I escaped from my own nixie just this week.
Made moves to, anyway. Gave notice that I would be leaving my well in a few weeks’ time and that neither flax nor bucket nor blunted axe will ever be touched again. I just don’t want to heft those things anymore. And I don’t want to take them with me.
What that means for me will be different for you, of course, so let’s not muddle the message with Jungian archetypes, imaginal symbolism or any dry treatment of mature ideas. I’d rather we talk about what it means to climb out of the wells that trap us.
Let’s understand this first: The siblings didn’t sign up for their predicament. This wasn’t a dare and they weren’t exploring the well as part of an urbex adventure. They slipped and fell. It was an accident.
Or was it? I’m no expert on nixies, but I find it suspicious that this one decided to set up shop in a location ideal for capitalizing on others’ missteps. It’s one of many details in this story I wonder about.
No telling how long those two were down there in that well. What we know is that eventually, the kids realized that they had enough. It was time to bust out.
Isn’t it weird that this evil, maligned, mythological nixie goes to mass on Sundays? I picture her wet, scaly face covered up in a bonnet, mouth hissing between her jagged teeth as she says, “peaccccccce be with you.” Some aspects of the universe remain constant, it seems, fairy tale or no.
What stops me in my tracks, though, is the escape. The nixie chases the kids. It’s not enough to scramble out of the well—the trouble you found there is going to follow you no matter where you go.
Unless.
Look at what the kids leave behind: a brush, a comb, a mirror. These aren’t traps or roadblocks as we would understand them—they’re tools of appearance. Items to attend to one’s personal and social sense of self. How interesting that these are the things that must be sacrificed to keep past oppressions from catching up with us.
The mirror, of course, is the most potent, the one that finally does the job. Reflection can’t be so easily navigated by the shadows that mean to stalk us.
There are still plenty of images in the story that elude me. I wonder what it means for the girl to both start and finish the laying of the obstacles. I think it has something to do with the jobs the nixie foisted upon them.
That’s the great thing about old stories, though; they’re never fully done counseling you. The key is to not try to think your way through them; they aren’t to be treated as crossword clues or some kind of literary criticism mad libs. How the images spark your imagination is really the thing. What each scene looks and feels like, and what suspiciously sounds like timeless truth whistling through its teeth to get your attention.
Anyway, here are a few snapshots I took this past weekend, following along Sister and Brother’s escape route. Who would’ve guessed they’d send me through the Blue Ridge Mountains?
