Page 62 of The Last Kelpie

A spiral with the outer line hanging, leaving the tail end unattached.

“Áedán,” I whispered.

He was already staring at it. His whole body had gone still. “The spiral.”

I pulled out my phone and took photographs. Ed wasn't the one behind the changes. He was just another victim. To be certain, I took out my notebook and compared the symbol I'd sketched there with the one on Ed's manuscript. It was the same, not that I'd needed the confirmation. The spiral was a simple design. There was no way I could confuse it with another. It was the same symbol I'd seen in the water, the same symbol in the vision between the stones.

“Do you know what this symbol means?” I asked Ed.

He shook his head. “I noticed it, but I thought it was just an editor's mark. I've never seen it before. Odd, ain't it? With the end hanging there like a curved dash.”

“We've seen it before, but this is the first time we've seen it on a manuscript.”

“Where have you seen it? Maybe that will give us a clue to its meaning.”

“You wouldn't believe me.”

“Try me, lad. After this.” He motioned at the manuscript. “There's not much I wouldn't believe.”

“We saw it in the water of Loch Lomond.”

Ed fell back in his chair. Tommy whined and went to sit by him. Ed pet him absently. “In the loch where kelpies were said to live and then in my altered collection of kelpie lore. That is an interesting connection. Has the loch been changed too?”

Áedán swung his head to look at me. I gaped back. Were the changed myths affecting the loch itself? Was that why the water was forgetting the memories? Because someone had set that symbol into the loch?

“Yes, the loch has changed,” I whispered.

“Look for the sentence.” Áedán nodded at the manuscript.

I turned the pages, searching.

“What sentence?” Ed leaned his forearms on his knees.

“'Truth yields to the tale most often told,'” I read aloud as I tapped the page. “It's right here.”

“Tricky, tricky. Truth turned to lies. Sounds like magic to me.” Ed nodded knowingly. “Symbols with words of power. Yup, that's magic.”

“Aye,” Áedán said. “I believe it is.”

Chapter Twenty-One

I pulled out my phone and began photographing every page of the kelpie section of Ed's book. Ed watched with interest, occasionally adjusting the pages so the light fell better across them. My hands were steady, but my mind was racing.

The changes were subtle, but it was the final version that we'd found. Other books published after this one may have changed the wording, but the story was the same. This was the culmination of all the little changes someone had made. The first finished alteration of the kelpie story. The foundation for all others that followed. I was certain of it. Whoever had done this, this was their writing, their words scribbled in red ink, ending in that terrible sentence like the final line of a spell.

I photographed each page of the kelpie section, my stomach tightening with every alteration I found. Whoever had done this understood how stories worked. They hadn't written new stories. Instead, they'd twisted the stories that already existed. That made the changes far easier to believe.

A passage about kelpies drowning those who polluted sacred waters became a description of indiscriminate killing. A story about a festival became offerings made to placate the beasts in the water. Individually, each change seemed small. A word here, a phrase there. Together, they rewrote an entire species.

I glanced at Áedán. He stood by the window, his back to us, one hand pressed against the glass. His shoulders were rigid. He hadn't said a word since he'd confirmed that there was magic at work, and now his silence felt heavy.

Suddenly, Áedán turned away from the window. His expression was carefully neutral, but I'd learned to read the tension in his jaw and the way his hands curled slightly at his sides. “Ed, when did you last eat?”

Ed blinked and looked up. “Just had some biscuits.” He waved at the plate on the tea tray.

“I mean a full meal.”

He shrugged. “Lunch.”