Tithe A Modern Faerie Tale Page 0,32

it looked black. And the nacreous eyes were gleaming like pearls. Still, when it regarded Kaye, she was forced to think of the research Corny had done. That was chilling enough.

The kelpie strode onto the shore and shook its great mane, spraying her and Corny with glittering droplets of swamp water. Kaye held up her hands, but it hardly helped.

"What do you seek?" the horse spoke, its voice soft but deep.

Kaye took a deep breath. "I need to know how to glamour myself and I need to know how to control my magic. Can you teach me?"

"What will you give me, girl-child?"

"What do you want?"

"Perhaps that one would like to ride on my back. I would teach you if you let him ride with me."

"So that you can kill him? No way."

"I wonder about death, I who may never know it. It looks much like ecstasy, the way they open their mouths as they drown, the way their fingers dig into your skin. Their eyes are wide and startled and they thrash in your hands as though with an excess of passion."

Kaye shook her head, horrified.

"You can hardly blame me. It is my nature. And it has been a very long time."

"I'm not going to help you kill people."

"There might be something else that would tempt me, but I can't think what. I'll give you the opportunity to think up something."

Kaye sighed.

"You know where to find me."

With that, the kelpie waded back into the water.

Corny was still sitting stunned on the bank. "That thing wanted to kill me."

Kaye nodded.

"Are you going to try to find something it wants?"

Kaye nodded again. "Yeah."

"I don't know how I feel about that."

"You read the site. You knew it would be like this."

"I guess. It's different to see it… to hear it."

"Do you want us to leave?"

"Hell, no."

"Any ideas what it might want that doesn't walk on two feet?"

"Well," he said, after a moment's consider- ation, "actually there are a whole lot of people I wouldn't mind feeding to that thing."

She laughed.

"No, really," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that there are a whole lot of people that I wouldn't mind seeing drowned. Really. I think that we should go for it."

Kaye looked up at him. He didn't look particularly fazed by what he had just proposed.

"No way," she said.

Corny shrugged. "Janet's boyfriend, for example. What a prick."

"Kenny?" Kaye squeaked.

"Look, it doesn't have to be him. I could think of a dozen people. The best thing is that they're all so dumb I'm sure I would have no problem convincing them to come down here and ride the horse. I'm thinking that stupidity should have consequences. C'mon, we can do a little weeding of the human race." He waggled his eyebrows.

"No," she said. "Think of something other than people we can give it."

"Oats?" he said vaguely. "A huge box of instant oatmeal? A subscription to Equestrian's Digest? Hay and lots of it?"

"We're not getting people killed, so just give it up, okay?"

She was getting sick of listening to Corny's sighs.

She bet that Roiben's name would be a fair price. After all, this thing was probably not part of any court, being tied to the stream here. She bet that he would be counted as a fair price indeed. And it wouldn't change the fact that she knew the name too.

It would be a fine revenge on him for killing Gristle.

But then, she imagined that the kelpie would just order him to bring people for it to drown. And he would do it.

What else was there to bargain with that a kelpie might like?

She thought about the dolls in her room, but all she could picture was a little girl following a trail of them to the shore of the stream. Ditto with any musical instrument. She had to think about something that the kelpie could enjoy alone… clothing? Food?

Then she thought of it… a companion. A companion that it could never drown. Something that it could talk to and admire. The merry-go-round horse.

"Oh, Corny," Kaye said, "I know just the thing."

Getting back in the car was the last thing that Kaye wanted to do, but she did, sliding into the backseat, pressing her shirt over her mouth as though the fabric could filter the iron out of the air.

"You know where you're going, right?" she asked, wondering if he could understand the words, muffled as they were by the cloth.

"Yeah."

She let her head slide down to the plastic seat, one wing twitched just out of