WATER'S CHILD

WATER’S CHILD

CHAPTER ONE

Mara was dreaming about the water again.

She was swimming among the duckweed, her breasts bare, her hair loose and unbraided, her limbs blue and shimmery like those of a maiden’s corpse that rusalke, the river nymphs, finally returned to the shore after a harsh winter. She turned her head to look back at the shore: the huts of her village huddled together like birds at twilight, made of denser darkness than the skies, the wheel of her husband’s watermill unmoving, stunned into silence. Her clothes were still waiting on the bank, neatly folded. There was still time. She could yet turn back.

The dream Mara contemplated the garb she shed like a skin that no longer fit her slick, wet body. There was her linen dress and the apron decorated with red cross-stitched embroidery her mother made for her years ago, in ardent anticipation of her marriage to Milosh, the miller. Her eyes stroked her discarded silver temple-rings shaped like spring flowers with axe-like blades to protect a woman against the evil spirits. But Mara wasn’t afraid. It was too late for fear now. The one the people of her village called “the water demon” had already taken her. And now, he was waiting for her to return to him, to the water.

The cry of a marsh bird in the night was what woke Mara up. It was the witching hour, the full moon still hanging in the sky like a ripe melon. Neither the bird nor the young woman were supposed to be awake and yet they were. But Mara was glad to be rid of the dream. Hearing the bird’s nighttime call was like finding her own yearning living in a different, feathered body. Mara ought not be up, ought not be walking barefoot on the earthen floor, ought not be stepping over the threshold inhabited by the souls of her sleeping husband’s ancestors and exiting the realm of their protection. The night was full of cackling demons waiting, ravenous. Chuma was out there, in the shadows, the pestilent hag, with her four evil eyes and saggy breasts, combing her long, unruly hair. Gvozdenzuba, her teeth made of iron, was lumbering in the night, carrying the cauldron full of hot embers to burn off the fingers of lazy yarn-spinners. There was the winged Cikavac, with his long beak and a sack of lose skin under its throat, lapping honey out of beehives and suckling cows until they ran out of milk. Even those peacefully slumbering were not safe: Moras preyed on them, ready to take the shape of a black moth or a hen, squat on their chest, and give them nightmares. No one could escape the Moras. They could open every door, and squeeze themselves through every crack, even keyholes, like wisps of smoke. Locks were useless against them.

Mara sat up in the bed she shared with Milosh. She placed her feet, first right and then left, onto the dirt floor. Luck sleeps in the right foot, and needs to be roused first, and she needed Luck’s aid tonight. Quiet as a spider spinning her web, Mara walked across the earthen floor to the water basin resting by the fire, washed her hands and made the sign of the cross athwart her chest. Then she silently submerged her face in the water three times. She wiped her brow with her embroidered sleeve. The towel was not to be used by women and children, only men. She felt more at peace after washing her face. One should never commence a task without cleansing her face first, or bad luck would follow.

Milosh stirred in his sleep, his hand clutching the air. Mara’s eyes moved across his fine-boned face and full lips, slowly, like a tired soldier, hoping to go back home after the war, but finding only ashes where the old homestead once stood. There was a time when she thought all she wanted in this life was to sleep next to this man, in this bed. But night after night, as Milosh’s hands fumbled awkwardly across her outstretched body, squeezing her breasts and grasping her buttocks like sacks of flour, she felt hunger, wild and barren, that bread could never feed, and that this man, her husband of three winters, could never satisfy. The world was bursting with unspeakable horrors, and yet Mara found herself venturing out, into the night, ready to face them all, just to get to the water and be with the one her flesh and heart longed for.

Mara stumbled out of the house like a sleepwalker and fell into the summer night’s outstretched arms. The air was scented with night-blooming jasmine. Her footsteps were obscured by the clatter and hiss of the watermill wheel. The rains had been plentiful that year, and the water in the river was abundant too, cascading down the massive wheel and splashing Mara’s face and ankles, and soaking through her nightshirt. She shivered with fear and delight both, eager to get away from the row of houses strung along the river bank as quickly as possible. Should Milosh wake up, he’ll think she went outside to relieve herself.

As she rushed across the meadow, her nightclothes sticking to her calves, Mara was careful not to step on any Vile circles. Vile were beautiful beyond reason, but frivolous and easily offended, especially if someone happened upon them in the night, when they danced with abandon across the moonlit fields. One could lose his sight, tongue, or even mind to the Vile, especially young men. Many a youth was found in the morning, on a bed of trampled grass and pale toadstools that old women call “Vile’s spoons.” Each was mad and covered in his own frothing spit, as if Vile had consumed him, body and soul. When Mara was a child, she and her mother would leave out a basin filled with water, soap, and a spoon of lard every night for the Vile to bathe their children in. She was hoping they would remember her kindness and not condemn her for her clumsiness if she happened upon them on her way to the water.

Her feet were the first to recognize that she has reached the part of the river where the whirlpools were the strongest. The grass was cooler here, and wetter, as if it knew that demise was looming right beyond the bank. Mara shuddered and smelled the air like an animal, her breasts starting to tingle. This was not her first time to perform the ritual, and every nerve and muscle in her body was ready and listening. She raised her arms to the night sky and released a bird-like sound, sharp, and filled with longing.

“Vodan,” she sang, “I have gifts for you: song and milk of a woman for you to drink!” She lowered her lithe body to the water’s edge, cupped each breast and gently squeezed, until a white stream of breast milk squirted out, sprinkling the water like moonlight. Something inside the river stirred, as if awakened from a long slumber. Mara felt it too, deep down in her insides that had never brought a living child to term, and yet she felt heavy with it: it leaped like a small, guileless fish unable to remain water-bound any longer, even in the face of death.

It was the top of his head that broke the surface of the water first, and then the whips of his long black hair, slippery like wet silk, as he shook his head, like a dog ringing its ears dry. His dark face shone in the moonlight like a flat river rock, wild and beautiful as sin, and as she watched him, Mara felt her heart swell like a wineskin. She stumbled hungrily into the river, towards his waiting arms, through the mud and slimy plants, gasping as the water reached her waist, and felt Vodan’s thick, snake-like tail wrap itself around her, steadying her gently before his long-fingered hands ever touched her. No words were spoken between them, that night or any other, beyond what she would tell him in her song and what he sang back to her in the language of the water, gurgling and splashing like a brook rushing over stones. His was the voice of a slow river, deep and plentiful and life-giving, like he could feed her whole village with all the fish under his command. A voice so steady and true that it could order a fat trout to jump out of the water into a fisherman’s boiling cauldron singing with the joy of fire, if he so wished. And at other times, he would whisper to her in the voice of wind among the weeping willows, and she would understand each word of his whistled song, the same way she knew that the spring has arrived or the night has fallen. The love flowing between them like water over rocks was more beautiful than dawn, more hallowed that bread. And how could something so beautiful ever be evil?