Sometimes if we were lucky we would see a beautiful water nymph come out of the cave furthest away from us. She was tall and very beautiful like most Ethiopian girls are with hair so long she could sit on it. She would often smile at us, come over to the grassy bank and sit next to us. She only came if we were alone there with no adults, she seemed to float through the air like a ghost. When she entered the water she would swim like a dolphin and could seem to hold her breath for what seemed like forever. Around her neck she wore a necklace made of the crystals, I’m sure this had some kind of magic to it. Sometimes she would talk in Amharic which was the local language but she could also talk in English which was easier for us as we were not fluent in Amharic. She told us some interesting stories of things she had seen.
The beautiful water nymph would teach us about the animals on the land. We learned all about snakes which lay their eggs in grassy nests of straw, they would lay about 6 eggs at a time and make the nest in a sunny spot so that the eggs would be warmed by the sun. They would take about 15 days to hatch and when they did they were about 6cm long and were the same colour as their parents. They would slide back into the pool and the baby snakes would follow.
The Beautiful nymph would mostly tell stories of a family who lived on a farm above the pool. The dad was called Michael and the mother was called Philippa. Michaels horse was called Pegasus and Philippa’s horse was called Freckles, they would usually come down at weekends when there was no school. Both children learned to swim in the pool but it was so cold but sometime it was so cold they would nearly drown. One time Hannah had a friend come to stay, however she couldn’t swim either. Stephen and Hannah clung together and started to sink, an adult friend called Harold had to leap in and bought them safely to the bank. Hannah didn’t appear to be breathing, then the water nymph floated over and gently kissed Hannah on the forehead. Hannah immediately started to breath again. Thank goodness the water nymph was there. I always knew she was a magical being.