Source of Vengeance: Nökken

The Landvik children were asleep, safe in their beds when the playing began. The calling song of a fiddle seemed to be coming from the direction of the bay. Long slow notes swirling through the air attempting to wake them from their slumber. Kristian awoke first. Confused, the young boy rubbed his eyes and stood, tiptoeing towards the corner bed in which his younger brother, Aldrik slept. The younger boy was concealed beneath his blanket, which he’d fisted in his hands as he slept, curled in on himself and facing the wall. Kristian nodded, noticing the boy’s closed eyes and rising chest. Aldrik was asleep, snoring softly with each breath. He would not awaken any time soon.

Carefully, Kristian moved across the small room he and his younger brother shared and towards the door. His sister was sleeping on the couch where she’d resided since outgrowing her younger brothers. She too, was awake. “Lisbeth?” Kristian questioned, stepping out of the doorway.

She did not answer.

“Lisbeth?”

Again, there was no response. Confused, Kristian walked towards her, laying a hand on the back of the moth-eaten couch as he approached. Her soft brown eyes were wide, glazed over, as if entranced. Her features were blank, devoid of emotion or thought, which was strange. Lisbeth was an unusually bright girl with a large smile and expressive features. And yet, here she was, all of the beautiful emotion that Kristian had always associated with her, gone.

“Lisbeth?” Kristian questioned once more.

Slowly, she rose from her seat, the soft rhythm of the fiddle quickening as she did so. Scared and confused, Kristian reached out to her. She seemed to look right through him, but not really see him. It was as if she were focused on something way out in the distance, except there was nothing there. He’d looked.

Silently, Lisbeth stepped, walking at a brisk pace towards the door.

Kristian tugged on her nightdress in an attempt to stop her. “Lisbeth, stop. What are you doing?”

She seemed to not even notice, taking her next step and continuing on even as her brother tugged on her gown and begged for her to stay. She moved across the small family room and towards the wooden door to their home. Kristian moved all around the room at a frantic pace, quickly shoving on his shoes and pulling on his coat. “Lisbeth, wait!”

Again it was as if she hadn’t heard him.

“Kristian?”

The older boy turned to see his younger brother standing in the door to their bedroom. The young boy’s deep brown eyes were bleary with sleep and his hair was ruffled. His sleep clothes were wrinkled and buttoned lopsidedly, hanging off of him oddly as the clothes were much too large for a boy his size. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes and yawning he looked at his older siblings with confusion and uncertainty. “Do you hear the music too?”

It was all Kristian could do to nod as Lisbeth slipped out the door and he hurried to follow after.

“Wait!” Aldrik called, shoving his small feet into his boots and rushing out after them.

“Lisbeth! Kristian! Wait for me!”

“Shhh!” Kristian hushed, holding the smaller boy back and away from Lisbeth.

“Something’s wrong with her.”

Wide-eyed the young boy looked up at his older brother with fear and confusion as a fiddle continued to play in the background. So Kristian did as his sister once did for him, he held his younger brother’s hand and told him all would be alright. They would be okay. And when the younger boy shivered in the autumn wind he gave him his jacket.

Together they followed Lisbeth, clambering along after her as fast as their short legs could carry them. She was taller than them, slender and beautiful with soft brown eyes and soft features. The pale moonlight danced across her skin bathing her in shades of shining silver. Her white linen nightdress billowed around her as the wind whipped through the air, her dark hair whirling around her face and flagging behind her.

Neither boy bothered calling out to her. She was too far gone to notice them anyway.

But the music still called, growing louder and louder with each passing moment, the notes becoming quicker and closer together, almost cheerful. They had to be getting closer. They had to be.

Lisbeth started over the peak and the boy’s followed after her, stopping at the top of the hill. Aldrik gripped Kristian’s hand as they watched their sister descend towards the bay that lay not far away.

The land was misty where it met the bay, as usual, but tonight it seemed especially eerie, almost foreboding. Aldrik inched closer to his brother as they watched their sister approach the misty waters.

Then, he appeared. A young man, not much older than Lisbeth herself. He wore no clothing that they could tell, his torso bare and strong, sculpted as if by an artist. His lower half was clouded in the mist. His eyes were dark but sparkling, seeming to capture the light of the moon. His hair was dark like the midnight sky and long, falling down almost past his shoulders. Lisbeth’s eyes were locked onto him, as he were her whole world. She stared at him, and him at her. He was undoubtedly beautiful, strangely so for a man. They couldn’t seem to tear their eyes from him.

It took the two boys far too long to notice he had a fiddle held between his shoulder and his cheek, playing loud long notes while he watched the approaching girl with hungry eyes.

It took them even longer to realize this was not a coincidence and this strange boy could not be anything good. Gripped with sudden panic and a fierce desire to protect his older sister Kristian pulled away from his brother’s grasp and ran towards his sister.

By the time the boys had come to their senses, Lisbeth was already in the water, her nightdress soaking up the water as she waded into the depths, moving towards the beautiful boy with a mindless smile. She reached out to him with open arms. He continued to play his song as he stared at her, the corners of his lips curving into a strange grin that seemed to somehow enhance his strange ethereal beauty.

Kristian screamed as he ran, “Lisbeth!” Arms and legs pumping the young boy sprinted as fast as he could, ignoring the biting wind and the cold. “Lisbeth!”

She couldn’t hear him. She was too entranced by the music and the beauty of the stranger. Oh how she wanted to see him closer. To touch him. Closer still, she walked, the water lapping at her thighs and soaking her dress.

“Lisbeth!”

Aldrik watched with horror as his brother ran and screamed. He watched, frozen in place, unable to move, scared and confused and alone. He wrapped his arms around himself as the biting wind whipped at his skin and he watched.

The dark-haired boy stopped playing. Slowly he dropped the fiddle from his shoulder and outstretched his bow arm towards Lisbeth who took it readily, allowing him to pull her towards him. The creature smiled as he stared at him, her body pressed against his.

“Lisbeth!”

In a second the pair had disappeared beneath the water’s surface, gone.

“Lisbeth!”

Kristian dove into the water without a second thought, diving right after his sister, desperation in his eyes.

Aldrik screamed as the older boy crashed through the surface of the water, fearing for his brother, for the loss of his sister. He ran toward the water, his boots hitting the ground with a dull thud and his brother’s jacket trailing behind him while the wind howled in misery. “Kristian! Lisbeth! Kristian!”

The small boy ran as fast as he could, but in his haste tripped over a rock, landing face-first in the dirt. Shaking with fear and cold, Aldrik clambered back onto his feet and rushed towards the water’s edge.

And then he stopped. He gulped in air, breathing large labored breaths the small boy

watched the water, his deep brown eyes scanning the surface for a ripple, any indication that his siblings lived. He stared, hoping for a bubble, a sign, anything, but finding nothing. The water lapped at his shoes, calmly, innocently as if its depths hadn’t just swallowed up his siblings.

Aldrik waited there until morning, still staring out across the water. He’d stayed as the wind whipped around him, pulling at his brother’s jacket and his clothes and howling for the poor boy’s loss. He’d stood and watched as the mist had slowly subsided and the water cleared. He’d watched as the sun had risen, bathing the sky in hues of orange and pink. The water was beautiful, the colors reflected in its surface, but it wasn’t the same to him. It had changed. The water he’d once loved had been forever changed in his eyes. It was evil, dark and foreboding. He hated it. Hated that boy. That thing.

Lisbeth wasn’t there to tell him not to hate and Kristian wasn’t there to steer him right. Aldrik realized they’d never be. Never again, and that made him hate the still waters of the bay all that much more.

The fishermen with their scruffy beards clad in long coats collected him in the morning, returning the red-eyed, frozen and unspeaking boy to his family, who cried and yelled and screamed over their loss. Aldrik had done all of that already. He simply watched with an absent, vacant expression. They did not believe him and he hadn’t expected them to. It was ridiculous after all. A strange boy entrancing his sister and drowning both her and his brother under the water’s surface only for them never to return? Absurd.

Or so they thought.

As he grew he learned, growing stronger with each passing day. He’d be ready to face it someday. That thing. The creature. It was called a Nökken. An evil shape-shifting creature who lured victims into the water with music and charm and then drowned them. His anger never lessened. His sworn hatred never vanished, only grew. Nineteen years old and Aldrik was bigger, stronger, and angrier than ever before, and he swore vengeance.

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