Page 1 of The Last Kelpie

Chapter One

It was good to be home in England, especially the countryside where I'd grown up. But the road I stood before was unlike any I'd seen in the Cotswolds. The cab driver insisted this was the place, that the address I gave him was at the end of the lane. He ignored me when I asked him to drive me down the road. Honestly, I didn't blame him. It was nine in the morning, but the thick stand of trees and creeping groundcover on either side of the road created a tunnel of midnight that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. But I wasn't about to leave. So, I shifted my satchel strap higher on my shoulder, picked up my suitcases, and strode into the dark.

The further I went, the more I felt like a character in a fairy tale, about to be eaten by a wolf. The woods on either side of me made woodsy sounds that my mind translated into eerie cackling, whispers, and movement. I kept telling myself that no one was there, but a sense of foreboding crept up my neck.

Then I stepped out of the tunnel of plants, and the feeling fell away. The sun’s warmth returned to my skin, as birds sang joyfully. I followed the dirt road forward, tension leaving my body. A high stone wall appeared on my left, and then, at last, the gate Julian had told me to look for.

The wrought-iron arch rose from the earth, twisting into patterns that hurt to look at—arcane symbols and strange designs. It stood like a soldier between the stone walls, with double gates. At the apex of the arch, words stood within the iron frame: Ne Obliviscaris.

Do not forget.

I'd always been good at languages, and I was fluent in Latin, but even if I hadn't been, I would have known those words. My grandmother taught me the phrase when I had gone to live with her after my parents died. She said that some things were worth remembering, even when the world forgot.

I didn't understand back then. I was eight and more interested in whether we were having chocolate biscuits with our tea. Now I knew why those words were so important to her.

Beyond the gate was an overgrown garden and a long drive leading to a crumbling mansion. It looked as if no one had inhabited it for years. But I knew this was the place. If nothing else, the words on the gate would have convinced me. I pushed at the middle of the gate, and the panels opened with ease. The hinges didn't even creak. They should have—the metal looked centuries old, pitted with rust and weather—but they swung apart silent as a breath. The moment I stepped through, the world changed.

It wasn't dramatic. No flash of light or sound like breaking glass. Just a subtle shift in the air, like stepping from a cold room into a warm one, and suddenly I could see what had always been there.

In front of me lay a vast sanctuary: a unique blend of a medieval estate, a university campus, and a botanical garden. The main hall rose ahead of me at the end of the drive—three stories of pale stone with mullioned windows and a slate roof that gleamed like wet ink. Fairy tale cottages were located to the left, their outward-curving line disappearing from my sight. An enormous gray stone building angled outward to the right, forming a curve with the main hall and cottages. On either side of me were gardens. Not the manicured kind you see at National Trust properties, but wild, purposeful tangles of herbs, vegetables, and flowers that created a fantasy world that was hard for me to walk away from.

And everywhere I looked were unusual people.

A woman in a green cardigan walked past me, carrying a basket of apples. She was perfectly normal, but the man she spoke to had skin like polished mahogany and hooves for feet. Yes, hooves! Tiny winged people flew among the flowers, gathering pollen in little satchels. Then something small and brown darted between the cottages, moving too fast for me to see clearly, leaving a trail of silver dust.

I stopped walking and stared. My heart pounded out a rhythm of panic and wonder in equal measure. The Velasca Estate was even more wondrous than I'd expected.

Three months ago, I'd been finishing my European Studies degree in Reykjavik, writing a thesis on the preservation of Icelandic folklore in modern tourism. I was good at analyzing how cultures commercialize their myths, how stories get flattened into souvenirs and hashtags. I could write twenty pages on the economic impact of elf tourism without breaking a sweat.

I thought I understood myths. I thought they were stories people told to make sense of the world before science gave them better answers. None of it was real.

Then Julian Baptiste walked into the café where I was working on my laptop. He introduced himself as the head of an organization my grandmother had belonged to, and asked if I'd be interested in an interview. I don't know why, but I agreed. Maybe it was his presence. The man had charisma.

Julian had been striking in a way that made you forget what you were saying mid-sentence. He had worn a charcoal suit with a pocket square in the exact blue of Caribbean water, and combined with his deep complexion, he was a warm jewel among the pale, cool background of Iceland. He'd ordered an Americano, black, and sat down across from me.

“Your grandmother spoke of you often, Ethan. She was very proud of you,” he'd said.

I closed my laptop and scowled at him. He couldn't have been over thirty-five, and my grandmother had died eight years ago at ninety-six. “You knew my grandmother?”

“Forgive me, I misspoke.” His expression went still. “I meant to say that she spoke to our members about you often. That was, of course, before my time. She was one of our finest scholars. Her retirement devastated us.”

“She worked in folklore preservation.” I narrowed my eyes at him, wondering if he was a con artist. “For a private organization called the Velasca.”

“Yes, I am head of the Velasca.”

“She cataloged oral traditions, documenting dying languages. That sort of thing.”

Julian smiled. “That's what she was told to say, yes.”

The café had been busy—students arguing about Kant, someone's laptop playing Sigur Rós too loud, the espresso machine hissing like a furious cat. Normal sounds. A normal afternoon in Reykjavik, rain streaking the windows while the smell of coffee and wet wool permeated the air.

“The Velasca is an ancient organization.” Julian folded his hands around his paper cup. “Our mission is to preserve myths. Not the written myths. The living ones.”

“Living myths? Do you mean senior citizens familiar with myths that originated from oral traditions?

“No, I mean living beings born from human belief,” Julian continued, unruffled. “When humans believe in something strongly enough, for long enough, it becomes real. Not metaphorically real. Actually real. A story told around enough fires, passed down through enough generations, takes shape. It takes breath. Becomes a creature that exists independently of the telling.”

“That's—” I searched for a word that wasn't insane. “That's not how reality works.”