Ondine

At supper time an ondine’s narrow feet made dark tracks on the hearth. Like the heart of a yellow fruit was the fire’s heat, but they rubbed together quite blue with the cold. The sandy hem of her skirt dripped on the floor. She sat there with a silvered cedar knot for a low stool; and I sat opposite, my lips and eyelids hot in the heat of the fire. Piling on dry bark, seeing that no steam went up from her dark dress, I felt uneasiness as though firm sand had shifted under my feet in the wash of a wave. I brought her soup from the stove and she would not eat, but sat there crying her cold tears, her blue lips quivering with cold and grief. She blamed me for a thief, saying that I had burned a piece of wood the tide washed up. And I said, No, the tide had washed it out again; and even so, a piece of sodden wood was not so rare as polished agate stones or ambergris. She stood and wrung her hair so that the water made a sudden splash on the round rug by the door. I saw her go across the little footbridge to the beach. After, I threw the knot on the hot coals. It fell apart and burned with a white flash, a crackling roar in the chimney and dark smoke. I beat it out with a poker in the soft ash. Now I am frightened on the shore at night, and all the phosphorescent swells that rise come towards me with the threat of her dark eyes with a cold firelight in them; and crooked driftwood writhes in dry sand when I pass. Should she return and bring her sisters with her, the withdrawing tide would leave a long pool in my bed. There would be nothing more of me this side the melting foamline of the latest wave.