I FEED IT RAW MEAT, SO IT DOES NOT HURT ME
Boudika should have been surprised. That was the thought that came to her, when the horse emerged from the sea. She should have been surprised; but, instead, it occurred with the familiarity of a rising sun. Of course there would be a horse beneath the waves. Of course the water horse crested surf with a red frill and eyes greener than jade. Boudika would have started, a month ago. She would have reacted with hostility, or perhaps leapt back, but for a brief moment all she thought of was Denocte in flames, the feeling of running from the grey kelpie on the cold shoreline, his words, I could Make you, and the winter castle. All of these things were fantastical, strange, compared to the familiarity of a water horse in the sea.
My. You’re a lovely creature. And in that voice Boudika could only hear the sea, the way it sang at nighttime, the way it sang once to her in her prison cell. Soft and delicate, warm, nearly torpid. The heat of a humid climate, like the one they were in; or the warmest summer night in Oresziah, which brought in the storms but first, first, the silent night and lulling sea.
Boudika was split apart inside. So are you, she wanted to say, in just the same way that the tiger hunter would always admire the robust colour of the feline's coat, or the lion hunter the ferocity of the beast. The beauty would always enchant her. Are they not beautiful? Vercingtorix had once asked, of their bodies, heaped like that of so many fish. They shone with scales and horns and bright, glassy eyes like marbles. Walrus-tusks and teeth rowed as a sharks, needled like a barracuda, and they were all the colours a horse could be. Chestnut and bay and roan and grey. Black and white and sorrel and palomino. Some were frilled with fins or crests, or adorned with the nacre and pearl of the sea. And all of them in shapes of change, all of them seeming to shift even in death, as though in the last throes of life.
So Boudika did not tell the sea creature she was beautiful. How could she, when she had seen so many bleeding? Was that not sick, to think, you are more beautiful dying?
Her lip twisted wryly. The salt of the ocean stung and scraped. The moon shone bright and she answered, quietly, “It is only the moon.” It must have been, Boudika thought, that this creature had never seen the night sky. “It is not often you see the sky?” The sentence began as a statement and ended as a question.
She cocked her head, curious, leonine. The water felt strange about her knees and her tail lashed at the waves behind in, first in languid flicks, and then vicious ones. The island remained eerily silent to her back, and Boudika did not turn to glance at it. “Are you searching for the relic?” she asked, quietly, and beneath the question lied another: or are you searching for flesh? But there was something about the green-eyed kelpie, the softness of her voice, that invited Boudika to remain gentle, and calm, and always in the back of her mind swam the image of Orestes as he drowned, and his words, always his words—
It’s in your nature.
Could she not fight nature? And so Boudika waited. Tense, but responsive. Tense, but not murderous. Tense, and captivated, and afraid of her on heart as it beat within her chest with all the fury of a bird in flight.
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