Welcome to this week’s installment of many micro stories, ranging in length from 100 words to 500 words.
With each story we hope to deliver a little whimsy into the lives of our readers.
THE NOKKEN
With one final note, the music faded away. Lilja was crying. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard something so beautiful. She stepped forward into the ankle-deep water…
***
The music came to an end with one heartbreaking note that faded into the silence. Lilja realized that she’d been crying. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard something so lovely. She—where was she?
Barefoot, stumbling, wading up to her knees in the mud-thickened waters of the swamp. Insects whined through the stick-sweet air, heavy with the scents of spruce and bog myrtle and the dankness of still waters. What was she doing out here? She’d never known herself to sleepwalk, but clearly, she had. Her feet were numb and her nightclothes soaked through. How far had she gone from home?
Lilja reached out into the dark water, until her hands met something rough and prickly and blessedly solid; a tree branch. Lilja followed the branch up to the base of the tree, hauling herself out of the water and onto a muddy bank. She’d have to wait there until dawn; she’d never find her way home in the dark. But her teeth chattered, and Lilja wished for warmer clothes. Dawn couldn’t come fast enough.
Ah, there! A light, peering through the strands of mossy tree branches. Lilja relaxed. But it wasn’t the sun—this light was moving, coming closer. Now she could see—it was a man, carrying a lantern in one outstretched arm and something she couldn’t make out tucked under the other. He was a strange looking man, with long hair like water reeds pouring from an oversized hat. Lilja started to call out to him, but the words caught in her throat. He had looked right at her, known to find her there. But his eyes were not human eyes; they were too large, gleaming like moonlit lakes.
The man carefully hung the lantern from a tree branch and revealed the bundle under his arm; a violin, carved from dark wood. The man with the lake lit eyes put a bow to the strings and began to play…
***
With one last, haunting note, the music faded away. Lilja realized she’d been crying. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard such a beautiful song. She—where was she? Barefoot, stumbling, wading up to her chest in the cold waters of the swamp…
Jennifer Monsen works as a music therapist at a psychiatric hospital by day. By night, she is a writer with a bent towards the strange and the fantastic. Her first love is storytelling in all its forms; her second love is pizza. She was chased down by an escaped ostrich at age five, which is less an explanation for her life and more a snapshot of how it’s going. Find her at https://jentellingstories.blogspot.com.
If you enjoyed this story you can find it and more in the Hawthorn & Ash anthology.
Iron Faerie Publishing 