37
With its single eye, green as the needles on a freshly felled Christmas tree, the well was watching from under its murky, cloudy veil. The water was cold and smelt rusty, as ever. Having turned the winch and fetched the bucket, N. greedily drank of the green needles and murky clouds, but they were not depleted, and the bucket remained full of them.
Next he took a look inside the well. The shaft was dark, moss peeped out here and there. Suddenly a face appeared between the needles and the clouds. Or rather, not so much a face as a kind of grimace, vulgar and sickly sweet, and a mouth appeared. Gaping, it declared with its lips alone:
“Come sleep in the water.”
And the needles with their clouds wrinkled in expectation.
“Tempting,” N. admitted. “But that smile is most unpleasant, and
