AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The man turned his head to look, just as a wall of black water exploded from downstream, came racing past them. The hollow where the band had made camp was instantly awash. Men, half-asleep, were running everywhere in the darkness, shouting. The water was rising unnaturally fast, throwing men off their feet and frightening them by its very strangeness.
One man began calling orders. “First the silver!” he shouted. “Then the horses!”
But the water was rising faster and faster. A man was pulled down by the flood, then another. Many of the men made it to higher ground. But the one who’d been calling orders was still floundering in the wash.
As Vasya watched, the vodianoy, the river-king, shot out of the water directly in front of him.
The man couldn’t see the chyert. But he jerked back anyway, on some instinct older than sight, and nearly went under.
“Prince?” said the vodianoy. His laugh was the grinding of rocks in the flood. “I was king here when princes groveled in the mud of my river and threw in their daughters to ensure my favor. Now—drown.”
The black water surged and knocked the man off his feet.
Vasya had taken refuge in a tree, while the current raged below. Now she dove from a limb straight into the torrent. The water snatched at her with astonishing force, and she could feel the vodianoy’s rage in it.
In her veins was the same strength that had broken the bars of her cage in Moscow. She wasn’t sleepy now.
The leader of the camp came up for air, gasping. Men were shouting to him from above, cursing each other. Vasya swam three strokes, cutting across the current. The leader was a big man, but fortunately he could swim a little. She seized him under the arms, and on a last burst of strength, heaved him to shore. A stab of pain ran down her half-knitted ribs.
The man just lay in the mud, gaping at her. She could hear men converging on all sides, but she didn’t speak, just whirled and dove back into the water, leaving the man clinging to the shore and staring after her.
* * *
SHE LET HERSELF BE SWEPT downstream until she caught a rock in the middle and clung there, gasping.
“River-king!” she shouted. “I want to talk to you.”
The water rushed along, with broken trees borne on its flood. She had to clamber higher on her rock to avoid a huge limb spinning toward her in the current.
The vodianoy popped out of the water scarce an arm’s length away. His grinning mouth was filled with needle-sharp teeth, his skin thick with slime and river muck. Water ran like diamonds down his warty skin and foamed and boiled around him. He opened his spine-toothed mouth and roared at her.
This is when I’m supposed to scream, Vasya thought. Then he laughs—and I cry out in despair, believing in my own death, and that is when he sinks his teeth into me and drags me down.
That was how chyerti killed people, by making them believe they were doomed.
Vasya spoke as composedly as one could, clinging to a rock in a current. “Forgive my intrusion.”
It is not easy to startle the river-king. His gaping mouth closed abruptly. “Who are you?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Vasya. “Why were you trying to kill these men?” The water surged, struck her in the face. She spat it out, wiped water from her eyes, hitched herself a little higher.
She only knew where the river-king was by his black bulk against the sky, the shine of his eyes. “I wasn’t,” he said.
Her arms had begun to shake. She cursed her lingering weakness. “No?” she demanded, breathless.
“The silver,” he said. “I was to drown the silver.”
“Silver? Why?”
“The Bear desired it of me.”
“What do chyerti care for men’s silver?” she panted.
“I know not. I only know the Bear bid me to do it.”
“Very well,” said Vasya. “It is done now. Will you quiet the water, river-king?”
The vodianoy rumbled with displeasure. “Why? Those men with their dust and their horses and their filth fouled my river. They left no offering, no acknowledgment. Better they drown with their silver.”
“No,” she said. “Men and chyerti can share this world.”
“We cannot!” snapped the vodianoy. “They will not stop—the bells will not stop, the cutting of trees and the fouling of water, and the forgetting will not stop until there are none of us left.”
“We can,” she insisted. “I see you. You will not fade.”
“You are not enough.” The black lips had pulled back again, revealing the needles of his teeth. “And the Bear is stronger than you.”
“The Bear is not here,” said Vasya. “I am here and you will not kill these men. Quiet the water!”
The vodianoy only hissed, mouth opening wide. Vasya did not recoil, but reached out a scraped hand and touched his warty face. She said, “Listen to me and be at peace, river-king.” The vodianoy felt like living water, cold and silken and alive under her hand. She committed the texture of his skin to memory.
He shrank away. His mouth closed. “Must it be so?” he asked her, in a different voice. He sounded suddenly afraid. But beneath it was a thread of agonized hope. Vasya thought of what her great-grandmother had said, that the chyerti didn’t really wish to fight, at all.
Vasya took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said. “It must.”
“Then I will remember,” said the vodianoy. The raging force of the current slacked. Vasya drew a relieved breath. “You must also remember—sea-maiden.” The vodianoy sank gurgling beneath the water and vanished before she could ask him why he called her that.
The level of the river began to drop. By the time Vasya dragged herself ashore, it was only muddy creek again.
The man that she had rescued was standing on the bank when she came wading out. She was bedraggled, panting and shivering, but at least she wasn’t sleepy. She jerked to a halt when she saw him waiting, quelled a startled impulse to flee.
He raised his hands. “Do not be afraid, boy. You saved my life.”
Vasya didn’t speak. She didn’t trust him. But the water was at her back, the night, the forest, the Midnight-road. All promised refuge. She was afraid of the man with an instinctive fear, but it wasn’t like Moscow, where walls hemmed her in. So she stood fast and said, “If you are grateful, Gospodin, then tell me your name and your purpose here.”
He stared. Vasya realized belatedly that he had thought she was a peasant boy but that she didn’t sound like one.
