Loch Nessa

by Clare Kauter

  I waded out until I was boob-deep in the loch, vial in hand.

  “OK,” said Daisy. “This is about to get a whole lot less pleasant.”

  “That’s possible?” I wheezed.

  “Afraid so,” she replied, unstoppering her vial. Hecate and I followed suit.

  “Bottoms up,” I said, and all at once we downed our potions like they were shots. For a moment everything seemed fine, and then everything stopped seeming fine. The first thing to disappear was my vision. The world around me seemed to melt as the potion took hold of my body, the scenery dripping away like a painting in the rain.

  The next thing to go was my skin. At least it felt that way. It was like I’d been sprayed all over with acid and my body was beginning to disintegrate. Fortunately (ha) I didn’t dwell on that because a moment after the skin thing happened, my insides began to boil. I could feel them bubbling like a cauldron over a roaring flame and if I’d had any energy I’d have been screaming in pain.

  At some point in all this my knees had buckled and I knew I must be underwater by now, but I didn’t have time to worry about that. Now I just needed to get rid of the pain… the burning… the…

  My heart stopped.

  Actually and literally.

  Daisy had killed me.

  To be fair, she’d also killed herself and Hecate, but that definitely seemed like the kind of thing you should get someone’s permission to do before going ahead and murdering them. (Yes, I know that sounds a little hypocritical coming from me. Shush.)

  Now I knew why the others hadn’t wanted to tell me – or Henry – what the potion was. Eudora’s Curse was very illegal – for a very good reason. The draught went by many names, but often it was called Zombie Juice. I’d prefer to roll with ‘Eudora’s Curse’ from here on, though, if you don’t mind, because there’s just something really disturbing to me about saying I drank Zombie Juice.

  I couldn’t believe Daisy had been brewing up a batch of Dora – and that Hecate had been OK with it. The Hellfire Shire Police Pepartment was a mess. The Green Wattle Coven was rife with illegal magical activity. First necromancy and now this, the exact opposite of necromancy. Daisy had given us a potion that killed us. Only temporarily, but still.

  It made sense, I suppose – although in hindsight I would have preferred regular diving gear. I was going to be having nightmares about that experience for the rest of my life. How had Daisy and Hecate managed to compel themselves to drink the stuff knowing what it was? Everyone knew that Dora caused just about the worst pain you could inflict on a person. Dying wasn’t often pleasant, but temporary death was especially gruesome.

  Still, now that I was dead I wasn’t going to need to breathe, so we could explore the lake freely. At least for the next hour or so. I decided to risk opening my eyes, hoping my vision had returned. At first I thought my eyesight had been affected by the potion, but then I realised that the visibility down here just wasn’t that great. The lake wasn’t a nice blue colour like I’d been expecting – it was a dirty brown, like tea, and I could see that the further in we swam, the darker it would grow. It was going to be tricky to stick together in the depths when we couldn’t really see each other.

  There was some movement from my left and when I turned and saw what it was, I screamed. Trouble was, the murky lake water flooded my mouth before I could so much as get a squeak out. Floating in front of me, slimy, brown and seven feet long, was a giant eel. Was this the monster? I froze in terror, wondering if the monster was going to kill me. Was that even possible? I wasn’t sure how Dora worked – could I die when I was already dead?

  The eel just shook its head at me, and that was when I realised it was Henry.

  Oh. Right.

  I spat the dirty water out of my mouth, grateful that my dead tastebuds hadn’t been able to register the flavour of the microbe-laden loch. To my right, Daisy and Hecate appeared. Now that we had no air in our lungs, we didn’t float, so we were able to simply walk along the loch’s floor. Henry swam along beside us, slithering through the water like a sea serpent. The further we went, the more glad I was at the absence of my heartbeat. It would have been racing furiously right about now, and my veins would have been flooded with adrenalin. As it was, I just felt… not quite cold. Just sort of neutral. Like a reptile would, I guess.

  Eudora’s Curse had been banned since just about the moment it was discovered, and the instructions to make it had been destroyed as soon as the authorities had heard about it. Somehow a copy of the recipe had survived, and while the government had attempted to keep a lid on it, knowledge of the potion’s existence still managed to somehow disseminate to society at large. Everyone knew about Dora. What not everyone knew was how to make it.

  A select few members of the seedier parts of the magical underworld possessed the knowledge to make a vat of Dora. For the right price, you could buy a spoonful, but it was definitely an ‘at your own risk’ kind of deal. It was notoriously tricky to brew and more than once a patron had died an excruciating – and permanent – death at the hands of a bad barrel. Still, plenty of people risked it. The potential was too great to resist.

  You may be asking yourself why people were so hot to get their hands on a spoonful of death. If that’s the case, then you have no imagination. There were many reasons you would use it, but there was definitely a most popular purpose: it’s the best way to fake your own death. You have no heartbeat, and by all conventional tests you appear to be dead – because you are. No one questions whether you’re alive or not, even people who know Dora exists, because everyone assumes that no one is crazy enough to take it. Seriously, who’d put themselves through that? And who’d risk it going wrong?

  Well, apparently my witchy sisters were crazy enough. Great. Yet more evidence that I was blood bound to a cult.

  But why would they go this far? Were we trying to convince the Loch Ness monster we were dead? I doubted it. Why had Daisy and Hecate thought this was the best way to get to the dragon? Sometimes magicals didn’t like using non-magical means, even when they were more practical. Still, I could think of a hundred spells that would have been more pleasant (not to mention less risky) than downing a shot of Dora. Why would Daisy go to the trouble of making this when we could have, say, cast a bubble around ourselves and floated about like a magical submarine? Not only would we not have had to go through the skin-meltingly painful experience of dying by Dora, but then we also would have been able to talk to each other. Instead we were walking along the bottom of the loch, three silent corpses and an eel looking for a dragon. Just your average Tuesday.

  Daisy sent an orb of light out in front of us. It flickered like a lightbulb during an electrical storm. I tried not to let that concern me. Sure, the death draught had impacted Daisy’s magical abilities, but that was nothing to worry about. Just breathe. Wait, no! Don’t breathe. Just, uh, walk. Walk along in your lifeless body.

  Even in its diminished state, the orb managed to illuminate a decent patch of the water around us, which offered at least a little comfort. It was a hard slog, pushing against the currents and picking through the thick water weeds and trying not to get carried away by the movement of the water around us. It was especially hard when you were dead. God, why had Daisy done this to me? To herself? Henry was going to be furious when we got out of here. Well, if we got out. For a bunch of light witches, the Green Wattle sisters got up to some shady shit.

  A dark figure moving up ahead caught my eye. I put out my arms to stop the others and my hand slid across Henry’s slimy surface. If I’d still had a gag reflex, it would have been working overtime at that. There was no time to waste on being disgusted by Henry’s gross fishy self, however. Not right now. I squinted, trying to see better, but even with the light from the orb I was having trouble discerning what it was. It could be the monster or a massive piece of lake weed – I had no idea.

  The others saw what I was looking at and judging by the expressions on their faces they didn’t know what it was either
. I bit the inside of my lip, careful not to open my mouth again lest the festering lake water seep in. I didn’t know if it was just my imagination, but the figure up ahead appeared to be getting closer. I waited for a moment, and then decided it was definitely getting closer – and at speed. I gestured at the others to get out of the thing’s way and hide behind a nearby rock. The other corpses and I shuffled over to hide while Henry did his best to shield us from the creature’s view. I guess there were some advantages to his gross slimy form.

  From our hiding place, now that the thing was closer, we could see that it was a shadowy four-legged creature of about my height. As it drew under the light, it occurred to me that maybe I should have told Daisy to put the orb out, but it was too late for that now. The thing had seen it.

  It stalked closer, eventually stopping right under the orb and sniffing it. Although the creature was dark and largely blended into the inky background of the loch, now that it was this close to the light I could finally see what it was. Not the monster, I realised. This looked like a… a horse. Not a horse, I realised. A Kelpie – the child-snatching water horse of Scottish legend. It looked over towards us and, seeing Henry, cantered away, presumably to abduct someone’s kid.

  We shuffled out from our hiding spot and continued our search for the monster. A thought occurred to me and I considered frowning, but it seemed like too much effort. (Seriously, when your heart’s not pumping, getting your body to do anything is a struggle.) What would happen when the Dora wore off? We didn’t have any air in our lungs – would we be able to make it to the surface of the lake in time to get oxygen into our bloodstream?

  Again, I thought I saw the monster, but it turned out to be a group of mermaids watching us. They kept their distance and I didn’t really get a good look at them, which was kind of annoying. Travel all the way to Loch Ness and I didn’t even have time to stop and look at the mermaids. I didn’t just want to look at them for a touristy thing to do – I was curious to find out more about them. Were they dark or light magicals? Were they a kind of faery? Mermaids had long been the subject of debate among scholars, and I wanted to form my own opinion. Unfortunately, due to my recent death my magic was on the fritz and I couldn’t even send out my feelers to test their energy. Sigh. Scuba gear would have been infinitely preferable to this.

  Eventually the high pitched giggling of the mermaids faded as we left them behind and entered a somehow even darker patch of the lake. The ground dropped away beneath us and we sank to the bottom of a deeper pit within the loch. The orb did its best to illuminate our surroundings, but it had its work cut out for it attempting to penetrate the oppressive darkness down here. The light began to flicker and then it stopped. To help, I made a pitiful attempt at creating my own orb, but it only cast light for about a metre before dissipating. I glanced at Daisy, who tried to cast another orb, but this one spluttered and disappeared as well. She shrugged apologetically. The Dora was definitely inhibiting our abilities.

  What now? We were lost in complete darkness. Should we head back to the surface of the lake and cut our losses? Then we could invest in some proper dive gear and come back down here under a less dangerous set of circumstances.

  I was just about to start trying to perform an interpretive dance to indicate to the others that we should head back to the surface of the lake when the water around us seemed to grow lighter. I glanced around at the others, wondering who had managed to get their magic working. Henry would have been my first guess, but he looked just as confused as I was.

  The water around us turned blue, a bright blue like the ocean, as it filled with light. I squinted in the sudden brightness. Whose energy was responsible for this?

  Then the ground under my feet began to move.

  This was another one of those moments when my heart would have raced if it had still been beating. I slowly tilted my head down to see what I was standing on. It was a vibrant, glowing blue and it was covered in scales. I’d found the source of the light.

  It was the Loch Ness monster. And we’d woken him up.

  CHAPTER 16

  NOT THE BEST FIRST IMPRESSION, really, stepping on the dragon you want to question. I could only hope he would realise it was an accident. I looked at the others. Henry manoeuvred until he was vertical in the water and jerked his head upwards, indicating towards the surface of the lake. He didn’t have to tell me twice. I pushed off from the dragon’s back and kicked my legs as powerfully as I could, trying to swim up. I managed to get about a metre before I started sinking again. Henry took a deep breath in eel form before shifting into a whale. He beckoned us with his pectoral fin. We all clambered onto his back while the serpent beneath us uncoiled and slithered around. Once we were all on Henry’s back, he began to swim up as fast as he could.

  Unfortunately, the dragon was faster.

  The giant serpent rose before us, his head and neck blocking our exit. Henry could have tried to swim around him, but the dragon’s slinky body was much faster than Henry’s. We were trapped. The monster’s face split into a big grin and I tried not to stare too long at its teeth. Best not to dwell on what was to come. The dragon was long, impossibly long, with the body of a snake and the tiny, impractical arms of a tyrannosaurus. His head was unlike a snake’s – it was rectangular, with big nostrils and navy and turquoise barbels like a catfish.

  The dragon clapped its vestigial limbs together in a way that might have been comical under different circumstances.

  More visitors? I’m so popular lately! said a voice in my head. OK, it was official. I’d been worried about this for some time, but now it had been confirmed – I was going crazy. There was no other explanation for why I would be hearing voices. Wait, maybe it was a side effect of Dora? That would be a comfort. Kind of. Unless the Dora had a permanent impact on my brain.

  Are you OK? asked the voice.

  Sure I am, I replied. Don’t mind me.

  OK, said the voice. Well, do you want to tell me what you’re doing here?

  Shouldn’t I be asking you that?

  The voice didn’t answer for a moment. Um, I’ve been here for hundreds of years. I kind of thought you would know that already.

  What the hell are you –

  And it was at that point that I realised it wasn’t a voice in my head I was talking to: it was the dragon. Somehow he was speaking to me through my thoughts. I frowned, not quite sure what to say now that I realised I was communicating with the Loch Ness Monster via ESP.

  Oh, right, I thought back at him. Sorry. I got a bit confused. Thought you were someone else.

  You thought I was a different dragon who lives at the bottom of Loch Ness? he asked incredulously.

  Um, yes, I replied, not really sure that I could – or should – explain what I’d actually thought.

  Sorry to be rude, but I don’t know how much longer we can survive down here, said Daisy. So apparently I could hear the others’ thoughts too. Interesting. Dragon magic was so cool. Daisy continued, We were hoping to ask you a question, Nessie.

  Why were you hoping to ask me a question? I asked Daisy, confused. Why didn’t you just ask me while we were on land? Now really doesn’t seem the right time to –

  Nessie, not Nessa. She’s talking to the dragon, you idiot, Henry thought. Loudly. How did he even manage to think sarcastically?

  Oh. Right. Sorry.

  The dragon gave me a curious look before nodding at Daisy. What can I do for you?

  Not eat us? I thought.

  He put his tiny hand to his chest. How could you? I would never!

  He seemed genuinely offended. I frowned. Really?

  Of course not. For one, I’m a vegetarian.

  I raised my eyebrows, though it took some effort. Was the potion somehow making me deader the longer it was in my system? Or was there something down here that was affecting me? The cold of the lake or the dragon or…

  Of course. The dragon was dampening our magic. Not intentionally – it was a natural ability they had. Sata
n had mentioned it to me once when she was first teaching me about magic and magical creatures. The potion definitely wasn’t helping, but the reason Daisy’s orb had finally flickered out was because we were so close to the dragon.

  I’m sorry, I thought. He was a herbivore, which meant he didn’t eat Alora. OK, so far, so good. That meant I could stop staring at his teeth, since he wasn’t going to use them on me. I squinted. Wait, was that something green wedged between his canines? I tried not to shudder as I remembered seeing something similar stuck between Pierre’s teeth. I didn’t mean to offend you. You seem like a very nice dragon.

  Nessie’s cheeks turned a bright purple. He was blushing at the compliment. Oh, you’re too kind.

  Maybe it was seaweed in his teeth. Or lake weed. Loch weed. Whatever grew in here. Not rotting meat like in Pierre’s mouth, definitely. I tried not to stare too long or think too loudly about it, which of course only made me stare and think about it more.

  We actually wanted to ask you about someone else who came here to visit you, thought Henry, forcefully enough that I hoped he was drowning out my thoughts.

  Who would that be, whale man?

  I frowned. Do you get many visitors down here?

  A couple.

  What about a witch? Daisy asked. She would have been here recently.

  Alora? asked the dragon.

  Daisy and I looked at each other. Bingo.

  So you met her?

  Yes, I did. Lovely girl. How do you know her?

  She’s in our coven, Hecate explained.

  And how is she? Did she have any luck with my brother?

  Hark, was that a clue?

  Your brother? Henry repeated.

  Yes, she… His scaly brow wrinkled as he caught our facial expressions. You haven’t heard from her?

  We all shook our heads (which is quite hard work when you’re a zombie). The force of Henry’s head shake just about pitched me off his back. With my compromised range of movement, this was basically a rodeo.