Throwback Thursday: ‘The Nix’s Wife’ by Kathryn Yelinik

Blood and Water

In ‘The Nix’s Wife’ by Kathryn Yelinek, a young woman must fight supernatural beings and ordinary prejudice to prove her husband’s innocence.

Enjoy this excerpt from Issue 22, Spring 2019, on sale now until September 30th.

The Nix’s Wife

by Kathryn Yelinek

After our wedding, Strømmerik and I made our home in my uncle’s fortified lodge, in the suite of rooms that had been mine as a maiden. Gone were the carved chairs and woven carpets of my girlhood, replaced during the ceremony by functional wooden benches and rushes on the floor. Such furnishings were more easily replaced once water damaged — a certainty, since I had married a water spirit:  a nix.

Summer sun and birdsong streamed through the suite windows on the morning six months later when my uncle Jørgen and his guards came for Strømmerik.

“You’re under arrest,” Uncle Jørgen said. Disappointment and betrayal dug deep grooves in his sunburned forehead. “For murder.”

“That’s absurd.” I put aside my embroidery hoop and would have risen, but Strømmerik held out a hand to stop me. 

“You know I’d never kill anyone. I swore an oath, and I’ve kept it.” Still, he surrendered his violin to the guards. How strange it was to see him do so, as if he’d handed over his black hair or his long fingers. For one moment, we all stared at the oddity of a nix’s violin in the hands of a guard. The only sound came from a drop of water, dripping from the perpetually damp hem of Strømmerik’s tunic.

I shuddered. I loved my husband, but I hated that sound.

“I wish I could believe you.” A champion frowner, Uncle Jørgen lowered his eyebrows nearly to his ruddy beard. “But we found a woman drowned this morning in the river. On her throat was the mark where a nix drank her soul, and you’re the only nix within a three-day walk.” He opened the door to the hallway. “Take him away.”

Find out what happens next, in Issue 22, Spring 2019, ON SALE now until September 30th!

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Kathryn Yelinek is a librarian and a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop.  Her work has been published in Daily Science Fiction, NewMyths.com, and Metamorphosis, among others.