Vodník

  At least he had something to smile about. He slapped me on the back and continued down to the tour station.

  “I threw up,” Katka said out of the blue.

  “Excuse me?”

  “On my first tour, I got so nervous I threw up over the side of tower. I almost hit another group in the courtyard, and the grounds crew had to wait for it to rain for the stain on the side of the tower to completely disappear.”

  No. Way. “Are you just saying that to make me feel better?”

  She shook her head. “It’s the truth. I wanted you to hear it from me before you asked my father about it. He still teases me.”

  Who wouldn’t? “Well . . . thanks for sharing.” I didn’t feel like such an oaf anymore.

  We reached the ramp leading to the keep’s main gate, and we paused at the corner. Below us, the construction team was hard at work on the fallen wall, using pulleys and ropes to move building materials from inside the castle walls to the construction site itself. I could see Adam talking to one of the construction workers, pointing at some of the materials and then over to the wall.

  “You’ll get better,” Katka said.

  I nodded. “Right.” I couldn’t get much worse. And maybe I hadn’t done such a bad job after all. If it weren’t for that granny-from-hell, it would have been great.

  Katka cleared her throat. “Well, what do you want to—”

  My right hand shot out to grip her arm, cutting her off in midsentence. On top of the wall, right next to where it had crumbled away, a new figure had appeared. Her black cloak was easy to make out, contrasting with the blue sky behind her. The scythe in her hand caught the sunlight and sent it shattering back to me as she gazed down toward the construction zone.

  “What is it?” Katka asked, but I ignored her. As soon as I had seen the woman, my eyes had leaped to the construction site. If I could see what the danger was before it happened . . .

  Adam had finished his conversation with the man and was making his way over, smiling and waving at us as he navigated through coils of rope and building materials.

  I held up my hands. “Stop!” I shouted. “Don’t come any farther.”

  He stopped for moment, his head tilted in confusion. As he put a hand to his ear to show he didn’t understand, a loud cry came from the workers. I glanced over to see a rope holding one of the loads of rubble had broken free. The entire container shot down through the air and crashed to the ground in front of Adam, just missing him. Over a thousand pounds of rock exploded in a cloud of dust and shrapnel.

  I looked back at where the woman had been standing. She was still there, but she was no longer staring at the area below us.

  She was staring at me, her eyes blazing with fury.

  If you do happen to miss a death, be warned! You must recapture that soul as soon as possible. Failure to do so will have serious consequences. Ever heard of the Trojan War? You wouldn’t have if Thanatos had done his job right. That one single slip resulted in decades of overtime in the Mediterranean.

  I stumbled back in surprise, and Katka caught me from falling to the ground. When I checked again, the woman in black was gone. For a moment, Katka, Adam, and I stared at one another, then he unsteadily continued toward us. We went down to meet him.

  Death shouldn’t have been pissed at me. I saw someone in trouble, and I did something about it. People save people’s lives all the time. But that look hadn’t been one of annoyance. It was pure malice.

  “How did you know?”

  I blinked and focused on where I was. We had reached Adam, who was exuding relief and confusion. I cleared my throat. “I—uh . . . saw the rope slipping, and thought you might get hurt.”

  He watched me for a few heartbeats. One of the rock shards had hit him in the cheek. He was bleeding. “I’d be dead if I’d taken one more step.”

  I glanced at Katka. She shook her head. I cleared my throat again. “Oh—you probably could have dodged out of the way,” I said. “Maybe gotten hit by some rock shards, but nothing serious.” Right. And jumping off the Empire State Building would leave you a little sore, but fine.

  Adam gazed into the distance. “Probably.”

  I waited for him to speak again, but he seemed way too disturbed to manage conversation.

  Katka spoke. “We need to get back to the waiting area. Another tour might come.”

  Adam nodded, but stayed quiet.

  “Do you need any help?” I asked.

  That got him to meet my eyes. “Thank you, Tomas.”

  “You’re welcome.” What else was I supposed to say?

  Adam shook my hand and left without another word.

  “Come on,” Katka said to me after a moment. “I want the whole story.”

  We went back to the castle plaza—the one with the Well of Love. A juggling troupe was performing, and a group of maybe forty had the benches half filled. Katka and I sat at the back, and I checked around one more time before speaking.

  “Zubatá,” I said. “She was on the wall, staring down toward the construction, and I didn’t think. I just . . .”

  Katka smiled. “You just saved Adam’s life.”

  “Katka, she was looking at me . . . after. She didn’t seem too thrilled with what I had done.”

  The smile left her face. “Oh.” We watched the jugglers, but for some reason, a bunch of whirling knives and flaming brands weren’t comforting.

  I shrieked when a hand fell on my shoulder, causing the jugglers to stumble in their routine, one of them narrowly dodging a knife before it clattered to the cement. The crowd turned to see me, and I turned to see who had me by the neck. At first all I saw was T-shirt. I craned my neck up to see beard, and above that, L’uboš’s eyes drilling into me. He had a hand on Katka too.

  “We need to talk,” he said, and practically pulled us to our feet. The crowd murmured as we left, herded back toward the tour guide break room until L’uboš let go of his daughter, pulled out his keys and opened a different door. Behind it was another room, full of boxes and cloth-covered who-knew-whats. L’uboš closed the door behind him and studied me. I wondered if he knew how intimidating he could be. “Now speak,” he said.

  I cleared my throat. “About what?”

  “I just ran into Adam, and he had a very interesting story. I want to hear your side.”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I saw he was in trouble, and I warned him. That’s it.”

  “That’s not it,” Katka said. “He saw . . . Zubatá.”

  Instead of scoffing this time, my uncle asked, “You did?”

  He was taking me seriously? “Yeah,” I said.

  He sighed, then shook his head. “What you have done might have been very stupid. To know if it is stupid, I must hear the whole story. Now speak.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Now you believe me?”

  “Did you talk to your parents, as I told you to?”

  “No.”

  “Stupid. But it might make things easier now. Why do I believe you? Adam said you yelled before there was an accident—before anyone could have known. It makes your tale more believable. And remember, I have seen things at the castle too. Your mother, she will just have to deal with this. I cannot always do as she wishes. Speak.”

  I crossed my arms. I’d known I wasn’t crazy. “Fine. You want the story? I saw Zubatá, saw Adam was in trouble, and warned him. He lived. The end.”

  L’uboš groaned. “As I thought. Very foolish. Very stupid.”

  “I saved his life!”

  My uncle nodded. “For now, maybe, but one does not cheat Death lightly. What if she decides to get revenge for this trick? What if she kills you, instead? Yes, you saved his life, or extended it for a few hours. I will mourn if my friend dies, but what if now I must lose you too?”

  The fact that I had been thinking the same thing only made my reaction worse. My legs gave out, and I plopped down on the floor. L’uboš and Katka were there right away, fanning me.

  “Breathe,” L�
��uboš said. “Don’t kill yourself. Make her do it, if she insists.”

  I glared at him. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  He forced a smile. “No. Just make you think better.”

  In that case, it had worked. “You know, these warnings would have been a whole lot more use if you’d brought them up last night instead of saying you didn’t believe me.”

  L’uboš sighed. “This is all more complicated than you realize. Besides, there’s no question of belief now. I know. You are in big trouble.”

  “What can I do?” I asked.

  My uncle pointed a meaty forefinger at me. “Don’t tell your parents. Your mother thinks all of this is insanity, and there’s nothing they can do anyway. I’ll call them and tell them you’re staying with me tonight at the castle. It’s my shift. Whatever Zubatá decides to do, it will most likely be tonight. None of the stories says she has a long temper.”

  “What will she do? And what can you do to stop her?” I asked.

  L’uboš shrugged. “I don’t know. Hopefully something will come to us.”

  Katka and I spent the evening hiding in the storage room, talking about the old stories, with her telling me as much about Zubatá as she could think of, though nothing had helped. No clues about how to escape her or deal with her. She was death incarnate: not known for making compromises. When ten o’clock rolled around and L’uboš said Katka had to leave the castle, I thought I was going into cardiac arrest. She’d been the one person keeping me sane.

  “Why does she have to go?” I asked L’uboš.

  “Because I said, and I’m her father. So she must go.” L’uboš stood his ground, which was some pretty impressive ground, given his stature.

  There wasn’t much I could say to that kind of logic.

  Katka protested, but L’uboš wouldn’t budge. He didn’t want her in danger. He left to escort her to the door, and then the room had just me, piles of boxes, some unknown objects covered in sheets, and a whole lot of shadows. The only light came from a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. I had to stay hidden because L’uboš didn’t have permission for me to stay the night.

  I tried to keep calm. If Death was so ticked off with me, she probably would have come and smote me right then. Or was it smitten? Smoted? Unless Death liked to make her victims sweat before she got around to smiting.

  All those sheet-covered things in the room didn’t help. I stood up and walked over to one. My footsteps echoed on the tile floor, and my breathing was labored. The object was about my height, and sort of human sized, although it was bulky. Any other day, I would have whisked the sheet off in an instant, but there in that silent storeroom, all alone. . . . In a horror movie, it would be the ideal homicidal maniac hiding spot. Throw a sheet over himself, then wait for the first scantily clad teenager to come and take it off, or (if he was lucky) for two oversexed teens to start making out in the room, and then voomp, off would come the sheet, and down would come the machete.

  I swallowed, no longer sure whether it was better to leave the sheet on or take it off. Then again, I was neither scantily clad nor making out with anyone. Still, I couldn’t turn my back from the sheet. But what if the killer was behind me, even now creeping up step-by-step, the knife raised high—

  I whirled. No one was there. I spun back to the sheet and ripped it off, then screamed at the long-nosed troll leering at me.

  “What’s the problem?”

  I screamed again and whipped around to see L’uboš coming through the door. He walked over to the troll and knocked on it. “Wood,” he said.

  Sure enough, it was only a statue, and a badly carved one at that. You could see where the blade had sliced away the wood, leaving the troll as blocky as an eight-bit video game. Big nose, funky hair, potbelly. It’s amazing how fast you can go from scared out of your skin to feeling stupid. “Oh,” I said. “Right.”

  L’uboš sat down on the floor and patted the spot in front of him. “Please. Sit.”

  I did as asked, happy to not be alone and even happier not to have a scythe sticking out of my head. “Is Katka gone?” I asked, more to hear the sound of my own voice than to know.

  He nodded. “We must speak. I had you stay at the castle so that if anything should happen, chances are less that Zubatá will kill someone else in addition to you. Better for you to be alone now.”

  “What?”

  “Think about it. Do you want her deciding to make a gas line explode and kill your mother and father too? Or an entire city block? Tomorrow will be better. If she decides to kill you, it will be tonight. She must make an example out of you, and to do that, the response must be swift, so no one can say it was an accident. The longer it is, the less likely she will kill you. In fact, it is already late enough. You are probably safe.”

  “What if she wanted me to get really nervous first?”

  He grunted. “I had thought of that, but decided it would be best not to bring it up if you didn’t.”

  “Uncle L’uboš, you’d just give up on me like this?”

  It took him a moment to answer, and when he did, his voice was tight. He was holding back tears. “No. I would not ‘give up’ on you. But there is nothing I can do. I have thought, and thought, and thought, but I can’t . . .” He stood up and cracked his neck, then turned away. “You can leave this room and walk around the grounds, but don’t come into the keep. Stallone is out, and he would attack you. I’ll be back to check on you in a couple of hours.”

  Without looking back, he left. I realized the position he was in, and I was touched he was so concerned. It didn’t do squat for my current predicament, and it was one case where the thought definitely didn’t count, but at least I knew he’d cry at my funeral.

  Enough. It was time to think better thoughts, and time to be out of this sheet-infested room. If I was going to die tonight, I wanted it to be under the stars. I walked outside.

  It was cloudy.

  Humans like to make deals with Death. It comes with the territory. And while you might be tempted, we discourage you from entering into such pacts. Unless they involve really good dark chocolate. Because some deals are just too good to pass up.

  I sighed and went down to the amphitheater to walk off some steam. L’uboš was right: I wasn’t dead yet, and I wasn’t going to die. If some Slovak version of Death wanted to eat me for dinner, she would have—

  Laughter echoed through the amphitheater, low and cackling. I froze, and the laughter stopped. It hadn’t sounded close, but it was hard to tell where it had come from—too many buildings for sound to bounce off. The castle floodlights did a great job of making the walls bright, but provided terrible lighting for actually seeing anyone near me. Now all I could hear was the sound of cars passing by below. Somewhere, someone was having a cookout: I could smell smoke.

  When I moved, the cackling started again. It came from my left, back in the direction of the well. The well with the vodník. The well I was supposed to stay away from. Fine by me. I headed the other direction. Vodník or Zubatá—either one was bad for my health. But when I crept up the hill toward the main keep, I heard something move in the ruins to my left. Something big. Big enough to cause the earth to shake, as if stones were grinding against each other deep below us.

  Maybe going to the main keep was a bad idea too.

  Weren’t castles built to make people feel safer? So why did I feel so trapped?

  I turned back to go to the tour guide break room, only to see a figure silhouetted in the floodlights, standing twenty feet away. It wasn’t the vodník: the scythe was a dead giveaway.

  Zubatá had her hood up. She was going for the full freak out. She walked toward me, and I was so scared I couldn’t move. If she was going to kill me, there wasn’t a thing in the world I could do but stand and watch. I hoped I didn’t cry and beg.

  The figure kept coming, almost gliding across the flagstones. A breeze brushed across the path, but it left her dress untouched. She took the scythe in both ha
nds, no longer using it as a support. Only ten feet separated us. Five feet. Three.

  “Please don’t kill me!” I begged. So much for dying stoically.

  She drew the scythe back, then paused and cocked her head, an unspoken question.

  “I won’t do it again,” I said, not even thinking about what I was saying. I just spoke anything that came into my head. “I learned my lesson. Knowing is half the battle. I’ll pay you back. I—”

  The scythe sliced forward. I closed my eyes and braced myself to be torn in two. There was a puff of air, a twitch at my side, and then—

  “Did I scare you?”

  I opened my eyes. I was still standing there, and I was all in one piece. I looked down at my feet, worried that I’d see my dead body staring up at me—that I was already in the afterlife, and that Zubatá was just waiting around to gloat.

  No dead body.

  “Did I scare you?” she asked again. She had a raspy voice, but with a touch of warmth. Sort of like a benevolent chain smoker’s voice. She drew her hood back, revealing her long hair. Up close, I still couldn’t tell her age. She had a hooked nose and high cheekbones. She reminded me of Morticia Adams, with a shot of Elvira and a dose of generic grandmother. She looked slightly different from each angle.

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  She whipped the scythe back and forth past my head. Each time I was sure it would cut me in two, but each time it passed with little more than a tickle. A disturbing tickle, but nothing to cause lasting physical damage. “The scythe,” she said. “And my laugh. Was it scary?”

  Scary? I’d be standing in wet pants if I’d had anything to drink earlier. “Y-yes,” I said. And when that didn’t sound like an adequate answer, I added, “O great and powerful Zubatá.”

  The smile slipped away from her face immediately. “Don’t call me that.”