The Nymph

There was a nymph in the basement. Not my basement, my friend’s, beside the washing machine in the tiny crooked room beneath the stairs. I thought it was Narnia, though we would have to crawl into a machine rather than through fur coats, which was a small price to pay for entering Narnia, in my opinion. In the way of dreams I knew it was a nymph, though it looked like a large wolf.  I cannot recall the colour of its eyes, or its teeth.

“Don’t provoke it, Mum says to just move around it,” my friend said in my ear, watching the nymph as we inched toward the tin of Easter candy saved from weeks ago.

It kept its eyes on me, and snarled. I was tempted to respond in kind, but any sound I made was lost among the rushing water that followed its snarl. Its voice was the voice of tides, breaking on a shore, flowing more than ebbing. The disturbance in a glass-still sea.

We grabbed the chocolate tin and tiptoed out of the room, its water-roar still in my ears.

I am afraid to listen to seashells now, to hold them to my ear. Though really the nymph looked almost gentle, in the right kind of light.

Text by Lucie MacAulay