Kelpie, by Gareth, Year 10, Mazenod College
“He watched the wheeling eddies boil,
Jill from their foam his dazzling eyes
Beheld the water demon rise:”
Sir Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake
Down in the cold, in the dark, the wet. The man might be drowning. Submerged in an old dream, treading in places where no one sees anymore. Here there be monsters.
He wakes now, coughing and spitting the dream from his mind, letting it run like water from his body, through the floor, back down into the earth.
Sitting up slowly, the man opens the backseat door and steps out to relieve himself under an old white eucalyptus, branchless and smooth before its crown. Returning, he eats from a can and sits on a rotting picnic table, by the river. Sits there for a while, in the safety of numbness. Not thinking much at all.
In the car now he pulls away from the lonely riverside and sets back onto the country road. I don’t think he knows where he is going, nor if he has seen these roads before. All that matters is that he leaves something behind as he drives down each one.
“She’s beautiful.” The thought reverberates through the boy’s head, through his being, as he stares at the girl across the room. She looks uncomfortable, out of her element, where she stands watching the world from a corner. A wild mane of black hair flows down her shoulders, stark against her muddy brown skin.
The girl looks up. Moss green eyes with dashes of gold. The boy looks away. He has never seen true beauty before this night. She shone.
The boy busies himself at a table of plastic cups and cheap unopened soft drink (everyone else is drinking heavier stuff). Stopping a friend as he passes by, the boy asks after the girl standing in the corner. He is told that she has not been seen before and then his friend is away, lost in the loud bodies and pulsing air of the party. Half-consciously wrestling a cup from a stack, he keeps his head down.
No one watches now as the girl edges around to the table, every step a milestone. She is not used to people, but knows that he has seen her. She saw him as well.
“Hello. You’ve a friendly face, one of the few that I’ve seen round here.” She tells him openly, but carefully. He looks up, into her eyes.
“It’s saddening to hear that you do not know kindness well.” The boy replies, with a special kind of confidence.
“Perhaps I might get to know it better then.” They smile together, shyly.
The girl shares her name and the boy happily surrenders his.
So they went, flowing through conversation and always sharing freely, exploring the miracle that they’d found. Moving throughout the house with the tide of the party, never far apart, they soon came outside together, standing under young constellations. Here they stayed.
They danced there, to a slower tune; “Come sail your ships around me, and burn your bridges down….” All the night was magic, wild in the starlight. A moment then, as the song fell away, they looked into one another’s eyes and each knew the other, and perhaps themselves. Then she took the boy by his cold hand and together they walked away from the house, to the shadows of the road. No one saw them go.
They walked down the country lane until no more buildings bordered the path. Only the night sky watched over them and the tall pure ghost gums guarded their way.
In time they came to a river, fleeing down from the mountains, and the lane split to turnoff down into a small park. The place a traveller might stop for a time, only to forget the humble place before too long after his quiet departure. It was down here, at the water’s edge, that the pair sat on the mossy green rocks and listened to the wild dark rapids, singing their lonely song to the night sky. Here she told the boy the truth.
In time he walked away.
She did not think that she would see him again. She could feel him forgetting her.
The car turns off the old road into a small park area by a muddy river bank. The sky is a deep darkened blue and the broken fuel gauge reads less than zero. Beside this, the man knows that this is the place he must stop, just as a bird returns home, by instinct or perhaps a stronger force.
The man sits upon one of the mossy rocks by the river and listens for a while. Listens and begins to remember the story it tells him.
“I didn’t think you’d come back.” The girl says beside him. She looks older.
“I think that I always meant to. I had forgotten, or perhaps just remembered it all wrong.”
A spot of cold alights on his shoulder. Looking up, the stars are falling. It’s beginning to snow.
“You made a promise.”
“Yes, I think I did. And here I leave it behind me.”
She takes the man by the hand now, a tear down her jaw line, of joy or sadness I do not know.
Leads him out upon the waters, using the stones as steps, and here on the centre stone they stand together with the river running about them. The man leaving it all on the bank behind him, shed like a worn winter coat. Just a nightmare now.
“Are you sure” Her eyes are wide.
“I promised.”
They stand there in the dark, with all the world flowing around their moment, frozen as stone.
Then the river leans in and presses her lips against his, pushing against his body as together they fall down into the wild, hungry water. Taken away with the flow.
Splitting apart.
Spreading out.
Fading out.
Lost in oceans.
Together with the girl.
Jill from their foam his dazzling eyes
Beheld the water demon rise:”
Sir Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake
Down in the cold, in the dark, the wet. The man might be drowning. Submerged in an old dream, treading in places where no one sees anymore. Here there be monsters.
He wakes now, coughing and spitting the dream from his mind, letting it run like water from his body, through the floor, back down into the earth.
Sitting up slowly, the man opens the backseat door and steps out to relieve himself under an old white eucalyptus, branchless and smooth before its crown. Returning, he eats from a can and sits on a rotting picnic table, by the river. Sits there for a while, in the safety of numbness. Not thinking much at all.
In the car now he pulls away from the lonely riverside and sets back onto the country road. I don’t think he knows where he is going, nor if he has seen these roads before. All that matters is that he leaves something behind as he drives down each one.
“She’s beautiful.” The thought reverberates through the boy’s head, through his being, as he stares at the girl across the room. She looks uncomfortable, out of her element, where she stands watching the world from a corner. A wild mane of black hair flows down her shoulders, stark against her muddy brown skin.
The girl looks up. Moss green eyes with dashes of gold. The boy looks away. He has never seen true beauty before this night. She shone.
The boy busies himself at a table of plastic cups and cheap unopened soft drink (everyone else is drinking heavier stuff). Stopping a friend as he passes by, the boy asks after the girl standing in the corner. He is told that she has not been seen before and then his friend is away, lost in the loud bodies and pulsing air of the party. Half-consciously wrestling a cup from a stack, he keeps his head down.
No one watches now as the girl edges around to the table, every step a milestone. She is not used to people, but knows that he has seen her. She saw him as well.
“Hello. You’ve a friendly face, one of the few that I’ve seen round here.” She tells him openly, but carefully. He looks up, into her eyes.
“It’s saddening to hear that you do not know kindness well.” The boy replies, with a special kind of confidence.
“Perhaps I might get to know it better then.” They smile together, shyly.
The girl shares her name and the boy happily surrenders his.
So they went, flowing through conversation and always sharing freely, exploring the miracle that they’d found. Moving throughout the house with the tide of the party, never far apart, they soon came outside together, standing under young constellations. Here they stayed.
They danced there, to a slower tune; “Come sail your ships around me, and burn your bridges down….” All the night was magic, wild in the starlight. A moment then, as the song fell away, they looked into one another’s eyes and each knew the other, and perhaps themselves. Then she took the boy by his cold hand and together they walked away from the house, to the shadows of the road. No one saw them go.
They walked down the country lane until no more buildings bordered the path. Only the night sky watched over them and the tall pure ghost gums guarded their way.
In time they came to a river, fleeing down from the mountains, and the lane split to turnoff down into a small park. The place a traveller might stop for a time, only to forget the humble place before too long after his quiet departure. It was down here, at the water’s edge, that the pair sat on the mossy green rocks and listened to the wild dark rapids, singing their lonely song to the night sky. Here she told the boy the truth.
In time he walked away.
She did not think that she would see him again. She could feel him forgetting her.
The car turns off the old road into a small park area by a muddy river bank. The sky is a deep darkened blue and the broken fuel gauge reads less than zero. Beside this, the man knows that this is the place he must stop, just as a bird returns home, by instinct or perhaps a stronger force.
The man sits upon one of the mossy rocks by the river and listens for a while. Listens and begins to remember the story it tells him.
“I didn’t think you’d come back.” The girl says beside him. She looks older.
“I think that I always meant to. I had forgotten, or perhaps just remembered it all wrong.”
A spot of cold alights on his shoulder. Looking up, the stars are falling. It’s beginning to snow.
“You made a promise.”
“Yes, I think I did. And here I leave it behind me.”
She takes the man by the hand now, a tear down her jaw line, of joy or sadness I do not know.
Leads him out upon the waters, using the stones as steps, and here on the centre stone they stand together with the river running about them. The man leaving it all on the bank behind him, shed like a worn winter coat. Just a nightmare now.
“Are you sure” Her eyes are wide.
“I promised.”
They stand there in the dark, with all the world flowing around their moment, frozen as stone.
Then the river leans in and presses her lips against his, pushing against his body as together they fall down into the wild, hungry water. Taken away with the flow.
Splitting apart.
Spreading out.
Fading out.
Lost in oceans.
Together with the girl.