Vodník

  “Fighting will hurt. You’ll be thrown to the ground. Knocked around. You must learn how to do it correctly. How to absorb the blows.” In a flash, he bent down, hooked a hand over my ankle and pulled. I fell flat on my back, the blow cushioned by the soft dirt we were standing in. “See?” L’uboš said. “That was not the right way to fall. Do the same to me.”

  “What?”

  “Trip me.”

  I bent forward, took his ankle, and pulled. He didn’t move. I pulled harder. I might as well have been trying to tear down an oak tree. L’uboš smiled. “One more time,” he said.

  I gave his ankle one last jerk. He flew up into the air and fell, rolling to the side as he landed. He continued his roll and used the momentum to get back to his feet. “That is how you fall.”

  The next hour flew by, as L’uboš went over the basics of falling from different angles. Falling forward. Falling backward. Falling to the side. Getting tripped. Getting pushed. By the end I was out of breath, sweating, and aching. L’uboš wasn’t even clammy. He smiled at me and nodded. “Two things,” he said. “First, you must get stronger. Much stronger. I have weights in my apartment. Have Katka show you where they are, and start lifting. I will show you how. Upper body and lower body. Second, you must practice what I’ve shown you. These sessions, they are training. You learn new techniques with me, and that is good. But you must practice those techniques on your own. Perfect them. Okay?”

  “Sure.” It felt good to be doing something.

  “A final piece of advice,” L’uboš said. “I don’t expect those bullies to bother you anytime soon, but if they do, you must have no mercy. You must fight dirty. Between the legs, the eyes, the nose—these are the soft spots of a man. The solar plexus, if you can find it. Be prepared to do damage, and do it fast. Okay?”

  “But won’t that make them more angry? Make them want to hurt me more?”

  “Tomas, three against one . . . if they try to beat you again, they might do lasting damage. You fight to stay alive. You hurt them, and then you run like a rabbit. Forget pride. Forget teaching them a lesson. Disable them and get away. Okay?”

  I hoped it didn’t come to that. In the movies, I’d have a great scene where I beat up all three of them, triumphant music swelling in the background. But I still remembered them kicking me, spitting on me. Peeing on me.

  This wasn’t the movies.

  The next two weeks were a mix of amateur hour at the local magic shop and a Rocky training montage. In our spare time, Katka and I took turns with the book. Well, she ended up looking more at the book than I did, coming to check in with me when there was a part where the English was too much for her, even with a dictionary. It was good she had time for it—I was too busy lifting barbells that were pitifully small (while watching Slovak reruns of 80s American TV shows) and throwing myself to the ground on practically every surface I could find.

  And as frustrating as all that might sound, I could still see myself making progress. I had a problem, and I was doing something tangible to fix it.

  It felt good.

  Things weren’t so good on the Morena contract front. The first thing to do seemed like a no-brainer: ask Ohnica. But when you’ve got a fire phobia, steeling yourself to summon up a friendly fire woman isn’t exactly basic math. I was proud of myself for being willing to even consider it, let alone do it. Finally a few days later Katka and I made a small bonfire out behind the castle one evening (bringing some klobása along to make it look at least a bit like a barbecue). The castle had a large wooded area that belonged to it, but which was only accessible by a locked gate. A locked gate we just happened to borrow the key to.

  Of course, when I say “we” built a fire, I mean Katka and I stacked all the logs up, and she lit it while I was a safe distance away, far enough back that I didn’t feel the heat. That was my standard operating procedure, when it came to fire. I didn’t hyperventilate or anything, but I wouldn’t go any closer.

  The víla appeared when I called her name, having waited for the fire to get to roaring speed before giving it a shot. The flames lowered, and Ohnica stepped out like she was coming from behind a curtain, glowing in the night air like Obi-wan when he appeared as a ghost to Luke. Except orange, not blue. Katka gasped and stepped back. Apparently that potion from Death in the Modern Day had made more than just the book visible.

  Ohnica got right down to business, freezing Katka before turning to me. “What is it? Has the vodník attacked you? Have you killed him?”

  “No. I haven’t seen him yet. I haven’t really been trying to.”

  She blinked, those burning cinders of eyes covered for a moment like cooling lava before bursting back to life. “He hasn’t even tried to see you?”

  “Well . . . he sent a girl. Lesana. She told me he wants to meet soon, but—”

  “Do not test his patience, Tomas. He is unpredictable. If he said he wants to meet, you have no choice.”

  “That’s not why I called you. I mean, sure, I’ll meet with him. But do you know how to work a switch with Death, soul for soul?”

  “What are you up to?”

  “Never mind. Can you do it without having to kill another person?”

  Ohnica shook her head. “No, and killing another person wouldn’t do it either. Morena knows when everyone is going to die. Everyone. You can’t surprise her—at least, humans can’t.”

  I had thought this might be the case. “What about the vodník?” I asked. “What if I released one of the souls it had caught?”

  “I don’t know. It might. But I don’t know of a way to do that.”

  “You can’t just break a cup?”

  “I told you. Humans have a hard time interacting with us, and we have a hard time interacting with them. It used to be different, but . . . And in any case, the teacups don’t break. He has them specially made.”

  Right. Because spirit-stealing teacups weren’t exactly made in Taiwan. Or maybe they were, by special Taiwanese monks. I stared at her, watching the flames ripple through her dress. “Is there anything else we could try?”

  She sighed. “The only thing that can break them is a soul who escaped one, but since no souls can escape them. . . . It doesn’t matter, Tomas. You’re already risking your life by being here with the vodník. Must you add Morena on top of that? The woman is not stable. I don’t know what deal you think she made with you, or why, but she does not do things on a whim. Everything is calculated with her. Everything has a reason. She’s using you. I suggest you put her out of your mind.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I need to—”

  “Then I won’t be part of it,” Ohnica said, frowning. “I do not approve.”

  I was losing her. “What about my grandmother?”

  She cocked her head. “Who?”

  “About twenty or thirty years ago, my grandmother disappeared. There was fire and water damage where she lived. I thought . . .”

  “I might know something about it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Ohnica waved her hand dismissively. “Tomas, I can’t be expected to know every bit of what goes on in this city. I’m sorry she disappeared, but you humans need to keep better track of one another. I told you before. If you really want my help and are serious about it, build a bigger fire. This is better than the last one, but I need a good house fire. Get me something like that, and if you’re there, I might be able to free myself from these flames at last. Then I could protect you. Now, I can only wish you luck.”

  Like I’d ever want to be anywhere near a house-sized fire again. The bonfire flared to life, and when it dimmed, Ohnica was gone, the fire extinguished.

  “Wait,” Katka said, freed from her pause. “Where did she go? Is it done already?” She walked over and poked at the embers with a stick. Our klobása was burned to a crisp.

  “She froze time,” I said. “These creatures seem to be able to do that. Anyway, she didn’t have anything useful to offer. According to her, even murdering someone wouldn’t
do it. Morena knows when everyone dies. So . . . what do we try next?”

  Katka thought for a moment. “Did Ohnica say anything about what to do with the vodník?”

  “Oh,” I said. “That. She thinks he might get violent if I don’t follow through on his request.”

  “What request?”

  I realized I hadn’t told her about Lesana’s midnight visit—or the articles about Babka’s mysterious disappearance. In the rush of starting the tours and Adam and Morena and my beating, it had all gotten pushed to the back of my mind. Time to fill Katka in.

  We stayed in the woods late into the night, talking by the embers of the fire. She took it all pretty well. Curious and intrigued about Babka—and surprised her father had never shared those stories with her. Nervous and skeptical about what to do with the vodník.

  Every so often, it hit me again: I was in Europe. Sitting there in the woods, talking with a cousin I’d never remembered, trying to figure out how to live in a new country and deal with mystical beings and not get beaten to a pulp by the local populace. A few months ago, I would have thought I was crazy. So much had happened since my house burned down. My life was so different. Better in some ways.

  Worse in others.

  I cleared my throat. “This is a bit . . . odd, isn’t it?”

  “What is?”

  “We’re talking about ways to cheat Death.”

  Katka tried to smile. “Do you think we shouldn’t bother?”

  “No. It’s just every now and then, I take a step back and realize how crazy my life has become since I moved to Slovakia.”

  “Your life,” Katka said, her face bland.

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  We were quiet again. I heard the high-pitched whine of a mosquito near my ear, and I tried to shoo it away.

  “Do you regret it?” Katka asked at last.

  “What?”

  “The move.”

  So I wasn’t in too much trouble. “Not really. I miss my house, but it’s not like it’s there anymore. And Slovakia’s got potential—if we can get through this Death thing and the Bigot Gang.”

  Now her smile was genuine. “I’m glad.”

  I cleared my throat again. “Anyway, I think I’ll keep avoiding the vodník for now. It’s not like he’s done anything to directly threaten me.”

  “Only shoved you in a pool.”

  Oh. Right.

  Katka continued. “You can’t keep running from your problems, Tomas. You need to face them. Stick up for yourself. Lesana said the vodník wants to meet with you soon. Put off the decision long enough, and you’ll have no decision to make.”

  Was that supposed to be a good thing, or a bad thing? I changed the subject. “Other ideas about this Morena deal?”

  Katka gazed at me for a full thirty seconds, silent. Thinking. What about? Before I could ask, she spoke. “There are some other things to try from Death in the Modern Day. Have you heard of Starenka?”

  “Who?”

  “A figure in Slovak folklore. There’s a spell in the book for summoning her, although the book is a bit skeptical if she exists or not. It’s a little unclear, but maybe it’s just my English. Anyway, Starenka is an old grandmother who sells herbs and shows up to help heroes when they don’t know what to do.”

  “Herbs?” I asked, my stomach dropping out from me.

  Katka nodded.

  “I . . . uh . . . remember back to when you were giving me a tour of the city?”

  “Yes.”

  “Remember that old granny I told you about—the one you couldn’t see?”

  Katka’s eyes widened. “Oh.”

  “Right,” I said. “Maybe I’ve already met this Starenka lady, and I blew it. She didn’t seem too happy with me.”

  “You didn’t know any better. We’ll try the summoning, and if she comes, you can apologize.”

  Anything was worth a shot, though how a geriatric could help was beyond me. Still, you’re never supposed to make fun of ideas in a brainstorming session. “Fine. What about the vodník? What if we . . . killed him?”

  Katka frowned. “Won’t work. Mystical beings have souls that are handled differently than human souls.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. The book has a whole chapter about soul equivalencies.”

  “It does?”

  She nodded. “I remember, because I thought we could maybe go to an animal shelter and euthanize the dogs. That wouldn’t work, either.”

  She had considered killing puppies? How far had we sunk? “How about Lesana?”

  “The girl in your visions?”

  “Right,” I said. “We could release her.”

  “I don’t know. Messing around with vodníks . . . it sounds more like something Death’s Assassin would handle.”

  “Come again?”

  “Did you even read the book?” Katka said, frowning.

  “In a few days? It’s like two thousand pages, and you’ve been hog­ging it.”

  “Death’s Assassin is the person who kills magical creatures who refuse to die. From what the book said, Death can get too busy handling humans to be able to worry about trouble spots. That’s where Death’s Assassin steps in.”

  Sort of like a hit man for Death. I’d have to check that out later. “But I wouldn’t be killing the vodník. Just releasing one of his souls.”

  “Still,” Katka said. “It would be too dangerous. I’m not going to have you risking your life just for a chance at saving mine. Starenka will work. She’ll have some advice for us—she always does in the stories.”

  I didn’t say what I was thinking: we weren’t living in a story. The conversation wandered from there, touching on other ideas, from the brutal (asking to help someone with a suicide) to the abstract (asking the sun and moon for help, apparently another tried-and-true Slovak folklore solution). At last we fell asleep under the stars, too tired to go home.

  Care should be taken with these humans, because if you fail to properly kill them the first time, going back for a follow up visit can prove futile. In extreme cases, some have become immune to Death itself, essentially ceasing to belong to Homo sapiens and becoming something else entirely. The best known case is Rasputin, who was so hard to kill that even humans noticed, and it is after him that this type of phenomenon has been named. See Appendix E.3.4.

  He’s not very pleased with you.”

  I woke up to see Lesana staring down at me. Maybe “see” wasn’t the right word for it. The North Star shone down on me through her face, but I could make out the rippling form of her in the night, as well. I sat up and checked on Katka. She was asleep. “What?” I said.

  “He said he wanted to meet with you soon. He means it.” She concentrated for a moment, and her body began to ice over. Little tendrils of frost blossoming on her skin, her dress, her face. I could have sworn the night air grew warmer. When she was done, she looked kind of like the Silver Surfer, only less shiny. And hotter.

  Easier to see, at any rate.

  “How did you do that?” I asked.

  “I do what he lets me do,” she said. She held a finger out, and it melted and elongated until it was three feet long and as sharp as a needle. Never mind the Silver Surfer—she was the T-1000. She pointed the needle at me, resting it against my chest. “I don’t want to kill you,” she said. “But I can’t do anything about it.”

  Before I could call out, she drew her hand back and thrust it forward, like a rattlesnake striking. The needle plunged through my chest.

  But there was no pain.

  Lesana drew her finger back to show she had let it melt again. I hadn’t been skewered, even if I’d almost wet my pants. What a relief. “Meet at the well,” she said. “You have one week.” With that, she evaporated, liter­ally. First the ice disappeared, then the rest of her in a puff of water vapor that sailed off into the night sky.

  I didn’t sleep any more that night.

  When Katka woke up at dawn, I was staring off
at the castle, thinking about my options. Too many deadlines, and all of them were taking the “dead” part too literally. Katka tried to console me: maybe Starenka would have an idea when we summoned her.

  But getting the old woman to show up was a complete bust. The potion involved was even wilder than the nose hair concoction, with ingredients ranging from termite blood (which I had to drink and then regurgitate—fun incarnate) to half a tadpole. It took us two days to get it ready, what with having to split our time between searching for ingredients, giving tours, and trying to keep our parents from becoming suspicious. And did I mention I was still training for weight lifting and medieval fighting? L’uboš kept checking with me to see if I’d had any more run-ins with the Bigot Gang. I hadn’t, but only because I turned and hid anytime I saw someone who remotely looked like one of them. He didn’t need to know what a chicken I was becoming, though. I’d fight the Bigot Gang—I would. But not until I had a clue what I was doing.

  When we finally had the Starenka potion, stored in a glass container in the shape of a globe, we went out to the same spot we’d made the fire. I threw it on the ground, just as the instructions ordered.

  The glass shattered against a rock, sending shards dangerously close to Katka. Then we waited. No one showed.

  “Maybe she’s slow,” Katka said. “Starenka is very old.”

  So we waited some more, but after two hours, she never came. She probably didn’t exist, after all. Either which way, it was disappointing.

  The days kept marching by. The deadline with the vodník was fast approaching. My falling won approval from L’uboš, and he graduated me to learning a couple of basic arm locks and throws, admonishing me to keep falling in my spare time. He also asked my sparring partners to up the ante—get more physical on me. I certainly was getting used to being shoved around. The weights I was lifting didn’t get any heavier, but I was able to do more reps with them, which was something. I also had used my earnings from doing castle tours to buy some real DVDs. Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. Just the bare necessities for now.

  After one long training session (focused on getting a hip throw right), L’uboš asked me to sit next to him on one of the bleachers at the joust stadium. “When you faced these bullies, how did you feel?”