The Breathing Sea II - Drowning

by E. P. Clark

  “I thought it might help,” Sonya told her with a wink. “And if you need more help, I’ve a bucket of vodka sitting in my pantry as well. Two buckets, actually, and lots of other medicine—‘medicine’—as well. Just say the word! And don’t look so downcast, my heart. It doesn’t suit your cheery face. If you were my daughter…”

  “I think the beer will be enough,” Aunty Olga said, stopping her before she could launch into one of her unstoppable speeches. “Thank you, Sonya. It was a clever thought. Drink up, Dasha, it’ll make you feel better.”

  Dasha had grave doubts on that score, which became even graver after a few sips—how did people manage the great swallows she’d seen them do? It was so thick and bitter, and threatened to make her choke and cough with every mouthful!—when she started to shiver and twitch, and then burst into tears.

  “There, there,” said Aunty Olga, patting her awkwardly on the back. “There, there. It’s all right.”

  “It is not!” cried Dasha. “It’s not all right at all!”

  “Well…it’s not so bad as all that.”

  “How can you say that?!”

  “I know things didn’t go the way you’d hoped,” Aunty Olga said cautiously. “But they never do. You had a picture in your head of how things were going to go, and you think everything’s gone wrong because that picture hasn’t come true, am I right?”

  Dasha nodded slowly.

  “Well, the picture never comes true, Dasha my heart, so you can’t get too angry with yourself when it doesn’t. After all,” she grinned ruefully, “I had a picture of how you would sit quietly in your chamber and let Apraksiya Bozhenovna heal you, and none of this”—she waved her hand to indicate Dasha’s tear-stained face and them sitting alone in the chamber—“would be happening. Everything would be completely different than this. I certainly never expected the domoviye to take an interest, and spirit you away in the middle of the night in order to cause heartache and trouble all over Lesnograd!” She smiled at Dasha. “But they did, and maybe they were right to, and I was wrong. No, don’t faint,” now she was grinning, “sometimes I can admit I’m wrong, but don’t tell anyone! But you see how things keep turning out different from how we want. What’d you think would happen, those men would fall to their knees and admit the error of their ways, before retiring to some sanctuary, and spend the rest of their days in communion with the spirits of the forest? And Vladya would outlaw bear-baiting, and everyone in Lesnograd would turn over a new leaf, and there’d never be a fight again?”

  “Something like that,” admitted Dasha in a tiny voice. “It could happen.”

  “It could, but it won’t, because people are stupid and cruel and slow to learn. Every time you try to change them, even if it’s for the better, they’re going to fight back and make things worse, at least at first.”

  “So what should I do? I can’t do nothing!”

  “Of course you can’t,” said Aunty Olga. “You’re your mother’s daughter. You’ll think of something. But whatever it is, no matter how clever it is, it won’t work perfectly, because nothing ever does. Half the time it’ll look like failure, even if it’s success, because that’s how things are. Now eat your food before it gets cold.”

  “And then what?” asked Dasha. “Back to my chamber?”

  “Maybe for a bit,” Aunty Olga told her. “Just so you can get some rest after being up all night. But then we’ll see. I think things are going to work out better than you think they will. I’ll have a word with Vladya myself, and Vasya too. It’s high time Vasya did something, since she is in fact our very own Princess Severnolesnaya, and should be the one sitting in judgment, not the rest of us. So we’ll see. Now eat up, and cheer up. Tomorrow everything will look better, for sure, even if it doesn’t today. Morning is wiser than evening.” She gave Dasha’s shoulder a gentle punch, and set to her own food with great appetite, as if things were finally working out the way she wanted.

  Chapter Fourteen

  This time, when Aunty Olga led Dasha into her chamber, she didn’t lock the door behind her when she left. Muscles Dasha hadn’t known had been tense relaxed at the sound of the door not being bolted. Even though she hadn’t had any immediate plans to leave her chamber, the knowledge that she could if she wanted to made staying inside much easier.

  Is this what it was like for the bear? she thought. Only much worse, because I was being kept caged in comfort, while all he had was filth and misery? Probably. And is that what it’s like right now for those two men who caged him? The same desperation to escape a trap? Probably. Only they deserved it, while the bear and I were innocent. Does that even matter? Dasha couldn’t help but be gnawed by the feeling that it didn’t matter very much at all, as much as it gave her pleasure to think of those two men suffering what they had done to others. She had administered justice, to the best of her ability, and it was working out just as poorly as Oleg had kept telling her it would. Or even worse, because she didn’t even feel good about it.

  If only they would learn! she thought. Or if they can’t learn, if only they would let themselves be guided by others who can. And Vladya…but the problem of what to do about Vladya was so great that Dasha could hardly bear to think about it, so she flung herself on the bed instead, and closed her eyes.

  She should have been sleepy after her sleepless night, and she did doze off for a while, but then she twitched all over, making her teeth snap together with a sharp clack that jarred her awake, so she reached over for Spirits of the North and began reading it again:

  Water-maidens are generally girls and young women who have been murdered by their lovers, or betrayed and then died of a broken heart. While they can inhabit all the provinces of Zem’, they particularly love our watery North, with its bogs and pools and streams, hidden away in the deep woods. Some say, in support of this, that water-maidens and snow-maidens are one and the same: water-maidens in summer, snow-maidens in winter; it is our deep snows, they claim, that allow water-maidens to transform themselves and survive the winter, and, conversely, our water-filled earth that allows them to transform themselves and survive the summer, instead of melting away, as is generally believed. The truth of this claim has not been ascertained. The benevolent nature of snow-maidens, as opposed to the malevolent nature of water-maidens, argues against it. If anything, one would expect snow-maidens to be the cruel ones, like the winter that nurtures them, but they are, according to all reports, as gentle and fragile as the snowflakes that compose their bodies, while water-maidens are as treacherous as summer floods. That they are both creatures of water, however, and partake in the changeable nature of this element, is certain.

  Snow-maidens possess a charm that melts all hearts, sparkling as they do, in both body and mind, like frost-covered trees on a sunny day, and there are numerous reports of them being adopted into families, or taken as wives by besotted young (and not-so-young) men, despite the mystery that universally surrounds their origins when they appear in a town or village. Water-maidens also possess their own charm, one that lures the unsuspecting to their pools and deep places, surrounded by high, slippery banks, the better to trap their victims in. They can also, it is said, possess the bodies of others, merging their spirits with the soul of a living person, in the way that water, once drunk, merges with the body of the drinker. The effect of this on the host is

  Dasha jerked awake, her teeth snapping together so hard she was afraid they might crack, and she narrowly avoided biting through her tongue. A Compilation of Tales was lying on the pillow next to her, its pages splayed open, one half-fallen out of the binding. Dasha picked up the book and carefully slid the page back into place. She should tell someone that the book needed mending—but who would care? Vladya? In theory, but she seemed determined to ignore everything Dasha said. Aunty Olga? She cared little for books, but she might be more willing to listen to Dasha. She went to close the book and set it aside, when the title at the top of the page she had just replaced caught her eye.

  The Tal
e of the Water-Maiden

  Dasha began reading, not even aware that she was doing so.

  Once upon a time a young woman lived in a small village in the Far North, up where the sun rarely rises in the winter, and the Northern Lights shine three nights out of four.

  The young woman's name was Snezhenka, because she had skin as white as snow, so white it gleamed in the sunlight. There were those who claimed that her mother must have taken a snow-spirit as a lover. This was a time when snow-spirits roamed the land freely, and often mingled with the world of women.

  “She is my daughter,” the woman would say. “What else do you need to know?”

  All the young men of the village were greatly enamored with Snezhenka, and begged their mothers to speak to the matchmaker about her, but their mothers were not so pleased with their choice.

  “It is not good to be so beautiful,” they told their sons. “The gods have touched her, and those whom the gods have touched live hard lives, as do those who marry them. Better to marry an ordinary girl, who can provide for you in ease and comfort.” And they would not be swayed by their sons’ pleas.

  So it was that Snezhenka reached her twentieth summer still unwed. One hot day she took her mother’s cows out to pasture, and sat on a log in the shade of the forest as they grazed, and sang. And the sweetness of her song drew a falcon, a shining falcon, who appeared to be made of flame, down from the sky, and as she sang the third verse he landed beside her, and sat with her till she left her perch and returned home.

  The next day the same thing happened, and the next, and the next. The other girls of the village began to tease Snezhenka, claiming that she had taken a secret lover, a spirit who lived in the woods. Snezhenka always denied it, but her cheeks turned red as poppies as she did, revealing the truth hidden even to Snezhenka herself.

  On Midsummer’s Day Snezhenka took her mother’s cows out to pasture as she always did. The sun was burning high in the sky and would not set all day and all night. As she sat there, Snezhenka wiped the sweat rolling down her brow again and again.

  “I feel as if I’m melting!” she complained. “The sun is burning right through me!” To distract herself from the heat, she began to sing, a song about firebirds and the hot sun. When she reached the third verse, her falcon landed beside her, as he always did. Only this time as he landed she shook her head, and a bead of sweat flew off her brow and struck him, and he transformed into a young man before her eyes, a youth with the form of a man, but with flames wreathing his body.

  At first Snezhenka screamed in fright, but there was no one to hear her cries, and the young man told her, “Don’t be afraid! I mean you no harm. I am the same falcon I always was. A cruel sorceress turned me into a bird in punishment for rejecting her daughter’s love, and I am doomed to remain a falcon until my true love transforms me with the water of her body. The single drop with which you have gifted me has allowed me to take my true form for a single day, until the sun sets. But if you give me all the water of your body on a night with no sunset, I will remain a man for the rest of my life.”

  “The sun will not set today,” Snezhenka told him.

  “Not today, no. Today is the day I can be saved.”

  “How?” asked Snezhenka.

  “Meet me at the river at midnight, when all the maidens will swim out with their wreaths and candles, in search of their lovers. You will find me there, and there you will save me.”

  “I will do so,” Snezhenka promised. She tried to seal her promise with a kiss, but the young man disappeared as she leaned in to touch him, leaving behind nothing but flames.

  That night, in the midnight sun of Midsummer, Snezhenka set out with the other maidens of the village to the river. They carried candles and wreaths of poppies, and they sang a song of fire and sunlight. When they reached the third verse, they plunged into the river and began to swim, laughing and splashing as they went.

  Snezhenka let the current take her, and was soon carried away from the other maidens, around a bend to a deep pool surrounded by high banks. There she found her young man waiting for her, sitting high above her on the riverbank. The sun was to his back, and it looked to her eyes as if he were wreathed in flames.

  “Come join me,” she called. “Come join me, so that I can give you what you need, and save you.”

  “I am afraid of the water,” he told her.

  “You have no need to fear it,” she told him. “The current is weak here. Come join me.”

  “You may rethink your decision, and send me away, once I am with you.”

  “I will not,” she told him. “Come join me.”

  This time, at the third time of asking, he stood and, diving like a falcon stooping on his prey, leapt into the water with her.

  “You see?” she told him. “There is nothing for you to fear.”

  “That is true,” he said, swimming beside her. “And will you give me what I ask now?”

  “I will,” she said. “Water, is that not what you needed?” And she laughed, and splashed him.

  But her laughter turned to screams, and then to nothing at all, as, instead of kissing her as a man would, he transformed into a snake, and sank his fangs into her neck, and drained her body dry of blood. And when he was sated, he transformed back into a man, and weighted her body with stones, and sent it to the bottom of the river, before disappearing himself. And whether he was a man, or a spirit, or a victim of a curse as he claimed, was never known.

  Snezhenka’s body was never found, but those who went to that bend in the river could hear her singing sweetly, and those who ventured too close were lured over the high banks and down into the deep pool, where they joined her in her watery grave. She kept a court of young men down there with her, the handsomest young men in the village, till there were none left, and the village elders decided they must leave, for the safety of their sons. And so the village was abandoned, and so was Snezhenka, and she grew angrier and more vengeful with each passing year, until she began to seek out other young women who had been wronged as she had, and transformed them into water-maidens as she had been. And they became a plague upon the land, and good people feared to fish, or fetch water, or sail upon their rivers and lakes. They begged the gods for release from this curse, but the gods ignored their pleas, as they are wont to do.

  “Flame and water,” the gods told them. “Once you are able to bring together flame and water, the curse will be lifted. Till then you must suffer the consequences of what was done. Till then you must live in fear of the water-maidens, so that you do not forget what was done to our daughter, and all our other daughters.”

  Many clever sorceresses have striven to find the secret of bringing together flame and water, but to this day they have failed, and water-maidens continue to haunt our lands.

  There was a knock at the door. Startled, Dasha dropped the book. “Who is it?” she asked.

  “It’s Aunty Olya. Do you want to come down to the Great Hall? Vladya wants to speak to you.”

  That can’t be good, Dasha thought, but squelched that thought instantly, and jumped up, calling out, “I’ll be right there!”

  “Good girl. I think you might find it interesting.”

  Dasha hoped so too, but when she came out into the corridor, Aunty Olga’s face promised little hope of anything good. “What happened?” Dasha asked.

  “We caught someone,” Aunty Olga told her.

  “Who? What kind of someone?”

  “A Westerner.”

  “A woman?” Dasha asked.

  “Don’t look so surprised! They have them, same as we do. How else do you think they keep the breed going?”

  “Yes, but…I thought it was mostly men who were fleeing into our lands. Probably defeated warriors, trying to escape the slavers.”

  “Slavers? Oh, right. Yes, they do have slavers there. As well as women. Come on. I think Vladya wants you to hear what she has to say, and give your council.”

  “My council?”

  “Well
, to tell her what your mother thinks.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to do! But she won’t listen!”

  “Well, maybe now she will.” And with that, Aunty Olga refused to say anything more, saying it was a bad business that didn’t bear talking of when she didn’t have to.

  Vladya was sitting on her chair on the dais in the Great Hall when they arrived. Vasilisa Vasilisovna was perched half-on, half-off the chair next to her, looking very unhappy about being there. A woman was standing in front of the dais, chains on her wrists and ankles. Her clothing was clothing in name only, being rags that were barely held in place with a few strings and laces. She was tall, almost as tall as Dasha, but so skinny her face looked too big for her body. She had long hair that had once been a blonde braid, but was now a dirty rat’s nest of filthy tangles, and large round blue eyes that were disfigured by large bruises. Tear tracks cut through the dirt on her face, and she held herself as if she were in pain.

  “Who is she?” Dasha whispered.