Nathan Hill - The Nix

“Stupid,” she says, staring at her feet, climbing the path that leads steeply uphill and over the ridge ahead, thinking that coming here was stupid, looking for the old house was stupid, even her clothing is stupid — little white flat-soled shoes totally inappropriate for hiking over tundra, and a thin shirt she hugs around herself because even though it is summer, it is brisk. Just a few more stupid choices in a life full of them, she thinks. It was stupid to come here. It was stupid to get back in contact with Samuel, whom she felt responsible for after abandoning him to Henry, which was also stupid. No, that wasn’t stupid, but marrying Henry in the first place was stupid, and leaving Chicago was stupid. And on and on it goes as Faye continues up the hill, tracing back her long line of bad decisions. What had started it? What put her on the path to this stupid life? She doesn’t know. When she looks back on it, all she sees is that old familiar desire to be alone. To be free of people and their judgments and their messy entanglements. Because whenever she got tangled up with someone, disaster always followed. She got tangled up with Margaret in high school only to become a town pariah. And with Alice in college only to be arrested and plunged into violence and mayhem. And with Henry only to wreck the child they had together.

She had been relieved at the airport when Samuel’s name appeared on the no-fly list. She feels bad about this now, but it’s true. She felt these opposing emotions: joy that Samuel no longer seemed to hate her, and relief that he wasn’t coming with her. For how could she have endured the entire flight to London with him — a whole ocean of questions? Never mind traveling with him and living with him wherever they ended up (he seemed to prefer Jakarta, for some reason). His need was too much — it was always too much — for her to bear.

How could she tell Samuel that she was going to Hammerfest because of a silly ghost story? The one she heard as a child, the story her father told her about the nisse on the night of her first panic attack. The story had stayed with her all this time, and when Samuel mentioned Alice’s name, she was reminded of something her old friend told her long ago: The way to get rid of a ghost is to take it home.

Which is stupid, such superstition. “Stupid, stupid,” she says.

It’s as if she really is haunted. All this time she thought maybe her father had brought some curse from the old country, some ghost. Only now she thinks maybe she’s not haunted but rather she’s the one doing the haunting. Maybe the curse is her. Because every time she’s gotten close to someone she has paid for it. And maybe it’s appropriate she’s now here, in the remotest part of the world, alone. Nobody to get tangled up with. No more lives to destroy.

She reaches the top of the ridge lost in thought, brooding on these bitter things, when she becomes aware of a presence. She looks up to see a horse standing in the path, maybe twenty feet ahead, where the ridge begins sloping back downhill to a small valley. She flinches and exclaims a surprised “Oh!” when she sees it, but the horse does not seem startled. It is not moving. It is not eating. She does not seem to have interrupted anything. It’s eerie — like it’s been expecting her. The horse is white and tensely muscled. Its flanks occasionally shiver. Big round black eyes that seem to consider her wisely. A bit in its mouth, reins around its neck, no saddle. It stares at her as if it’s just asked an important question and is waiting for her to respond.

“Hello,” she says. The horse is not afraid of her, nor is it friendly. It is simply that Faye occupies its whole attention at the moment. It’s actually a little creepy, the way it seems to be waiting for her to do something or say something, though she does not know what. She takes a step toward it, and the horse has no reaction. She takes another step. Still nothing.

“Who are you?” she says, and even as she says it the answer bursts into her head: It’s a nix. After all these years, it has appeared to her, here, on a ridge high above the frigid harbor, in Norway, in the northernmost city in the world. She has found herself in a fairy tale.

The horse looks unblinkingly straight at her as if to say, I know who you are. And she feels herself drawn to it, wanting to touch it, to rub her hand along its ribs and bound onto it and let it do whatever it wishes to do. It would be a fitting end, she thinks.

She comes closer, and even as she reaches up to pet the beast’s face, still it does not flinch. Still it waits. She touches it on that spot between its eyes, that spot she always thinks will be softer than it really is, the skull so close to the surface there, all thin fur and bone.

“Were you waiting for me?” she says into its ear, which is gray and black and flecked silver and looks like a porcelain teacup. She wonders if she can leap onto its back, if she can manage the jump. That would be the hardest part. The next part would be simple. If the horse began galloping, it would reach the nearby cliff in maybe a dozen strides. The fall down to the water would take only seconds. It amazes her that after such a long life, the end could come that quickly.

Then Faye hears a sound, a voice carried on the wind from the valley below. A woman is down there walking toward her, yelling something in Norwegian. And beyond her, just past her, is a house: a small square thing with a deck in back that faces the water, a path down to a rickety wooden dock, a big garden out front, a few spruce trees, a small pasture for a couple of goats, a couple of sheep. The house is gray and weathered, but in the places that are protected from the wind — under the eaves and behind window shutters — Faye can see the lingering color of old paint: salmon-red.

She almost falls over at the sight. It’s not how she imagined it, but still she recognizes it. It’s familiar, as if she’d been here many times before.

When the woman reaches her, Faye can see she’s handsome and young, maybe Samuel’s age, with the same striking features she sees all the time in this country: fair skin, blue eyes, long straight hair that delicate color halfway between blond and cotton. She’s smiling and saying something that Faye does not understand.

“This must be your horse,” Faye says. She feels self-conscious about using English so presumptuously, but she has no alternative.

The woman does not seem offended, though. She cocks her head at this new information and seems to process it for a moment, then says, “British?”

“American.”

“Ah,” she says, nodding, as if this solves some important mystery. “The horse wanders off sometimes. Thank you for catching him.”

“I didn’t really catch him. He was standing here when I found him. It’s more like he caught me.”

The woman introduces herself — her name is Lillian. She’s wearing gray herringbone pants of some sturdy-looking material, a light blue sweater, a wool scarf that looks homemade. She’s the very picture of unassuming Nordic style — restrained and elegant. Certain women can wear a scarf effortlessly. Lillian takes the horse by the reins and together they all begin walking back down toward the house. Faye wonders if this might be a distant relative, a cousin, for this is almost certainly the place. So many of the details match, even if the version her father told was exaggerated: not a field in the front yard but rather a garden; not a long line of spruces but only two; not a great pier over the water but instead a small flimsy-looking dock perhaps large enough for a canoe. Faye wonders whether he was self-consciously lying and puffing it up, or if, in the years since he left, in his imagination, the house really did grow in its proportions and majesty.