Vodník

  I blinked. “Come again?” I hadn’t expected him to go along with my suggestion.

  L’uboš’s face softened some. “We will not abandon you. I will have words with some of my friends. These three boys who attacked you, there will be consequences. But if Katka and I solve this for you, it will not help you. You must learn how to handle this.”

  “How to get beat up?” I asked, dumbfounded.

  “No,” L’uboš said. “How to fight. How to defend yourself. If you are dangerous, these boys will not hurt you.”

  An image of me unleashing medieval wrath all over Draco’s smug face was more than comforting, but I gestured down at my body. “Defend myself? How?”

  “Body size can change,” L’uboš said. “It is not difficult. It just takes time and effort. But you must do it. Do you understand why?”

  I nodded. My uncle was right. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to do it, but I had to at least try to stick up for myself more. And if it involved a war hammer, so much the better.

  Over the next half hour, L’uboš and I worked out when I’d be able to come down and get training from his joust buddies, who were out today mourning Adam’s death but would be back on the job about the same time my bruises healed. Katka wanted to come along, but L’uboš shook his head, explaining he didn’t want to put undue strain on her body. It was a somber reminder of what I’d found out from Morena the night before, and it quieted me down. Too much was happening too fast. I wanted a break—a pause button. All I got was the day off from L’uboš. He said he’d cover the tours for us today.

  At last L’uboš headed off to keep getting the castle ready, leaving Katka and me staring at each other. I tried to act normal, still not sure what was the best thing to tell her.

  “What’s wrong?” Katka asked after all of five minutes. Apparently I’m not as good at acting normal as I’d like.

  “You mean besides seeing Death last night and having her tell me she killed Adam?” I hoped sarcasm would serve as a cover for my unease.

  “Yes.”

  So much for that. “Nothing,” I said.

  “You’re rubbing your scar.”

  She was right. “Mosquito bite.”

  “That’s a pathetic excuse. What aren’t you telling me?”

  “It’s been a long morning,” I said, then winced and held my side. Maybe the sympathy card would work.

  “You’re hiding something from me. Why?”

  And that quickly, I was sitting there with no more excuses and no idea how to get out of talking to Katka. I sighed. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go to the park, and we can talk there.” Maybe the fifteen-minute walk would help me come up with a way to break it to her. It would definitely help loosen up my body some. I didn’t know which was making me tenser: my injuries or the pressure I’d been feeling all morning.

  As we walked, I kept expecting the Bigot Gang to appear and finish the job. I knew L’uboš had sworn they’d pay for what they did, but until I saw them and knew I had a bit of a reprieve, walking through the city wasn’t going to be easy for me. The memory of lying in a huddled ball, getting kicked from all sides . . . I was still so embarrassed and ashamed and afraid. I’d see a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye, and I’d flinch. It happened four times during the walk across the city. How long would it be before I felt safe outdoors?

  Katka was wise enough not to ask me any questions until we were sitting on a wooden bench in a corner of the park. It was big, with wide swathes of green grass framed by tree-lined paths. A gentle wind brushed through the treetops, the branches waving fifty feet above our heads. People were around, but none close enough to hear our conversation. “So what happened?” she asked.

  I swallowed. I had made my mind up to tell her, but it still wasn’t easy. How would she take it? “I’m not sure you want to know,” I said.

  “You saw Zubatá last night?”

  I nodded. “Her name’s Morena. She was very specific about that.”

  “Huh. Okay, Morena. And she told you something you don’t want to share?”

  “Obviously,” I said.

  She thought for a moment. “It’s when I’m going to die.”

  I forced myself to meet her eyes and nodded again. “August 25th,” I said.

  For once she had no response. She just stared at a mother walking by with her child in a stroller.

  “That’s not all,” I said. Giving a terminally ill person a straw to grasp at was bad, but when that straw might involve murder . . . Katka still deserved to know. “Morena said I could make a trade.”

  “What?”

  “Soul for soul.”

  Katka sat back against the bench. “And you weren’t going to mention this to me?”

  I shrugged.

  “Don’t you think it concerns me?” Katka said. “That I had the right to know?”

  A pickup soccer game was going about thirty feet away. I watched it instead of thinking, but it soon brought up too many mental images of my recent beating. Each time someone would kick the ball, I remembered lying in the street, Gollum’s foot smashing into my shoulder, Jabba going for the soft spots. The sound of Draco’s laughter.

  “What are we going to do?” Katka asked.

  I turned from the soccer game. “I have no clue. Do you think we should tell your dad?”

  “Are you crazy? He’ll just worry, and there’s nothing he can do about it.”

  Exactly. I shrugged again, pain lancing through my side. “Fine.”

  “No, Tomas. I need you to promise me. No one else finds out about this unless I say so.”

  “All right, already.” It was her call, and nobody in this family talked to anybody about anything, anyway.

  She was quiet again, then said, “What do we do about the deal she offered you? There must be a way to fulfill it.”

  “Right. Know anyone who needs killing?”

  My cousin was staring at the soccer game herself now. A vein was throbbing in her forehead, and I wondered if this would be enough to bring on another seizure. She stood up. “I need some time to think. Be alone. Will you be okay getting home from here alone?”

  I nodded and stood as well. “It’ll be okay, Katka. We have a month and a half—plenty of time to think of a way out of this.”

  “Maybe we’ll talk later, okay?”

  I tried to smile. “Don’t get too down, though.”

  Katka shook her head and left. I had to keep reminding myself this was a good thing. If I hadn’t talked to Morena last night, Katka still would have been slated to die. This way, at least we had a shot of saving her life.

  But how? We couldn’t involve any of our parents, and even if we could, what were they going to do? Kiss it and make it better? Heck—if we told L’uboš, he’d probably arrange for an “accident.” Someone else dies, and the problem would be solved.

  I could think of three nominees right off the top of my head.

  I rolled the thought over in my mind as I headed home. It didn’t take me too long to get an answer: the one Morena had pointed out. Would I like to have it turned on me—have Katka killed so someone else’s “someone you knew” could be saved? No way. Even the Bigot Gang must have families. Murder could not be an option.

  And besides, how was I supposed to get a death for Death? It was like the old “what you get for the person who has everything?” dilemma, only a million times worse. Morena had talked all about how she couldn’t kill someone before their time, but wasn’t that what she was asking me to do? If she had rules to follow that I wasn’t aware of, how could I be sure this deal was even possible?

  Thunk.

  I almost tripped over a package that had appeared out of nowhere in front of me. I glanced around me on the street. No one was near. The package was hefty and rectangular, wrapped in plain brown paper, tied with a white string with a note attached. I bent down and picked up the package, which weighed about twenty pounds.

  The note was written in flowing black handwriting and had a
simple message:

  Thought you might like some help.

  —A.

  I looked around me again, just to be sure I was still alone. Who was A? Did Morena have a first name? She was the only one who knew about this, and she was the only one who could probably read my mind. But then why not sign it M? Nice and clear. I crouched at the side of the street to open the package, feeling like Charlie searching for the Golden Ticket, except way more morbid. I knew what it was before I opened it. I had been through enough Christmases to recognize a book when I felt it, though this one was more on the level of a tome. So I went straight for the cover:

  Death in the Modern Day.

  Introduction

  Congratulations on your decision to get involved in the exciting and fast-growing industry that is Death. No doubt you have realized that with the exponential growth of life today, the need for capable Deaths can only grow greater. This little book is designed to explain everything you need to know about the science behind the business of death. Your first step is to memorize all the simple rules in the chapters that follow. Once you have the basics down, you’re sure to see how easy this profession really can be. If you have intelligence, education, and ability, so much the better, but remember that it’s possible to kill things without any of these qualities.

  I waited until I was in my room (and showered again) before I started to read the book. The walk had breezed by, despite the heavy weight I had to carry and the lingering pain. From the feel of it, I’d have some dark bruises on my legs and back. But I had too many questions to worry about the bruising, and I was too curious to think about anything else besides what information the book might hold. Better to be focused on this than what had happened to me this morning.

  Luckily my parents weren’t home yet. I locked the door to my room, settled on the bed, and got the package out.

  The book was as thick as a dictionary and bound in smooth leather. And it was in English, not Slovak. There were no locks, and the paper seemed to be just that—paper. Acid-free, even. No human skin turned into leather, no eyeball on the cover. Just a big book.

  When your father’s a librarian, you approach books differently—especially nonfiction. I evaluated the quality of the binding and design. It was excellent work. I scanned the table of contents, flipped through the pages, noticed the extensive index. It was organized by subject: Introduction, A Brief History of Death, How to Manipulate Time, Death and You, How to Keep Track of Death—even a Troubleshooting section. From the snippets of text I caught as I browsed, its tone was pretty casual, considering the subject matter. Not only that, but it had little illustrations peppered throughout, sort of like that Books for Dummies series. Except instead of helpful friendly faces, these pictures were of a little cartoon reaper showing the reader how to do whatever the text was describing.

  When I read the introduction, it stopped me cold. People became Death? How? Why? I checked the index, but I couldn’t find anything that answered those topics. The book was aimed at someone who already knew about becoming Death, however that happened. Maybe you were recruited, like for a spy agency. I flipped further in to check out some other sections, which were arranged into related laws and bylaws with so many notes and subnotes that it was practically impossible to follow.

  There were some jobs I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to do. This one took the cake. Then again, thinking about Morena, maybe it just called for the right kind of person. Someone who, instead of telling you the time, points you in the general direction of a clockmaker. I had wanted to know how to fulfill this deal of hers, and she plopped the whole rulebook in front of me.

  I started searching the book in earnest, looking for at least the general section where I might find some answers. The more pages I flipped, the more frustrated I became. There was practically no rhyme or reason to the way it was organized. Everywhere it was the same—that stupid cheery narrator talked about how easy all of this was, and about how successful I’d be, all the while ignoring the fact that it was impossible to even believe a tenth of the material, let alone put it in action. Meanwhile, that little reaper guy helpfully showed the right way to decapitate someone, or how best to intimidate victims. One page had instructions for a potion that would make the book visible to mortals: it involved tap water and dandruff (with an accompanying pic of Reaper Dude in need of Head and Shoulders). A five-year-old could come up with a better potion than that.

  An hour later I took a break. I was over to Katka’s apartment before I remembered how depressed she’d been. I thought about not knocking, but then did anyway. This was a development, and it might cheer her up—give her more hope.

  She came to the door in her pajamas. “What is it?”

  “I wanted to check on you.”

  She nodded. Uncomfortable pause.

  “You okay?” I asked at last.

  Another nod.

  I took out the book and held it in front of me. “Listen, Morena gave me this. It’s all about the rules she has to follow and tricks she can use, and I was thinking maybe one of them might help . . . you know.”

  Katka ran her fingers through her hair, trying to straighten it. Her eyes were red and puffy. Actually, now that I noticed, she looked pretty crappy. “That’s a dictionary.”

  I checked. It was still Death in the Modern Day. Same cover, same everything. My shoulders slumped, but then I caught myself. “That’s just because it’s disguised. There’s a potion in here for making it visible to you.”

  “Potion?”

  “Tap water and dandruff.”

  That earned me even more skepticism. “Are you sure you’re thinking straight?” she asked. “You had that hit to your head. Maybe you need some more rest.” She started to close the door.

  I stamped my foot. “Come on! Before this, you knew you were going to die sometime, maybe soon, maybe not—but it was going to happen. If we figure out a way to fill this deal Morena made with me, you get better. She promised you’d die of old age, not cancer. And now we have her rulebook? It’s like an open-book test.”

  Katka stared at me. Either my speech hadn’t been inspiring or she was still working on waking up.

  “You know what I think?” My mouth had gotten me this far, so I kept going. “I think lawyers would have a field day with this agreement. There’s got to be a thousand different ways to fulfill it. We have a month and a half. No problem. We just need to—”

  “Come on,” Katka said. “Let’s sit down.”

  Well, that was a nice change. We went into her living room, and she turned the light on and went to the couch. “We make quite the pair,” she said. “You being beaten this morning, me with a month and a half to live. But you’re right. Sulking isn’t going to do us any good.”

  I nodded. “The answer’s in here. We just need to find it.”

  It took quite a bit of page flipping to find the stupid potion again. But I did at last:

  Take 2 tablespoons tap water, add one of your own nose hairs and three flakes of dandruff. Mix thoroughly in a counterclockwise direction with a dandelion stem, and allow it to rest uncovered overnight. In the morning, use a pure white feather to paint the concoction on the tongue of the skeptic. Voila. The book will then be visible in its natural state.

  I even managed to convince Katka to go along with it. What did we have to lose? We followed the directions exactly, finishing off the potion the next day before our tour shift at the castle. We snuck into one of the storage rooms the joust team used, surrounded by costumes, helmets, and swords.

  Katka was reluctant to get her tongue brushed with a feather laced with my dandruff, but we all make sacrifices for science. As soon as the feather left her tongue, her eyes glowed purple for a moment.

  She gasped, blinking, her eyes wide.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “That was . . . strange. It felt like someone ran ice down my spine.” She took out the book and thumbed through it. “But it worked. It’s not a dictionary, after all. Who would
have thought? What’s up with all these cartoon pictures of the guy with the skull?”

  Hallelujah. It was one thing to have people say they believed you, but another to have them actually experience the same thing. I really wasn’t crazy.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Now we can get down to—”

  L’uboš opened the door and walked in. “Tomas. You’re late.”

  “Late?” I asked, feeling like I should be covering up the book, then reminding myself that it would only look like a dictionary to my uncle. His crazy daughter and nephew, cramming themselves into a clothes closet with a dictionary, a feather, and a bottle of flaky water.

  “Defense training,” he said.

  Oh right—Bigot Gang Ass Kicking Time. I glanced at Katka, who nodded at me. “I’ve got this here,” she said. “Go.”

  Fifteen minutes later, I was standing in the middle of the joust arena, the stands empty. L’uboš had found me some loose fitting clothes that made me look like a peasant in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I felt stupid, but he’d pointed out that getting my street clothes dirty wouldn’t be a good idea right before I gave a tour.

  L’uboš spent the first few minutes poking and prodding at me. The bruises on my back and legs hurt, but my jaw was feeling mostly better. At last, my uncle grunted in a vaguely approving way.

  “Now, the basics.” L’uboš held his arms out to the side and shook them, rolling his neck to loosen up. “I do not know karate. This is not fancy. Knights were not concerned with being pretty. They wanted to do damage quickly and effectively. Get your enemy on the ground, then punish him. Break bones, and do it fast.”

  Break bones. Perfect. If the Bigot Gang wanted to mess with me again, I’d be ready.

  L’uboš continued, “But you are not ready for that yet. The first part of unarmed fighting is knowing how to fall.”

  What? I’d seen The Karate Kid. The first part was doing pointless exercises that ended up being ways to do karate. “Come again?”