It was the white feather that caught the librarian’s eye…Naomi had picked up two books abandoned in the Library Staff Room and was about to return them to their rightful shelves when she noticed the feather was being used as a book mark in the book of Scottish Myths and Legends. She opened it up, it marked a page with instructions on ‘How to Kill a Kelpie’.
Now Naomi knew a little about Kelpies but had never thought she might need to kill one, it was late, she’d been running the Knit and Natter group and it was now time to lock up the library. She decided to take that book home, so she scanned it, placed it in her knitting basket and pulled the elasticated plastic cover tightly over the top against the rain.
She walked up the canal and the rain stopped and she noticed a woman dressed from top to toe in green sitting by some lock gates. Well top to ankle at least as she could not see her feet, the woman was wearing a long green-overall and a soft velvet hat in the centre of which was a strange brooch. She was knitting in the old fashioned way with 5 steel wires pointed at both ends’ in the round’. She was knitting something small, something pink and as she passed Naomi smiled and asked what the woman was knitting.
“I’m knitting a big toe,”
Now Naomi had knitted a good many strange things in her time, the library knitting group had once crocheted The Forth and Clyde Canal complete with knitted Navies, some swans and bees, lots of knitted bees and some of the towers of Grangemouth oil refinery complete with smoke, so this was not the strangest thing to knit. But Halloween had past and indeed why else would you need a knitted toe?
Naomi sat down for a natter and got her own knitting out, it was a sock, a stripy sock. She was using up the left over wool from the Library craft sessions.
The woman’s eye was drawn to Naomi’s basket where the book that had fallen open at the ‘How to Kill a Kelpie’ and suddenly a gust of wind blew up the canal and blew the feather bookmark up into the air. Naomi put down her knitting and chased after it but by the time she reached the bank it had floated into the middle and was starting to drift. Naomi was keen to get it back – that feather she knew was an Eagle feather and an Eagle was an endangered species and a full grown feather was rare – to be honest she was more interested in the mystery feather than in the book of Myths and Legends.
Naomi resolved to follow the floating feather but she needed her basket. She returned to the Lock to the woman who was knitting the big toe. As she bent down to pick up her basket she noticed that the woman had been kind enough to replace her half knitted sock in her basket next to the book.
“You’ll be needing this my dear…” she whispered and slipped a second book, a slim book a booklet into Naomi’s basket.
Naomi could just make out an X and a 5 and a 2 on the cover as she slipped the cover over the basket, she had no time to read any further if she was to follow the feather. Naomi waved her thanks and walked quickly up the canal. As she passed the Pizzeria, she glanced at the sign:
“Don’t overlook the humble prawn”
Naomi giggled, she’d past the restaurant many times but not noticed the sign before. She reckoned that the feather would have stopped at the next set of lock gates and she could try and fish it out with a knitting needle and sure enough it was waiting for her caught in some waterweed. Naomi shuffled cautiously along the great wooden beam that dissected the canal and got down on her hands and knees the better to stretch out and reach the feather, but her arms just weren’t long enough so she turned back to get her basket perched on the top of the beam to pull out a needle and plop! The basket fell into the canal, she reached out to rescue her basket SPLASH! Naomi grabbed the basket and sank to the bottom of the canal, she stood on the bottom knee deep in mud her long hair was swirling around head and then she realised that the lock gates were opening and with the force of the water she was washed out into the next stretch of the canal.
Now Naomi was good at swimming and she had no fear of water, but that basket acted like an anchor, it was dark and cold down there so she stood still and started to feel around her…her hand touched a cold something rough and bumpy like an iron surface. She felt along the sides to try and discover what it was. It seemed to her that this was a long tube, pointed at its end like a giant bullet, but who would need a bullet this big? Then she remembered that the factories that used to line the banks of the canal, The Falkirk Iron Foundry. The Carron Works had all been turned over to making bombs, munitions in The First World War.
Crikey! Perhaps this was a bomb or a giant shell? Her hands were trembling now but then they touched a smooth wheel the shape of the water stopcock under her kitchen sink, but this one was the size of a car steering wheel. She grabbed it with both hands and she turned it, it was heavy, it was rusty but Naomi was strong. With a rush of bubbles as a circular hatch opened and Naomi slid inside. Under the hatch there was another wheel, she slammed it shut and turned it, closing the hatch behind her to keep out the canal water.
Once inside she could hear ticking and a single red light blinked inside this giant iron tube. There was a forest of wires and pipe work that led to rows of switches and the pipes that lined the tube were pink with rust, they dripped and hissed and Naomi felt like she was in the belly of an Iron Giant. She felt around her, flicked a few switches and more lights came on, she discovered some writing on the inside of the tube; a name and a date:
“THE SHRIMP 1954”
Maybe she wasn’t inside a bomb? Maybe this was a submarine? If so she desperately needed some instructions…then she remembered the strange woman’s booklet and reached inside her basket and pulled it out:
X52 INSTRUCTIONS
She read it from cover to cover and located the ‘on’ switch, the dials and motors started up and she discovered that there was a periscope and another switch turned on a searchlight outside the sub like the headlamps on a car and if she took a look out of the periscope, she could see the underwater canal world outside. The Shrimp was soon moving through the murky water, she tried to remember how far it was to the next lock gate – she didn’t want to ram it.
How fast can a cast iron shrimp travel anyhow? She wondered.
She returned to the instruction manual to try and find out how to surface but everything she tried just made the shrimp submarine go faster – the needle on a gauge read 5.5 knots but Naomi wasn’t sure what Knots meant in terms of Horsepower. There was nothing for it so she decided to go with the flow, she looked through the periscope and she was amazed what was at the bottom of that canal.
A triangular men-at-work sign was stuck in the mud, although it might have been a man struggling to put up an umbrella? Shopping trolleys, old bikes, a birdcage with a parrot long extinct, even a gun floated past, an old pistol with a white hilt, the trigger glinted gold! Car tyres, cartwheels, a wagon wheel from an old Stagecoach! The further the midget submarine travelled the more ancient the rubbish seemed to become and then she saw it – a giant eye looking back at her directly into the periscope and it did not blink.
She brought the X52 to a halt, she cranked a brass handle and found that she could move the periscope 360 degrees and whilst she stayed still around her pranced ghost horses their manes and tails sparked and their muscular limbs glowed outlined against the black water. Wow! They were strong horses, they were big horses they must be Clydesdales Naomi thought, horses that used to pull the barges along the canals or pull the carts in the town. But then a third horse joined in their playful dance, but this was no workhorse, this was bigger and this horse had a silver harness on and this horse’s eyes were wild, Naomi was transfixed she had never seen such a beautiful beast… it opened its mouth, its yellow teeth and screamed…
Suddenly the submarine shot to the surface, the wheel above her head turned and Naomi looked up to see a full moon shining down on her, then a face peering down into the submarine hatch and a strong hand pulled Naomi out of the craft and she found herself sitting on the same lock gate where she had met the woman that evening. An owl hooted and she heard a bubbling sound she looked down to see The Shrimp – her red rust-bucket of a submarine sinking to the bottom of the canal, its shape glowing with phosphorescence.
Naomi turned to thank her rescuer, a young man with dark wet hair and round his neck she noticed a thick silver chain glinted in the moonlight.
“Goodness what’s your name and where do you come from?” Naomi asked
“Oh I’m not from anywhere, I’m a traveller, and my friends call me The Duke”
“ Well thank you very much Mr Duke for fishing me out of the canal!” Naomi replied.
“What are you doing, I mean where are you staying tonight? – You can come and stay in my garden if you want, I’ve got a tent and then you can continue on to… on to…tomorrow?”
“Aye, right.” He picked up his old leather saddlebag.
Naomi wondered how he could live out of just one bag. She put up her tent in the garden, ordered take away pizza and had hoped to sit in the garden and listen to his stories but she was tired. She made him a hot water bottle and gave him a pillow and a sleeping bag. As she wished him goodnight she noticed his necklace, it fascinated her, the links were thick and square she had never seen anything like it before.
She took her library book to bed, she didn’t expect to get further than a few pages before her eyes closed but as she read Scottish Myths and Legends she understood who he was, what he was, the traveller, The Duke
An owl hooted as Naomi tiptoed out into the garden, the stranger in the tent was snoring strangely a sort of whinnying sound. She quietly opened the zip of the tent. The man inside was sleeping his mane of hair spread out on the pillow she’d given him and it was still wet…he turned over onto his stomach and Naomi noticed that he had a feather tucked behind his ear, the eagle feather she had followed! The clasp of the silver chain around his neck was within her grasp – Naomi knew what she had to do – she had read the instructions – she knelt down and undid the clasp with a click and the chain slithered into her hands – it was icy cold to the touch and then she watched as the stranger shape-shifted, out of the sleeping bag his neck started to stretch out and his shoulders grew broader and his long arms lengthened, his elbows and knees twisted around and his hands and feet became silver hooves. With a flick of his magnificent mane he leapt through the tent door jumped the hedge and galloped away. All that was left of the stranger was the eagle feather left on the pillow.
The next morning Naomi was smiling as she walked to work. Everybody complemented her on her new silver necklace, everyone in the Staff Room at tea break wanted to touch it and it was oh so cold to the touch!
“Where did you get such and unusual chain?” Vikki asked.
“I found it in the canal, I dropped my knitting and fell head over heels…SPLASH!”
Naomi told them all about her adventure in the giant shrimp and her colleagues laughed, others raised an eyebrow because Naomi had always been a good storyteller. Vikki noticed the book that she had been reading was still on the staff room table. The lucky feather she had found in her own hair a few nights before was still sticking out of it. She picked it up and opened the book at the feather, it marked a different chapter: ‘How to Capture a Kelpie’.
A set of instructions followed…a silver bridal…magic power’… Vikki knew that Naomi was one of the smartest Librarians and if anyone could tame a Kelpie it would be Naomi, for a Kelpie’s power lies in its silver bridal and that was now in Naomi’s possession.