A few years after the mermaid in the bay, my mother died in a car crash. And I moved away from the ocean and into my grandfather’s house. He lived in the countryside, with a forest on either side of his house and a field sporting a massive lake behind it. The sheep weren’t allowed back there.

He was a quiet man, my grandfather. Who loved his sheep, as most Irish farmers do. He warned me from the lake, and the darker parts of the wood. I never listened.

At night, I would creep out to bother the sheep. Some nights, I would think I saw movement down by the lake, or in the trees. I never went to check it out by moonlight. Only sunlight. Along the lake’s edge, in the dark mud, there were hoof-prints that led to and from the lake and forest. My grandfather didn’t have horses. So one day I asked about the hoof-prints.

“Grandda?”

“Aye lass.”

“What leaves the hoof-prints by the lake?”

“Oh, aye. Those be the kelpies. And their dark uni mates. Stay away from them lass, they’ll drown and eat you.”