five metres. moss has taken the parapet down to a green shoulder. the water is cold and clear. and in it, a long-bodied eel — not large, the length of a forearm — has lived for at least four generations of the household, by record, and longer than that by belief.
it is fed nothing. it does not appear to need feeding. it surfaces in the bucket about once a season and is poured carefully back. the cook calls it tenant. the housekeeper calls it old gentleman. children, briefly, call it names that do not survive their first sighting.
local belief: while the eel is there, the well is sound. on a day when the eel does not show — there have been three in living memory — no household member draws water from any source until evening. they wait. it has always returned.
field-note · the eel turns counter-clockwise in the bucket. always. the keeper does not know what to do with this fact.
the dry well · garden · the ink-eel · the lullaby-fish · bestiary