I need to start this story by saying that I am no one's idea of an outdoorsman. I hate hiking and I have no interest in bike trails or bird watching. My idea of roughing it is when my TV is broken. I have only one exception to this rule. Fishing.
I love fishing. I can stand with a pole in my hand for hours. On a bank, in a boat, it doesn't matter. I just love to fish. My absolute favorite kind of fishing is trout. Every year I join a buddy of mine in Colorado and we go fishing for rainbow trout. He's got a little place up there right on the river. We start first thing in the morning and don't quit until well after sunset. The view is gorgeous, the river is wonderful, and the fish are delicious.
By the way, my name is Charlie, Charlie Adams. I own a car dealership, and my friend Brian runs a hardware store. It's Brian who has the place in Colorado.
Everything was looking great. We had bought our plane tickets, and we had both scheduled our vacations, when Brian got sick. The flu was going around, and my buddy caught it two days before we were to fly out. I was sure that the trip was off, but Brian told me to go without him. At first I refused, after all it was his cabin we were using. But Brian just said there was no point in both of us missing out, so he gave me the keys and I decided to go ahead and go.
The trip to Colorado was fine, and I got to the cabin in the evening. I unpacked, got everything working and ready, and went to bed. I wanted to get an early start the next day.
By 5:00 the next morning I was already on the river. It was still a little dark and I couldn't see much yet, but something was definitely wrong. After a couple of hours, the sun was up completely. Now I could see the river and I didn't like it. Normally, our little river was sparklingly clear, but today it wasn't. It was cloudy, and the water was a funny color. Also, there was a strange odor coming from it. Well, I waded up and downstream over the course of the day, but I never found a better spot, and I never got a bite. In fact, I never even saw or heard a fish jump.
That night I called Brian. I asked him if he'd heard anything about any water problems, but he didn't know any more than I did. The nearest town was about three miles upstream, and we both figured if I was going to find out anything it would be there. So the next morning as I fished, I began to gradually work my way towards Longville.
I don't know how far I had gone. Probably more than a mile, but less than two, when I heard a scream. It was awful. The scream was obviously that of a woman, and it sounded like someone in horrible pain. I thought it had come from a little farther upstream, so I took off at a trot and tried to follow it.
I'd just turned a bend in the river, when I heard the scream again. This time it was close, very close. I looked all around, but I still didn't see anything. But if I listened closely, I could hear what sounded like a girl whimpering or sobbing. I followed the sound, and examined the area very carefully. Finally, I saw it. The far bank was very steep, and there hidden by the shadows, was a small cave. It was hard to see, but it was definitely there. And the sobs were coming from inside.
The opening was too small to walk through, but I could crawl through it easily enough. I have to admit I was a little scared, but I had to find out if someone was hurt. I did have a good flashlight, and as I shined it in the cave, I could see that the place opened up quite a bit very quickly. In fact, I only had to crawl a hundred yards or so before I was able to stand quite easily.
It was a cavern. Quite a large one actually. There was water on the ground, maybe ankle deep, and stalagmites rising from the floor. Crystals sparkled off the walls when my flashlight hit them.
For a moment, I still couldn't find the source of the sounds, but then I saw her. She was lying at the far end of the cavern. It was a girl, and she was face down. Her long hair was just splayed out around her. At first my heart sank as I was sure she was dead. But then I saw a leg move, and I dashed over to her as quickly as I could.
The girl appeared to be a teenager. Or maybe early twenties. I'm not good at telling that sort of thing. She must have been into some sort of punk thing, as her hair was colored a bright shade of blue-green. I knew I wasn't supposed to move someone who might be hurt, but her face was in the water and I had to make sure she didn't drown.
I lifted her up and turned her over. She was a tiny thing. Just a bit over five foot, and thin. Her body was probably the athletic type, although it was hard to tell at that moment. Whoever she was, she was breathing and managed to get to her feet with a little help. When she was able to walk, I led her back to the cave opening. I wanted to find out who she was, but I thought it was more important to get her out of the cave while she could still walk.
Crawling out of the cave, and pulling her at the same time was tricky, but I managed it. The girl never said a word, but she let me help her out of the cave. Finally, we were back out in the sunlight, and that was when things really got strange.
As I helped the girl from the cave, I got my first good look at her face. She was beautiful. Amazingly so, actually. In fact, once my eyes met hers, I couldn't tear them away. It was like my soul was being drawn in. I don't know what might have happened, but thankfully, she lost consciousness and her eyes closed.
I blinked and cleared my head. Then I took a closer look at the girl. Aside from being fascinating, her eyes had been bright blue-green. In fact they had been almost exactly the same color as her long hair. And as I looked at that hair, I realized that it was not dyed. That blue-green color was its natural shade. There were no roots showing, and the way it shimmered was like no coloring I had ever seen.
Finally, though, there was her skin itself. It also had a bluish tone to it. True, it could have been that she was just cold or weak, but I didn't think so. I had a feeling that the blue color was simply her natural skin tone. It was tempting to leave whatever she was there, but I couldn't do it. Somehow I did know that without help she would die, and I just couldn't let that happen.
I had a pair of sunglasses with me. I didn't know if they'd protect me from her eyes, but I put them on anyway. Then I gently tried to shake her awake. Gradually, she came to and her eyes opened. I don't know if it was the glasses, or just that I had seen them before, but while they were still strikingly beautiful, I wasn't trapped in them. Then, a minute or so later, she passed out again.
There was nothing I could do where we were. We were in the middle of nowhere in Colorado, and the mountains were between me and any city. I couldn't get any signal on my cell, and I couldn't just leave the girl where she was. So I scooped her up and began the long walk back to the cabin. The little girl was tiny and not much of a burden. It was less than an hour later that I was carrying her inside and lowering the mystery girl onto the bed.
Once again, I gently shook her awake. Her eyes opened, and she moaned, but she didn't seem to be able to really wake up. I had poured a glass of water, and I held it to her mouth so she could sip it. When the first drop hit her tongue, her hands grabbed onto the glass and she drained it in an instant. A moment later, her eyes popped open wide, and I could see that she was absolutely terrified.
I put my hands up to show that I wouldn't hurt her. I tried asking her who she was but she just shook her head. I was just about to give up on that, when I heard her speak to me. Except her mouth wasn't moving. She wasn't talking, I was simply hearing her in my head. It wasn't her voice, it was her thoughts. Whatever this girl was, she was telepathic.
What she was, was a river nymph. She said her name was Nixana and she was the nymph of my little river. As she continued to "speak" to me, I learned that normally nymphs live in their bodies of water. Since they can turn their bodies into water, people never see them. Which brought me to wondering why I had found her lying in that cave.
Nixana tried to tell me, but she wasn't completely sure either. She had been swimming, when she'd come across a large barrel at the bottom of the river. It was leaking something into the water, and all the fish were dying. Nixana had tried to move the barrel, and a drop of whatever was in it touched her. It had seared into her. The burning pain had been terrible. And worse, as she had jumped back, the nymph had knocked the barrel over and its entire contents had spilled out.
A second later, the whole river had become poisoned. Normally, if a nymph was hurt, simply entering her water would heal her. But it was the river itself that was now hurting her. Panicked, Nixana had tried to swim anywhere to escape the burning, but the whole river was dying. Then, as she was dashing upstream, she had found another of those barrels. It was leaking too. Nixana had realized that she had to get out of the river or die. The nymph had crawled out of the water and into the cave.
There she had lain until I had found her. A nymph can't live out of water long, but there was just enough on the floor of the cavern to keep Nixana alive. Except that she had become so weak, that she would never have been able to crawl back out. If I hadn't found her, she would have just laid there until she finally died.
After that, I could feel the nymph begging me to tell her what those barrels were and why they were in her river. I told her I wished I knew, but I had no idea. Tears came to her eyes, and I could feel an overwhelming grief in her thoughts. Nixana knew that very shortly her river would die. All the plants, the fish, the other animals, they would all soon be dead. A nymph couldn't survive the death of her river. If the water died, the nymph died with it. Nixana didn't want to die, but even more than that, she didn't want her beautiful river to die.
My immediate concern, though, was Nixana. She was still very weak. I gave her glass after glass of water, and that seemed to help some. But the nymph needed to be in water. Then, I got an idea. I ran into the bathroom, and started the tub filling. It took about ten minutes, and I let it fill as deep as I could. When it was ready, I scooped Nixana up and carried her into the bathroom. Then I carefully lowered her into the bath.
The beautiful girl perked up immediately. This incredible smile crossed her face, and then she just sank down into the water. A second later, she scared me half to death as she just disappeared right into the water.
