Page 3 of The Last Kelpie

“Thorough is a diplomatic word for pedantic, but yes.” Julian's voice carried a dry humor that I found charming. “You must have been very fascinated indeed to have finished in half the time. Every report I received about you was glowing.”

“My grandmother taught me a lot before she passed away. She framed it differently, of course, but now I know she was preparing me for this.”

They had compressed six months of training into three for me because I blew through the classes. I learned about the Velasca's history—nearly five hundred years of preserving myths and reintroducing their stories to the world so that they wouldn't fade. I learned how to document without exploiting, how to observe without intruding, and how to help without controlling. Everything else I already knew thanks to Grandma and my studies.

“I'm sure she did, but Dr. Müller said that you have good instincts.” Julian glanced at me again. “I'm excited to see what you can do in the field.”

The sounds of voices, laughter, and the clatter of dishes carried down the hallway, along with the scent of coffee and freshly baked bread. The paneled walls held more of those strange paintings, each with a metal plaque beneath it bearing a name.

Julian stopped before a painting. It was the last one before a door at the end of the corridor. In it, a slim man stood on a hill, dressed in robes. He held a walking stick and was smiling. His dark hair was tousled, and the artist expertly rendered his blue eyes so they seemed to catch the sunlight. The artist's signature was one name: Caelum.

Julian gestured to the painting. “This is the man who started everything. This is Velas.” Julian clasped his hands behind his back and peered at the man in the painting. “He was a monk who was fascinated by folklore. He spent years traveling, collecting stories, and trying to preserve them before they disappeared. Then he met Caelum.”

“The founder.” I had learned this in Switzerland, but hearing it there felt different. More real. Especially with Velas's image before me.

“Yes, Caelum is the founder,” Julian nodded. “Though he would tell you Velas founded the Velasca, that he just gave it a name and a home. Caelum was the first myth Velas saved.” He turned to look at me. “Caelum was dying. Not from illness, but from disbelief. These days, he's known now as a Green Man, but back then, he was a forest god. People worshiped him, but then the world changed. A new religion was taking hold. The old ways were fading, and he was fading with them.”

“But Velas saved him.”

“Velas believed in him.” Julian's voice went soft. “Despite his god, he believed in Caelum. And that belief was enough to anchor Caelum to the world. He wrote down Caelum's story and then told it to everyone who would listen. His belief and love stopped Caelum from fading. They spent the next forty years traveling together, finding other myths who were fading and helping them survive. When Velas died, Caelum buried him and planted an oak tree over his grave. He built the Velasca around it. That was four hundred and seventy-three years ago.”

“Where's Caelum now?”

“Still here.” Julian went to the door at the end of the hallway, opened it, and led me into the dining hall. “You'll meet him eventually. He's particular about new Velascans. Likes to observe them before introducing himself.”

I followed him into the dining hall and then just stood there, gaping around me. It was pure chaos.

Chapter Two

I'd expected the Velasca's dining hall to be formal, like something at the universities I'd studied at. Lines of long tables with quiet scholars eating at them while they read a book, maybe some polite conversation about manuscript preservation. Instead, I got the noise, color, and movement of a university cafeteria during finals week. If that university were in a Tolkien novel.

A massive space stretched before me, with exposed-beam ceilings and tall windows in the walls directly across from me and to the right. Sunlight streamed in through those windows, illuminating the entire space. The rows of long wooden tables were the only things I'd expected, but fantasy people sat among the humans at those tables.

A woman with blue-green skin and elaborately braided green hair sprawled on a chair near the window, complaining about the dry air while eating sliced melon. “I don't care what Ravi says.” She pointed at the man next to her—possibly a human. “My skin is cracking. Cracking. Do you know how uncomfortable that is?”

“You could go back to the coast.” The man pushed her finger away.

“And miss Mateo's cooking? Absolutely not.”

Then an explosion had me spinning to the right to see that a man—definitely not human, his skin was faintly luminous and his eyes burned gold—had set someone's toast on fire. The flames glowed bright orange, and the scent of burned cinnamon wafted over to me.

“Damn it, Pyrhus!” The toast's owner laughed. “That's the third time this week.”

“Sorry, sorry.” Pyrhus waved his hand and extinguished the flames. “I'm working on my control.”

“You've been working on your control for two centuries!” someone shouted across the hall.

“These things take time!” Pyrhus shouted back.

Near a long pass-through window in the right wall, a man shouted in Spanish-accented English as he gestured with a wooden spoon. He was broad-shouldered, with olive skin and thick black curls streaked with silver. The words Kiss the Cook's Ass adorned his apron in faded letters. I assumed that was the cook, Mateo.

“Nobody leaves until they've eaten something proper!” Mateo swung his spoon at the entire hall. “I don't care if you're immortal; you still need breakfast. Yes, I'm talking to you, Brannoc. Coffee is not a meal.”

A voice like gravel answered from a beverage station along the entrance wall to my left. “Coffee is the only thing keeping me from murdering the idiot who designed this machine.”

I peered around Julian to see a short but muscular man with bright auburn hair, including a thick beard with bits of metal woven into it.

“That's Brannoc,” Julian said. “He's a dwarf and our master blacksmith. He's been complaining about that espresso machine for six years.”