The Realm of the Naiad

The Realm of the Naiad

... an excerpt from my novel, working title

Find the River

Diana Morrison

The Realm of the Naiad

The chill wind danced a riot upon his nakedness; the pull of the ebbing tide dragging him with it as it hastened to the sea. 

He felt incredibly weary. All the fight had gone out of him and his brain was numb, almost desensitised. Surely, this must be his last ride. 

Twilight was descending as he floated, face to the skies, in the inky flow of icy water. Voices hallooed him from the banks as strange, incredulous children dressed in Dickensian clothes, pointed and howled with glee and their equally strange, disapproving parents pelted him with stale bread crumbs and maggoty apples, glaring accusingly at him as if he were some kind of sordid peep show. 

He was beyond caring. His greedy eyes took in his surroundings with a despairing sorrow, believing that he was seeing the mortal world for the last time. 

The smooth deep waters whisked him around a bend into shallower rapids strewn with jagged rocks that protruded from the riverbed and jolted his shattered body as he was forced over them. He tried but failed not to see the little people that would, under normal circumstances, haul his sanity into question once more, as they ran rings around his fading grasp on reality. He looked beyond them into the preternatural realm. A white mist like gossamer ribbons swirled around and clung to everything it touched. 

He knew she was there, taunting and teasing him with her ubiquity. Betrayed, as she was by woven fibrils of red hair, gone in the blink of an eye, or a wistful sigh, caught on the wind and wafted towards him in an echo of his own silent despair. Oh yes, she was there, a slinking Succubus, waiting to strike. 

The moon climbed lazily above him struggling from time to time to break free of the clouds and frothing them up into a great celestial banana milkshake. The trees crept to the water’s edge, their heads bent conspiratorially. He could hear their sighs of disapproval as they nodded and whispered in hisses of ancient wisdom. 

The pull of the unknown drew him further in, slipping through lymphatic shadows on glassy water. A phantasmagoria of outlandish little people appeared on the bank laughing and dancing like it was Midsummer’s Eve. The whole of the ghostly underworld seemed to be out watching him, charting his progress through the damp and chilly moonlight on a night that sounded only of water. 

Armed with magic, she nimbly kept pace with his swiftly moving body as it continued its wild ride to the sea. She made no sound and yet he was acutely aware of her presence. His need to see her tore from his lethargy. He tried to force his body into drastic action, splashing and spluttering as he grasped at reeds and rotted tree roots in an attempt to slow himself down enough to haul himself out of the accelerating torrent. In his frantic desperation to break free, he hit a wickedly serrated rock that pierced his thigh, stinging him with a familiar pinprick. His will and borrowed strength left him, his muscles melted and his mind went on to half-power. 

She watched and waited for her opportunity. She smiled with satisfaction and stepped gingerly in moon-bathed, unabashed nakedness across the river to the opposite bank where he now lay. She watched the dying leaves tumble from the tree, under which he lay, covering his nakedness in a carpet of crunchy foliage. His eyes remained closed as she tiptoed closer to him. Noiselessly, she sat down beside him and brought her sparkling lips down to his face. A mischievous smile flicked across them as she leant forwards, planted a lacewing kiss on the tip of his nose, and felt him jump. 

The sweetness and warmth of her breath on his face pervaded his senses and his eyes flickered open. He could not hold her gaze. He felt humble in the face of such a vision of loveliness. She was the most beautiful thing that he had ever seen, but then she always had been. 

She gazed benignly at him; familiar and comforting to him yet the dormant power to raise the most fearful feelings of panic, dread and choking anxiety still lurked only half suppressed behind the steel grey eyes that shone in the moonlight. Her skin was creamy white and as smooth as a photograph. His eyes rested on the small, pert breasts, well within his reach. He wanted to touch her. He wanted her with such an aching intensity. He had never wanted anything so badly. 

The invitation was smouldering in her eyes. 

  ‘Touch me,’ they tempted him. ‘Stroke my hair. Caress my body. Have me. I am yours.’ 

He lay, caught in a precarious place between agony and ecstasy, the confusion of his inner child spreading like bindweed. She trailed her luscious, silky red hair across his face and down his chest, brushing aside the leaves, her eyes dilated with surreal eroticism. 

  ‘Touch me,’ her body shimmered once again, as she drew her hair across his belly smiling at his look of remarkable innocence and undoubted fear. 

He stared back at her, his eyes wide with longing and uncertainty, his lips parted slightly; He shook his head. He was too weary. He was too afraid. A strangled sob escaped as she watched the teardrops rise and slide from the corners of his eyes. He turned his gaze away from her and screwed his eyes shut; praying desperately for it all to end as his deep sobs overcame him and convulsed his failing body. 

Her disapproval was absolute. He felt her fingers spitefully pinching his skin and as he forced open his eyes, a wailing alarm screeched through his head, almost splitting it. Her mouth was open and the sound was coming from it on a wavy, luminous lime green stave of semibreves. 

There was movement around him; her court had arrived to deal with the traitorous fool. He watched them incredulously; tiny folk dressed in brown and cream, carrying torches of fire. There were hundreds of them scurrying from their Daisy houses, their black eyes glinting malevolently. They formed a cordon around him waiting for the sound to abate. Her mouth snapped shut and he watched in fearful fascination as she reeled the stave back in and wound it around her finger allowing the semibreves to fall upon him like a shower of golden coins. For a moment, there was stillness and peace. He held his breath. With one almighty shriek the tiny people were upon him, pulling out handfuls of his hair, scratching and tearing him, biting him, stamping and pinching him, pulling at him, poking him, sweeping the leaves from his body in an attempt to find and claim a piece of the treasure. He lay in bewildered, terrified silence, unable to move, as they desecrated and abused him. 

Eventually she snapped her fingers and the demons stood aside. The stave unfurled itself, flew from her finger like a spider’s web, and bound him tightly like a stricken fly. Painstakingly, they hauled him to the brink and screeched with glee as they rolled him back into the vociferous river; setting him adrift, face down. 

Her sobs filled his head and he could take no more. His body opened up and let the water flood him until his brain was swamped and he knew no more.