12. Back Through the Flooded Forest

12

BACK THROUGH THE FLOODED FOREST

NADYA AND THE WOMAN (whose name was Anichka; she was a farmer, and had been bringing in the herbs and simples from her garden when the storm swept her off the dock and began her fall) sat and talked for what felt like hours before there were lights above them, and voices shouting Nadya’s name. She leapt to her feet, waving her arms in the air.

“Here! We’re here!” she called.

Several great turtles descended, all larger than her beloved Burian, all equipped to swim these depths without losing control. Ivan the harbormaster sat astride the largest of them, a harpoon in one hand and a lantern in the other. Inna was on another, the first time Nadya had seen the woman who had become in all ways her mother astride a turtle. She blinked. Inna pressed a hand to her breast, staring at Nadya like she had never seen anything so wonderful. Nadya offered her a smile in return.

Anichka shrank back against the stone wall, suddenly shy, as Nadya stood and pulled her to her feet. “Have you come to get us?” Nadya asked, intentionally insouciant.

Ivan smiled. “No. We just wanted to see how far you’d fallen, and now we’ll leave you here. Of course we’ve come to get you, foolish girl. We would have come faster, but the we had to allow the storm time to pass.”

“Alexi is very concerned,” scolded Inna. “Most men don’t care to see their wives go flinging themselves over the edge of the world. Come, we’ll have you back to him, and calmed, before we waste a moment more.”

“Come, Anichka,” said Nadya. She leapt from the ledge, catching the rope Ivan threw down to hold her, and let herself be pulled onto the back of his turtle, where he embraced her and looked her over for injuries, as Inna tossed a matching rope to Anichka. The turtles grumbled at the added weight, but as two passengers were less than the balance of a boat, they bore up well enough, and began swimming back toward the city, cutting smoothly through the weighted water.

The devastation of the storm became more and more apparent as they drew nearer home. Docks had been smashed, markets washed away, houses stove in by the weight of debris falling on them from above or whirled up by the currents raging below. Nadya stopped looking after she saw a young turtle crushed under a wall, motionless. They would be rebuilding from this for years, if not forever.

No, it couldn’t be forever. As they reached the level where she and Alexi lived, and she saw him standing outside their house, twisting a rag between his large, well-loved hands, a worried expression on his face, she knew it couldn’t be forever. There had been storms before. There would be storms again. They would rebuild, ever and always.

Ivan kissed her forehead and pushed her toward her husband, and she paddled across the short distance between them, arms and legs churning to keep herself from falling through the thin water, which was never meant to hold a human up for very long. His eyes lit up, and then his whole face with them, and he dropped the rag as he opened his arms and welcomed her home again.

They broke their kiss when Inna’s turtle brought her to a level with their faces. “You will go and apologize to Burian for frightening him so,” she said. “And you will come to dinner with us tonight, to talk about why you are a foolish girl who shouldn’t risk yourself for others when there’s any other choice.”

“But there wasn’t, Inna,” said Nadya. “Anichka was falling, and there was no one else to jump.”

“That may be so, and she seems a lovely lady, but you are my daughter, and my concern is for you before any other.”

“Thank you, Inna.”

“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. “They wouldn’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 TOGETHER to 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 it would 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.

The frog’s throat inflated. A deep, terrible croaking sound rolled over them, loud enough to hurt Nadya’s ears.

Then its tongue lashed out, and caught the back of Burian’s shell, yanking the turtle backward. Yanking Nadya backward with him. Burian yelled. Nadya shrieked. The frog continued to pull. They were going to be consumed. They were going to end.

Nadya looked frantically around. The River Winsome had no reason to care about her, or what happened to her, but most of the water near them had to still be rainwater, fresh-fallen and not yet truly a part of this river. It was a stranger here, like she was, and home in the Wild, some of the rainwater had come to her aid when she needed it most. She thrust her right hand into the river, fingers spread, and grabbed the water like it was something she could hold.

When she pulled her hand out of the river, the water was something she could hold. Nadya drew forth a glistening sword of water, translucent and sharp, and swung it at the frog’s tongue as hard as she could. She had no technique. She had no training. She had strength enough to bring that sword down like a cleaver, slicing through the frog’s tongue.

Burian lurched forward, his frantic paddling suddenly of use again, and swam for the bank as hard as he could, orienting himself by the tree line. The frog dove beneath the river, and Nadya saw the great shadow of its body pass beneath them, dark and terrifying.

“Burian, turn !” she shouted.

Not fast enough. The frog, injured and angry, surfaced below them, fast enough to knock Nadya from her place on Burian’s back. She flailed around, grabbing hold of the lip of skin surrounding the frog’s ear. Burian was swimming, not yet swallowed.

“Go! Go!” she yelled, and stabbed her water sword into the frog’s earhole.

It didn’t shriek. It didn’t croak. It hissed, flailing in sudden agony, flinging Nadya into the line of white water that marked the boundary between the Winsome and the Wicked. She clawed for the surface, trying to catch her breath against the sudden deluge of heavy water. When her head broke the surface, she saw the frog sinking, twitching but no longer moving, and Burian swimming away from it.

“Buri—” she began, and stopped as water filled her mouth. She continued to thrash, to no avail.

The water pulled her under, and all she knew was darkness.

Her last thought before even thought went away was that a border was very much like a threshold, and a threshold implied the presence of a door.