Poem: "Aguana"
This poem came out of the January 22, 2013 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from ellenmillion. It also fills the "water" square on my Dark Fantasy Bingo Card. It has been sponsored by rix_scaedu. This poem belongs to the series Fiorenza the Wisewoman. You can read more about the aguane online.
Aguana
There were goat prints in the garden
but nobody's goats had gotten loose.
There were bites taken out of Fiorenza's herbs --
the basil and sorrel and marjoram --
not to mention a whole row of peas eaten.
Fiorenza tried raising the fence,
but that did not help.
She tried sitting up at night,
but nothing came when she did,
and she couldn't sit up every night
because she needed her sleep.
So when the bean pods began to swell,
Fiorenza set a snare beneath the plants.
That very night came a twang! from the snare
and a frantic bleating from whatever it caught.
Fiorenza flung on her robe and ran outside
to find, dangling from the tree above her bean patch,
a fairy with a woman's torso and the four legs of a goat
all dripping with muddy river water.
"I know you," said Fiorenza.
"you are one of the aguane who lives
in the river at the bottom of the hill.
Why have you stolen from my garden?"
"My sisters drove me away from the river,"
said the aguana, "because I do not like
to drown men who wade across it.
They caught me giving rides to little boys
and now I have nowhere to go.
No one will sell me food looking like this,
and I am tired of eating leaves in the woods."
Fiorenza thought that one less chance
of people drowning in the river was a good thing,
but losing so much of her produce was not.
Then again, perhaps she could bargain
for something that would reduce her own work.
"You may eat all the apples that fall to the ground
in the orchard, and all the garden trimmings
that land on the compost pile," Fiorenza said.
"In addition, I will give you a basket of vegetables
each week if you bless the village water supply
so that it runs clear and carries no sickness."
The aguan nodded, so Fiorenza cut her down.
From that time onward, the village wells
all gave clean cold water, even in summer,
and even the one a dog had somehow died in
that never was quite right again until that year.
When Fiorenza's cousins Durante and Frederico
mentioned riding a funny white goat in the forest,
Fiorenza just smiled and suggested
that she might carry them over the creek
in exchange for a pocketful of carrots.
* * *
Vocabulary
aguana (plural aguane) -- a type of Italian water-fairy with the torso of a woman and feet or legs of a goat or horse. The exact form varies regionally. In part of Northern Italy they are called anguane and are related to banshees.