A lone knight hobbles his horse and wanders through the sedge, coming upon a lake blighted with cold-rotten weeds and a thin veneer of slime. The nymph crawls up the bank, her leg blackened with gangrene, her once-beautiful features now death-pale and sagging. Hardly able to lift herself, she offers a sad smile with broken teeth, though her eyes, yellowed and watering, make no attempt to hide their fear and desperation.
‘Hello, handsome stranger,’ the nymph wheezes.
‘Hello, my lady,’ the knight says, looking down at her, his features hidden by his helm.
In some other time, his younger self might have once been enchanted by her unnatural radiance and he may, willingly or no, been led by hand and song to her flowery hollow or the murky depths of the lake. They may once have been intense lovers and natural enemies all at once, but the opportunity for such fiery concoctions has long since past. All the magic has been driven from the world and only sad ghosts of their former selves languish here in its wake, the knight included. Now is the time of masters and stone. The wild and woods have gone.
‘This will be quick,’ says the knight, drawing his sword. All the mercy that he can conjure.
And so he sojourns here, alone and palely loitering. The sedge is withered from the lake and no birds sing.
Paddy Dobson
31st December 2020