The Nixie of the Mill-Pond

In a peaceful valley surrounded by rolling hills and dense forests, there stood an old watermill that had been operated by the same family for many generations. The current miller was a hardworking and honest man who took great pride in his craft and had built a reputation throughout the region for producing the finest flour from the grain that local farmers brought to him.

For many years, the miller had enjoyed considerable prosperity. His mill was always busy with customers, his grinding stones produced flour of exceptional quality, and his family lived comfortably in the sturdy house that adjoined the mill building. The miller had a devoted wife and a grown son who worked alongside him, learning the trade so that he could eventually take over the family business.

However, as the years passed, the miller’s fortunes began to change in ways that he could not understand or control. The once-abundant stream that powered his mill wheel began to flow more slowly, reducing the efficiency of his operation. Customers started taking their grain to newer mills that had been built in neighboring towns. Competition increased while his income decreased, and gradually the miller found himself struggling to make ends meet.

Despite his best efforts to improve his situation, things continued to get worse. The miller tried everything he could think of: he repaired and upgraded his equipment, he lowered his prices to attract more customers, and he worked longer hours to increase his output. But nothing seemed to help, and his financial problems grew more serious with each passing month.

One particularly difficult day, when the miller had been forced to turn away yet another potential customer because his mill wheel was barely turning due to the low water level in the stream, he found himself standing beside the mill pond in a state of despair. He looked out over the dark water that reflected the gray clouds above, and he felt overwhelmed by the weight of his troubles.

“What am I to do?” he said aloud to himself, his voice heavy with worry and frustration. “I’ve tried everything I can think of, but nothing works. At this rate, I’ll lose the mill that my family has operated for generations, and my son will have no inheritance to carry on our tradition.”

As these words left his lips, the miller was startled to see the surface of the pond begin to ripple and swirl, even though there was no wind to disturb the water. Suddenly, a figure emerged from the depths of the pond, rising up through the water with an otherworldly grace that immediately told the miller that this was no ordinary being.

The creature that appeared before him was a nixie—a water spirit that was half-human and half-fish, with the upper body of a beautiful woman and the lower body of a powerful fish tail covered in shimmering scales. Her long green hair flowed around her like underwater plants, and her eyes were the deep blue-green color of the deepest parts of the pond. When she spoke, her voice had the musical quality of water flowing over stones.

“Miller,” the nixie said, her voice both enchanting and somehow menacing, “I have heard your troubles, and I have been watching your struggles with interest. I have the power to restore your prosperity and make your mill more successful than it has ever been before.”

The miller stared at the supernatural being in amazement and fear. He had heard stories of nixies and other water spirits from the old folk in the village, but he had never really believed that such creatures existed. Now, faced with one in person, he felt both terrified and oddly hopeful.

“How… how could you do such a thing?” he asked hesitantly. “And what would you want in return?”

The nixie smiled, revealing teeth like pearls, but there was something cold and calculating in her expression. “I can make the waters of your stream flow more abundantly than ever before,” she explained. “I can ensure that customers come to your mill from far and wide, bringing you more business than you can handle. I can give you wealth beyond your current dreams.”

The miller felt his heart racing with excitement at these promises, but he was also wise enough to be cautious when dealing with supernatural beings. “And the price?” he asked again.

“The price is simple,” the nixie replied. “You must give me the first living thing that comes to your house when you return home today. That is all I ask in exchange for the prosperity I will bring you.”

The miller thought about this proposal carefully. He tried to remember what usually greeted him when he came home from work each day. Most often, it was his faithful old dog, who always ran out to meet him as soon as he heard his master’s footsteps on the path. The dog was a beloved companion, but the miller reasoned that it would be a small price to pay for saving his family’s livelihood and securing their future.

“Very well,” the miller said after a moment of hesitation. “I agree to your bargain.”

The nixie nodded with satisfaction and extended her hand toward the miller. “Then shake my hand to seal our agreement,” she said, “and your prosperity will begin immediately.”

The miller reached out and grasped the nixie’s cold, wet hand in his own. As soon as their hands touched, he felt a strange tingling sensation run through his entire body, and he knew that some sort of magical bond had been formed between them.

“It is done,” the nixie said, and with that, she sank back beneath the surface of the pond, leaving only ripples to mark where she had been.

The miller stood by the pond for several minutes, wondering if what had just happened was real or if he had been hallucinating due to stress and worry. However, as he made his way back toward the mill building, he could already hear the water wheel beginning to turn more rapidly as the stream’s flow increased dramatically.

Filled with a mixture of excitement and apprehension, the miller hurried home to share the news of his strange encounter with his family. However, as he approached his house, he was shocked to see not his old dog running out to greet him, but his grown son, who had come outside to tell his father that a large group of customers had arrived and were waiting to have their grain ground.

The miller’s heart sank as he realized the terrible mistake he had made. In his desperation to save his business, he had agreed to give away the first living thing that came to meet him, never imagining that it might be his beloved son instead of his dog.

The young man, whose name was Hans, approached his father with a cheerful smile, completely unaware of the bargain that had just been struck. “Father!” he called out happily. “You won’t believe what’s happened! Customers have been arriving all afternoon, more than we’ve seen in months. And look at the mill wheel—it’s turning faster than it has in years!”

The miller looked at his son’s joyful face and felt his heart breaking. How could he tell Hans about the terrible bargain he had made? How could he explain that in trying to save their family’s future, he had inadvertently doomed his own child?

For several days, the miller kept the secret of his agreement with the nixie to himself, hoping against hope that somehow the situation would resolve itself or that the nixie would forget about their bargain. Meanwhile, his business did indeed prosper exactly as the water spirit had promised. Customers came from all over the region, the mill operated more efficiently than ever before, and money flowed in at a rate that exceeded even the miller’s most optimistic expectations.

However, the miller’s success brought him no joy, because he knew that it had come at a price he was not willing to pay. He watched his son working happily alongside him, completely unaware of the danger that hung over him, and the miller’s guilt and anxiety grew stronger each day.

Hans, for his part, was delighted by the sudden improvement in their fortunes. He worked with renewed energy and enthusiasm, making plans for expanding the mill operation and dreaming of the day when he would inherit the prosperous business from his father. He had recently married a wonderful young woman from the village, and he looked forward to starting a family and continuing the miller tradition for another generation.

The miller’s wife could see that something was troubling her husband deeply, despite their newfound prosperity. She asked him repeatedly what was wrong, but he could not bring himself to tell her the truth about his bargain with the nixie. Instead, he made vague excuses about being tired or worried about maintaining their success.

As the weeks passed, the miller began to hope that perhaps the nixie had forgotten about their agreement or had decided not to collect on the debt after all. However, this hope was shattered one evening when Hans failed to return home from a trip to the village to purchase supplies for the mill.

The miller and his wife waited anxiously through the night, and when morning came with no sign of their son, they organized a search party to look for him. The searchers found Hans’s horse and cart abandoned beside the mill pond, but there was no sign of the young man himself. The only clue to his fate was a set of wet footprints leading from the cart to the edge of the water, where they disappeared entirely.

With a heavy heart, the miller knew exactly what had happened. The nixie had finally come to collect her payment, and Hans had been taken down into the depths of the pond to serve as the water spirit’s captive. The miller’s desperate attempt to save his family’s business had resulted in the loss of the very person he had been trying to protect.

When the miller finally told his wife and daughter-in-law the truth about his bargain with the nixie, they were horrified and heartbroken. Hans’s young wife, whose name was Anna, was particularly devastated by the news. She had been married to Hans for only a few months, and the thought of losing him forever to a supernatural creature was almost more than she could bear.

However, Anna was not the type of person to give up easily, even when faced with seemingly impossible circumstances. Despite the warnings and protests of her in-laws, she declared her intention to find a way to rescue her husband from the nixie’s power.

“I don’t care how dangerous it is or how impossible it seems,” Anna told the miller and his wife with fierce determination. “Hans is my husband, and I love him more than life itself. I will not rest until I have found a way to bring him back home where he belongs.”

Anna began her quest by seeking out the wisest and most knowledgeable people in the region, asking them for advice about how to deal with water spirits and supernatural creatures. She visited elderly herbalists who knew the old ways, consulted with traveling scholars who had studied ancient magic, and spoke with priests who understood the spiritual aspects of such encounters.

Through her research, Anna learned that nixies were indeed powerful and dangerous creatures, but they were not invincible. She discovered that water spirits could be bound by certain magical rules and obligations, and that sometimes it was possible to negotiate with them or even to outwit them if one was clever and determined enough.

One ancient wise woman told Anna about a special ritual that might allow her to communicate with the nixie and attempt to bargain for her husband’s release. The ritual required Anna to perform certain actions at specific times under particular conditions, and it involved considerable personal risk, but it offered at least some hope of success.

Following the wise woman’s instructions, Anna waited for the night of the new moon, when the veil between the natural and supernatural worlds was said to be thinnest. She gathered the required materials—special herbs, sacred oils, and objects that had been blessed by holy men—and made her way to the edge of the mill pond.

Standing at the water’s edge in the darkness, Anna performed the ritual exactly as she had been taught. She scattered the herbs upon the water, anointed her forehead with the sacred oils, and spoke the ancient words that were supposed to compel the nixie to appear and listen to her petition.

For a long time, nothing happened, and Anna began to fear that the ritual had failed. But just as she was about to give up hope, the surface of the pond began to glow with an eerie green light, and the nixie emerged from the depths just as she had done when the miller first encountered her.

“Mortal woman,” the nixie said in her musical but cold voice, “why do you disturb my domain with your magic and your demands? The bargain was made fairly, and your husband belongs to me now.”

Anna summoned all her courage and faced the supernatural creature without flinching. “I know that you have the right to keep him according to your agreement with his father,” she said as steadily as she could manage. “But I ask you to consider making a new bargain with me. I offer myself in exchange for my husband’s freedom.”

The nixie studied Anna with her deep, alien eyes, and a slow smile spread across her beautiful but frightening features. “You would sacrifice yourself for him?” she asked with apparent amusement. “How touching. But I already have what I want from your family. Why should I make any new agreements?”

“Because,” Anna replied, “a willing captive is more valuable than an unwilling one. My husband will always resist you and try to escape, but if you release him, I will serve you willingly and faithfully for the rest of my life.”

The nixie considered this proposition for a long moment, and Anna could see that the water spirit was intrigued by the offer. Finally, the nixie spoke again.

“I will make you a different bargain,” she said. “I will give you three chances to complete three tasks that I set for you. If you succeed in all three, I will release your husband and forget about the debt his family owes me. But if you fail in any one of the tasks, you will both become my servants forever.”

Anna knew that this was a dangerous gamble, but it was the only chance she had to save Hans. “I accept your terms,” she said without hesitation.

The nixie nodded with satisfaction. “Very well. Your first task is this: you must bring me a tear shed by someone who has never known sorrow. You have three days to complete this task.”

Anna left the pond feeling both hopeful and worried. The task seemed almost impossible—how could she find someone who had never experienced any sadness or loss in their entire life? However, she was determined to try, and she set out immediately to search for such a person.

For two days, Anna traveled throughout the region, speaking with people of all ages and from all walks of life. She talked to children who seemed carefree and happy, but learned that even they had experienced the sadness of losing a pet or being separated from friends. She spoke with wealthy nobles who appeared to have everything they could want, but discovered that they too had known grief from the loss of loved ones or disappointment in their children.

On the third day, just when Anna was beginning to despair of completing her task, she encountered a newborn baby who had just been born that very morning. The infant was too young to have experienced any real sorrow yet, and when Anna gently touched the baby’s face, a single tear of pure innocence fell from the child’s eye.

Anna carefully collected this tear in a small crystal vial and hurried back to the mill pond, where she presented it to the nixie just as the sun was setting on the third day.

The nixie examined the tear and nodded approvingly. “You have completed the first task,” she said. “Now for the second: you must bring me a flower that has never been touched by sunlight. You have three days.”

This task also seemed nearly impossible, but Anna refused to give up. She searched in the deepest caves and the darkest corners of the forest, looking for flowers that grew in complete darkness. On the second day, she found a rare underground bloom growing in a cave that was so deep that no sunlight had ever penetrated to its depths.

The nixie accepted this offering as well. “Very impressive,” she said. “Now for your final task, which is the most difficult of all: you must bring me a song that has never been heard. You have three days.”

Anna spent two sleepless days trying to understand what this task could possibly mean. How could a song exist if it had never been heard? She consulted with musicians and poets, but none of them could solve the riddle.

Finally, on the third day, inspiration struck. Anna returned to the mill pond and, standing at the water’s edge, she opened her heart and sang a song of pure love—a melody that came from so deep within her soul that it had never been expressed before, words and music that were born in that very moment from her love for Hans and her determination to save him.

As her voice carried across the water, the nixie emerged once more, and for the first time, her expression showed something like genuine emotion. “Never,” the nixie said softly, “have I heard such a beautiful song, nor one so filled with true love.”

The water spirit was silent for a long moment, and when she spoke again, her voice had lost much of its cold, inhuman quality. “You have completed all three tasks,” she said, “and you have shown me something I had forgotten—the power of selfless love. Your husband is free to go.”

With a gesture from the nixie, the water of the pond began to glow and swirl, and Hans rose to the surface, gasping and alive. Anna rushed into the shallow water to help him to shore, and they embraced with tears of joy and relief.

The nixie watched their reunion with an expression that might have been wistful. “Go,” she said finally, “and remember that love which is willing to sacrifice everything is the most powerful force in all the worlds.”

Anna and Hans returned home to find that the miller’s prosperity continued, but now it felt truly earned rather than cursed. The family had learned valuable lessons about the price of desperation and the power of love, and they lived happily for many years, always grateful for the second chance they had been given.

The moral of this tale teaches us that love gives us strength to face impossible challenges, and that sometimes the greatest victories come not from magic or supernatural power, but from the willingness to sacrifice for others and to never give up hope, no matter how difficult the circumstances may seem.