8. The Land Beneath the Lake

8

THE LAND BENEATH THE LAKE

THE HARBORMASTER’S NAME was Ivan, which seemed like the best and most serviceable of names to Nadya, who allowed herself to be led into his small, cozy study, with its chairs upholstered in buttery leather and candles burning all around the edges of the room. He saw her frowning at the fire like it was entirely incomprehensible, and he smiled.

“Let me guess; you don’t understand how fire can burn beneath the surface of a river?”

“I don’t understand how a river can run under a lake, or how we can breathe and not die. We don’t have gills like fish do; we shouldn’t be able to survive here, unless someone has been lying to me.” Nadya fixed him with a hard gaze. “If I’ve been underwater since I fell into the pond, I should be as dead as any victim of the rusalki by now. How is this happening?”

“At least you aren’t trying to claim it’s not,” said the harbormaster, and took a seat in one of the chairs, gesturing for her to do the same. “Some of the door-swept begin by denying everything that’s happening around them, claiming that because it doesn’t fit the world as they understand it to work, it can’t be true. That gets tiresome fairly quickly.”

“A giant frog came out of the river and ate my arm,” said Nadya. “I don’t think pretending it didn’t happen would do me any good, and if that happened, then everything else is happening, too.” Talking foxes and lakes in the sky and giant turtles and all.

And admittedly, she really wanted the giant turtles to be happening. She wanted it more than she’d ever wanted almost anything.

The harbormaster nodded. “Do all children have detachable arms where you come from?”

“No. It was a prosthetic—a tool made to look like an arm, to fill the gap where people thought an arm was meant to be.” Nadya waved the stump of her right arm in his direction, making sure he saw it. “I was born without one.”

“You seem to be doing quite well for all of that.”

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’d asked me, 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 in dreams 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…

“How do you 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…”

“You can always return here,” the harbormaster reassured her. “Our goal is happiness for the Drowned, not misery.”

“Then it sounds perfect.” Nadya stood, laying the coat on the chair. Then she winced. “But I would like to see your restroom first, if I could, please.”

The harbormaster laughed. Nadya kept smiling, the faintly mortified smile of a child being forced to discuss such things in front of unfamiliar adults, and he directed her out of his office and down the hall to the bathroom, which, she was relieved to see, was more modern than the candlelit office would have implied; the plumbing was all bronze and polished wood, no ceramic, but when she turned the tap, hot water came out. How that could be possible when they were already under the surface of a river, she didn’t know and didn’t want to ask. The harbormaster would probably just tell her another story about some water being heavier than other water, and her head was still spinning from the night before.

She washed up, splashing water over her face with her hand, and looked at herself for a moment in the mirror before leaving the room and heading back toward the harbormaster’s office, stepping as lightly as she could to keep her approach from being overheard. As she drew closer, she slowed, listening as closely as she could.

“She’s still new here,” the harbormaster was saying. “If she changes her mind, if it’s all too much—you mustn’t get too attached, Inna, she could be called back to the world of her birth at any time.”

“I do understand how the doors work, Ivan,” said Inna, almost chidingly. “I’ll keep her as safe as I’m allowed, and encourage her to find as much danger as she needs, and she’ll serve Belyyreka well.”

“And the missing arm—”

“Is not a flaw. If she wants to replace it with something to help her grasp and steer, she can, and if not, she will still be entire and intact as she is. She’s perfect, Ivan. Perfect for Belyyreka, and perfect for me.”

Nadya smiled and stepped back into the office. “I hear biscuits?” she said hopefully.

They were American biscuits, close to the syrniki Nadya remembered from home, sweet and flaky with currants and unfamiliar nuts tucked between the layers like little surprises of taste and texture. She took a bite, chewed, swallowed, and turned wide eyes toward Inna. “You are Russian?” she asked, with some surprise.

“My grandparents were,” said Inna. “They moved to America to make a better life for their children, and when I was a little younger than you are now, my nana taught me to bake. Many things here will be familiar, Nadya, and many will be strange. I think the doors understand us well enough to know how much strangeness each of our hearts can handle, and they choose their children accordingly. Many of the people you’ll find here who came from our first world have Russia in their roots.”

That explained the names, and the comfortable shape of things. Nadya nodded, swallowing her mouthful of syrniki, and said, “I still want to meet the turtles, but I’m willing to go with you now.”

And Inna smiled.

ADOPTION—IF THAT WAS what this was—worked very differently here than it did back in Russia. No papers were signed, no money changed hands, unless biscuits were money here; Inna simply handed the rest of the plate to the harbormaster, took Nadya by the hand, and said, “Come on now, we’re going home,” before leading her out of the office and onto the dock.

Rather than turning to head deeper into the city then, she began walking out along one of the long fronds of planked wood, pulling Nadya with her. Nadya walked in obedient quiet for a few minutes, then tilted her head up and asked, “Where are we going?”

“Home, eventually,” said Inna. “But I remember how overwhelming all of this was when it began for me, and I thought you might like something to anchor yourself by before we go any further. I know you’re taking a very large leap of faith by trusting me. I want to prove I can be trusted.”

Nadya didn’t say anything. The turtles trusted Inna, and still weary and overwhelmed as she was, she trusted the turtles. She always had. She couldn’t say precisely why, and she didn’t feel like she should have to. Some people trusted other people, some people trusted religion or people on the news, and she trusted turtles. It was just one more way a person could be made differently.

They walked along the long wooden dock to another building, this one made of paler wood, with windows shaped like a turtle’s shell. Inna led Nadya inside, to where a woman sat behind a tall counter. “Clear currents, Anna,” said Inna.

The woman—Anna—looked up and smiled. “Clear currents, Inna,” she said. “Come for Vasyl already?”

“No. I have a new charge.” She indicated Nadya. “She’s been door-swept, and she wants to meet the young turtles. Perhaps one of them will care for her company.”

“Welcome to Belyyreka,” said Anna, turning her smile on Nadya. “Most of the fishing boats have gone for the day. You’re welcome, both of you.”

Inna nodded and led Nadya through a small door at the back of the room, into a narrow hall that smelt of wood rot and wet in a way that nothing else had so far. They walked along that hall to a room that opened up like a cavern, and in the center of it was a vast pool of heavier water, liquid and shimmering, and in the pool…

Oh, in the pool were the turtles. Dozens upon dozens of turtles, more turtles than Nadya had ever dreamt. Some were the size of Vasyl, drifting lazily toward the bottom of the water or lounging on the slope that filled one entire end of the pool. Others were much, much smaller, ranging in size from turtles small enough to fit in her palm to roughly as big as a large serving platter. It was the smaller turtles who swarmed the water’s edge where they were standing, stretching their heads out of the water and calling greetings in high, piping voices, like the tuning of a vast orchestra made entirely of flutes. Inna released Nadya’s hand and knelt, murmuring greetings to the turtles.

There were so many that Nadya was overwhelmed, not sure how she was supposed to respond or answer. She drifted a few feet away, suddenly shy.

A single head, belonging to a turtle about two feet across, poked out of the water and looked at her. “Hello,” said the turtle. “You smell of other waters.”

“I’m a Drowned Girl,” said Nadya. “I just got here from Colorado.”

“So they brought you to meet the hopeful straightaway? Oh, they must want to keep you.” The turtle sounded amused. “Shouldn’t you be making nice to convince one of the fawning frenzy to choose you as their bosom companion?”

“Maybe I want you to choose me,” said Nadya, feeling a little bolder.

The turtle looked at her gravely. “Do you?”

“I don’t know yet. We just met. I don’t even know your name.”

“My name is Burian,” said the turtle. “And you don’t want me, even if you think I do.”

Nadya blinked. “Why don’t I?”

“I’m too big to live comfortably in a human house for long; I’d have to leave you far too soon. But I’m too small to pull a boat for years yet, if I ever can. Look.” He rose higher out of the water, showing her the jagged crack that ran across his shell, showing where it had been broken and healed. “I’ll never be able to haul as much as the others can.”

Nadya sat down, letting her feet dangle into the heavier water, and smiled at the turtle. “What if I don’t want to run a boat?” she asked. “Would I want you to choose me then?”