by Lari Don
The woman was very short. She didn’t even reach Molly’s waist. And she was clutching a bundle of leaves to her chest.
Molly wondered who she was looking at. A short human? A slim dwarf? A tall pixie? A well-dressed brownie? Or something that she’d never heard of? The pointed ears and purple eyes were probably clues, but Molly didn’t know what they meant, and suspected it would be rude to ask.
So she smiled politely and said, “Can I help you with your nettles? I have a lovely stone egg here, which fits into that mortar. Or maybe that pestle, I’m not sure which bit is which… Would you like those nettles ground? I’d be happy to help.”
“Nettles… ground?” muttered the old woman. “Yes, nettles, ground!”
Molly said, “Fantastic! I’ll get right on with it then.”
She grabbed the nettle leaves beside the wall, ignoring the sting in her fingers, piled them in the shallow bowl-shaped stone and squished them with the stone egg.
She rolled and pressed and crushed, and the nettle leaves mushed down into dark fibres and fragrant juice, staining the bowl and Molly’s hands, but leaving the smooth egg unstained.
The little old lady squeaked, “NO! My nettles!” Molly looked up. The little old lady was bouncing up and down. “Ruining my nettles!”
“I thought you wanted your nettles ground.” Molly stopped grinding. “I was trying to help.”
“I don’t want nettles ground. Nettles from the ground. Silly girl. Dottled quine. I harvest nettles for clothes. For aprons, skirts, vests and knickers. I can’t make knickers with messy squished nettles. Silly daft dottled quine!”
The old lady counted the nettles in her hand. “Twenty leaves. I need a hundred leaves. You pick me eighty more.” The old lady, tiny and wrinkled and squeaky and apparently wearing nettle pants, pointed sternly at the nettle patch.
Molly sighed. “Yes. Of course. I’m sorry. I’ll pick you more nettles.”
With her egg back in her pocket and her fingers stained green, Molly stepped into the nettle patch and picked eighty of the biggest, greenest, stingiest nettle leaves she’d ever touched.
She counted out loud, but she could still hear the little old lady muttering behind her. “Silly quine. Making soup of my nettles rather than knickers. Daftie baftie.”
Molly counted, “Seventy-eight, seventy-nine, eighty,” then waded out of the deep green stinging sea. “Here you are. Is there anything else, by any chance, that me and my stone egg can do for you? Any good deed?”
“No, silly girl has done too much already.” The little old lady sniffed the pile of nettles. She looked up and smiled. “You picked fresh leaves from the tallest nettles. Leaves I can’t reach. So I will give you advice in return. Good deeds are hard to do. Interfering is rarely welcome. Better to wait for someone to ask for help. So keep your ears open. And wash your hands, manky girl.”
Molly thanked the old lady for her advice, ran out of sight of the nettle patch, shifted into a hare and bounded down the road, her paws smarting from the nettle stings.
The old lady was right. Finding people who wanted help, then giving them the right help, especially with a stone egg, wasn’t going to be easy. Molly decided she would follow the advice and only help people who asked, rather than blunder in with unwanted help.
Perhaps stealing the stone egg had been the simple bit of this task.
Molly was slowing down now, because as she got nearer Craigvenie, boundaries were crashing in more frequently and she kept falling to the ground as a girl.
She crossed a low bridge and tumbled to the ground for the third time in five minutes. As she limped off the bridge, she noticed a clump of docken leaves, so she decided to take a quick break, soothe her stings and look at the map again.
Molly sat down and rubbed both hands with moist docken leaves, easing the pain of the stings. She heard the gentle shushing of water under the bridge. She unfolded the map and saw that this river ran behind Beth’s wood. She was getting very near Craigvenie.
Then Molly heard coughing and choking. Perhaps someone needed help!
She followed the sound down a slope, past a field of ponies with broken jumps and a metal horse trough.
Molly slid to a halt on the edge of a deep brown pool and saw a silver fish in the middle of the pool, with its head out of the water. The fish was coughing and spluttering.
“Are you alright? Can I do anything to help?”
The fish swivelled round to look at her and said in a clear musical voice, “I would appreciate some help, thank you.”
The fish swam to the bank and spat out a golden ring, big enough to go on a man’s thumb and carved with a swirling Celtic design. “I must swallow this ring, so I can give it to the rightful owner when they catch me in nine years’ time. But the ring is too big to swallow. Could you…?”
Molly nodded quickly. “I could squash it a little, with this stone egg, if that would help.”
Molly picked up the ring, wet with peaty water and fish spit, and looked round for a flat stone.
She saw a mossy boulder a few steps further along the bank, near the ponies’ fence. She cleared a small patch of the moss and laid the ring on the bare rock.
“Are you sure you want me to bash this ring? You won’t change your mind?”
“I’m sure,” said the fish. “You would be doing me a considerable favour.”
Molly unzipped her pocket.
A voice said, “Oh no. This is my river, and I’ll do any water-based good deeds.”
Innes climbed over the fence.
Molly fumbled her stone egg out of her pocket and lifted it up.
Innes strode forward and put his hand between the egg and the ring. “No you don’t. I will crush your ring for you, wise old salmon. Step back, Molly Drummond, and no one needs to get hurt.”
“No. The last time you said ‘no one needs to get hurt’ you shut us in with those angry crows. This time I’m not giving into your threats or bullying. The fish asked me to crush the ring, and that’s what I’m going to do. So you step back, kelpie.”
They stood facing each other, the rock between them.
Innes laughed. “I will never step back. But I can make you step back. I can make you RUN, Molly!”
Innes shifted, faster than she’d ever seen, into the horse. Into the form Atacama had said she must fear.
As he shifted, she heard his voice ringing in her ears: ‘RUN, Molly!’
But if she ran, she would be running away from her last chance to lift her own curse.
So she didn’t run.
“He’s a kelpie, child,” said the fish. “He’s a kelpie, he looks hungry and he’s near the water, which is his killing ground. This water is not safe for you, girl. Leave here now.”
But Molly shook her head. She wouldn’t step back. She wouldn’t run. She wouldn’t be bullied by a boy or a horse.
She lifted the egg high above the ring on the rock.
The white horse reared up, hooves cutting the air, and crashed down again, shaking the ground. The rock wobbled and the ring slid off.
Molly glared at him. “Leave me alone, Innes. I’m going to do this…”
The horse bared his long ivory teeth.
And bit her.
The huge heavy horse lunged towards Molly and the kelpie sank his teeth into the shoulder of her fleece, just missing her flesh. He dragged her towards the water.
The fish called out, “Don’t let him get you in the water! Give up now and he might let go!”
But it was too late. Molly screamed as the horse lifted her off the ground and galloped into the river, flinging them both into the depths of the pool.
Suddenly Molly was under the water, with cold liquid filling her eyes and mouth and nose.
The pressure on her shoulder lifted. Innes had let go. She tried to swim upwards.
Then she realised she couldn’t move, because Innes was still holding her.
But Innes wasn’t a horse any more.
Molly could feel ten
tacles tightening round her legs and torso. She was being pulled deeper into the river, by a kelpie in its monstrous underwater form.
Chapter 22
The kelpie’s tentacles wrapped round Molly’s ankles, ribcage and throat, pulling her deeper and deeper into the pool.
She didn’t have any air in her lungs. But she wouldn’t let Innes drown her so easily.
She jerked her legs and flailed her arms. The ropy tentacles gripped tighter.
She hit out with the stone egg in her fist, hoping to punch some sense into Innes. But she couldn’t find a head or a torso, just lots of boneless tentacles. So she smashed at them with the egg and their grip loosened slightly, enough for her to struggle upwards and get her face out of the water to gasp a breath.
But the tentacles tightened again, more and more of them, round her arms and legs and waist, more than she could possibly hope to fight. And the kelpie started to drag her under once more…
Molly took one last look at the sky. At the clouds, the sunlight and the pale daytime sliver of moon. The moon!
Just before she was dragged back under the surface of the water, she screamed, “Innes, the moon! The water isn’t safe for you either. Innes, look, the moon!”
Suddenly the tentacles grabbed her much harder, so hard that she realised Innes hadn’t been using half his strength before, and he flung her from the water. He threw her up and out, onto the bank.
She collided with the salmon on her way through the water, knocking the fish out of the pool too.
She turned round to see Innes become a boy, a fish, a boy again, then a horse, his shifting fast and unfocussed. The horse scrambled onto the bank beside her.
Molly choked on a sudden harsh salty smell. She whirled round, to see the river turn bright white.
The horse screamed and she saw his back leg was still in the water, salt crystals climbing like upside-down icicles along his hoof.
Innes seemed paralysed with shock, so Molly rolled forward, grabbed his leg and hauled it out of the water, then scrubbed at his hoof to wipe the salt off.
She heard a familiar cough. The salmon, beside her, was drowning in air.
She picked the fish up, to put it back in the river.
“No! Not in there,” the salmon croaked, “it’s so salty it will poison me.”
So she hugged the fish close, scrambled over the fence, ran across the field and dropped it into the dirty water of the horse trough.
“I’ll be back with the ring,” she gasped. She rushed to the river, wondering if there would still be time to do her good deed.
But Innes was standing by the river, the gold ring flattened and small in his human hand, staring at the water.
The pool was filled with death. With fish and insects and frogs, all floating on the surface, all glittering with salt crystals. All of them dead.
Innes wiped his eyes with a sleeve, then turned to Molly. “Where’s the wise salmon?”
“In a horse trough.”
“That won’t suit his dignity, but thank you for saving his life. And thanks for my life too. The three of us are the only ones to get out of that cursed pool alive. Everything else is dead, and this river will take years to recover.”
He sat down and stared at the ring.
“At least you can lift the curse now,” said Molly quietly. “You crushed the ring. Give it to the salmon, then take your egg to Mrs Sharpe and get your curse lifted. This won’t happen to any more rivers.”
Innes closed his fist over the crumpled gold. “I didn’t crush the ring just now, while you were saving the fish, after you saved my life. Even I wouldn’t do that. The ring was like this when we came out of the water. I must have smashed it with my hoof when I attacked you. So neither of us has done a good deed with an egg yet.”
“It’s not easy, is it?” said Molly. “I’ve already failed at a good deed involving nettles.”
“Ouch. I’ve already failed at a good deed involving chickens.” He used a handful of grass to clean the remaining salt crystals off his left boot.
Molly sat down beside him. “Innes. Can I ask…? Were you going to drown me? Were you going to eat me?”
Innes shook his head. “I was angry with you. I wanted to frighten you. But I would have let you go, if you’d admitted I had won, if you’d promised to stop interfering.”
“I couldn’t admit anything or promise anything while I was drowning.”
“Obviously. That’s why I let you up to get air. So you could surrender. Anyway, my mum says eating friends isn’t polite. Or nutritious. Apparently it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. So I probably wouldn’t have eaten you, even if you had kept fighting me.”
“I’m not going to give up,” said Molly.
“I’m starting to realise that. I’m not going to either.” He pointed to the creatures floating belly-up in the salty pool. “That’s why I can’t give up.”
Molly said, “I know this curse is life and death for you, but it’s the same for each of us.”
Innes stood up and offered Molly his hand to pull her up, but she was already half-standing, so she didn’t take it. They climbed the fence together and walked to the horse trough. The salmon bobbed up and nodded to them.
Innes said, “Here’s your ring, crushed by my hoof rather than a stone egg.”
“Thank you, young kelpie. I’m grateful to both of you. I’d be even more grateful if you could get me out of this cramped horsey water to a clean pool.”
Innes glanced at the sky. “It’s about to rain, so you’ll be fine for a few hours. I’ll move you somewhere more spacious once I’ve lifted the curse that killed your river.”
He turned to Molly. “We should split up. Look for different good deeds, not get in each other’s way again—”
He was interrupted by a noise. A roaring bellow of pain.
A cry for help.
The noise was coming from Beth’s wood.
Molly looked at Innes. “Do you want to see who gets there first, a hare or a horse?”
“I’d love to race you, but we don’t have time to find a dog.”
Molly smiled. “I don’t need to hear a dog any more. Not a real one.”
She growled and shifted.
Innes laughed and called out, “Ready, steady, go!”
***
The horse and the hare raced across the fields towards the woods, the horse leaping over fences, the hare squeezing under them.
Molly ran in a straight line, rather than dodging about. She used her hare’s speed, but her human focus. She had to get to the wood to help that screaming creature, and she had to get there before Innes.
At first they kept pace with each other. Two of the fastest animals in the world, a horse and a hare, both pushing themselves as hard as they could. The hare skimming the ground, the horse thundering above.
The hare was built for running and nothing else. Molly was light and supple, with legs ridiculously long for her body.
But the horse was not built just for running. Innes wasn’t a racehorse, all nervy and fragile; he was a strong, heavy horse, able to pull loads and fight in battles as well as gallop.
They leapt over the land, forcing themselves to the fastest pace their bodies could achieve.
And Molly won.
She pulled ahead, inch by inch, pace by pace, leap by leap. She darted into the woods a few heartbeats before Innes did.
Then she tripped and fell to the ground, as a girl.
Molly watched the horse gallop past her into the woods.
There might not be another boundary among the trees, so she couldn’t become a hare again. She ran on heavy human legs after the horse, towards the deep roaring noise.
This time, Innes won. He got to the source of the bellowing before Molly.
But he didn’t get there first.
When Molly arrived, she saw that Beth, Atacama and the toad were there too.
Beth was jabbing Innes in the chest. “It’s my wood, so it’s my good deed. Get out of my
way.” Her pale face was fierce, her purple hair flying around her head in the breeze. “All of you, get out of my wood.”
Molly looked past the rivals and saw a white stag trapped in a bramble patch, his antlers tangled and his skin ripped by thorns.
“It’s my good deed!” repeated Beth.
“It’s the good deed of whoever can free the stag first.” Innes shoved the dryad’s hand off his chest.
Molly laughed. “If it’s about being first, let’s race to the stag, Innes. Now we know who’s actually faster.”
Innes glared at her. “I got here first.”
“Only because I crossed a boundary. In this wood, or in a field, or on a racetrack, I’ll beat you every time.”
Beth said, “It doesn’t matter who’s faster, it matters who releases the stag.” She took a step forward.
Innes grabbed her arm. “No! I need this good deed. I have to save my rivers and my life.”
Atacama said, “I need my riddle back to be a true sphinx, so I need this good deed too.”
The toad opened its mouth, but Molly couldn’t hear a croak over the stag’s bellowing and her classmates’ quarrelling.
Beth said, “But the stag trapped here is a chance to lift this wood’s curse. It’s my good deed!”
Molly took a step back and watched them, yelling and demanding, shoving and pushing. And she felt rain start to fall from the clouds that had been threatening for hours.
“Stop, please!” yelled Molly. “All of you, stop arguing and think! We need to free that stag with calming words and gentle hands. You can’t untangle brambles with a stone egg. How were you planning to use your eggs?”
Beth said, “Bash the thorns off with the egg?”
Atacama said, “Hypnotise the stag to keep it calm, by waving the egg in front of it?”
Innes shrugged. “Knock the stag out with the egg, so it’s easier to free it?”
The toad snorted. A comment Molly could hear because the stag was finally quietening down.
Molly said, “I’m leaving my stone egg in my pocket, so I can untangle the stag using both hands. Then I’ll search for another good deed, all of my own, without you lot arguing about it.”
