Page 10 of Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear

The fox began to trot deeper into the wood, and Nadya, having no desire to be left alone again, followed.

The ground was no less marshy along the fox’s path, but by following his tracks, Nadya found that she could stay outof the worst of the mud. When they reached a bush covered in fat, heavy berries the color of bananas and the shape of raspberries, Artyom sat, flicking his tail.

“These are safe for human stomachs,” he said. “I don’t care for the taste of them, myself, but hopefully you will, and even if you don’t, they’ll fill you up from toe to top. Come, eat quickly now, we’ve a good way yet to go and night will come soon.”

Nadya had experience with eating things she didn’t care for the taste of. Food was food, and when someone offered it to you, you ate it, because doing otherwise might mean going hungry for longer than you liked. She hastily plucked berries from the bush and conveyed them to her mouth, where she found the flavor to be more pleasant than she’d feared. They were tart and sharp, with a buttery, sugary aftertaste that she generally associated with pancakes or biscuits, not with fruit at all.

Artyom watched with growing impatience, finally rising to wind between her feet as he said, “Most of the humans I’ve known would fill one hand with berries and pick with the other, and then they could bring berries along with them as they walked. The frog did you a great disservice by eating your arm. We’ll have to see if we can get it back again.”

Nadya swallowed her mouthful of berries, trying to figure out how to explain prosthetics and birth defects to a fox. Finally, she said, “I don’t want the arm back after it’s been inside a frog.”

“No, I can’t imagine that would be particularly pleasant.” Artyom sounded displeased. “I suppose there’s nothing to be done, then, unless the rivers see fit to provide you with something else.”

“I would take a gift from a river,” said Nadya.

Artyom gave her what she could only interpret as a pitying look. “Oh, human child. Oh, Nadya. The rivers don’t give gifts. They give obligations, and only the unlucky attract that much of their attention.”

He began trotting deeper into the wood, apparently judging her to have had enough of the berries for now, and as her stomach was no longer snarling and grumbling, Nadya followed. Her legs were still tired, her feet still hurt, but having a goal and a destination in mind made it easier to keep walking. It was like she could tell her weary body that this would all be over soon and it could rest, and because she had never betrayed it before, it was still willing to listen.

She wasn’t sure what would happen if she betrayed it now and tried to make it listen again in the future.

They walked for what felt like at least an hour, until her stomach began to rumble again and she looked to Artyom, silently pleading. The fox huffed, a small sound of annoyance.

“Are human children always thishungry?” he asked. “I’ve been walking the same time as you have, and I haven’t run off to chase mice through the weeds even once.”

“No,” said Nadya, who had seen his jaws snap a few times as something too small for her to see got close enough to catch. She was sure the forest was short a few toads by that point. “But I was walking a long time before you found me crying, and all I’ve had to eat since the frog were those berries.”

“Fine.” Artyom sighed, a bigger and deeper sound than his body should have been able to contain. He trotted toward the base of a nearby tree, lowering his nose to the ground, where several large blue mushrooms grew, and sniffed deeply. Then, in a smug tone, he said, “These ones. I’ve seen humans eat these ones.”

Nadya hurried to pluck the largest mushroom, which was easily the size of a hamburger bun, fat and fleshy. “Are all the mushrooms around here safe to eat?”

“Not at all.” The fox sat back on his haunches, muzzle hanging open in a silent laugh, as he watched her. “Most of them will kill you just as dead as dead, and then you’ll be a treat to fill the belly of the next beast to come along, whether they be fox or boar or bear. Never pick mushrooms without someone who knows them well to guide you. Someone you trust to have your health in mind.” He cocked his head, watching her closely. “Now is where we find out if you trust me.”

Nadya considered for a moment. Foxes were known to be tricksy creatures, capable of great cunning and deceit. But Artyom had led her clear thus far, and the berries had done her no harm, and she was so hungry.

She brought the mushroom to her mouth and took a large bite of the fleshy cap. It tasted surprisingly like an unbreaded chicken finger, all parts of the bird mashed together, neither dark meat nor white meat, but both of them at once. It was a little bland, but good for all that. She chewed and swallowed before taking another, even bigger bite.

Artyom looked satisfied. “Trust is an important gift, difficult to give and easy to break. But if you trust me, I shall do my best to trust you, and believe you when you speak to me. Come along, Nadezhda. The River Wild is not so far from here.”

If they were almost to their destination, there was no need to have shown her the mushroom. Unless it was a test of sorts, to see whether shewasthe kind of human who could be trusted. And she had proven that she was! Feeling oddly proud of herself, Nadya continued following Artyom through the woods, munching on her mushroom as the trees began tothin around them, until they were stepping out of the shadows and onto a wide, grassy strip of land between the forest and another river.

Calling the vast expanse of water “another river” felt somehow dismissive, like she was describing it as something much, much smaller than it was, and not a virtually endless sheet of water rushing from one side of the world to the next at a pace she could never have hoped to match. It was so wide that she could barely see the other side at all, and she couldn’t understand how anyone could possibly have mistaken the River Winsome, which was definitely the river she had seen first, for this great sea of tides and currents and rippling rapids.

No frogs were going to come out ofthisriver. Even one as large as the frog before would surely have been swept away. Nadya stopped in her tracks, not noticing when the last of the mushroom tumbled from her hand, and simply stared in disbelief at the broad, watery expanse.

“The River Wild, as promised,” said Artyom with delight. “And no frogs!”

“No people, either,” said Nadya.

“People are mobile things. They’ll be along soon enough,” said Artyom. “Of course, they might not, if the fishing’s done for the day. We shall see, I suppose.” He yawned enormously. “Yes, we shall see.”

The river rushed. Nadya stood. The river rushed on. The sky roiled gray and black with clouds, as ominous as a Monday afternoon with homework yet undone and all the week’s chores looming. Artyom retrieved the remains of Nadya’s mushroom and gnawed at them happily.

Time passed. Nadya tired of standing and sat down on the muddy ground. Artyom finished the mushroom and licked his paws clean, before beginning to dart in and out of theweeds, making short work of the mice that made their homes there. The river ran.

Nadya’s eyelids were getting heavy and the ground was beginning to look like a pleasant place to nap when Artyom barked, a short, sharply triumphant sound.

“There, you see, you see? I led you correctly!” he cried, and Nadya bolted upright, standing and scanning the horizon, just in time to see what she had taken for a log push its way out of the water, becoming a tall pole. It stayed that way for a moment’s time, then continued to emerge from the river, until it was clearly the front of a small boat; the pole was the prow, long and sharp, and the rising pitch behind it was the hull, shaped like a seedpod to cut through the water.

---