The Breathing Sea II - Drowning

by E. P. Clark

  “We can speak of this when we come to my mother,” she said. If we come to my mother, she thought to herself, as she caught a flash of gold out of the corner of her eyes, and had a sudden, powerful sense of something stalking them, something that would soon catch up with them and bring them to…what? The confrontation that needed to happen, the reason—one of the reasons; she suddenly felt that there was more than one—that she had put herself in this position. There were no images, but she could feel, so strongly for a moment she caught her breath and stopped walking, that everything was coming together, and that soon—tomorrow!—the crisis would arrive, and she would be in the center of it.

  “Your eyes, Tsarinovna!” cried Yuliya.

  “What about them?” Dasha asked.

  “For a moment…it must have been the trick of the light…I thought they were filled with golden light…”

  “Oh,” said Dasha. “That. It happens sometimes. It’s nothing to worry about.” And she took Yuliya’s arm in her own, and helped her stumble onwards through the hot and sticky forest.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  They kept going all day, stopping only for a few breaths, it seemed, every few versts, driven onwards by Bjorn’s determination to stay ahead of the pursuit he was convinced—rightly—was after them.

  “I’ve captured many prizes,” he told Dasha, via Yuliya. “But you’re the best. I’m not letting anyone take you from me. Besides,” he added with a grin, “I like you.”

  “Thank you,” Dasha told him, flattered and disturbed, especially by the fact that she was flattered, in equal measure.

  Late in the evening they came suddenly out of the woods and found themselves on the edge of a set of fields, with smoke from a village rising up into the deepening twilight above them.

  They jumped back into the woods and huddled on the edge of the trees. Bjorn and several of the other raiders with whom, Dasha had noticed, he always conferred about any decisions, gathered in a circle and held a heated discussion. Dasha shared a glance with Yuliya, and then wished she hadn’t. Yuliya was clearly thinking that they were going to attack the village, and now Dasha was thinking the same thing.

  There was furious gesticulation coming from the raiders, sometimes aimed in the direction of the village, sometimes at Dasha. She tried to see what it might mean, what it might lead to, but she was too distracted by all the noise and the worry to be able to let the visions come, and all she could sense was her own anxiety. She looked up at the sky, as if deliverance or clarity might come from it, but all she saw was an especially bright star, come out into the deep blue of the almost-midsummer midnight. There was no sign of the moon. Her stomach cramped, reminding her that her moonblood was due to start any day now.

  Let it be late, she prayed, let it come at a time that won’t be so terrible as now, but such prayers had never been answered before, so she had little faith that they would be answered this time. She rubbed at the back of her head. It was itchy and prickly, as if a storm were coming on…as if a fit were coming on…she found her head turning on its own, and then leading her off, one step after another, towards a tree on the edge of the wood. Someone noticed her movement and shouted, but she kept walking, until suddenly she stopped. Why had she stopped? She was prickling and tingling all over. There was something just to her right…she turned her head. A prayer tree. A huge spruce. The ribbons on it were so sparse she hadn’t noticed them at first, but now she could see them, fluttering in the evening breeze here and there, faded and stained but still hanging, still marking the prayers of those who had hung them there.

  “What?!” demanded Bjorn, grabbing her by the shoulder. He looked angry, and maybe a little scared as well. “What?!” he repeated. “You?! What?!”

  Dasha gestured at the tree, and then knelt down before it.

  “Ah,” he said, nodding in understanding. He said something else, in his own language, that Dasha couldn’t make out, but that suggested impatience and dismissal, with that undercurrent of fear just beneath it.

  Let us all get through this safely, Dasha prayed. The prickling was growing stronger and stronger, and she knew she was about to fall into a fit, and there was nothing she could do to prevent it. We will get through this safely, she thought, not sure who the “we” was, but thinking it nonetheless. The sense of something standing before her, hanging over her, was so strong she could scarcely breathe, but there was a thick wall between her visions and it, and she couldn’t batter her way through it. Because what she needed was faith. Faith she couldn’t find right now, faith that was being squeezed out of her, she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think…

  “AKH!” she screamed, and jerked and flopped over, her head crashing into Bjorn’s chest where he had caught her. He stared down at her, his funny-shaped pale blue eyes even rounder and paler than usual with concern. Three different possibilities for him unfolded in front of Dasha’s eyes all at once, along with the thought that these fits were just the other side of her visions, like the seams of a fine garment, washing away the pain and the fear and the rising tension that always marked the onset of a fit, leaving behind nothing but certainty and peace.

  “I’m fine,” she told him, trying to wriggle out of his grasp and failing.

  He gestured at the prayer tree and said something that was clearly a question.

  “The trees affect me like that,” Dasha told him. “It’s nothing to worry about.”

  Even if he couldn’t understand her words, he seemed to understand what she meant, and he said something in denial, pointing at the tree with vigorous distaste.

  “Come,” said Dasha, finally managing to free herself from him. “We should leave this place.”

  He was happy enough to follow her away from the tree, and as soon as they returned to Yuliya he began demanding something of her, pointing in the direction of the tree and then Dasha.

  “He wants to know what harm the curse trees can do to you,” Yuliya told her. “The ones with ribbons, and sometimes faces. He wants to know if they can watch us, if they are watching us, and reporting back to the gods or to other sorceresses.”

  “I don’t know,” Dasha said. “Maybe.”

  This response did not please Bjorn at all, and he immediately gave the others orders to, Yuliya told Dasha, leave the area immediately and skirt around the fields until they were in the woods on the other side of the village, far away from the “curse tree.” Not until they were out of all possible sight of it would they stop and rest for the night.

  “They were going to raid the village,” Yuliya told Dasha. “But now they might not. You might have saved us all with your fit, Tsarinovna.”

  “I know,” Dasha said. “I saw it, when I had my fit. They’ve finally proven to be good for something, at least.”

  “Did you see how we’re going to get out of this, Tsarinovna?” asked Yuliya.

  “Sort of,” Dasha told her.

  Yuliya gave her a long look. “Better than nothing, I suppose,” she said, and then began trudging wearily along the edge of the woods, in the direction of their new destination.

  ***

  They spent the twilight of midnight skirting along the edges of the fields, coming finally to the woods on the far side of the village just as the sun was rising again. They all flopped down under the trees and began to eat the remnants of the stale bread they had with them. Some of the pieces were spotted with mold. Dasha’s piece, which once again was larger than the others, and which she split with Yuliya, was not moldy, but both Ratibor and Yaromir were given pieces covered in mold, which they threw down on the ground in disgust, causing one of the raiders to come over and shout at them.

  “He’s saying that they shouldn’t waste food, that we don’t have anything else,” Yuliya explained to Dasha quietly. Ratibor and Yaromir, who couldn’t have understood the words any better than Dasha had, nonetheless managed to catch the gist of it, and there began a furious argument, in which neither side could make out a word of what the other was saying, over
the bread. More raiders gathered around them, but instead of breaking up the argument, joined in, until at least ten of them were all shouting at each other, Ratibor and Yaromir largely forgotten.

  “They’re arguing over whether or not to raid the village for food,” Yuliya whispered, as Bjorn went over to jump into the argument. “Bjorn is telling them no, the curse trees are watching us and we have to keep moving to keep ahead of the people tracking us, who want to take you back, and the others are saying that it won’t matter how fast we go if we starve to death.”

  “Who’s winning?” Dasha whispered back.

  “The hungry ones,” Yuliya told her, and Dasha’s stomach clenched. The three possible futures she had seen when she had had the fit narrowed down to one, the one that would happen if they raided the village. Actually, they were not so much a set of certain futures, as a whole series of possibilities, none of them wholly good. The best possibilities, her vision had told her, were if they kept going and made it all the way to Pristanograd untroubled, where they could meet with her mother and make an agreement with her. That future had great promise for bringing about a time of peace and prosperity for both Zem’ and Rutsi, although bought at the price of Dasha’s marriage to Bjorn or someone like him. But that, the visions assured her, would not be so very terrible. Capture, or in her case rescue, by her father and the others with him was less promising of eventual peace arrangements between Zem’ and her neighbors, and might lead to the deaths of a number of the raiders, but would likely leave Dasha and her companions unscathed. But if they were to carry out a raid on the village…then Dasha’s would-be rescuers, who were not very far behind them, would catch up with them, and would have no choice but to reveal themselves and defend the villagers, and that would lead to…badness. What exactly the badness would be, Dasha couldn’t say, but it would be bad.

  “I have to dissuade them,” she said, jumping up and running over to where now everyone except the raiders on watch were gathered together in an angry knot of shouting and disagreement.

  She had to elbow and slither her way into the middle of the knot, getting shoved and stepped on in the process, and then it took her three tries to catch Bjorn’s attention, and once she did, she realized that Yuliya hadn’t followed her into the shoving, shouting mass of men.

  “Don’t!” she cried, looking around for Yuliya, trying to get her to come join her. But Yuliya stood there stubbornly on the outside, refusing, perhaps wisely, to put herself in harm’s way amongst all the men.

  “Don’t,” she repeated, looking earnestly into Bjorn’s face and shaking his arm, hoping to impress on him her sincerity. “Come! Come with me. I have to tell you something.”

  The men all laughed, thinking, she could guess, that she had said something else, that she was trying to distract him or make some other kind of proposition to him than what she actually was. Bjorn was grinning too, even as he was looking at her with irritation, thinking the same thing.

  “Come on!” she told him, trying to drag him away from the other men. “I have something I have to tell you. About the visions. About my magic.” She imitated the fit she had just had, which made the other men laugh, an ugly, frightening and fear-filled laugh, and then mimed seeing something.

  Bjorn’s face changed. He said something to the others, and then followed her away from them, over to Yuliya.

  “You have to tell him!” Dasha told her. “Tell him that I saw a vision of what will happen if he raids the village.”

  Yuliya, speaking reluctantly, said something to Bjorn, who gave her a searching look and said something in reply.

  “He wants to know if it was at the curse tree,” Yuliya explained.

  “Yes,” Dasha said. “I have visions, and I had one there. Three visions, all about him.”

  When Yuliya relayed that, Bjorn stilled and then asked, the apprehension clear in his voice, “What kind of visions?”

  “Tell him that if we keep going, if we make it all the way to Pristanograd and my mother, then my visions say there is a chance, a good chance, that everything will work out just as he hopes it will: Zem’ will help support Rutsi against the Southern invaders, our agreement strengthened by marriage—all of it. Tell him!” she said fiercely, when Yuliya’s face twisted in disgust.

  “You can’t mean you want to…!” said Yuliya.

  “I am the Tsarinovna. Any marriage I make will be arranged. Better it should be one that averts invasion and war, don’t you think? Tell him!”

  Her whole body showing what she thought of this, Yuliya began speaking to Bjorn. Barely had she gotten ten words out when his face lit up like a suddenly unshuttered dark-lantern, and he clapped Yuliya so hard on the shoulder that she stumbled back and had to catch herself against a tree to keep from falling down. Dasha wanted to jump forward to help steady her, but Bjorn had already snatched her up and planted a kiss on her face. She thought he was aiming for her mouth, but she managed to turn her head just in time and catch it on her ear instead, which made him laugh and Yuliya give her a look that said, plain as day, Do you really want to be married to that?

  “He says,” said Yuliya, as Bjorn said something, still laughing and hugging Dasha, “that you’ll soon learn to love what he has to offer. He said one day he’ll make you a real woman. Only he said it much more crudely than that.”

  “I’m sure,” said Dasha, wriggling out of his grasp and going over to stand beside Yuliya. “Tell him that if he wants that future to come true, we need to set off for Pristanograd as soon as possible.”

  Yuliya opened her mouth to start speaking. A sudden commotion drowned out whatever words might have come out. Their heads all snapped around, just in time to see half the raiders push the others out of the way and set off running in the direction of the village.

  “No!” cried Dasha. And then she cried out again when Bjorn made to go after them.

  He turned back and said something to her, his eyes sad and tight, all the former elation gone from them.

  “He says you must have seen something about what will happen if they go into the village,” Yuliya explained.

  Dasha nodded, her throat tight.

  “He says he can see by your face what it is.”

  “Tell him not to go!”

  “He wants to know if you’re asking for him, or for your people.”

  “Both! Tell him not to go.”

  Bjorn smiled, making his face look even sadder. He bent over and kissed Dasha’s cheek, his lips surprisingly soft against her face, even as his beard scratched her. He said something into her hair, and then slipped out of her grasp, just as she had just slipped out of his, and was off before she could stop him.

  “He said,” said Yuliya, her voice gentle even though her face was disapproving, “that you would have made a good wife and a good queen. He said he wishes he could stay, but he has to go with his men, because that’s what a man does.”

  “What?! What kind of nonsense…We have to stop them! Not just for them, or for the villagers, but for all of us! We need the peace agreement that could be forged between us—but if they are caught or killed…”

  “They’re already out of our reach, Tsarinovna,” said Yuliya. “I for one never could outrun them on my best day, and right now I can hardly walk. They’re gone, and we can’t stop them.”

  “I have to try!” cried Dasha, and, before Yuliya could object, whirled around and raced off through the woods.

  ***

  Branches slapped at her face and caught on her hair and clothes, threatening to rip them right off. Her legs, which had felt so leaden all day, felt as strong as a prize racehorse’s as she wove back and forth around the trees, leaping over logs and pools of water. Even so, the raiders remained just out of her reach.

  She burst out of the woods and into an open hayfield. The grass rose up to her waist. Even following the trail left by the raiders, running through it was like running through deep water. Something seemed to be keeping pace with her, but when she looked, there was nothi
ng there other than her own footsteps. No…something was slithering along…a viper! A viper peered out of the grass at her, smiling and hissing. Dasha leapt sideways to avoid her and kept running. Whose footsteps were those? Surely hers weren’t so loud. Was that a bear galloping alongside her, just out of sight? Or a wolf? Or…were those shadows? More shadows than just she was casting? Flowing along through the grass next to her? But why were they so loud…the raiders were getting ahead of her. Dasha turned all her thoughts to pumping the air through her lungs and keeping her feet bounding along over the crushed grass.

  The field ended abruptly in a ditch. Dasha almost went tumbling down into it, catching herself just in time. There! Over there. It was spanned by a bridge made of two birch poles. The raiders had already crossed and were racing along a path that led directly to the village. Dasha flew over the birch poles, feeling them shake under her feet but moving too quickly to lose her balance. It was no more than a few hundred yards to the village…she was never going to catch up with the raiders in time, and if she did, what was she going to do? Set them all on fire?

  If I have to! she thought, and sprang forward with renewed determination.

  There was movement up ahead, in the buildings. Someone making an early-morning visit to the privy? No!

  “No!” Dasha screamed, as she recognized Svetochka’s figure running out to meet them. She couldn’t say who she was shouting for. Svetochka would be cut down in an instant…but she wasn’t alone. There was Denisik…all the others…even Vladya! And Oleg. He was there too. And villagers were coming out as well, armed with scythes, pitchforks, anything they could get their hands on that vaguely resembled a weapon.