Mårbacka/Part 2, Chapter 6
In the southern part of the parish there are tracts where the landscape is more variform and far more beautiful than up north, round Mårbacka. There the Fryken cuts into the land in deep bays—the one after the other—along each of which lie shore-meadows, bordered by leafy woods, and three or four fine old peasant homesteads. Jutting out between the bays are rocky, wood-grown headlands so wild and inhospitable that no one would think of clearing or building there.
One summer's day Lisa Maja Wennervik had ridden down to Bössviken, which is the most southerly bay, to order some of the fine pears ripening there under the protecting hills. The Bössvik folk were very friendly, and she had dropped in at several cottages, so that it was rather late when she left for home.
But the girl was not afraid to ride back alone in the light summer evening. She went slowly, that she might enjoy to the full the beauty of the night; now riding up among the hills through dense woods, where she fancied robbers or bears might spring out at any moment and tear her off her horse; and now down dales of dewy fields, pretty birch groves and light, shimmering streams. There was still a pale rosy glow in the sky, which was reflected in the lake. She had never seen anything lovelier than that night!
All at once she saw a large, beautiful stallion grazing in the shore-meadow of a bay. His coat was a dapple gray, his mane so long it swept the ground, and his tail, which was thick as a rye-sheaf, also reached to the ground. The horse was broad across the hindquarters and high at the withers; he had a small head, with fine, clear eyes, his legs were slender, his hoofs a silvery white that glistened like polished metal as he lifted them in the grass. His body bore no marks of harness or saddle.
Lisa Maja had just walked her horse, Svarten, down a hillside, and was now going at the same slow pace toward the meadow where the stallion grazed. She went so close to him there was but the fence between them; by putting out her hand she could have stroked his haunches.
The stallion seemed not to have noticed them before; but now he raised his head and looked up at the young girl. And Lisa Maja was so pretty that the young swains would drop axe, or scythe, or whatever they had in hand, when she came riding, and hurry down to the roadside to hang over the fence till she had gone by.
Fancy! When the beautiful stallion raised his eyes to her, there was the same look of admiration in his gaze that the peasant lads sent her from the roadside.
For a moment he stood regarding her, then quickly turned and galloped off—his mane waving in the breeze, his tail standing straight out. Like a streak, he darted across the meadow and down the bay. Near the shore the bay was shallow and shelving, and as he dashed through the shallows the water splashed round him in clouds of foam. Then, all of a sudden, he disappeared.
Lisa Maja thought the horse in his wild flight had gone beyond his depth, and was drowning. She hoped for a second that he would come swimming to the surface again; but no, he did not reappear. And there was not a ripple on the water where he had gone down.
Then Lisa Maja felt a wild desire to ride to the rescue. She could not bear the thought of letting that glorious creature drown without making some effort to save it. With a sharp pull at the bridle, she swung her horse round toward the fence and gave him a dig with her spurs to make him jump it. But Svarten being the kind of horse that knows more than most humans, instead of taking the hurdle, turned and made for home at full gallop. The young girl from her high mount in the side-saddle had not much control over her determined steed; she soon realized that this time it was useless to try to make him obey. Besides, Svarten probably knew what sort of horse it was the girl wished to rescue from the water. By the time Lisa Maja had come to the top of the next hill and found herself in the darkness of a dense pine wood, she, too, knew what it was she had seen.
The silver-gray stallion with the unshodden hoofs and trailing mane she had often heard tell of. He was none other than the Neckan—the River-god—himself.
When the girl came home to Mårbacka and told the serving-folk of her adventure, they all thought as she did—that she had seen the Neckan and that herself and all on her place had best be careful, or before very long one among them would surely be drowned.
But there is no lake near Mårbacka and the old bottom lands to the west of the estate were by then so well dried out that not a trace of swamp or quagmire remained. Even the river, which had once been broad and treacherous, was now so diminished that in summertime, at least, it was scarcely more than a shallow creek.
However, in the month of August, when the days grew shorter and the mists hovered over river and meadow, it happened that an old man from Mårbacka was walking homeward one evening across the western meadows; what he may have seen or encountered down among the mists no one ever knew—but he did not return that night. The next morning his body was found in the little river, which was so shallow the water scarcely covered him. He had been a crabbed old man and there was perhaps no great mourning for him; but they were all very certain now it was the Neckan Lisa Maja had seen that time; had she followed him into the lake he surely would have drawn her down to his Blue Mansions in the deep.