Nøkken

         The water is too cold for visitors and she understands your reluctance to visit. Nonetheless, she wishes you would see her. She has promised to fix her hair if you can ever come by.

         You have never come by.

         Her friends and family have forgotten her and have gone their own ways, in search of food, leaving her to pucker and puff up in the water. She pretends she doesn’t mind, but I happen to know that she does.

         I gathered my warmest clothes and traveled north for three days by train, four hours by chartered carriage, and then walked the rest of the way to her lair. I don’t know why I did it – it really should have been you to pay her a visit, but you will not respond to my letters anymore and remain aloof at community gatherings. I felt it necessary that I make my way to her – to care for her or whatever it might be.

         There are no trails to her shores, so, I had to bring thick gloves and a piece of wood from my shed to blaze my way out to her. It was much more work than I had expected and much more work than I had wanted to do and much more work than I have done recently, so my hands grew blistered and split and my arms and legs went floppy and tired by the time the icy moon rose behind the bare branches of her trees.

         The water doesn’t really have a name anymore – though the acclaimed regional scholar, Lisolette Westergaard, claims it retains the archaic name Fagertärn.

         Named or not, no one visits. And Nøkken is lonesome.

         I arrived on a long night, frosty mist twinkled in the moonlight, but Nøkken was nowhere in sight. I pitched my canvas tent and wrapped up in layers of reindeer skin and slept the night in the airs – my father would be greatly pleased to see my courage and my fortitude.

         To tell truth, it was terrible, that night, lying awake and staring at the canvas and cupping my hands in my crotch and breathing into the damp skins – frosted with each breath in and dripping wet with each breath out.

         I felt more than alone.

         My sleep was hardly sleep at all – and my thoughts blended with near-dreams that grew progressively stranger as the night wore me into exhaustion and confusion. My near-dreams carried me along the surrounding fields and hills on the back of one of your father’s Dølehest purebreds – it all seemed too real and I began to fear I was nearing a mental break-down, being exhausted and cold as I was.

         I rode the dark horse across the swampland. Nearing the waters of Fagertärn, we, the dark horse and I, did not tarry. We dove headfirst into the icy water. Blades of cold cut me and sent me into a panic as I dreamed that I awoke in my little tent.

         The cold was unbearable.

         Then I saw Nøkken’s face. She leaned over me and opened her mouth, releasing her pale tongue. I opened my mouth, allowing her to slide down my throat and into my stomach, where she consumed whatever it was that was left inside of me. I pretended to fight, for my own sake, but really had no drive to stop her.

         I then found myself afoot in the moonlight. Nøkken stood before me: those long black locks of hair and those shadow eyes. She was beautiful! To me, she was. She was just as I remembered her. I altered, becoming beautiful in her presence and the world was magnificent. 

         The pond rippled with rain.

         I ran for shelter, any shelter. I paused at the base of a tree and waited, getting wet.

         When I awoke, the tent was empty and it was raining outside and dripping inside. I heard soggy footsteps and breaking twigs and crackling leaves and I shouted, Who’s there?

         She did not respond, but froze in place, dissociating from reality like she always used to. For quite some time, there was nothing but drips of water from the seams of my tent and fitful sleep.

         I could hear her crying that night.

         And I just laid in the dark, wrapped in skins, listening to the altered cadences of her wails. Her voice sounded thicker, heavier.

         I sighed, wondering what I’d hoped for by traveling here, but I could only recall the sweet smell of her hair in the summertime. Remember? When you and I rode along the streets of Trælnes on your father’s Dølehest purebreds? That was the first and last time I ever felt elegant.

         By the time the sky was deep blue, I gave in and crawled out of my tent. Nøkken, I called. There was no response. A frog jumped into the water. Shivering birds sang their morning songs. The sun peaked its head over the horizon, and as it did, I saw a flicker on the water; there was something just beneath the surface. The swamp grass, algae, and pollen obscured my view. I’d not seen her in years, and I was anxious to see what had become of her.

         Lisolette Westergaard claims that Nøkken had run away in the middle of September, when the weather was still temperate. It was during a warm spell that Nøkken ran away and never returned.

         The note she left behind, on her bedside table, was addressed to you – but you have refused to read it. It’s too late to change anything now, but I have included a replica of her letter. The original, written on thick parchment in a desperate and deeply pressed hand, reads as follows:

Do not forgive me, please. It’s in my arms that birds do not sing and it’s in my arms that your heart grows cold, but do not forgive me, please.

All of this was my fault, though you have told me otherwise.

I hate myself more than you could ever possibly hate me.

You will love another sometime and they will love you and everything will be better for you.

You have already forgotten me and our love has grown numb. I am heavy with hate and will surely sink.

Nøkken

         Nøkken? I called across the water. The shine of her wet hair appeared first, followed by her black eyes, staring blankly. It’s me, I said, Emil. I have traveled far to see you. Is that you, Nøkken?

         Her head plunged back into the water and her ripples swayed the lily-pads and swamp grass. I shivered at the thought of her skinny arms and legs.

         A pair of geese took off with a splash. I called out to her again, Nøkken? She did not wish to see me.

         I took off my overcoat and my vest and my shirt and my shoes and my socks and my slacks and my suspenders and my under garments and waded out into the icy water. I can’t explain why. It seemed like my only option. My bare feet were numb before I’d even set foot in the water and now they throbbed. My skin tightened and my teeth chattered. My heart raced as the water rose past my knees. Then, without warning, I lost my footing and fell into the cold.

         Her clammy hands pulled me deep and kissed my mouth. She towed me ashore and cast me out of the lake. I spit up water and coughed and spit up some more and coughed and gagged and kept on in this manner for quite some time, my muscles and joints seizing. I curled up into a ball on the shore.

         And there she appeared before me: now fully above the water, her bare fish-belly white shoulders held high, exposing her naked chest, her twiggy arms, and her albino pubis.

         She gurgled thick water from her mouth as she spoke, Why did you come here? she asked.

         It-t-t’s m-m-me, I sputtered.

         Her eyes – the shadows of what they once were – smoldered and scowled. You’re nothing, she groaned. I felt hot blood rushing to the edges of my skin; she excited purpose into my aching body.

         I stood, shivering wildly. She lowered back into the water and I panicked. Wait! I shouted, I’m Emil. Y-y-your friend, ah-huh-huh-at Skyggesjøen!

         She paused, halfway in the water. Her gaze, like a heavenly choir, twisted butterflies inside me – just as it did back then! And suddenly, I forgot the cold.

         You’re not Emil, she spurted the last of the water from her lungs.

         I am, I assured her. I’m Emil.

         Her hair dripped algae as she drifted out of the swamp; her pitched forward hips protruded and stretched her ivory skin; her twiggy knees shook and her long, twisting toes bent at the surface of the water. She trembled in the open air.

         I was shaking uncontrollably. I put my hands out in invitation for her to join me. She refrained and simply floated, like a drunken marionette, dripping and emaciated.

         Then, she almost smiled at me.  

         I can only imagine how I must have looked: hunched to one side – due to my scoliosis – smiling my cleft-lipped smile, constantly shifting from foot to foot – due to these painfully clubbed feet – and lastly, wearing that long comb-over, wet and barely concealing my psoriasis.

         Somehow, in that moment by her unnamed shores, I felt beautiful.

         And when she smiled her grey toothed smile, I knew that happy days had come again.