The Breathing Sea II - Drowning

by E. P. Clark

  The vodyanaya dwindled back to her previous size, and then smaller, until she was no larger than an ordinary frog. She half-hopped, half-slithered down the bank and back into the water without a word.

  “Tsarinovna? Little Tsarinovna, where are you?” The domovaya came around the tree, bent-backed and shuffling. “Ah, there you are.” She peered up at Dasha, her small eyes crinkling in a disapproving squint. “Why are your hands full of flames, you silly little girl?”

  “She made me!” said Dasha.

  “I very much doubt that,” said the domovaya. “Now put those out before your hurt someone, and come with me. You have much to learn, and I have much to teach you, and with luck, all our worst fears for you won’t come true.”

  “I…” Part of Dasha was ready to admit that she didn’t know how, that she was utterly helpless in the face of the power that was taking over her, that she desperately needed help and guidance, but the other part of her kept hearing the words “you silly little girl” and “our worst fears for you,” and she knew, with as much certainty as she’d ever had about anything, that she couldn’t let them stand, that she couldn’t let herself be trained by someone who thought she was innately evil, or would speak to her that way, no matter how silly she might be, or how wise they considered themself. It might be true that she was silly, but the line between truth and lies, as she had told Fedya, was as thin as the blade of a knife, and that truth was dwarfed by the truths of the domovaya’s heart, that would seek to make that truth a lie.

  “No,” she said quietly. She stepped closer to the domovaya, towering over her, noticing with another thrilling surge of power how the domovaya cowered back, curling down into herself like a hedgehog.

  “No,” Dasha repeated. “Anything I had to learn from you would be tainted by your contempt, by your desire to tame me. No. Better that I teach myself, or remain untaught, then be twisted and trampled by you.”

  “No one can teach herself!” cried the domovaya. “We all think in our arrogance that we can, but we’re all wrong, every time.”

  “Then I’ll be wrong,” said Dasha. “Better to be ruined by my own mistakes than by those of other people.” She looked down on the domovaya. “Your sister told me I was like her,” she said. “I told her she was wrong, but I see that she was right. We are alike, aren’t we. We’re both as much children of the gods as we are the daughters of women. That’s what she meant, isn’t it, and that’s what you’ve come to teach me.”

  “Along with self-control, which I see you are sorely lacking,” said the domovaya.

  “No? If I were lacking in self-control, I would have burned you already. But I haven’t, have I?” Dasha could hear the grandiosity of her own words, which the flames were urging out of control, and she reined herself in. “I know you meant well,” she said. “I know that you think you had a bargain with my mother. But that was with my mother, not me. I was not consulted when you entered into it. So I will enter into my own bargains, and I will only enter into bargains with those I consider to be my equals.”

  “We are sisters, as you said,” the domovaya said, looking up at her now with flat dark eyes, her face unreadable. “Children of the gods, even as we are also the daughters of women.”

  “Sisters, but you insist on making me the younger one.”

  “You are the younger one,” said the domovaya. “That cannot be denied.”

  “Even younger sisters have to grow up,” Dasha told her. “Even little Tsarinovnas have to grow up, and become women and Empresses. And I can’t do that if you are determined to hold me down.”

  “You need help!” cried the domovaya. “You’re a danger to yourself and everyone around you! You’ve been seeking help ever since you left Krasnograd, and I am—we are—offering it to you freely! And now you would turn it down out of a fit of pique!”

  “Bad help is worse than none,” Dasha told her. “I have been seeking help, yes, but it has to be help, and not some false semblance of it, that hurts me more than it aids me. Better to go my own way than be led down the wrong path entirely. Maybe one day you’ll be able to help me—I can see it now, the possibility—but not today.”

  “You’ll make mistakes,” the domovaya warned.

  “My tutors always used to say that we learn through mistakes,” Dasha said. “Perhaps I will become very learned, very quickly.”

  The domovaya closed her dark little eyes. “You are choosing the hard path,” she said, opening them again. “Two paths lie before you, the easy one and the hard one. Come with me, and you will take the smooth and easy one. We will teach you, and soon all this—the fits, the fear, the flames you cannot control—will be behind you, and you will be able to return to your mother and Krasnograd a wise and powerful young woman, ready to take up her role and her rule. Take the other path, and I cannot see what will be, other than it will be long and hard, with no guarantee of success at the end. You may waste half a year, or a year, or your entire life, seeking what you cannot give yourself, and you will suffer in the seeking, and so will those you drag along with you.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Dasha. “I’m sorry. But I have to take the second path.”

  The domovaya shook her head. “We may not be able to watch over you, if you do this,” she said. “We may not be able to come back for you, or help you when you need it, or pull you out of whatever hole you find yourself sliding into, if you do this.”

  “Then don’t,” said Dasha. “After all, that is how it is for everyone else, is it not? You don’t watch over them, or help them, or pull them out of the holes they find themselves sliding into, do you? As it is for my people, so should it be for me.”

  The domovaya gazed up at her, her expression still unreadable. “But you cannot be lost, Tsarinovna,” she said. “If others slide down into a hole and find the mud closing over them, well, that is the way of things. Some are fated to die that way, because that is the way of things. But not you. If you were to die that way, many would suffer.”

  “Then do something about it,” Dasha told her. “Reach out your hand and pull them out, instead of using it to push me down.”

  “But…”

  “We could argue about this all day, and all through the night too,” Dasha said. “And we would never get anywhere, because each of us would be right. But I’ve made up my mind. I want to go back to my companions.”

  “And then what?” asked the domovaya. “Set them on fire?”

  “No.” In truth, Dasha didn’t know what she would do when she got back, but that was something best kept to herself, she decided.

  “Very well.” The domovaya folded her little arms. “You reject my—our—aid? You want to find your own way? Then find it. Find your own way out of the forest and back to your companions. Teach yourself how to navigate your way back home.”

  Dasha looked down at her. She could see, with a crystalline clarity that so rarely accompanied her visions, that the domovaya expected this to break her, expected her to back down and agree to her terms or ask for her help, because that was what anyone of sense would do.

  “Very well,” said Dasha, and, brushing past her, began walking downstream until she disappeared into the trees, and the domovaya was lost from sight behind her.

  Chapter Two

  Dasha didn’t know why she’d picked downstream, other than the fact that the domovaya had originally placed them slightly upstream of where she’d been standing when she set off. But that seemed as good a reason as any, as was the fact that the trees were slightly thinner in the downstream direction, so she strode on briskly.

  After a while she noticed that her hands were no longer in flames. Which was probably just as well, but she did have to admit to herself that she didn’t know how to summon the flames at will, and soon it would be dark. Which was not a very happy thought at all. Dasha didn’t want to say that she’d made the wrong choice, but, well…she realized that she had stood before a grave decision, but whether or not she had chosen rightly, she could not yet say. She
so easily could have chosen the other way, because there had been so many good arguments for that choice too, and perhaps she had been foolish not to. Or perhaps that would have been a terrible decision, and she had chosen wisely. It was too soon to tell.

  Although now that the shadows were lengthening and lengthening, filling the spaces between the trees and making her aware of just how alone she was, and how little she knew where she was, part of her was telling her that she hadn’t chosen very wisely at all. Her white-hot purity of purpose had vanished, and along with it, her certainty. Everything had been so simple when she had looked down upon the corpse of her sister, and then up at the faces of those who claimed to be her kin, and yet were not her kind, but now that simplicity had vanished in the face of her visions of their suffering at her absence, and the suffering she would have caused them had she done what she had wanted to do and attacked them. She was still certain of her own rightness, she just didn’t know how to express it, or make it come to life, and storming off, first from her companions, and then from the domovaya, had many negative consequences, the first and foremost being that she was now wandering the woods alone, with no idea where she was or how to get home.

  “How far from the sanctuary can I be, anyway?” she muttered to herself. She had meant it to be encouraging, but as soon as she started thinking about the question, it was not very encouraging at all. The forest looked very similar to the forest around the sanctuary, but it also looked very similar to every other forest they had ridden through, and the taiga was vast. She could be two versts from the sanctuary, or two hundred, or two thousand, and not know the difference. They had passed through the shadows in the space of a single heartbeat, or so it had seemed, but Dasha had no idea how fast domoviye could travel. And even if she really was only two versts away from the sanctuary, she had no idea in which direction those two versts lay.

  Think! she told herself, as a chill sweat of fear trickled down from under her arms. She stopped to wipe her face, and discovered that her hands were cold as ice. Which she had always thought was one of those silly things that people said about being afraid, but now it was happening to her.

  Think! she told herself again. What do you know that could get you out of this? She resolutely pushed down the visions of herself starving, freezing, drowning, being eaten by wolves…Wolves! Her father was friends with wolves, wasn’t he? And not just any wolf, but Gray Wolf, who had been taken by the gods as their servant and was as big as a horse, and could speak like a human. He had appeared to her mother, hadn’t he? Maybe he could help her now!

  This was a very hopeful thought, but it promptly crashed up against the problem of how to summon him. Dasha closed her eyes and tried to send out her thoughts in his direction, but after several tedious attempts, the only thing she got for her pains was a particularly itchy mosquito bite on her ear.

  So much for that, she told herself, tamping down the panic that was threatening to bubble to the surface and take her over. My mother never said how to summon him, or even that he was summonable. He just…appeared. I wish he would appear! But in the meantime, I’d better come up with something else. She opened her eyes. The pools of forest darkness appeared to be spreading and rising up around her, as the last rays of the setting sun pierced through the cloud cover and settled upon her face…West! She tried not to think on the fact that West was the direction of death, and focus on how it might help her. Which was not immediately obvious. Knowing which way was West was only useful if she knew where she stood in relation to where she wanted to go.

  Well, at least it’s a direction, she reasoned. I won’t be going around in circles, and that’s something. And if I keep going West, eventually I’ll reach the main road, or Pristanograd, or something. She tried not to dwell on the possibility of walking right out of Zem’ and into barbarian Tansko or Rutsi. Surely she would reach a road before then, and roads led to towns, and towns were full of people who could tell her where she was. And if she told them who she was, they would be bound to aid her. Wouldn’t they? Or would they think she was lying—but if they accused her of being a pretender, she could insist on speaking with the local princess, and if she couldn’t convince her, then she would have to be brought back to Krasnograd for trial, at which point she would definitely be recognized, although she might pass some very unpleasant days or weeks before that; the treatment of prisoners was said to be better now than it had been before her mother’s time, but better was a relative term…

  Worry about that later, she told herself. Find a road first. She began walking West, directly into the last red rays of the setting sun.

  She had only gone a very few paces when those last rays winked out, and the forest darkness rose up from where it had been hovering around her legs to fill even her face.

  I need to stop, Dasha told herself. No point in blundering around in the darkness. I may not get lost—any more lost than I already am, that is—but I could trip over a log and break my head, or step on a snake, or plunge into a creek and never come out again. Like Vika. She shuddered. And then she thought about spending the whole night alone in the forest with no food, no water, no tent or bedroll, and no companions, and shuddered again.

  I guess I proved to them that I am most certainly not wise, she said to herself, and had to bite back tears. Spending the night alone in the woods couldn’t be that bad. Lots of people survived it all the time. Lots of people did it on purpose. Her mother’s friend Dunya was a woodswoman, a hunter and tracker, and spent more time by herself out in the woods than she did at home with her family, to hear her mother tell it, and Oleg lived by himself in some cabin off way to the North, on the edge of the tundra, and they seemed to enjoy it perfectly well. But they had shelter, and supplies, and were not softhanded girls of seventeen, more given to daydreaming and stargazing than doing anything useful.

  Well, when I get back I won’t be a softhanded girl of seventeen any more, Dasha told herself. I’ll be an experienced woodswoman! Her words rang hollow inside her own head, but she ignored that, and made herself look around in search of a good place to set up for the night. Food she might not have, but some small shelter could probably be found, and there might be water nearby…water was that way, just ahead. With relief she began walking down what she realized was a slight incline, leading her to a low place where she could have guessed water was likely to be found, even without the water-sense she still had after taking in Vika.

  The dusk was settling down on her from the treetops, even as the darkness of the forest floor was rising up to meet it, and so at first she didn’t realize what it was she was seeing. But then the movement resolved itself in front of her eyes as a doe approaching the same streambed from the other direction.

  Dasha froze. The doe froze, and looked at her with large limpid eyes, barely visible in the deepening dusk. Then the doe took one cautious step, and then another, and walked up to the stream and lowered her head and drank.

  “Thank you for not being afraid of me,” Dasha whispered, and then wished she hadn’t, sure that the doe would take fright and flee. But the doe only looked up at her, and then lowered her head and drank again, before looking Dasha in the eye and making a motion towards the water with her muzzle.

  “You want me to drink too?” Dasha guessed. The doe made no move in reply, merely watching Dasha with silent expectation. Dasha crept slowly towards the stream, one step at a time, expecting the doe to bolt at any moment, but the doe stood there watching her as she stepped up to the edge of the stream, and then knelt down and cautiously put her hand in the water. It was cold but not painfully so, and when she drew out a mouthful in her cupped palm and drank it, it tasted faintly of earth and moss, but not unpleasantly. She drank several more handfuls, until her thirst was slaked, and then looked back up. The doe was still watching her.

  “Thank you,” Dasha told her. The doe turned, and Dasha thought she had finally frightened her, but she took two slow steps, and then looked back, cocking her ears in Dasha’s direction.
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br />   “What is it?” Dasha asked. The doe took two more steps, and then stopped and looked at Dasha again.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” Dasha asked. The doe made no reply, but waited patiently as Dasha jumped across the stream, grabbing a tree to keep herself from slipping back and falling in as she slid on the mud of the far bank. Once she had gained her footing, the doe began walking again, stopping frequently to look back and make sure that Dasha was following her.

  They stepped between the thick spruces, winding this way and that until the doe came to a halt in front of a large, heavy-needled tree whose boughs came almost to the ground. She slipped in under the boughs, disappearing entirely until her head popped back out and she fixed Dasha with a steady gaze.

  “You want me to join you?” Dasha guessed. The doe regarded her unblinkingly. Dasha crouched down and crawled under the branches with her.

  Inside there was a little hollow, practically a nest, floored with a thick bed of spruce needles and concealed from the outside world by the branches. The doe lay in it, and next to her lay a tiny fawn, no bigger than a small dog. She looked up at Dasha with fearless eyes, and then settled back down by her mother’s side.

  “You have a beautiful daughter,” Dasha told the deer, who dipped her head in acknowledgement and then lowered her head down to sleep.

  Dasha arranged herself as comfortably as she could in the small space left to her. Sitting upright, she soon discovered, had her head stuck up between the low branches, and was tiring as well. She settled for lying down on her back next the fawn, who, to her surprise, allowed Dasha to nestle against her with no sign of protest or anxiety. The ground was not as flat or as soft as Dasha would have liked, but it was better, she supposed, than being outside, unsheltered. Deer slept in these conditions every day of their lives, and so did elk, and wolves, and bears, and every other wild creature of the forest. It was only humans who insisted on houses and beds. Although this little hollow under the branches was probably as close to a house and a bed as a deer could build. Would they accept living in a human habitation as preferable to these rough accommodations? Or would they reject the conditions that came with it?