Aunt Nessie would be furious if she could see her nephews fight like this. And so was Macey. Her brothers were idiots. Bruce had Jerry by the neck and was squeezing a lot tighter than he should have been. And what could she do about it? Not a damn thing. Not with the stupid bind that stopped her from using magic. It was the one condition that her father had given when she’d said she wanted to come on land. Well, that and the two buffoons she called brothers. Luckily, he’d bound them too, so at least they weren’t about to start spurting water at each other. Or shift.

They wouldn’t be able to stay in their kelpie forms for long without suffocating. She shivered, imagining the headlines that would come from the dead, oddly hued horses whose coats shimmered, not unlike when light hits the surface of the water. Oh, wait, that’s exactly what it was like.

It was times like this Macey questioned her decision. But it was tradition for her people to come on land when they turned eighteen, and it’d been three years since then. Problem was, she really had no idea what she was actually supposed to do here. Some of the old legends talked of epic quests, and royalty, and men in kilts. So far, she’d seen none of that. Well, she’d seen a man in a kilt. But he had to have been around eighty, and she really didn’t want to think about what was under it. Not. At. All.

Damn. Where was the whisky when she needed it? Oh right. It was behind her brothers. Not a reasonable solution then.

She cupped her face in her hands, not wanting to watch the fight anymore. The only result would be a bruise or two from their stupid game. It likely wouldn’t even resolve what they were fighting over. Knowing them, it’d be something like the last of the stew she’d made for dinner. Maybe she should eat it herself... it wouldn’t go down well, but might teach them a lesson.

Macey pushed back from the table and left the room; she had far better things to do. Maybe she’d curl up with her e-reader, which, unlike the man in the kilt, was something she actually liked about life away from the water. The book she’d been reading the night before was giving her ideas, probably ones that would cause her brothers to murder anyone that laid eyes on her, but she didn’t mind.

She really needed to get herself her own place. Living with her brothers was hard enough below the surface, but, there, she was able to stop their shenanigans with her magic. She was more powerful than the both of them combined, and luckily, they knew that. Up here, their muscled bodies gave them the advantage. She was a measly five foot two in her human form, and while she’d been called pretty, she wasn’t so sure about that herself. Guys would say anything to get women into their beds. And so far, she hadn’t felt tempted by any of the local boys. They were too... Well, just not attractive to her. Too human. Not kelpie enough. She knew that was racist, but she was yet to meet a good looking human man her age. Brownie points if he was wearing a kilt.

Maybe she should move to a city rather than stay in this village. More people, more choice.

In her first year on land, she’d stayed close to the loch, feeling unsafe whenever she got too far away from the water. In her second year, she partied, hard. And now, in her third year since leaving, she was struggling to decide what to do. If she wanted to stay in the human world, she needed to get a job, or go to uni, or do something worthwhile. If she went back to her father, she’d have to behave like a princess again - something she hated. Caught between a rock and a wet place, that was her life. And caught between her brothers, if they didn’t stop fighting.

“Oi!” she called out, but of course they didn’t react, continuing their struggle. “Stop it, or I’ll tell Auntie Nessie!”

The scuffle instantly ended, the mere hint of their Aunt’s name enough. Macey snorted to herself. Of course it was. Aunt Nessie was terrifying, just ask the locals, but she had a heart of gold really, or at least she did for her niece, one of the perks of being the only girl, she guessed.

“You wouldn’t.” Bruce may have mumbled, but his voice was low and the walls were thin, so she heard it all. Damn, she really needed to leave. She sighed, ignoring him. He knew as well as she did that she wouldn’t say anything. That would mean going back to the Loch, which Aunt Nessie never left unless she absolutely had to. Or she was terrorising the local fisherman. Macey sniggered to herself, remembering the last time Nessie had appeared to them. She’d used magic to grow three times her normal size and given one of the fishermen a shock so hard that he fell off his boat.

Macey retreated to her room and started to read. It was a book about humans, but it wasn’t as boring as it sounded. She actually had to laugh a few times while reading. Who knew humans could be so amusing!

Suddenly, the lights went out. She waited a second for them to flicker back to life, but when nothing happened, she got up with a sigh to check if the other rooms were without power as well. The corridor was dark and so was the rest of the house.

“Bruce? Jerry?” she called, but there was no reply. “What’s going on?”

She felt her way along the corridor until she reached where her brothers had been fighting not too long ago. She found the light switch, but when she pressed it, nothing happened. Maybe the fuse had blown, maybe her brothers were in the basement checking it out. That had to be it. They didn’t usually leave without telling her first.

She made her way down into the basement, tripping several times over random things lying on the floor. She was really going to have to tell the boys to clean up after themselves. Just because they had servants underwater, it didn’t mean they could behave the same way on land.

“Hello?” she called out again when she reached the bottom of the stairs. The basement always gave her the creeps. It was an old house and there was a distinct mouldy smell down there. Now, where was that fuse box again? She dimly remembered Jerry showing it to her after a power cut shortly after she moved in. It was probably hidden behind all those boxes...

Bingo! A dim green light signalled her salvation. Well, at least some light, which was a good start. She felt for the switches in the box, but they were all in the correct position. So it wasn’t that after all.

Maybe the power had gone in the entire village?

Starting to feel anxiety creeping up on her, she stumbled back upstairs and opened the main door. “By the fucking waves,” she muttered under her breath as she took in the view - or lack of - before her. A thick mist surrounded the house, making it impossible to see further than a foot or two. Her neighbour’s house was on the other side of the road, but it could have just as well been on another planet. All she could see was white fog. She stretched out a hand and moved it through the mist, creating smokey swirls around her fingers. Did mist always behave like that? And did it always smell like aniseed?

She took a careful step forward into the mist. It was moving gently in the breeze, forming swirls and shapes - until she noticed there was no breeze. It was utterly windless, this wasn’t normal.

“Jerry! Bruce!” she shouted, hating herself for the quiver in her voice. She was the Princess of the loch, she wasn’t supposed to be afraid. But up here on land, she was no more than a mere human. With her magic blocked, she was defenceless.

She took another tentative step - and her foot hit something soft. She bent down, hands extended, until she felt something - someone. Falling on her knees, she shook Jerry’s lifeless body, shouting at him to wake up. He was curled up as if he had been defending himself from something. Seeing her big brother taking on such a vulnerable position made her feel even more afraid.

She felt for his pulse. He was alive, thank the waves. Staying on all fours, she crept forwards until she found Bruce, lying in the same position. He didn’t respond to her calls, nor to being hit (it was worth a try).

What was she to do now? Two unconscious brothers, a mysterious mist and an unknown threat. It sounded like a fairy tale, except that she knew most of them were true. And right now, she definitely didn’t want this to be.

The fog around her began to shift, thickening into the shape of a man. He wasn’t a person in the mist, he was made of mist. Before her eyes, the shape disappeared, leaving her decidedly uneasy.

An old story came to her mind of the fàth-fiata, an old legend her grandmother used to tell during the long nights of winter when the Loch’s surface above them froze. It meant something like magic mist in Gaelic, her nan’s native tongue. The story went that the Immortals used to create fogs to shroud themselves in, hiding from humans during their walks on Earth. Not that her grandmother ever actually explained who the Immortals were. Kelpies didn’t believe in gods. There were stories in which humans were helped by mysterious beings, never knowing who they owed their good fortune to. But there were also tales of the fàth-fiata bringing great harm and evil. Right now, Macey preferred the first version.

But her unconscious brothers didn’t seem to be a sign of a benevolent being coming to visit in the fog.

She needed to get them back into the house. She grabbed Bruce’s shoulders and tried to drag him, but he wouldn’t budge. Curse the genes that made her brothers into giants and Macey into a delicate dwarf. This wasn’t going to work.

She closed her eyes, focusing on the magic locked inside her. She didn’t even need to shift, all she needed was access to her powers and she would easily be able to get them back inside. But no, her father had put a lock on it that she wouldn’t be able to break. As the King of Kelpies, he was the most powerful of them all.

She dug her heels into the ground, pulling on her brother’s shirt, but all she managed to do was rip the fabric. She cursed, with language she’d never use at court. What was she to do?

Suddenly, something she couldn’t see touched her cheek. She looked around, wild-eyed, but the fog and darkness hid anything that may have been out there. She went back to dragging her brother, but she hadn’t managed to get him further than a few inches. There were whispers in the mist that made her cry out in frustration.

“Run,” someone said close to her ear and she whirled around, jumping to her feet, ready to defend her brothers and herself. She wasn’t one to run. She would fight.

With a crack, something hit her head from behind and she felt her legs crumble. She fell, landing on the limp body of her brother.

The last thing she saw were beautiful grey eyes filled with the swirls of the mist around them.