Anya and the Dragon

by Sofiya Pasternack

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The light was gone immediately, and Anya was swept away from the well opening in the breakneck darkness of the river. She still held on to Ivan’s arm, praying the underground river wasn’t full of debris and roots to catch and hold them until they drowned.

  A few little roots smacked Anya as she went, and she scraped her legs and feet on the bottom of the river a few times, but she mostly continued unobstructed.

  Until she hit a large, hard something. She was stuck against it for a moment, and Ivan slammed into the back of her, which knocked her loose, and she barely managed to keep ahold of his arm as she started moving again.

  The current ripped at her, attempting to drag her onward, but now Ivan was stuck on the whatever-it-was. Anya raised her free hand, trying to figure out what had him snagged, and he grabbed her.

  She couldn’t see him in the pitch-blackness, couldn’t see what held him. The coldness numbed her fingers, and she could hardly even feel him.

  Then Ivan dislodged her hand from his arm. Too fast for her to resist, he squeezed her hand—​and let go. Anya released a blurt of bubbles as the current carried her away from Ivan, leaving him alone in the darkness.

  * * *

  The underground current spat Anya out into murky light, and her lungs screamed for air as she clawed toward the surface. Her head broke the water, and she sucked in a loud, desperate breath that caught a few water droplets and sent her coughing and choking.

  She looked toward the shore as the slower current carried her downriver. The flames of her barn were taller than the trees, a titanic torch licking at billowing smoke in the sky.

  Anya struggled to the shore, shivering and aching all over. She heaved herself onto the muddy grass slope and set her forehead against the wet ground.

  Ivan.

  He had pushed her away.

  She stayed on the shore, watching the water, waiting for him to come.

  Minutes passed. They stretched out as her barn groaned and collapsed, shooting sparks up to illuminate the black clouds like fireflies in the night.

  Then the water bubbled.

  Anya perked, sitting up, eyes wide. Her heart jumped, so hopeful that Ivan’s dark head would break the surface.

  The hair that emerged was red. A rusalka’s empty eyes peered up at her.

  Anya’s heart still jumped, but with despair rather than hope. She wasn’t even afraid of the rusalka; that emotion had been overshadowed by her overwhelming guilt.

  The rusalka remained where she was, but she brought her head up farther out of the water. The expression on her white face was one of concern.

  “Please,” Anya said. “The underground river . . . there’s a boy trapped in there.” She shivered and huddled in on herself. “Help him. Please.”

  The rusalka’s concerned expression remained unchanged, and she vanished under the water. Anya didn’t dare hope the rusalka would find Ivan and bring him to safety, but she remained on the shore just in case.

  As she waited, she thought. Sigurd had taken Håkon somewhere alive. Why hadn’t the Varangian killed Håkon in the barn? That would have spilled too much blood, perhaps. Sigurd might have needed a special place to do his bloodletting. Maybe Anya had time to save Håkon.

  But how could she do that? She didn’t have any backup, or weapons, or even know where Sigurd was. Without some kind of help, Anya was never going to find him in time.

  “No,” she said aloud to herself. She couldn’t think like that.

  Babulya had quoted part of the Talmud to Anya on Shabbat: “Whoever destroys a single life has destroyed the entire world.” But there was another part to that. If she saved one life, she would save the entire world.

  Anya held her breath until she couldn’t anymore. The rusalka didn’t come back.

  She had already failed to save Ivan. She wouldn’t fail Håkon, too.

  * * *

  Anya crouched in the trees off the road by her house. The barn’s roof had fallen in, and some of the sparks jumped to the house just as Dyedka arrived with the goats. She watched the domovoi shoving the goats into a messy herd while Babulya stood nearby with her shawl clutched around her shoulders and Kin sitting at her feet, coughing. Dyedka trundled in and out of the smoking house, carrying books and a handful of Babulya’s plants. Anya was glad she had told the domovoi to get Babulya out.

  Voices echoed up the road from the village. People must have seen the smoke and were on their way to help. She had to get away before they showed up.

  Sigurd’s mount had left deep hoof prints in the dirt of the road, heading north. She followed the prints until the road forked, and then they went west. After the prints crossed the bridge over the Sogozha—​the bridge with the fisherman trail beside it that led to Kin’s secret ravine house—​they took a sharp left on a meager path, directly south into the forest.

  The sun dipped low in the sky, sinking behind the trees as Anya came to a shivering stop on the road. If the northern forest was dangerous, the southern one was even more so. The farther south the forest went, the more dry birch and pine would give way to the swampy shores of the messy, meandering Sogozha.

  She stopped at the path’s mouth, fear slowing her. The Varangian wasn’t the only dangerous thing in the swamp. The local leshy would get her lost, which was something she couldn’t afford right now. Vodyaniye and bukavacs prowled the waterways, hungry for people foolish enough to venture in. And besides them, she had to worry about plain old wolves and zmeyoks.

  Fear slowed her, but a different kind of panic got her started again. She could be hurt or killed in the swamp, but that wasn’t for certain. Håkon would definitely die if she did nothing to stop Sigurd. She wouldn’t be able to live the rest of her life knowing that her cowardice was responsible for the death of one of the last dragons, and knowing that Håkon had saved her life and she hadn’t returned the favor.

  Anya licked her lips and clenched her fists, and as the red of the setting sun lit the forest, Anya plunged into it.

  Chapter Thirty

  In the forest, Anya followed the path as it wound south, at first between enormous mossy trees. As the forest became wetter and swampier, she had to avoid stepping into still, black pools that looked like shadows. The sun’s dying red glow vanished, replaced with the rising full moon’s pale light through the skeletal trees. Anya wished desperately for a lantern.

  She stumbled along, careful to stay on the path so she could find her way back if she needed. Every few minutes, she would pause to get her bearings and listen for any sounds in the swamp.

  The third time she stopped, she thought she heard rustling. It stopped just after she did, and she told herself it was her imagination.

  The fourth time, the rustling was still there, and she heard the distinct sound of footfalls on the wet ground before whatever was following stopped along with her.

  Anya took a deep breath, attempting to steady her panicking heart. It wasn’t a leshy. Leshiye were silent in the woods, and they rarely harmed people. The leshy would confuse her and send her wandering. Since that’s what she was doing anyway, she doubted more wandering would hurt.

  A bukavac made a lot of noise—​after all, that’s what its name meant. Dyedka had told her about a bukavac he had driven away from the village before, and how the monstrous little creature had made such a ruckus, it had caused Dyedka to go nearly deaf. It had also killed a man and maimed another before they had successfully exorcised the thing. She didn’t know if they were noisy the entire time they hunted, though, or if they were smart enough to be quiet if they wanted to. Anya hoped whatever was following her wasn’t a bukavac.

  That left a vodyanoi, and Anya shuddered. The fishermen in the village would trade stories at the end of the day as they unloaded their catches and set their boats up for the night. Anya had heard stories of vodyaniye attempting to capsize smaller boats or drown people who got too close to the river. They rarely ventured into the water near the village, preferring to stay
in the area near the swamp, so only the foolhardy were at risk of being dragged into the Sogozha’s depths.

  Anya’s eyes flicked to the swamp around her. She felt pretty foolhardy at the moment. She didn’t know how far out of the water a vodyanoi would come for a victim.

  She searched her pockets, scrambling for anything metal. More often than not, spirits of any kind didn’t like metal. If a vodyanoi was after her, she could scare it away with iron. Maybe.

  Her pockets were empty of anything metal, populated chiefly by small pebbles and assorted scraps of yarn. She stuffed the trash back down into her pockets, scowling.

  The footsteps trailing her hadn’t started up again yet, so she stood still, waiting, searching the darkness for some kind of monstrous shape. The swamp’s stillness was disturbed only by the croaking of a frog and the splash as it leaped into a puddle nearby.

  Anya decided she had wasted enough time on a creature that might not even be real. The footsteps might have been in her imagination, and while she was standing there scared, Håkon was potentially having his heart cut out. She steeled herself and turned, ready to find the Varangian.

  She hadn’t moved yet, but a wet footfall squelched from behind her.

  Anya froze, heart hammering in her chest. She was cold all over.

  Another step.

  She turned. She knew she should run away as fast as she could, but she had to know what was stalking her in the darkness.

  Off to the side of the path, a pair of eyes reflected the moonlight at her. The creature they belonged to was tall and skinny, like a horse that had been pulled until its limbs stretched into spider legs. It was covered with scraggly, long ropes, like vines or tree roots. They dripped swamp water on the ground. It hunched over, standing on six legs but using the front two to feel the ground in front of it. Uneven horns jutted from the sides of its head.

  A huge bukavac.

  As Anya stared at it, it opened its black mouth and groaned. Then another mouth opened beside the first, teeth flashing in the moonlight. The second mouth emitted a different noise, a high-pitched squeal that made Anya’s toes curl. The sounds got louder and louder until they bored into Anya’s brain, tearing at her sanity.

  She ran.

  The creature behind her ran as well, and it started bellowing. The sound vibrated in the air and into Anya’s ears, making them ring as she fled.

  She ran, concentrating only on not colliding with anything that would slow her. She could hear the bukavac’s steps behind her, the scuttling rapid-fire of six feet punching the ground as it chased her. It screamed without taking a breath; beneath the screeching, Anya could hear slobbery licking, like the second mouth had stopped howling in anticipation of another use.

  The cold swamp air burned Anya’s lungs. Every breath she took stabbed pain into both sides under her ribs. Her shoes were soaked from stumbling through puddles. She hadn’t fallen yet, but she couldn’t see where she was going, either.

  And then . . . the path was gone.

  The ground wasn’t where she anticipated when she stepped. She lurched, uttering an ungraceful “Hurk!” as she pitched forward. She dropped a few heart-stopping feet into a puddle. Her face hit the water, and she scrambled up and back, gasping for air as she tried to claw her way out of the mud.

  The creature’s screaming and slobbering intensified, growing louder as it approached. The mud around Anya vibrated with every step the bukavac took. She waded closer to the shore, then pulled herself out of the mud and onto more solid land.

  She got one step into a run when the monster whipped out a long, spindly leg and swatted her feet out from under her. She hit the ground hard, the air rushing from her lungs all at once.

  The creature screamed with both mouths again, different discordant pitches that rattled the marrow in Anya’s bones. She clutched her ears with both hands and rolled away from the mud pit, chest tight and breath hitching. Her head felt like it would explode at any moment; through the buzzing in her ears, she could hear one of its mouths smacking loudly.

  Anya kicked out at it, but it swatted her feet away. Hot spittle dropped on her, and the bukavac’s corpse breath washed across her face. Its screaming was louder, closer, and the noise filled Anya’s brain with agony.

  In a final act of desperation, Anya flailed her arms and legs, hoping she would catch it in a vulnerable spot and shut it up for five seconds so she could regain her sanity. Her feet hit its legs, but it didn’t buckle. One hand swiped at nothing but empty swamp air.

  The other hand hit something cold and wet.

  The wet thing held on to Anya’s arm.

  The bukavac’s screaming changed. It sounded angrier.

  Whatever held Anya’s arm pulled her away from the screeching monster. She opened her eyes to see what was saving her—​or more likely, what was trying to eat her before the bukavac could.

  Dark spots clouded Anya’s vision. She made out the wispy outline of something vaguely humanoid, and then her eyes focused long enough to recognize it.

  “Ivan . . .” she mumbled.

  The bukavac snarled and bellowed with both mouths, and Ivan’s cold grip on Anya’s arm went away.

  Angry roars changed suddenly into pained squeals and yelps. Anya dared a look at what it was yelping about. Ivan stood, feet planted in the mud, before the creature. One arm played strings in the air; the other was swathed against his chest. Whips of water slapped at the bukavac’s face, snapping and cracking as they hit. Then Ivan heaved his arm from one side to the other, like he was throwing a bale of hay over his head, and the pool’s water rose up in a muddy tidal wave. It crashed into the monster, knocking it over in a tangle of legs and ropy appendages. Anya’s ears rang and buzzed from the bukavac’s screeching, and then it turned and fled.

  Anya rolled to her back, gasping as the silence of the swamp became deafening. Her mind was fuzzy and dark, vibrating against her skull in a frenzy, like it was trying to escape. Her chest was still tight. She felt like she couldn’t get a breath, and she sucked at the air as her arms and legs roiled between burning and numbness.

  It felt like someone was sitting on her chest. The dark spots expanded, filling up the outer edges of her vision.

  Ivan was at her side then, eyes wide. His cold, cold hand was on her arm, and his mouth moved. She couldn’t hear him. Why couldn’t she hear him? Why was his hand so cold?

  Oh no.

  He had drowned. He was a rusalka. She hadn’t heard of a boy rusalka, but drowned men had to go somewhere. Anya tried to suck in a breath to speak, to apologize for leaving Ivan to die, to beg his forgiveness. She couldn’t, and the dark spots rolled across her vision like thunderclouds.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The darkness rolled out as it had rolled in, leaving a splitting headache and sore muscles in its wake. Anya groaned and flopped toward where Ivan had sat, succeeding in rolling to her belly before her strength went out of her.

  She lay face-down on the wet ground, puffing in and out of the side of her mouth. Her arms wouldn’t work to push her up.

  Cold fingers grasped her shoulder and tugged, rolling her to her back again. Anya stared at her dead friend above her, and tears started pouring down her face.

  “I’m s-so sorry!” Anya sobbed. Her own voice sounded muffled and far away.

  Ivan shushed her and pulled her to him awkwardly, hugging her one-armed. He was damp, and his skin was cool like the rusalka that had grabbed Anya in the river. He wouldn’t speak. He still had his eyes, but maybe that was something he would lose over time.

  “Please forgive me!” Anya continued to cry. She wanted to hug him back, but there was no way. Anya’s arms felt like challah dough: floppy and damp. “I would have tried to get you out, but it was so dark, and then you pushed me away, and, Ivan, I’m so sorry I let you die!”

  His eyebrows shot upward. “What?” His voice sounded muted and distant, like he was speaking with a pillow against his face, but she still heard him.

  She gaped
at him, and then shouted, “You can talk!”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re not a rusalka!”

  “I’m not a—” He shook his head. “Of course I’m not a rusalka. But”—​he lifted a finger—​“a rusalka did pull me out of that tunnel.”

  “Really?” Anya wondered if it was the same one she’d asked for help.

  “I used my water magic like I did when Sigurd threw us in the river.” Ivan pointed to his broken arm. “But this arm was stuck in a bunch of roots, and I couldn’t pull it out. And I couldn’t use my other hand to pull myself out, or I’d lose the magic. The rusalka saved me.” He stared off into the distance. “I was wrong about them.”

  “You were wrong about dragons, too,” Anya said.

  He rubbed his swathed arm. “And your domovoi.”

  “You’ll have to edit your book,” Anya said.

  “I guess.” He looked around. “So where are we going?”

  “Ivan, you’re hurt,” Anya said. “You shouldn’t come with me.” She turned back into the heart of the swamp. “I have to find Sigurd before he kills Håkon.”

  Ivan swallowed hard. “Anya—”

  She spoke, interrupting him before he could try to talk her out of finding the Varangian. “I’ve already made it this far.” She lifted her arms, indicating their surroundings. “I didn’t fight a bukavac and get lost in a swamp so I could run away before I even found Sigurd! So you don’t have to come, Ivan, but I’m—”

  “I’m coming with you,” Ivan said.

  Anya paused. “Really?”

  “Yes,” Ivan said.

  “What about your arm?”

  Ivan shrugged. “I don’t want to leave you alone.”

  “Aren’t you scared?” Anya frowned.

  “I’m terrified. But . . .” Ivan shifted on his feet. “I want to be a hero. And heroes don’t abandon their friends.”

  Anya smiled. “Thank you.”

  He tapped his injured arm softly. “Well, I don’t think I’m going to do much good against Sigurd with a broken arm.”