the water, bidding it to move and shape itself into a long bullwhip.
For several moments she played the part of horse trainer, putting the four kelpies through piaffes and prances, and wielding her magic over the water to make aquatic jumps for them to bound over.
She’d feign surprise whenever one of the kelpies accidentally crashed into a jump and transformed into a woman behind its splashing wreckage.
And then she contorted herself back into her horse form and leapt over watery fences that had to be as tall as Jackson.
At the end, all five kelpies turned to their horse forms and summoned a towering wall of water in the middle of the pond.
They sailed over it in unison.
People roared.
The kelpies sank into the pond upon landing, disappearing beneath its surface in one big plop.
As the riotous cheers ricocheted through the dome, another kelpie rose from the water—a taller, ganglier horse with rippling blue flesh and ribbons of seaweed plastered to her forehead.
As the crowd cheered, the kelpie whinnied and pranced up to the left-side section of the bleachers, where she stuck her head over the divider, and blew bubbles out of her nose, inciting a bunch of excited squawks from the kids sitting nearby.
Then she returned to the pond, where she pranced in place for a moment before she snapped into a squared halt. A shudder ripped through her.
The ribbons of moss and seaweed dribbled down her body. Her skin melted, trickling down her bones as they cracked and crunched and reforged themselves.
I cringed. “Goodness, that looks awful.”
The kelpie laughed as she shook the last of her horse limbs away and straightened into a tall, silvery-haired woman. She spun herself into a delicate dance, skimming the edges of her mossy skirt through the water to create cascading fountains around her.
It was entrancing. Hypnotizing.
There was freedom in her dance, in the way she poured herself into each fluid movement. But there was pain in it too—the agony as she tried to convey a message, knowing most of the meaning would be lost in translation.
Tears welled in my eyes.
“It makes you feel like you’re in a tragic fairy tale. Doesn’t it?” I whispered to Jackson.
Whispered, because the audience had gone silent, watching the kelpie’s pirouetting dance.
“I guess.” Jackson shrugged. “She definitely knows how to work a crowd.”
The kelpie, basking in the audience’s rapture, leapt and pivoted through the twinkling fountains of water that had formed around her. Then she stopped. Abruptly. As though someone had fitted a hook to her midsection and hauled back, bringing her dance to a clumsy, sudden end.
I frowned.
People hooted with enough force to shake the ground beneath us.
Jackson sprang to his feet, mashing his hands together and whistling.
The kelpie stared at us, her chest heaving.
“Why’d she stop like that?” I asked Jackson as I got to my feet.
“Because the dance ended,” Jackson said.
“It didn’t look like it ended, though. It was like…” When Alistair had gotten too close to the dock and the magic had burned him.
Why burn her , though? Had she gone on too long with her dance? Were these creatures so rigidly controlled, they got punished for toeing a time schedule?
“Encore!” people shouted.
The kelpie shook her head, dropped into another curtsey, and dove into the depths of the pond.
“Well!” The man who ran the kelpie exhibit stepped out from where he’d been resting against the bleachers, and beamed at the crowd, waiting until the resonant applause quieted before he continued, “What a performance, huh? I’ll tell you, I’ve been here five years, and these lovely ladies still take my breath away.
Now, if you enjoyed today’s performance and you’re a big kelpie fan, don’t forget to check out the gift shop.
The funds go not only to making the environment better for our lovely ladies”—he swept his arm over the pond—“but can also help us expand this experience in the future.”
And there it was again: that sour emotion, wriggling around inside my chest.
“Ooh, babe.” Jackson jerked my arm when the commencement speech ended and people began to move. “I didn’t realize Kian was going to be here!”
“Who?”
“Kian Reed,” Jackson said. “We met him last night, rem—Oh, well, wait.” He squinted. “You were at the buffet when he gave me the cigar, and the smoke ring contest might’ve been after you left?—”
“Smoke ring contest?”
“But he’s a cool dude. You’d like him.”
I turned, shifting through the crowd to see who he was pointing at. My eyes instead snagged on the familiar forms of Melany and Sarah as they stood from the bleachers directly opposite us.
Melany saw me too, and she gave a great beaming smile as she waved.
“Melany and Sarah are here too,” I said. “This was a popular show today.”
This time it was Jackson’s turn to go “Whooo?” Like an owl. “Oh. Them ,” he chuffed after he followed my gaze.
“Don’t be rude,” I chided. “They’re sweet people. I like them.”
“Of course you do.”
I whipped my head around, stunned by the harsh way he’d responded. “I’m sorry?”
Jackson shifted and stared ruefully down at his feet. “You like everyone, Pippi. But yeah. Whatever. We can go say hi to them too. But Kian’s right this way, so why don’t we hit him up first? I really think you’ll like him. We’ll be just five minutes. Then I’m all ears for girl talk.”
My smile was so forced it hurt. “Yeah. Okay. Sure. Where is he?”
“Right over here. C’mon.”
As we descended the steps, I caught Melany’s eye again. She cocked her head toward Sarah, motioning for me to join them.
I pointed at Jackson and shrugged.
And she laughed, waving her arm like she understood completely, before she pointed at the pond and gave me two big thumbs up.
Behind her, Sarah huffed and tried to pull the “Oh-em-gee, I can’t believe I made this loony tune my life partner” sort of face, but she was smiling too.
And when she slung her arm around Melany’s shoulders, pulling her in for a kiss…
My heart hurt. Suddenly, and viciously, as though someone had fired a bullet clean through it.
Jackson and I didn’t have that.
That warmth, and affection, and love that poured off Melany and Sarah, the way they looked at each other, full of adoration and awe.
Had Jackson ever looked at me like that?
Had I ever looked at him that way?
My gut squirmed.
Oh no.
I turned to Jackson, searching for his eyes, his emotions, anything I could grasp on to. Anything that would tell me I was wrong.
But he had his gaze fixed on Kian. And even when I clawed at his hand, silently begging him to look at me, he offered me only a brief, lukewarm glance.