The Mïlen

It took 12 minutes for the boat to make it down the length of the river’s shallowest stretch. Under the pale light of the crescent moon, it felt like a lot longer. The fickle flock of wood that I was floating on, held together by nothing but a bunch of rusty nails and a wading ounce of faith, admittedly did well to survive the bustling from the river bed below. But the danger that kept me gripping onto the sides of my tiny vessel came from the creature that supposedly inhabited the river.

The story of the Mïlen wasn’t something I believed when I first heard it from one of the village people earlier that day. It was just another folktale to add to my coat of cultural immersion. On the river now though, in the deepest depths of the night, I could feel my hairs standing on end. A mirror of black, moonlit waters did nothing to calm my swelling chest. A night like this, dark and with a perfect crescent moon, was supposed to be exactly the time that the Mïlen visited our realm.

A deathly glow came from beneath the water. Deeper, it seemed, than where the river bed ought to have been. And from it, some unearthly movement had me swallowing a gulp of worries… What was that? A slither of black that could have been a ripple or my doom. Calming myself wasn’t easy after that. I tried holding my breath but that just made me aware of my breathing. Breathing which became staggered as I tried to control it against the fear riddling my body.

In one fell swoop, I was underwater. The Mïlen had flipped over my boat like a spoilt child losing a competitive board game. It happened too fast. The two mornings later, I woke up in a city hospital, left leg and arm missing. I’m glad I don’t remember the pain I went through to lose those limbs but sometimes, every night where there is a crescent moon, I feel them dissolving inside the stomach of the Mïlen.