Nøkken: A Halloween story

By Jeff Keenan
Reader Contributor

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. 

The rooms are all made up and the beds creased and damp. Her friends and family have forgotten her and 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, 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. Somehow, I felt it necessary, somehow, that I make my way to her — to care for her or whatever it might be. I’ve always been one to take care of others over myself — you’ve seen the scars and can attest to that. 

This is the misfortune of the gifted and the cursed: to be welcomed into the cold and the unpleasant without regard to the damage done. Anyway, I’m too damaged now to go back, so I hardly think about it anymore. 

Do you? 

Maybe I’ll never know what you really feel.  

There is no trail to the frosted shores of her waters. I had to bring thick gloves and a piece of wood from the ruins of 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 myself in layers of reindeer skin and slept the night in the airs — my fathers would be greatly pleased to see my courage and my fortitude. 

To tell the 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 inward breath and dripping wet with each exhalation. 

I felt more than alone. 

My sleep was hardly sleep at all — and my thoughts blended with near-dreams and grew progressively strange as the night wore me into exhaustion and confusion. My near-dreams carried my mind along the surrounding fields and hills on the back of one of your father’s Dølehest purebreds — it all seemed quite real and made me feel as though I was perhaps nearing a breakdown of my mental faculties, 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. Somehow, I altered, becoming beautiful in her presence and the world was magnificent.  

The pond rippled. 

The grass tickled the lynx. 

A bird kissed the mirror and laughed.  

The bird could see the bald spots on my head. 

And the bird got knocked about by the hail stones coming down.

I ran in search of shelter — any shelter. I paused at the base of a tree and tried to accept the pain, but to no avail. I knew that this hail might be the end of me. So, I ran. 

She heard my feet on her frosty shores and she tickled the lynx with her grass and the lynx bit  off my long nose.

I awoke, again, still in the near-dream, and found your father’s Dølehest purebred lying next to me in the tent, bleeding to death and whinnying.

When I awoke — for real this time — the tent was empty and it was hailing outside. 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 back then — when things got intense or loud or too many people were around. We knew Nøkken better than anyone, in those days at Skyggesjøen. 

Nøkken was very unpopular, but so were we. 

She didn’t care for anyone or anything. 

Even for those who rattled her cage or impressed her, Nøkken did not care. So, Nøkken one day commanded our teacher, Miss Andreassen, to put objects into her various holes — which many of us had never heard of before. After that, Nøkken vanished from school. 

She was a legend. 

No one dared to outdo her. 

She was unbeatable: to take things further than that just wasn’t right. 

Then Nøkken, or so was told, traveled north and was never seen in Trælnes again. 

You have probably forgotten her, haven’t you? Everyone does. Even I did for a time. But if you close your eyes and tune in, you might see her there in your mind’s eye.   

Nøkken lived in the woods behind her stepfather’s home all through that spring and summer; it was the best time of her life. Magic occurred. She hunted and thanked the animals for their lives and their nutrients and for making her stomach stop its painful call. Learning to live off of the plants was the worst. She threw up often and blacked out for a period and came to with her lips covered in thick mucus and yellow foam. 

Nøkken changed that year, for the worse, and never went back to the way she was back when we loved her. When she was young and ready to kill for you. It was back then that we were able to love. I wish we could go back to that time sometimes. 

She died out there in the forest. Stranding herself in the mess of the world.   

Even I forgot about her for many years. Until one autumn morning, I remembered her and had no choice but to find her.   

I could hear here crying that night, camped out by her unnamed shores. She sobbed deeply for hours and I would have helped her, had I known her whereabouts or the direness of her condition. All I could do, I concluded, was to await the approaching day and to search for her in the light. And so I lay in the darkness of my tent, soaking in drips of dampness and wrapped in skins, listening to the altered cadence of her wails — something had changed in her, I had no doubt of this. Her voice sounded thicker, heavier. She was once like the ballerina, Giselle, in love and nearly mad, ready to break at any moment. And like that handsome lord to his beloved Giselle, you lied to Nøkken and drove her over the edge of madness and into the abyss — this unnamed lake to be specific. 

There was nothing to be done for her, so I lay there waiting and waiting for the dawn, listening to Nøkken as she waded through the mucky, grassy water, sobbing and crying out at sparse intervals. I sighed, wondering what I’d had in mind when I’d come up here, but could only remember the sweet smell of her hair in the springtime, that spring we came to Trælnes upon your father’s elegant Dølehest purebreds. It was the first and last time I ever felt elegant in my life. 

Heads turned when we rode through the streets and smiles abounded and we felt happy to have arrived. I saw Nøkken first. She was so beautiful then, with her twiggy arms and legs and silky black hair down her back and dresses and ribbons and scarlet flowers in her hair and a circle of giggling little girls mocking her and her dark beauty. 

I eventually gave in and crawled out of my tent and onto the shore and called her name. There was no response for some time. A frog jumped into the water. Shivering birds sang their morning songs. The shy sun peaked its head over the horizon, and, as it did, I saw a glow just beneath the surface of the water. The swamp grass and algae obscured my view of her. I’d not seen her in years. I was anxious to see what had become of her. 

Lisolette Westergaard claims that Nøkken ran away in the middle of September, when the weather was fair. 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 the letter anyway. The original, written on thick parchment in a desperate and deeply pressed hand, has vanished:

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. I set the slop-bucket by the pig-pen, where the pigs cannot reach it — they will be dead when you return and you, in turn, will likely starve this coming winter. My hatred is thick as your mother’s crystalized honey. So, do not forgive me, please.    

All of this was my fault, though you have told me otherwise in order to appease my shattered nerves; there is no way around it: I have forced myself into this mold and will have to live in it for the rest of this wretched existence. I told you that it was your fault the last time we spoke, and it was in all earnestness that I spoke these words, but upon further reflection I have concluded that it was me, everything was.

I hate myself more than you could ever possibly hate me. I don’t blame you. My hatred for you is somehow blended with this sickening longing and love for you. Do not ever forgive me, please!

Your heart will love another sometime and they will love you and everything will be better for you and your heart will warm again.

You have already forgotten me and our love has grown numb with the vacancy of it. I am so full of hatred and I will surely sink.

Love and Hate,

Nøkken

I have left you and Nøkken out of my published memoirs explicitly to protect you and her from shame. And, once you have heard the rest of my story, you will understand that we must continue to keep this situation secret in order to protect my family’s name. 

To you, however, I must make my confessions — as you confessed to me, before these things were lost in your memory. My confession might seem silly to you, and at any other time in my life I would have laughed at myself for believing any of this, but now I understand the power that she wields and I am, like you once were, taken by her: I love Nøkken and she forever carries the unseen of my soul. 

Do not laugh, for she has carried the unseen of your soul for many years. 

I have sensed it there. I make no mistake in concluding that you must have loved her once and that since you appear to have no memory of your love for her, that part of you must be missing now. You might remain unaware of this missing piece, until the day of your death, when the lynx shall travel to you, to return what you have lost. 

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 went back under the water and ripples swayed the cloudy sky and the lily-pads and the swamp grass. I shivered at the thought of her skinny arms and legs in that icy water. The ripples faded and the clouds reformed on the mirrored surface. 

A pair of king eider with their strange heads and their black-and-white wings took off with a splash and a flutter. Stepping away, I called out to her again, Nøkken? My breath swirled in the morning sun, partially hidden behind a grey blanket of cloud. There seemed to be no one there. She did not wish to see me — or, I thought, maybe she didn’t remember me. 

Then, as if in a trance, I removed 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 soon they throbbed. My skin tightened and my teeth chattered. My heart raced as the water rose past my aching knees. Then, without warning, I lost my footing and fell into the cold. 

Then, as if in a trance, I removed 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 soon they throbbed. My skin tightened and my teeth chattered. My heart raced as the water rose past my aching knees. Then, without warning, I lost my footing and fell into the cold. 

Her clammy hands pulled me into the deep and kissed my mouth, tonguing my cheek. 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 exposed, afloat over 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 began lowering herself 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 there, 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 with scoliosis — smiling my cleft-lipped smile, constantly shifting from one clubbed foot to the other — 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. 

Jeff Keenan was the first-place winner in the Reader’s inaugural 208 Fiction contest in January 2022, in which any and all writers were invited to submit a work of fiction totaling exactly 208 words for consideration by a panel of local judges. Awards included $150 in cash for first place, and second and third place finishers received gift certificates courtesy of the Reader and its advertisers. Dates and details for the 2023 edition of 208 Fiction will be announced at a later date. Read all of the winning 208 Fiction pieces for 2022 at sandpointreader.com/208-fiction-2022-contest-results.