Chapter 5

––––––––

W eeks passed. Winter changed to spring in small island ways, as Mirren knew it would. Flynn stayed. She hadn't expected that.

They spent their days working. Their nights, tangled in a tide of pleasure. The pull between them was like the ocean: a give and take, sometimes turbulent, infrequently calm, a thing of haunting beauty and death and life. Mirren sometimes wondered if she was lost in him or found. She could never bring herself to press too much for an answer.

As the days warmed incrementally, she found Flynn looking out at sea more and more and began to feel unsettled by it. They said nothing about his unknown past. She believed he had no one waiting for him and didn't care about anything else. But did he have somewhere he needed to be? Or did he grow restless, for other horizons or other people?

He was no scholar, but few islanders learned to read. When she taught him fishing and other skills he learned easily, but had no prior experience with them. She wondered more and more of his life before they'd met and was afraid to ask him, as if it would break whatever fragile spell held them together. The romance of mystery held her in too tight a grip. But there was a mystery surrounding his necklace, too. Of this she felt certain, and it gnawed on her more every day.

One day the weather was fair enough that she took him up to the patch of land that would soon be her garden. There was no sign of farmer O'Neal on the hills, or of anyone else. Mirren spread stories that she'd married Flynn in secret so that the villagers, including O'Neal, would leave her alone. They did, though they sometimes watched the two of them with suspicion when they visited the village. But that day the grasses waved beneath a pale blue sky half covered in white clouds, and with a sly look, she pulled Flynn to the earth. They kissed ravenously, hungrily, as if they hadn't exhausted one another the night before, as if she would never see him again. She ached for him, needed him in a way that felt startlingly different. His face contorted in pleasure as she straddled him, coaxing and guiding, until he was inside of her, filling her perfectly.

They rocked in rhythm, groaning. His fingers dug into her thighs. Her motions were desperate, graceless, but so was she, seeking something she dreaded and desired.

"Tell me about the necklace," she said, then gasped as he found an especially sensitive place. Flynn gripped her arms and thrust faster. Her head fell back. She bit her tongue to keep from crying out. "You promised," she moaned. "Tell me."

"Not now." Flynn took hold of her waist and rolled over, pinning her beneath him, turning her face with one hand to make her look at him. His eyes were ablaze. "Please, Mirren."

"You always–say–that." She'd asked him twice before. She was done waiting. But her body responded the way it always did to him. Sensation took over and sent thoughts far away as a wave pummeled her over and over again, leaving her weak and floating beneath his hot, strong body. She watched him reach his own climax. His hair brushed her face, his features contorted, and he strained within her. He was beautiful in his abandon, in this intimate exchange of power where they both lost and they both won. She studied every line of his face and found what she always did–something hidden in his features, something he withheld from her. Mirren wanted all of him.

She stroked his back as they lay together, his body half over hers, and she watched the clouds fly overhead as his panting turned to slow, rhythmic breaths.

Flynn slept.

Her hand found the chain at his neck. Why was his secret necessary? Was it terrible? Was he terrible?

She unclasped it. Slender metal, warm from Flynn's skin, pooled in her hand. The charm looked like a tiny horse.

Flynn shuddered and woke.

"Mirren," he cried. "Mirren! What have you done?"

He was crushing her, shaking violently. Frightening, inhuman sounds emanated from his naked chest, which grew barrel-like in shape and size. Mirren scrambled away with a cry of fear and could not look away, uncomprehending.

Within minutes, there was no Flynn.

The creature that stood before her wasn't human. Silver hair flowed down the long, grey neck. Four long, powerful legs ended in hooves. Sea grey eyes became large, swirling pools of darkness.

Mirren stared, transfixed in horror. One word echoed in her mind, yet she couldn't comprehend it anymore than she could comprehend what–who–stood before her.

The beast regarded her with its eerie eyes. Its sides heaved; nostrils flared, snorted. It stepped towards her.

"No!" She cried. "Get away with you!"

The creature swayed from side to side as Mirren shouted at it. Then with a whinny and a toss of its neck, the creature rose up on hind legs to paw at the air before turning and running towards the beach, its mane and tail flowing.

Mirren bolted for home.

The shoreline taunted her when it came into view, calm, temperate, and steady, everything she was not. There was no sign of anyone else. She slammed the door behind her and stood, panting, before the red-ember hearth, in the space she had shared with Flynn, in a space that felt as distant and strange as he did.

What were the last few weeks, but a storm waiting to break? What was Flynn, but a total stranger?

A kelpie , her harried mind told her. Flynn is a kelpie.

––––––––

M irren worked in a frenzy, trying to put everything from her mind over the next few days. The bothy felt larger without him. She could almost forget him during the day. Or at least, pretend that she could. But night still came on, and with it, the end of the day's work, the end of her attempted distraction, and the transformation on the hills returned to her harried mind in a roar.

His human shape breaking, shattered, gone.

Her thoughts stumbled and disappeared. She ached for him, missed him in her bed, in her body. His presence had become a constant. Far beneath her fears that he would leave, she had begun to expect that he would stay, an undercurrent of longing for him that went beyond rationality.

It is impossible now. No more.

She had lived alone before, and she would do it again. There was always work to keep her occupied and to give her purpose. She would work him from her mind, her body, her heart. She would harden her heart, which balked at the idea like a stubborn kel–horse–balking at a bridle. She would tell the villagers her husband drowned at sea. If she ever saw him again, she'd drown him herself–never mind that these encounters usually resulted in the opposite outcome for those involved.

Had Flynn ever really existed? Was the man who had shared her bed nothing more than a lie? The ache in her chest grew. The man who had held her, pleasured her senseless, worked alongside her for weeks? He'd made her life not just bearable, but colorful, vibrant. She thought she'd found purpose in work, but life held meaning with Flynn. Had she loved something no more substantial than sea foam?

No, she told herself, I didn't love him. I don't. But her heart whispered, I'm afraid you do.

––––––––

S he stumbled out of bed one morning, having slept little. She told herself this morning would be different. Time for an ordinary day! Sang her mind, with all the vigor of the happily deluded.

When she went outside, on the beach stood a grey horse with a silver mane. Fuck, said her mind, and delusion slid away like sand.

He'd appeared every morning for the past two weeks. Since talking to him had gotten her into trouble in the first place, she had ignored him. No reason to stop now. She stormed off to start the day's business in a cool and composed manner that did not bely her anger and hurt, not at all.

Flynn–the kelpie–kept his distance all morning, but he was there. This, too, was routine. You could try to scare him away , said a part of her. Shut up, said another. I would if I needed to.

She was breaking up the earth in her garden today for planting turnips. The soil wasn't terribly forgiving, but she welcomed the work. The ache in her muscles would be a welcome distraction from other aches, some in her body and some in her heart, both for wanting him.

A presence stood nearby. Mirren looked up from her work and gasped, then frowned.

"What do you want?" She snapped.

He stood at the edge of her garden, quiet as a ghost, two arms' breadths away yet unnervingly close. She did not know much about horses, but she had to admit that the kelpie was truly beautiful. For a moment his beauty took her breath away. His coat gleamed and he looked like everything from a story, the calm of the sea before a storm. He should have been terrifying. Somehow, not even his eyes frightened her anymore. Something hung from his mouth. For a moment her stomach lurched and she wondered if he'd caught some poor soul. Had he brought the tattered, gory remains to her like some kind of terrible offering?

But on closer inspection, the thing in the monster's mouth was slender and brown and not at all human-like. Lowering his head, the kelpie dropped it to the ground, turned, and walked away. Mirren waited for him to vanish over the crest of the hill before tentatively studying the object half-hidden in tall grass.

The something was a bridle.

––––––––

S he was working at her garden, the silver horse charm lying against her skin, when the kelpie approached her the next day. His head low, he watched her through long lashes with eyes that seemed–sad? contrite? She snorted at the thought, sounding like a horse herself, and his ears flicked forward.

"Have you come to help me?" she asked.

The kelpie ducked his head. Mirren touched the chain at her neck. "Do you want this back? You could take it. Steal it like I did. Bite my head off. Tear me apart, drag me into the ocean. Is that what you were doing, Flynn? Biding your time until you could kill me?"

The kelpie looked at her with his uncanny gaze.

Mirren tossed her bag of seeds to the ground. Like any islander, she'd grown up with the tales of kelpies: monsters who lured victims close with their equine beauty, only to drown and devour those foolish enough to touch them. Creatures of the tempestuous, primal waters.

Yet she'd done her fair share of touching him. Slept beside him, worked beside him. He'd had any number of chances to destroy her. And he hadn't.

"Well, maybe you'd rather be in your true form. Maybe you got tired of being a man. I saw you watching the sea."

Flynn nudged the plow, making the heavy, burdensome thing look tiny. Mirren had found it leaning up against the bothy this morning. She'd dragged it up here herself, and it seemed a pity to waste the tool and the help now.

As Mirren hitched him to the plow, she wasn't sure if she was relieved or sad that Flynn couldn't answer her.