Page 15 of Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear

Nadya shrugged. “I never had that arm. I never missed it. When the people I lived with bought me the prosthetic, they said I had to wear it, and so I did, but that didn’t make it something I needed to have to be happy. I wouldn’t have minded as much if they’daskedme, but they never did.”

“That arm probably saved your life from the frog. Do frogs get big enough to eat little girls in the world you come from?”

Nadya shook her head.

“Well, then, we’ll begin there. This is Belyyreka, the Land Beneath the Lake. It’s also been called the Land of a Million Rivers, although I suppose there are rather more than a million, if you were to count them all. That’s the first thing new arrivals have to understand: water has weight, and different water has different weight. The water of the lake is very light, almost like the substance some people call air. You can breathe it and never notice, but you’re still breathing water, and you’re still Drowned. The water in the rivers is heavier, which means it falls to the bottom of the lake and runs there, heading for the great spouts that will drive it back up into the clouds, where it can fall again. Water loves falling. Do you understand?”

Nadya pictured great columns of water climbing into the sky like the legs on a table, and nodded.

“Even the water in the rivers is lighter than the water in the world you come from, and our water is the lightest anyone has ever heard of, which is why you can breathe it and don’t need air. But all of us are Drowned, and are never to be dry again, and quite happily so. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t belong here. The doors choose.” His last words sounded almost reverent.

Nadya frowned. “Inna, on the boat, said something very much like that. She seems to think the doors are normal things that people should have heard of. But I’ve never heard of a door that takes you under a lake to where the water is air and foxes can talk. I think someone would have said something. I’m not even certain I went through a door at all. There was a shape in the weeds that might have been a door, if you looked at it the right way, but might not have been a door at all. And then I fell through it.”

“And you wound up here, so it was a door, and had something different on its other side.” The harbormaster’s smile was an encouragement and a congratulations. “Not every world the doors touch admits their existence. We do, here, because how else would we explain children who panic when their heads are pulled underwater? If you were Belyyreka-born, none of this would be necessary. You would know how the world has always worked, and expect it to continue along its familiar tracks.”

“One of the women on my boat, she spoke to the turtle who steered us. Called him her companion. And said she had been chosen when she was just a Drowned Girl. What did she mean?”

“Ah. Well, the Drowned Children who come here from elsewhere, they have no bonds to Belyyreka when they first arrive. No families to keep them, no homes to call their own.And so the great turtles who live here with us at the bottom of the lake have agreed to shepherd them, when they have the numbers to do so. They adopt the Drowned, become their families—even more than the Belyyrekans who sometimes volunteer the same role, as human children need human hands and human beds to keep them safe and comfortable, but who can never replace the families the children left behind. And then they stay together, and we hope the Drowned will be happy here. Happy enough to be sure.”

“What does that mean?”

“You must be sure you have nothing binding you to the place where you are in order to pass through a door. If you had been less confident that you could go without leaving a hole behind, then falling into your waterweeds would have resulted in a splash, not a passage. But children can be sure of something one second and questioning the validity of it the next. If we don’t make sure this is your home, you might lose your certainty, and the doors might come to take you back.”

Sudden fear gripped Nadya, strong enough that she sat bolt upright in the chair and said, “No. I don’t want to go back there.”

“Ah.” The harbormaster didn’t look surprised. “The lost and the lonely, those are the ones who find their way to us when we have no call for heroes. The lost and the lonely. We find them, and we give them purpose, and we keep them as well as we can, and as long as they are sure of us, they stay. I hope you will be one of those who stays.”

Nadya sagged, fear flagging and taking what remained of her energy with it. “When can I meet the turtles?”

“In the morning. You’re exhausted, child, and you deserve the chance to sleep your fears away.”

Part of Nadya knew this was a dream, and that to sleep indreams was to wake in the real world. But the greater part of her knew that it didn’t matter; she was tired and sore and still distantly hungry. Still, one question remained…

“Howdoyou have candles here?”

“Our water is light, but our fire is hot,” said the harbormaster. “It can burn even in very dark places. Rest, and know that you are safe.”

Nadya’s eyes could barely stay open. She yawned enormously, snuggling into the corner of the chair, and everything dropped away but dreaming.

When she woke, it was a slow process, like swimming up from the bottom of a deep pond. She kept her eyes closed, measuring her breathing, trying to listen to the room around her. Something had been spread across her body, a blanket or coat; she was warm and weighted down. She might be in the harbormaster’s chair in Belyyreka, or she might be asleep in the back of the car, under Carl’s jacket in the parking lot again.

A soft voice intruded on the edge of her awareness, singing a rolling, gentle song that wasn’t quite a lullaby but was something closer to a mourning song. The harbormaster said jovially, “Come in, Inna. Oh, biscuits? What a lovely start to the day!”

“The girl,” said Inna. “Has anyone yet inquired for her?”

“Are you so ready, then, to start a family?” The question was lightly asked, but Nadya recognized the tone. It was the tone the matrons had taken on the rare occasions when someone they thought was too young showed up to ask about the children in their care.

“I have good work on the fishing boats, and a sister who loves me and has a husband and two children of her own, but I have no wish to marry,” said Inna. “We spoke on the boat,Nadya and I, and she sounds as if she comes from the same world I did, which would make my home less confusing to her. I know the questions she’s likely to ask, and what the best answers are to be honest and not overwhelming. Adaptation to Belyyreka can be hard for a new Drowned Girl. I’d like it to be easier for her than it was for me, if it can.”

“Then you may speak with her when she wakes, although I believe she’s more interested in talking to the turtles than she is in seeking a human guardian.”

Inna laughed. “I wasn’t looking for a new human family when I landed here. It’s no surprise that she’s not either.”

Nadya opened her eyes, finally confident that she wasn’t dreaming but would in fact find herself looking out on the harbormaster’s office. He and Inna were seated in chairs across from the one where she had fallen asleep; it was his jacket laid across her. She sat up, grabbing the jacket to keep it from falling to the floor, and he turned toward the motion, smiling warmly.

“I thought you might be awake,” he said. “Inna has offered you a place in her home, if you wish to take it. She is unmarried, but her sister and her sister’s husband also live with her, and you would not be—”

“I would be happy to,” blurted Nadya. Inna smiled at her, and Nadya smiled back, suddenly shy. “But if we find we like each other less than we hope…”

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