I found this in my blog archives. A little humor in dark times.
Last week my wrist wasn’t working right, so I took my arm to the Body Shop.
“What seems to be the problem?” Dr. Scott asked.
“It hurts when I start in the morning. Sometimes it just locks up completely. I’m having trouble lifting things and opening jars.”
Dr. Scott manipulated my wrist. “Hmm, I’ll need to get in there and have a look,” he said. “We’re kind of backed up here today. One of the techs called in sick. Can you leave the arm until tomorrow?”
“Uh, not really. I kind of need it for holiday cooking. Can you give me a loaner?”
“Sure can, but this is all I’ve got left,” Dr. Scott said. He reached under the counter and brought out a man-sized arm. It was covered in curly black hair. The underside was tattooed with a skull and lightning bolts.
I eyed it with distaste. “That’s all, huh?”
Dr. Scott shrugged. “Yeah, sorry.”
He helped me snap the arm into my shoulder socket. My sweater barely stretched over the bicep. A few inches of hairy wrist stuck out below the cuff. I had planned to stop at the deli on the way home, but decided to avoid the embarrassment.
At the house, my husband was reading in his recliner.
“Well, did he fix your wrist?” he asked without looking up.
“Not today. He gave me a loaner. Look.”
“Whoa, that is some heavy duty arm you’ve got there,” he exclaimed. “Cool tattoos.”
“Not cool,” I said. “I’m off-balance.”
“Hey, let me see you flex that thing.”
I obliged with a scowl.
He grinned. “Wow! That’s some bicep! I bet you could help me replace the bathroom faucet,” he said, pushing out of his chair. “Let’s try it.”
Sure enough, the loaner arm had more than enough strength to loosen the rusty bolt. We fixed the faucet. Then I hefted three forty-pound bags of water conditioner salt from the car into the basement. I poured one bagful into the tank. After that, I carried the thirty-pound frozen turkey from the basement freezer into the kitchen.
“I don’t know, honey,” my husband said, “that arm is pretty useful. Maybe you should keep the loaner.”
“Right,” I said. “And I bet this arm can strangle a spouse pretty well, too.”
The kelpie, a water spirit in Scottish legends, lives in streams and rivers. Some sources say kelpies also haunt lakes and seas. The kelpie is a shape-shifter who can appear as a beautiful horse or a lovely woman. In her horse guise, she lures people onto her back, and then dives deep into the water, drowning the rider.
Kelpies warn of approaching tempests by wailing and howling, and continue their chilling cries throughout the storm.
One can only tame a kelpie by taking possession of its bridle. Then the kelpie must submit to the owner’s will. Kelpies are strong, and can do the work of ten horses. However, capturing and mastering a faerie spirit like a kelpie is a dangerous undertaking. I wouldn’t recommend it.
*
In Book V of the Karakesh Chronicles, Bimi Lightfoot takes pleasure in teasing a kelpie.
Growing Magic, Chapter 2:
All this thinking about my real mother made me so angry that I walked as far as the sea caves. Gerran or Lunila couldn’t shout loud enough for me to hear them there. Inside the first cave, I stood on the narrow path.
“Queen of the sea, come to me!” I called to the kelpie. There are a lot of scary monsters in the sea, but she’s one of the scariest. I called again.
Nothing happened.
I got tired of waiting for her so I jumped in the water. Then I splashed around as if I couldn’t swim.
The kelpie plunged into the cave, making the water dark and rough.
She raised her horse head out of the sea. Seaweed twined in her silver-blue mane. She fixed her wild, evil eyes on me. I shivered.
Oooh, I loved teasing the kelpie! It was such scary fun!
I let her get really close. Then I scrambled up the rock steps to the path.
The kelpie snorted and bared her big horse teeth. She was really mad.
I knew that if I touched her, even with one finger, I would stick to her forever. She would pull me into the deep water and I would drown. She turned and lunged toward the open sea, splashing a wave so high that it almost knocked me back into the water.
When I came out into the sunlight, Gerran was waiting for me. He grabbed my arm.
All of the Karakesh Chronicles are available on Amazon and from Handersen Publishing.
Chapter 29: In which Agatha is attacked by a bunyip:
*
Agatha stared at the water flowing along and gave a deep sigh.
“What is it?” Malcolm asked. “Are you thinking of our parents?”
“Always,” she answered as she studied her grimy fingernails. “But it’s not that. I don’t want to seem shallow, but I’m tired of being filthy. I’m tired of eating snails and undercooked fish. Most of all, I want to wash my hair.”
“Again?” Malcolm said. “We are not stopping at an inn.”
“No, that would be foolish,”Agatha agreed. “Would you be willing to give me an hour to wash at the river?” she asked. “I promise I’ll be quick.”
“You go ahead,” Malcolm said. “Take Carl with you. I’ll make a fire and catch some fish. I promise to cook them well.”
With a much-improved mood, Agatha hurried off to the riverbank with Carl.
Agatha was standing up to her knees in water, rinsing her hair, when she heard a noise that sounded like the barking of an owl mixed with the shriek of a woman. Then something huge and dark lunged out of the water and grabbed her leg in its teeth.
Carl went flapping and squawking for Malcolm.
“Help!” he called. “It’s got Agatha! Hurry!”
–from Tangled in Magic, Chapter 29
The bunyip is a creature from Australian Aboriginal legends. Its name means “devil” or “spirit.” According to legend, the bunyip is a water monster that lives in rivers, swamps or billabongs. The early Aboriginal drawings depict the bunyip as a beast with a horsetail, tusks and flippers.
Said to be nocturnal, the bunyip comes out of the water to snatch and eat all kinds of animals, including women and children.
The bellowing cry attributed to the bunyip might also be the call of another animal, a koala or a barking owl. Is the bunyip real or imaginary? You decide.
Read more of Agatha’s adventures as she and Malcolm plot to retake their ancestral estate, Hawk Hill, from the evil warlock, Santer.
All books are available on Amazon, or from Handersen Publishing.
Bimi Lightfoot’s faerie mother gave him away when he was a baby. But who is his father? Someday, Bimi promises himself, he’ll seek out both his parents. That day comes sooner than Bimi expects, when his faerie cousin, Liri Flare, sweeps him into the sky on a mission to steal a horse. Once away from his adoptive family, Bimi sets out to find his mother and learn the truth about his father. He gets help from some of the magical folk of Karakesh, but other encounters are downright life-threatening. Does Bimi find what he seeks on his quest?
The Hissing Swamp
Growing Magic is Book V of the Karakesh Chronicles. Magic and fantastic creatures make travel in the Kingdom of Karakesh a mysterious, exciting, and often dangerous undertaking. The adventures of Bimi and the others who figure in the Karakesh Chronicles offer readers a world of enchantment.
Start with Book I, Tangled in Magic, to join Agatha in her quest to find her brother, Malcolm. Or jump in anywhere in the series.
The traffic was backed up on the west side of the Hudson River, a mile or more before the entrance to the Kingston-Rhinecliff bridge.
“If these cars are all heading to the Sheep and Wool Festival at the fairgrounds, this does not bode well,” I said to my husband, Pat. He didn’t seem bothered. Pat has dementia and enjoys car rides even though he rarely remembers where we are going.
The car jam broke up a bit on the other side of the river but slowed to a crawl waiting to turn into the fairground parking.
Pat was astounded at the number of cars. It was only about 11:00 a.m. and the rows and rows of vehicles glinted in the autumn sunshine. I reeled off the states on license plates: Florida, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey.
Fortunately, we had our tickets, so we skipped the buyers’ lines and followed the crowd. For crowded it was. Our first stop was the llamas and alpacas (and I still don’t know the difference). We bumped and jostled our way through the goat and sheep barns.
The one thing I was determined to see was the demonstration of Frisbee-playing dogs. It wasn’t the sheepherding dog demo that I really wanted to watch, but we made our way slowly to the grassy area marked off by flagged poles where an audience three deep was already gathered.
The dogs were amazing. They obviously loved the game, and the trainers/owners loved the dogs.
By this time, Pat and I were both hungry. I consulted the map and pointed the way to the food trucks. It turned out that everyone else at the festival was also hungry. Each vendor had lines of fifty or more people waiting to order food. Even the fried pickles truck had a line of obviously desperate people.
The hordes in the food plaza were worse than Oxford Street in London at Christmas time.
“I don’t want to wait in these long lines,” I said to Pat. Ever since Covid, I get anxious in large groups of people.
And it wasn’t just masses of people waiting to eat. Every barn and booth was packed.
The only thing I wanted to do now, having seen the dogs and given up on eating, was to choose some colorful handspun yarn to send to my sister in California.
“Let me get some yarn and then let’s go,” I said. “We’ll eat somewhere else.”
Pat, agreeable as always, held onto me as I dragged him through the crush.
After consulting the map multiple times, I figured out the way back to Gate 4 and our parking area. The barns of yarn and wool vendors were still crammed with people, but I pulled Pat into the one near our exit.
Halfway down the swarming aisle, I yanked Pat into a booth. I began to examine the yarns and the prices. Sixty dollars for one skein— uh, no. I turned around and—he was gone. No Pat.
Pushing my way back into the aisle, I looked around for an Irish cap and gray beard. There was a cap, but the wrong color and the man was too tall.
“Oh, no, oh no,” I moaned, elbowing my way to the entrance. No Pat. I turned and shoved back the other way.
Already I was imagining finding the festival police, if there was such an entity, and having someone call for Patrick Dillon on the PA system—if they had one. How in the world would I find him in these mobs of people? I got out my phone and called his mobile. It rang and said he was not available. Did he even hear it?
My mind played out more scenarios, such as me searching until closing time, when at last people would have gone and he might be easier to spot.
What would Pat do if he were trying to find me? Would he use his phone? Press his emergency medical button? Ask for help?
Eventually, I suppose, I would have remembered the app that locates him and his phone. Later, though, I discovered that he’d unknowingly turned it off in September.
But then—hallelujah–I spotted him, standing bewildered in front of the next barn over. What an incredible relief!
“Let’s get out of here!” I said, grabbing his hand.
Back in the car, I went over the protocol of what to do if we get separated. “Stay in one place,” I directed. But would he remember?
Should I tie us together the next time we’re out in a crowd?—if I ever attempt that again.
Tangled Magic 