Page 25 of Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear

“Be safer, Nadya.” Inna sighed and turned her turtle upward, taking Anichka with her, and the others of the rescue party swam away one by one, leaving Nadya alone with Alexi.

She looked at him, suddenly shy. “Are you very angry with me?”

“Angry? No. I knew who I was marrying when I made the choice to offer for you. A little sad, perhaps, but glad of the time we’ll have together, and that they brought you home to me.”

“I’ll always come home to you,” promised Nadya, as he let her go.

“I know,” he said, and smiled as he watched her run off along the dock toward the building where the turtles were housed.

The trip took twice the time it should have, as she dodged around holes in the dock and paused to help people clear debris from doorways and, yes, bodies. But the path was familiar, for all the damage that had been done, and in fairly short order she was running through the door, waving to a wide-eyed Anna, and heading into the large room where the adult turtles sheltered during storms and the like.

Burian met her almost as soon as she stepped inside. “Theywouldn’t let me go with the others to bring you home!” he wailed.

“Why not?”

“There are fish down deep, big fish with big jaws, and a bite from one them could have split my shell in two and they didn’t think it would help if they found you but lost me!”

“Oh, Burian.” Nadya tried not to think of the shadows she’d seen moving below them, or how close they might have come to dropping into the domain of those very fish. No point in dwelling on it now. “You are the bravest, smartest turtle I know, and I’m so glad you didn’t risk yourself for me. Now come on.”

“Where are we going?”

She smiled, impish and wicked. “The storm will have raised the level of the river. The forest may well be flooded again. Come, we’ll get you saddled.”

THEY RODE TOGETHERto the top of the river, the girl with the arm of River-water clinging to the back of the great turtle with the scarred shell, and when their heads broke the surface, they looked out together on a world transformed.

The river had indeed risen, and it was good that at least one of the scouts had gone up to see it for herself; when they went back down, Nadya would have to tell Alexi to notify the other farmers that their fields were well and truly swamped. In rising, the river had also spread, reaching watery hands across the landscape to grasp at everything it could reach. The trees of the forest resembled the rickety pickets of a fence, some of them leaning at odd angles, others fallen entirely, and the water spread between those same trees, flowing outward, carrying the flood in its open arms.

Burian swam forward, Nadya clinging to his back, and exclaimed in wordless delight when he found that between the fallen trees and the water, he could fit easily into the wood, traveling faster and farther than he had ever been before. Nadya laughed, looking around her at this swamped and flooded world as they traveled through. Here at the surface, the water of the river—the water of the flood—looked like any pond or river in the world of her birth, heavy and smooth.

It was water as she knew it instinctively, water you could drown in, and she was glad to have Burian beneath her as they traveled through the forest, where she knew the ground to be an endless succession of snarled roots and rocks, to catch her feet and trip her. She could have fallen and drowned in the wood, had she attempted the crossing on her own.

Artem the fox appeared atop a fallen tree, watching them silently as they passed. She looked forward, trying to see the forest’s edge. When she glanced back, he was gone.

She frowned and returned her attention to the journey. Burian had never been here before. He needed her guidance.

Not that there was much to guide. She had traveled straight through the forest on her first visit, and so Burian did the same, or as close to the same as his size and the pattern of the fallen trees would allow. The water shallowed out for a while, and when it began to deepen again, she knew that they had crossed the line between the two rivers; they were approaching the Winsome.

Nadya sat up straighter, unmistakable excitement surging through her. They had done it. They had crossed the uncrossable forest, and she was going to see the river the humans had been forced to surrender after the other Belyyrekan city had fallen. She leaned forward, patting Burian on the neck.“Look,” she cried, jubilant. “We’re almost there! We can go home with oysters and information, and everyone will applaud us!”

“I hope oysters are worth all this distance,” grumbled Burian, but she could tell he was as pleased as she was, and when they emerged from the trees into the water at the river’s edge, she fancied she could feel his excitement flowing up through her hands where they clutched the rim of his shell. They had become scouts because they enjoyed the process of learning their world, and this was something entirely new to learn.

The River Winsome was as she remembered it, only more so, fat and swollen with rain, so full it looked like a bubble on the verge of bursting. Where its waters brushed up against those of the River Wicked, which ran in the opposite direction, a thick band of white, churning foam formed, the two rivers warring for ownership of the current. Nadya wasn’t sure whether there would be a winner, but she was quite sure that anyone foolish enough to go near that roiling line would regret it.

Burian paddled forward, until they were well clear of the trees and unquestionably in the Winsome itself. “Which way?” he asked.

Nadya considered. “Downriver,” she said finally. “Alexi said it ends in an estuary, and estuaries normally mean oceans. I’d like to know if that’s the case here, too.”

“What’s an ocean?” asked Burian.

“And that’s the other reason I’d like to go downriver. If oceans exist in Belyyreka, you should have the chance to see one.”

The great turtle nodded, and turned, and began swimming along with the river. The current made it easier than itwould have been otherwise, and they made good time, Nadya looking all around them as they traveled, making quiet note of the shape of the land. They had hours yet before the sky would darken and they would need to go back through the forest to their own river. Perhaps there were still people here. Perhaps they could be the scouts who rediscovered a city, who reunited a people. Perhaps they would find the oysters after all. She wasn’t sure what an oyster tasted like, but she was quite sure that the taste was something worth having, if people still missed it all these years after the lost city became lost.

Burian swam and the river ran, and Nadya relaxed, content and comfortable, confident enough that they were where they belonged that she nearly fell off the turtle when the giant frog abruptly popped out of the water in front of them.

It was larger than Burian, larger than the largest turtle she had ever seen. It was big enough to eat the world. In her sudden fear, Nadya couldn’t imagine that anything larger existed in the entire world: it was just the frog, just the single universal frog, the frog that ate a city, the frog that must have eaten all the other frogs.

Burian whirled in the water, beginning to swim frantically back upriver, as Nadya craned her neck to stare. It wasn’t the same frog. It couldn’t be. It was too large, and even the passage of time wouldn’t explain this much increase in size. It was terrible and immense, but it couldn’t be the same frog.

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