Vodník

by Bryce Moore

  Something bright and orange and flickering.

  Something that sailed straight into the monster’s head.

  The beast yelped in surprise and recoiled. The back of his head was . . . melting. Great globs of fat dripped down to the grass around him, and I could hear the frying sound. It smelled like bacon. The wound didn’t seem to be mortal, but the monster was clearly in pain.

  The beast turned to see where the fireball had come from, and when he moved, I saw as well. Ohnica was standing in front of the burning beams, and she had dialed her heat up to the max. Looking at her was like staring at the sun.

  And suddenly, I remembered. Not everything. But I’d seen her like that before. Blazing with fury. I remembered her grabbing hold of my hand, and me screaming in pain. Just that one image, clear as day. And maybe a hint of terror? Had I been afraid of her then? She held up her hands and sent another comet blazing toward the monster. This time where it hit, the flame spread out, catching the beast on fire in the middle of his chest. He roared even louder, craned his long neck, and spat water on the flames, which went out. The thing growled at Ohnica.

  “Get over it,” she said. She whipped her arm toward the monster in a full-on throw, and another basketball-sized globe of fire hurtled out.

  The beast couldn’t dodge that, but he could spit water at it. Water and flame connected in midair, bursting into a ball of steam. Ohnica started throwing fireballs as fast as her arm would go. The dragon managed to intercept each one. His water kept coming, and so did the víla’s fire. But she was on the offensive, and she had the advantage for the moment.

  I got up and started edging my way to the well, but it was slow going. Fireballs and water blasts were being thrown every which way, and it was all I could do to avoid getting hit by accident.

  Ohnica started walking toward the monster, keeping up the throws but reducing the amount of space they had to go before they reached the beast. She was smiling wickedly, clearly enjoying the challenge. Almost toying with the beast to make it last longer. Behind her, I could see the wooden structure was burning fast. She was using up a lot of energy, very quickly. Maybe it wasn’t enough fire to free her. Maybe I’d get lucky and have her beat Ajax, but not be freed. The beast backed up as well until it reached the castle wall. Then it had nowhere to go. One fireball connected full on, splashing flames across its shoulder. Ajax craned his neck to get an angle to extinguish it, and in that moment, Ohnica wound up another fireball and threw it straight at the beast’s head.

  She didn’t miss.

  The water dragon inhaled in surprise, and that was all it took. There was no roar of pain or anguish this time. I think the lungs burned at the same time as the beast’s brain. A strip of flesh along the monster’s throat sloughed off and fell to the ground. The whole body collapsed in on itself.

  A wave of grease rushed over the scene and swept over my feet, running down the steps of the amphitheater. It all headed down the hill back toward the well, where it joined up with the water that had spilled out into the well plaza. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Ajax. Yes, he’d tried his best to kill me, but he was just doing what his master had wanted.

  Ohnica burned stronger than ever. She came over to me and grinned, but her expression seemed off. She was gloating. Maybe because she’d gotten some revenge on the vodník. Or maybe because she didn’t have to pretend to be nice anymore. “We’re even now, mortal.”

  “Um . . . thanks?” I said, taking a step back. Her attitude had changed too. Less friendly. More arrogant.

  She breathed in deeply, flames burning bright through every part of her. Behind her, the huge bonfire had gone out completely. “Free at last. It’s been decades.” She hurled a fireball up into the air fifty feet. It hit a seagull, which burst into flames and fell to the ground. Ohnica’s smile grew wider.

  I cleared my throat. “Um . . . the vodník has—”

  “You’re on your own now, kid,” Ohnica said. “Be thankful I don’t feel like killing you anymore. After this long, being freed by the witch’s grandson is far better revenge than killing you would have been. Maybe the vodník was right to stop me, after all. But next time I see you, all bets are off.” She exploded in a gust of fire that burst straight up into the sky, leaving me an afterimage of her figure burned into my vision.

  Ever get the feeling like you’d just made a big mistake?

  Magnify that by fifty. But I didn’t have time to think about that right now.

  I checked L’uboš’s watch again.

  Seventeen minutes left.

  One problem at a time.

  Many of the myths surrounding Death have their roots in simple everyday occurrences. The story of the toll Charon charges to cross the River Styx all started when he was a few drachmas short on his lunch money one day. He asked a passenger for a loan, and a legend was born.

  I ran to the well as fast as I could. My breaths came in gasps, and my muscles felt like gelatin. But I wasn’t going to let Lesana get captured by the vodník on the same night that I’d let him trick me out of the one chance I had of saving my cousin. And there were still seventeen minutes left. Could I hope for a last-minute miracle?

  The well was still full of water, perhaps to let Ajax go back to his master once he had finished with me. I took a breath—for habit’s sake—and dived in. At first I did my best to swim downward, but it wasn’t until I exhaled and took my first breath of water that I began to make serious progress.

  The water was inky black, and it was only the feeling of the algae-covered walls passing by on my side now and then that showed I was still going down. Then I caught a glimpse of blue light, light that increased in intensity the closer I got. The entrance to the vodník’s lair was open.

  I pushed myself harder. The wounds from the branches that had impaled me were fully healed now. I didn’t know how or why, but I wasn’t complaining. Once I was in the vodník’s tunnel system, I had no clue where to go.

  Thankfully, the vodník had lit the torches only on the path he had taken. All hail laziness. The tunnels zigzagged every which way, but I kept following the light until I emerged in midstroke into a waterless tunnel.

  I fell flat on my chest, water bursting from my lungs as I made the switch back to air, a process that involved a lot of hacking. I got up and hurried down the passage, trying to make as little noise as possible.

  After fifty feet, I heard voices—faint, but heated. I tried to listen as I continued, hoping to have a clue what was going on before I burst out into Lesana and the vodník’s confrontation.

  “All that I did, I did for you.” That was the vodník.

  Lesana said something I couldn’t catch.

  “What do you mean I should have asked you first?” the vodník said. His voice was shaking, on the edge of raving. “You were a water spirit. You were miserable. I didn’t have to ask you that. It was obvious. I was the one that put you in that state. I had to fix it.”

  “You shouldn’t have put Tomas into—”

  “Tomas.” The vodník snorted from a room ahead of me. The room was comfortably furnished, with two stuffed easy chairs next to a coffee table, as well as a rolltop desk bursting with papers. Overflowing bookshelves lined the walls. A cozy study compared with the Gothic flair the rest of the place had going. “That idiot,” the vodník continued. “And to think there was a time when I actually wanted him to be one of us. Not that I don’t want him in my collection, what with his powers and all. They would come in very handy these days, if they make the transition into the teacup. Very convenient, especially if there were someone like me—someone with more than a quarter of a brain, I mean—controlling those powers. Of course, he might be kind of squishy once Ajax gets through with him. But once I have his soul, I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” I stepped into the room.

  The vodník and Lesana turned to me in surprise. The vodník re­covered first. He frowned, then stood on his tiptoes, looking behind me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was
just wondering, have you seen a gigantic water monster around? About as tall as a building, with glowing eyes?”

  “He’s dead,” I said.

  The vodník rolled his eyes and groaned. “Oh great. This is just fantastic. First you screw up a simple potion, and now you kill my pet. Friends don’t kill friends’ pets, Tomas.”

  “Friends don’t kill friends,” I countered.

  “How many times do I have to tell you?” he said. “You wouldn’t ‘die.’ I left a cup there for you. Your soul would have been captured, no trouble. Easily. And Ajax would have brought me the cup. He was under strict orders about that. ‘No eating the cup,’ I told him. ‘And don’t stomp on it, either.’ I was very specific. You have to be with water monsters.”

  He picked up his master cup from the walnut rolltop desk and ran his index finger around the lid. “And if you had done what you were supposed to do, Tomas, then by now, you, Lesana, and Katka would all be comfy and cozy on a shelf downstairs. Three little teacups, meeting new people, discussing new ideas. Isn’t that what you wanted? Instead, Ajax is dead, Katka’s got about”—he glanced at his watch—“ten minutes, Lesana’s not in a teacup, and I’m not even sure if I want you anymore.”

  “I—”

  “Don’t interrupt me when I’m complaining,” the vodník said. “You might think you’re great because you resisted my bite and didn’t become a water spirit yourself. When I summoned that undercurrent in the well to suck you out to the river, I just thought I was getting rid of a corpse. So you survived. My bad.” He straightened his tie and cocked his head to the side for a moment, like a wannabe gangster. “You’re a high and mighty Rasputin, but there are other ways to die. I have the power of fifty wizards, seventeen witches, four Rasputins, and two kings at my beck and call. You think all of them just wandered into teacups willingly? Do you? Well, they didn’t. They struggled. They kicked. They threw lightning bolts at my head. But I didn’t hold that against them. They’re happier now, and they’ve apologized too.”

  His eyes narrowed and he stepped toward me, holding the teacup out. “They all come around in the end. They all see what’s best.”

  I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the cup. Was there something glimmering in the bottom? My feet moved on their own. My arm reached out. I’d just take the cup from him. That would be best. Have it close to me, safe.

  Lesana lunged to smack the cup from the vodník’s hand, releasing me from the spell he had been weaving. The vodník scowled at her, but the teacup dropped to the floor without so much as chipping. “Now I have to reset it,” he said. “Stop delaying the inevitable.” He melted into a puddle that slipped from the room faster than I could follow it, taking the teacup with him.

  Lesana was after him at once. “We must hurry,” she said. “It takes him some time to prepare the cups before he can use them.”

  We raced after him to a stairwell going down. The two of us took the stairs as fast as we could, and soon we had reached the end. This time, when the door opened to a room about the size of a rich man’s living room, I was momentarily stunned.

  The room was littered with shelves. Hutches lining the walls, mantels over fireplaces, shelves standing in the middle of the room, all of them brimming with teacups. Even more incredible: stuffed in, around, and over all those shelves was treasure.

  Lots of treasure.

  Gold coins, sparkling jewelry, paintings, ornate woodcarving, tapestries, mounds of iPods (probably broken, if the vodník had acquired them by drowning their owners), expensive stereo equipment—you name it, it was there. It was like someone had gone to a library and dumped a dragon’s hoard all over the place, then updated some of it for the twenty-first century. Lying in the middle of it all was a stone sarcophagus, carved into the shape of a sleeping king. The grave of Matúš Čak. No wonder humans had never found it—the vodník had probably drowned anyone who came close. Everything was lit by the same guttering blue torches the vodník used elsewhere, giving the whole place an eerie underwater feel.

  The vodník stood between two tall shelves, holding the master cup and muttering over it. I cocked my arm back like I was going to throw something, hoping I could bluff the vodník into submission. “Stop,” I said. “I’ll kill you if I have to.”

  “What’s that going to do?” he asked, sneering.

  “Ask your pet,” I said.

  The vodník froze, then smiled at me. “Tomas. You wouldn’t. You couldn’t. I mean, you killed Ajax, so obviously you’re not an animal lover, but to kill your own friend?”

  I shook my head, stepping around a pile of antique goblets to get a better angle on him. “Maybe we were friends before, but you’re no friend of mine now. Put the cup down.”

  He looked over at Lesana. “You’d let him do this? After all we’ve been through?”

  I didn’t take my eyes off the vodník, so I couldn’t see her expression, but she didn’t say anything back.

  He cleared his throat. “I told you. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for you, Lesana. Well, maybe not everything everything. I made myself dinner a few times, and there was this little crystal vase I bought once for myself, but other than that, it’s been all for you. I’d say we were like brother and sister, but that would be a lie, because we are.”

  “What?” Lesana asked, startled.

  The vodník nodded, then started fumbling inside his vest for something. “Right. Brother and sister. You and me. I was going to save this revelation for a more relaxed atmosphere, perhaps over tea, but your boyfriend over there seems a little kill-happy right now, so . . .” He took out a small glinting something and held it out to Lesana. “See?”

  She stepped forward to examine whatever it was, and I put out my other arm to stop her. The scar on my hand from the vodník’s bite caught my eye.

  “No,” she said. “I need to see this.”

  I let her go. My mind was racing, thinking about that scar. The vodník had tried to take my soul through the bite, and that hadn’t worked—and had given me a new scar—which meant I was immune to that now, right? Did the same apply to soul-stealing by teacup? I tried to remember if I’d ever read anything about it in Death in the Modern Day. What would happen when two magics collided? Rasputin vs. vodník? One would have to win.

  Lesana snatched the glittering thing, then rushed back out of reach of the vodník. I spared a glance to see what it was—a bracelet.

  “Where did you get this?” Lesana asked.

  “Where did I get it?” he said. “I got it from the boat the two of us stole when I was captured by the vodník. The other vodník. You were there.”

  I remembered that vision; it had been the first one I’d had, when I’d just got to Slovakia. I remembered being that boy. “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “Don’t listen to him.”

  The vodník laughed. “Ridiculous, he says. It didn’t feel ridiculous when I got pulled under the water. It didn’t feel ridiculous when my soul was ripped from my body and took on this new form. I was lost, confused—terrified, even. Out of my mind.”

  His face became progressively more serious, and he continued. “I had all these new instincts rushing through me, and I didn’t know what to do with them. So I went to the one person I trusted. My sister. I didn’t realize what I’d look like when she saw me. She got scared, I got scared, and I did something stupid. I tried to make her a vodník too. Is that so wrong?”

  Lesana seemed to be believing him.

  “No,” I said. “No no no. You can’t buy that. A vodník killed your brother, and that vodník would have the necklace your brother had. None of this proves anything.”

  “Don’t listen to him, Lesana,” the vodník said. “Ask me anything. I know it all. What was your dog’s name? What was the name of that annoying neighbor who was always peeking into our windows? Ask me everything.”

  “Wrong,” I said. “He stole your brother’s soul. He’s had centuries to find out those answers.”

  The vodník s
tomped his foot. “Will you stop that? You’re so negative. What do you know? You’re only sixteen. Lesana and I are so old, we’re measured in centuries.”

  “All he wants to do is figure out a way to put you in a teacup, Lesana. Are you going to let him?”

  It took her a while to respond. “I don’t know,” she said.

  We stood like that for what must have been a full minute. None of us saying anything, none of us moving. It was like a showdown in a Western movie. I was only watching the vodník, who was splitting his time between glancing at me and Lesana, probably trying to gauge what we were thinking and whether Lesana was buying his story.

  Finally the vodník must have decided things weren’t going his way. He opened the teacup and pointed it straight at Lesana. A beam of light shot out from it, connecting with Lesana, who gasped. I made my choice. It probably wouldn’t work, but it was the last chance I had at saving ev­ery­one. I stepped into the beam. As soon as I did, it felt like a hook landed in my heart and someone started pulling. All my energy disappeared, and my lungs felt like they were filling with water—but not water I could breathe.

  Behind the vodník, Morena had appeared.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  I opened and closed my mouth, trying to find strength to say something, but the pulling and drowning sensations were getting stronger. My soul was leaving my body.

  Morena snorted and walked over to me.

  “You stay out of this,” the vodník said. “No geriatrics allowed.” Lesana was standing still, her forehead wrinkled in confusion.

  Death ignored him and studied me. “Sacrificing yourself isn’t going to do anything. I already told you that. I ought to snap the connection he’s put on you, just so I can harvest your stupid soul myself.”

  I shook my head and slumped to the floor.

  “That’s not fair,” the vodník said. “I got him first. He’s mine. That’s how things work. Anything else is cheating. There are laws against this.”