Page 12 of Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear

After a moment’s hesitation she took it, and he helped her step over the side, into the boat, which rocked a little but was otherwise surprisingly stable. Once inside, she could see that there were low benches built into the sides, places for the people to sit, and piles of nets and baskets.

“Inna, Galina, let Vasyl know we’re ready to resume,” said the man to the two women. They nodded in unison and moved to the side of the boat, leaning over together and whispering to the water. The boat, slowly, backed away from the shore and turned back toward the center of the river. Nadya blinked, wide-eyed and wondering.

“Is the boat alive?” she asked. “Are you telling it what you want of it?”

The shorter of the two women laughed. “No, not at all,” she said. “Vasyl is my friend. He chose me when he was smaller, and now he takes me as I ask him. But he is very large andsometimes I can be hard to hear, and so my sister’s voice aids my own.”

“Oh,” said Nadya, confused.

“It will all make sense soon,” promised the woman. She picked up a net and moved toward the side of the boat, her sister moving with her. The two men picked up nets as well. The boat steering on its own accord meant that none of them needed to spend their time steering, and they could all toss their nets over the side.

As they did, they began to sing. Nadya sat down on one of the low benches and listened, eyes drifting shut. The words were unfamiliar, but the tune felt like something she had known in childhood, something so familiar that she didn’t need to remember it to know it. The fishers sang and the boat sailed and Nadya listened.

And then, somewhere in the middle of the song, Nadya slept.

She woke to the boat shaking all around her, and a floor covered in fish. Most of them were silvery, but some were brown, or banded in pink and blue scales, like delicate pieces of art. Most were dead. A few flopped weakly, unable to launch themselves over the sides from where they were. The smell was surprisingly mild and distant, not as overpowering as she would have expected from dead, raw fish.

The pile nearest Nadya shifted positions. She sat up a little straighter, glancing around. The people who had been doing the fishing were chatting among themselves, packing their nets away. They weren’t singing anymore, or paying the slightest bit of attention to her. They didn’t seem bothered by the way the boat was shaking, and so she decided that she wouldn’t be either, and focused on the moving pile of fish.

They weren’t flopping or trying to breathe. They werejust… sliding, like something was pushing its way up from beneath them. She frowned and leaned closer, then gasped as a small, beaked head pushed its way to the surface and looked at her with round yellow eyes.

“Hello, turtle,” she said, delighted by the appearance of such a familiar friend. It continued looking at her, not pulling away or trying to hide under the fish. “Did they sweep you up by mistake? Careless of them. Do you want help back into the river?”

The turtle cocked its head, seeming to consider, before replying serenely, “No. I am here because I would prefer to be here, and your help is not required.”

The fox talking had been like something out of a story. Of course a fox with no fear, in the middle of a flooded forest, would talk! More unusual if itdidn’t.But a turtle in a fishing boat is not the same as a fox in a forest, and so Nadya stared for a long moment before she squeaked, “Can all turtles talk?”

“All turtles in Belyyreka can,” said the turtle. “I don’t know about the turtles on the other side of your door, Drowned Girl, butproperturtles understandpropergrammar and how to use it.”

“I’m not drowned,” protested Nadya. “Drowned people are dead people or… or rusalki, and I’m not either of those things.”

“As you say,” grumbled the turtle, and vanished back under the mountain of fish. Nadya looked up, frowning, and saw that the prow of the ship was dipping down, down, ever farther down, until it broke the surface of the water.

Once there, it kept going. The fish began to slide, and the people were ready with their nets, throwing them over their catch, keeping it from going tumbling out into the river as the boat tipped more and more. Nadya grabbed her seat, findingsmall handholds under the edge, places she could hook her fingers and hold tightly on, keeping herself from falling. She shrieked as the boat stood on end, half in the water and half out, and began sinking rapidly, taking them all with it.

At the last moment, she thought to take a deep breath and hold it, so that when they slid beneath the surface of the water, she didn’t start to choke at once.

The boat kept going downward, not quite in a straight line, but leveling out. The fishers released their nets, which floated up a few inches before the weights on them caught and held them down. Then they began to sing again.

Their song, which had been bright and compelling above the water, was almost hypnotic here, beneath the water. It rose and fell with the currents around them, ebbing and eddying. Nadya didn’t understand how she could hear it so clearly, or how it could be so bright beneath the surface of the river, as bright, almost, as sunlight. Brighter even than the cloudy land above.

It wasn’t until they reached the chorus that she realized her mouth was hanging open and she was breathing in her shock, filling her lungs with river water that didn’t feel like water at all, but like the air on a misty morning, thick and cool, yes; still breathable. She coughed, choking just a little, and clutched her throat.

Inna turned to look at her, breaking off from the song and moving closer. “It’s all right, Nadya,” she said. “Breathe if you can breathe. The river won’t hold you responsible for taking a part of it into yourself.”

Nadya stared at her. “Are you… are you rusalki?” she asked, voice a squeak.

“No,” said Inna. “We are the people of Belyyreka, and you are one of us, door-swept and Drowned. The foxes of the forestand the turtles of the tides talk to you, and you hear them clearly. You are more sure than ever you knew or understood, and we are so delighted to be the ones lucky enough to be welcoming you home.”

She smiled, then, the sweet, melting smile of a new mother looking at a child in the orphanage, a child who had just, through the mysterious alchemy of paperwork, become her own. Nadya glanced around. The other three were still singing, and in the distance she could see more boats like theirs descending through the bright water toward the river bottom. She gasped.

The shape of the boats was as she had supposed when seen from above, but each of them was tethered, with a series of straps and ropes, to the back of a turtle larger than any she had ever seen before. She looked toward the front of their boat, resisting the urge to rush forward and check.

Inna smiled. “Yes, Vasyl is my friend. He chose me when I was just a Drowned Girl, like you. He was larger than our little one here.” She indicated the turtle still rummaging through their fish. “This one is still too small, I think, to want to bond himself to a human, however appealing. But there are other turtles at the shipyard who will be delighted to meet you, I think, and glad to have the opportunity. Drowned and unchosen are rare enough in a year without need of heroes that there’s little chance you’ll go without.”

“Don’t get the child’s hopes up before they’ve seen her,” called Galina. “Not all Drowned Girls find their companions.”

“Don’t mind my sister,” said Inna. “She’s Belyyreka-born, and needed no anchor to be sure she’d stay where the proper people are. So no one chose her, and now she sails with me, to aid my crew in their catches, and has no companion of her own.”

---