Water-Logged

The sun was hanging low over the sea, turning everything to fire.

The sand was hardened by the tide, into a sucking grainy slope the colour of blood. It carried rock sediment, deep red and brown. Where the sand lightened it was the colour of whole cream, so thick it might have been ivory. The water shone brilliant shades of gold and amber, like a rolling mixture of summer honey and autumn honey. The sandbar, rising out of the water, was a black patch in a glowing red ocean. It flashed scarlet when the water crept up on top of it and reflected the skyful of sunset.

The horse that stood on the sandbar was white.

Its hooves were caked with mud, but its long, gargantuan body was white as snow. It looked like a patch of winter that faded into being, into the stitched autumnal landscape. Its mane swayed like river grasses, or wheat in a field, a long ripple from the root that almost made it a whip in the wind. Pointing to the horizon, the sky, the horizon again. It was so bright the edges of it seemed to blur, as if it wasn’t real.

It didn’t move. I didn’t know if it noticed my presence at all. Animals pricked their ears when they sensed trouble or danger, but its ears were motionless. When its head moved it did so slowly, drifting, as if it were a mistake or unconscious rather than an effort. Then it began to wade into the water.

I waded after it. My shoes were already water-logged. Now my trousers were soaked too. I could feel them clinging to my legs as I went in deeper, cold and skin-like against my calves, but I didn’t take my eyes off the horse. Water horses were almost never seen. Some said they were seen only if they wanted to be. I walked around large patches of weed, as much as I could without making my path to the water horse longer. Something about the cobweb-like quality of its tail- no, not cobwebs, like an antique wedding veil, made my spine prickle with cold. But I couldn’t not follow.

My boots were slick with the muddy, sandy bottom, my pants surrounded by red-gold water now. Every step I took sucked my foot deeper, with dirt warmer than the water and softer than the sand on the beach, like fingers. Birds swooped over my head, and over the water, gliding and screeching. The music of the water was lovely and haunting. It filled my head often. The water horse suddenly tossed its head as if it too could hear the music. It looked ready to dive.

“Wait!” My voice was louder than the gulls. “Wait! Don’t go!”

Water horses could be dangerous. I’d known that since I was old enough to apy attention to the world. But all creatures were dangerous. And I had wanted to see a water horse for so many years. To see any impossible thing. And it was here. In front of me.

The horse was up to its stomach now in water. Its stomach was not large, but the curve of it disappeared beneath the waves. The water around it was black, darkened by its shadow, free of fire. It was against the sun, becoming a shadow, but still with softened edges, still looking like the suggestion of a horse, rather than a horse. Its hair whirled like a ribbon of snowflakes caught up in the wind. Its mane dragged in the current. White water snakes.

The water lapped at my thigh. I could climb for the sandbar, but the horse was moving away from it. I was close enough to see the patched on the sandbar where water that ran over it collected. They were ribboned with reflections of the copper and bronze canyons in the clouds. I turned away from them, and the smell of hot wet sand, toward the sun, dipping over the horizon like a heavy yellow fruit.

The horse didn’t turn around. It dipped into the water, in a smooth quick movement, like the disappearance of water fowl. A bow of the head, a white shadow under the water’s surface, then a ripple on the surface where it had been. I had dared to follow the water horse and now I was alone in the water, the pull of the tide around my waist, tugging me to and fro like a tree in a wind. The current was as powerful as hands.

The gulls sailed over me, screeching as if they could drown out the sea’s song.

I had lost my magic. Or it could have been the water horse’s teeth, tugging me under, sucking at me like the dirt, pulling me down so the water licked my waist, embraced my shoulders. The tide swam over my head. It was warm, filling my ears with song. My mouth was full of sea.

I lifted one hand out of the water. The water horse closed its teeth around the other. The sun glowed on the surface of the water, spreading its long fingers over the waves as it sank and sank.

Art by Anonymous

Text by Lucie MacAulay