The Waterhorse
Like the fog that rolls through the hills of the Scottish Highlands, stories of water horses, known as Kelpies, and other water creatures like Selkies, have long woven their way through time, surprisingly similar in their telling.
One such tale was of a young man on his way home one full-mooned evening through the hills along Loch Lomond. Alone with his thoughts and the rhythmic sound of hooves, his buggy wheels rolling across the dirt and rocks of the trail, he stopped suddenly at a large, dark horse-like figure in the middle of the path. Startled at first, the man fell into an almost dreamlike trance as he studied the animal, black as night and quite beautiful, and found himself unable to move from his seat. His own mare standing oddly still.
The animal too stood still, fixing its gaze on the young man. There was intelligence in the creature’s eyes that sent fear through him, yet at the same time left him unable to turn away. Seeming to calculate its options on whether to devour him or not, it turned and shaking its moss-tangled mane, took off in a gallop, plunging deep into the shadowless waters of the loch.
The young man sat for several minutes wondering if the horse would become distressed and need to be pulled from the waters. But the waves from its splash eventually stilled, stirred only by the wind, as if the animal had never existed at all. Save for one thing, the young man would have been sure he was dreaming. As mist rose off the water and drifted toward him, a strange howl-like singing echoed with it; an invitation to join the creature in the watery depths evident in its hypnotizing song.
He is considered an old man by those in the village now; with wrinkled smile, crooked legs and fingers that ache in the cold. Yet as he lies in his bed drifting off to sleep, on nights when he is especially weary from the day, he feels himself in his young body again, atop his wagon and stopped in the road by a thing inexplicable, a thing beautiful and dark and dangerous, with a song so alluring a young man is almost unable to turn away.
It sings to him still.