Page 18 of Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear

Realizing where the big turtle was going, the boy yelped and began trying to scramble up the length of Nadya’s body, nearly dislodging her in the process. “Hey!” she snapped. “Stop, or we’rebothgoing to fall.”

He stopped and just held on.

“Why were you being such a jerk to me, anyway? I don’t even know you, but you pushed me off the dock!”

She couldn’t see his face, but from the way he tensed, she could guess he didn’t look happy. Not that either of them was happy, dangling off the edge of the world like this. “Swept-aways come here from somewhere else and take things that don’t belong to them,” he mumbled. “My family doesn’t have as much as yours does, and it’s because of people like you, coming here and taking everything that should be there for us. There’s only so many fish in the river.”

“I lived in an orphanage until I was nine,” said Nadya. “We don’t have swept-aways where I come from, but we didn’t have enough food, either. We all had chores every day, and sometimes the younger kids couldn’t finish theirs and they didn’t get to eat. We’d save our rolls and sneak them to the little ones, but it wasn’t easy. Nothing iseasy.We don’t take all the fish out of the river, either. There’d be plenty for you, if you could be nice long enough to convince a turtle to take you to the surface.”

The boy didn’t answer. Nadya scoffed. Much of the economy was based around fish, one way or another, and the only way to be a successful fisher was to convince a turtle to help you. If this boy had never put in the time, it was no wonder he was angry with her.

“Have you even tried for a turtle?”

“They said no, because I’m Belyyreka-born and my father has one,” he blurted. “But Dmitri is old and he swims slow, and we never catch enough!”

Nadya frowned. That did seem unfair, but it wasn’t her fault, and it wasn’t as if she’d done it. Her arm was beginning to ache. She reached up with her right hand and grabbed the edge of the dock, pulling herself up, and the boy up with her.

Once they were both safely on the wood he stared at her, eyes wide as saucers. Nadya frowned.

“What?”

“Yourarm!”

For the first time, it occurred to her that it was odd she’d been able to pull herself up with an arm she didn’t have. She turned slowly and looked down at herself, then raised the right hand she wasn’t meant to have and turned it back and forth in front of her face wonderingly.

The right arm she had never had was there now, a perfect mirror of her left, made of the dense, liquid kind of river water. It gleamed like quicksilver in the light. She raised her left hand and poked her right palm. Her finger slid easily through the skin, and she felt it, both the water on her finger and the tickling sensation of having something inside of her. Gasping, she jerked her hand away and scrambled to her feet, shaking her right arm like she thought she could shake it right off of her body.

“What is it what is it what is it?” she demanded. “Get it off!”

“It’s the river!” The boy stood, still staring. “The River Wild chose you. I’ve never heard of a river-chosen swept-away before.”

Nadya stopped shaking her hand and glared at him. “Keep talking riddles and I’ll push you off the edge again.”

“The river’s magic. You have to know that by now.”

Nadya nodded slowly. “I do.”

“Well, sometimes, the river will choose someone to carry some of that magic with them, for their protection or because they’ll benefit the river in some way. It chose you.”

“Oh.” Nadya looked at her new hand, turning it slowly back and forth. It didn’t offend her the way the arm Pansy had forced upon her, all that time before, had; the river hadn’t even offered it until she’d really needed a way to pull herself up to avoid being hurt. It wasn’t because she wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t a way to make her look more normal. It was different and brilliant and special enough that the boy was looking at her with envy in his eyes, although that could also have been hunger.

“I said I would take a gift from a river, when I first got here,” she said, slowly. “I said it where the river could hear me. So this is something I asked for, not something being forced on me. It doesn’t change who I am. I’m allowed to want things to make the world a little easier. So thank you, river. It’s beautiful.”

Through her arm, she saw the shape of the harbormaster running along the dock toward them, with Burian in his wake. She made up her mind right there. Looking at the boy, she said firmly, “I need to know your name.”

“Why?”

“Because Inna always wants me to get people’s names before I bring them to the house. She says it’s polite, and we have to be polite or people will think we’re frogs washed over from the Winsome.”

The boy shuddered. “Yuck, frogs.”

“I saw one once.”

“Really?”

“Really. It was when I first got here, before I even knew what Belyyreka meant, and—”

By the time the harbormaster reached them, they were chattering away and laughing like old friends. He stopped and stared, as much at Nadya’s hand as at the sight of the two of them so chummy after what Burian had told him of the situation. Burian went to swim around his person, still anxious, and Nadya scratched the back of his head where she knew he liked it best with her new hand.

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