by Joy Preble
Before he can answer me, the fog thickens again, and Lily—her hair a wild tangle—shimmers back into view. She steps into the hallway with us and reaches out one thin arm to me, palm up. In the center of her palm is a tiny hair clip shaped like a little fan with seed pearls and what look like rubies. It’s the kind of thing I see in the Jewel Box all the time, the kind of piece Mrs. Benson loves to bring back from estate sales: small and delicate with lots of pretty detail.
“Take it,” she says. “You will know what to do with it when the time is right.”
I don’t answer her. I’m not about to take anything from her either, grandmother or not.
When I don’t reach for the pin, she turns to Ethan. “You must help her understand. She has been to the witch, and she can go back. So much was promised me, and so much was taken. My child. I want her to see me. I want her to hear me. But she cannot until this is over. That is my curse. I gave up what I held most dear, and only when his blood is shed can I have peace. Only then can I rest. I will swim and swim until it is broken. When you saved Anastasia, I thought it would be over. He would become mortal, and somehow his blood could be taken. But he escaped that destiny at the last moment. You thought he sacrificed for her so she could have the ending she deserved. But I think he did not. His sacrifice was a lie.”
I’m positive I don’t even see her hand reach out, but it does, and the pin is lying in my palm before I can even protest. Lily’s fingers are ice cold. So is the palm of her hand as she presses it against mine, the jeweled hair clip between our hands. The clip part digs into my palm hard enough that I wince.
“You must go to the witch and do what I cannot. I cannot cross the witch’s stream. I cannot enter her forest. You must promise. I cannot rest until you do. I will not ask you to do the rest. That will come when it will come. But this—this you must do for me.”
“Do what?” What could she possibly want me to do?
“Free Viktor.”
Oh.
“No way,” I begin. But she’s gone.
FRIDAY, 8:45 am
ETHAN
You know”—Anne flops into a chair at the coffee shop near my apartment—“I really have to find a way for everyone to stop telling me what is or isn’t my destiny. It’s getting old. And even if this mermaid really is somehow my birth grandmother, does she really think that I’m going to head back to Baba Yaga’s and let Viktor go? Because I’m thinking that’s not going to happen anytime soon.”
I try to formulate an answer. But it’s hard to do that when every mistake I’ve made over the decades has chosen this moment to haunt me—including the one I’ve made by letting myself love her. Anne Michaelson—the girl sitting across from me, auburn hair tucked behind her ears, face a little too thin, hands clasped together as she talks—the one who gave me back my life. What I feel for her is more than I’ve felt for anyone—even Tasha Levin, who’s buried in a small cemetery in the Lake District outside London and whose grave I’ve quietly visited over the years. To have this chance to love again—it’s more than I deserve. But there’s no time to ponder. If the woman I saw for those few seconds so many years ago really was Lily, then Viktor knew more than I ever understood. And I have been a zalupa for a very long time.
Anne rests her chin in her hand, and for a moment I think about how it felt to kiss her—about the feel of her body against mine. “You were on the right track earlier when you asked why now,” I tell her. “Why has she appeared to you now with this request and not any other time since last fall?”
“So what’s your answer to that one? Everything that goes bump in the night just decided to get together and meddle with my life?”
“Don’t be flippant about it.”
“How else am I supposed to be? What I want is to be like that girl over there.” She points at a girl in jogging shorts and a T-shirt who’s drinking an iced tea and laughing about something with a guy eating a muffin. “Just living my life. Maybe actually going to the movies with you on a normal date, or bowling, or anything that doesn’t involve danger and magic and running for our lives. But no. Not going to happen, is it? You and I couldn’t even just—oh, never mind.” She flushes and then looks down at the table.
Bowling? She wants me to take her bowling?
“Took you long enough to call me. I’ve got the clothes you asked to borrow.” This is how Tess greets us as she breezes into the Coffee Spot, thrusts a plastic drawstring Gap bag into Anne’s hands—some spare clothes—and drags another chair to our table. She looks from me to Anne and then back to me, then narrows her eyes. “I really can’t leave you two alone for a second, can I?”
It hasn’t been my idea to include her—yet again—in this whole mess, but I have yet to come up with a way of keeping her out of it. And as her question doesn’t seem to require an answer, we place our coffee orders while Anne brings Tess up to speed about the rusalka.
“So she just materializes right there in Ethan’s bathroom in this cloud of steam,” Anne tells Tess as I place the drinks on the table. “It was freaky. I mean, one minute we’re kissing, and the next—boom, there’s a mermaid in the bathroom. And she looks so familiar that I ask her—and this is the part I told you on the phone—if she’s Lily. Because that’s what she’s been hinting about. And then she looks at Ethan and tells him that he should remember her because she’s the woman he saw on the street back in the sixties. And that Viktor was the one who killed her Misha. Then she started talking about—”
“Whoa.” Tess’s eyes narrow even more.
“Anne,” I begin, hoping to deflect what’s obviously coming next. “You know, we really need to talk about our plan of action. We don’t have time to—”
“Whoa,” Tess repeats. “You were making out with someone who knew your grandmother when she was young? Doesn’t that, like, bother you at all?” She grins. “On the other hand, your grandmother’s a mermaid, and she tried to kill Ben. I guess it’s all relative, huh?” She snorts out a loud laugh. “Relative. Get it? Funny, huh?”
The very long silence that follows indicates that just possibly, it’s not that amusing. I take a sip of my swiftly cooling black coffee and think about all the many things that I’ve done in my very long life that have led to this particular moment. The list seems endless.
“Well, one thing’s for sure,” Tess adds. “I’m never going to complain about my family again. Because compared to yours, we’re really functional. And you thought your Grandma Ellen was a pain. I guess this puts that in perspective too, huh?”
“What’s there to complain about?” Anne tastes her latte, then rips open a sugar packet and stirs in the contents. “Your grandmother lives in Lake Forest and gardens and makes needlepoint pillows. She doesn’t stalk you when you’re kissing someone and tell you about yet another destiny that you don’t want.”
Tess shrugs. “I guess. Since you brought it up”—Tess shifts her gaze from Anne to me—“here’s what I think we should do. Let’s finish our coffee, then we’ll let you deal with the mermaids, and I’ll take Anne to work. What we won’t do right now is repeat the craziness from last fall. You know—the part where you dropped me off at my house and then took her home, after which the two of you almost killed each other in your dreams, and while you were busy lusting after each other in fantasyland, the professor got murdered. That kind of thing.”
I remind myself that she is only seventeen. But the mention of Alex is a low blow.
Anne scowls at her friend. “Do you really think all this is Ethan’s fault? I know I say that sometimes too, but—”
“Come on, Anne. It’s one thing to have some mermaid haunting you—and I can’t stress enough how freakish it is for me to admit that’s business as usual. But it’s another to have her attacking Ben and giving you gifts and hanging out in Ethan’s shower. And you absolutely can’t make me believe that this somehow isn’t all because he’s back.” She glowers at me again. “Seriously. Explain to me how this isn’t your fault.”
I
open my mouth to do just that. I’m tired of listening to her and tired in general and—
“Wait.” My brain shifts from annoyance—its usual mode around Tess—into actual thought. “As much as I hate to admit it, I think you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right. I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t right. I’m always—wait a second. How am I right?” Tess manages to look curious and self-satisfied at the same time.
Suddenly, my head is racing with possible connections. “You’ve been saying that the rusalka’s behavior has intensified since I’ve been back. But it didn’t make any sense to me. What did my return have to do with her? Did I really set something else into motion by being near Anne again? And why would that be?”
“Okay. I’m with you, but so?” Tess’s tone is still cautious.
I grab a napkin and spread it out. “Give me something to write with.” I take the pen that Anne produces from the chaos of her purse. Finally, things are beginning to make sense. There’s a pattern we can work from.
“Think about it. This won’t answer everything, but I think it’s a start.” On the napkin, I scrawl the word rusalka. “Okay. I need to know every time you’ve seen her and what exactly she did—what, if anything, seemed to trigger her behavior.”
We make the list. There were silent appearances first. At the pond near Anne’s house. On the sand near the lake a few days later. Standing by a tree in a rainstorm one afternoon. Always with water nearby. Always wearing the same dress.
“She would just stare at me,” Anne says, “then she’d disappear.”
“But yesterday,” I prompt her. “Yesterday was different.”
“Yeah.”
“Different how?” Tess frowns, but her tone finally shifts to something less hostile.
“Well, she talked to me, for one. I’ve told you that. About me and Anastasia and her doll. About how something’s coming. And—men. She talked about men.”
“She should have talked to me about that subject.” Tess takes a long slurp from her coffee. “So what was her opinion? Wait, let me guess—it’s not good.”
“She said someone loves me, but that it wasn’t easy. She said it never is for men.” Red rises in Anne’s cheeks as she glances over at me. “I guess I assumed she meant you. Or maybe Ben, to be honest. No offense, but what she said fits a lot of guys—the whole inability to commit thing. It was really kind of general.”
“Yeah,” Tess adds, “but it makes sense if the rusalka is Lily, since her boyfriend was killed before they even got married. She had to give up her baby for adoption, so if she thinks it’s partly your fault somehow, Ethan, then of course she’d be sort of bitter toward men.”
I force myself not to sigh. “Let’s go on. So she talks to Anne about men and love. Then she appears at the bottom of the pool, but when Ben dives in to save what he thinks is someone drowning, she pulls him down and tries to hold him there. And the question is, why? Was it only to get Anne’s attention?”
“Or was it because it was Ben?” I hear the alarm in Anne’s voice. “If that’s the case, was it because he’s a guy? Or is it specifically because it was Ben?”
“What would that mean?” Tess asks. “That your mermaid grandmother has a grudge against Ben? But why? She doesn’t even know him. It doesn’t make sense. Or maybe it does. If she’s your grandmother, she probably feels like she should have an opinion.”
“Hmm. Maybe that’s exactly what it means.” Anne grabs the napkin and pen and scribbles a few more ideas. “I was so freaked when I left Ben’s last night that I didn’t really think about it. But Ben—okay, no one judge me here; it’s been a confusing day or so—Ben kissed me. And that’s exactly when the rusalka appeared again. But he couldn’t hear her, I don’t think. Only I could. And she was talking about men again. How Ben would get over something. And how men forget so easily. Not like women. She said she tried to show me something, but that her body doesn’t always do what she wants it to do.”
This I understand. At least, in part. “It’s a spell,” I tell the girls. “It’s got to be some sort of spell. Maybe specific to her condition as a rusalka. Maybe something else. But there’s a force controlling her will. If she’s telling the truth.”
“That’s a big if, Ethan.” Anne blows out a breath. “A huge if. What if she’s not? What if she’s just lying? I mean, how do we really know?”
“We don’t.” I put my hand on hers again and hold it there because I like the way she smiles at me when I do. “Not yet. But let’s go on. There was nothing else until she appeared to the two of us earlier this morning?”
Anne shakes her head. “No.”
“So let’s focus on this morning. She didn’t appear in the evening. Even when our magic combined, we didn’t see her.”
“You mean when we flew?”
“You flew?” Tess shakes her head. “You know, if you want me to back off, telling me stuff like this isn’t going to cut it.”
“We hovered,” I correct Anne. “It was hovering.”
“Whatever.” Anne shrugs. “The point is, we didn’t see her—not until later. But after we—well, after we kissed, that’s when she appeared. Not randomly. She appeared because the two of us were together. That changed things for her somehow.”
I nod. “I agree. But in folklore, rusalkas are seductresses. That’s their curse. They can’t have what they want—maybe they’ve been scorned or murdered by a lover or lost a child or just lost hope and walked into some body of water hoping to end it all. So they seduce instead. Except Lily doesn’t seem to fit that pattern exactly. Maybe because you’re not the one who’s hurt her. Or maybe she’s just so desperate for you to help her that what she wants overrides what she’s become.”
“So she does stuff in spite of herself? Is that what you’re saying?” Tess furrows her brow. “That even though she might not want to act like rusalkas are supposed to, she does rusalka stuff anyway? She lures Ben to the bottom of the pool and makes herself look like Anne’s mom so we’ll follow her to the water. And goes all Fatal Attraction every time Anne locks lips with someone?” Tess turns and angles her chin at me. “Except—wait a second. What about you in this whole scenario, Ethan? You’d be the perfect one for her to go after. But she really hasn’t, has she? As far as I can tell, she hasn’t tried to lure you to do anything.”
“That’s not the point, Tess.” Anne shakes her head.
“Actually, I think it is kind of the point. She wants you to find a way to let Viktor go. She doesn’t seem to like Ben, although that might be just because he’s a guy and she thinks guys suck. And if what she says is true, she wants to see your mother again, which makes sense if your mom is really her daughter. But what about Ethan? What does she want from him? Let’s face it, Anne. All this stuff—all the way back to Baba Yaga, Viktor, and Anastasia—it all ties in to you, but it ties in to him too. So why not this also? Which means that even though we might not know what it is, she’s got to want something from Ethan.”
As always, I hesitate to admit she’s right. But she is.
“See?” Tess adds when neither Anne nor I respond immediately. “You agree.” She turns to Anne. “He agrees.”
“Do you?” Anne pulls her hand away from mine. “Why? She hasn’t followed you anywhere. She hasn’t pulled you into the water. She hasn’t offered you anything. Not like she did to me.” She grabs her purse and extracts the rusalka’s fan-shaped hair clip, places it on the table. “She made me take this. Told me I’d know what to do with it when the time was right. But if you agree with Tess, Ethan, then what does she want from you?”
I don’t answer. I have no answer to give. Unbidden, the image of the girl from my village—so many years ago—returns to me. How old was I then? Seven? Eight, maybe? While Anne and Tess sip their coffees, I tell them my rusalka story.
***
Her name was Lena. For the longest time, I told myself that I’d only imagined what I saw that day down by the stream—and what I saw a few days later,
and a few days after that. Maybe that was why I was so open to learning magic later on—once that veil is lifted, there really is no putting it back. I’d been hungry that day—not enough food in our house, and a lot of mouths to feed—and so I was down at the river trying to catch a fish or two when Lena’s father found her.
I didn’t see him walk to the water’s edge. There was a small curve in the shoreline there, and he was just out of my range of vision. I’d been concentrating on spearing a small fish with a stick when I heard him cry out—a deep, ragged wailing that startled me and made me drop my stick. What I remember most is that I was angry. I was hungry, and whoever it was had made me lose my potential supper. And then I saw them. Lena’s father was kneeling at the water’s edge, his face ashen. And Lena—she was floating in the water, her long blond hair fanning out around her like pale snakes. She was dead. Peter, the blacksmith’s son, had the bad fortune to get her pregnant and then die of influenza when she was about three months along. I’d seen Lena muttering to herself the past few weeks—her face streaked with tears, her hair often uncombed and matted, her clothes dirty. But there she was, floating dead, her father weeping uncontrollably on the shore.
I also remember what happened next. He stood up—this huge bear of a man who I knew was responsible for the purple bruise on Lena’s cheekbone, because in a small village, not much goes unnoticed—and began to wade into the stream to retrieve his daughter’s body. Even now, I don’t think he ever really knew I was there, watching. So he didn’t know that I witnessed the rest of it. How Lena sat up in the shallow water, her blond hair dripping. How she grinned at him with sharp teeth. Or how the creatures that I later learned were rusalkas reached up their hands and pulled her under and away. I turned and ran, heart pounding crazily in my chest, until I’d reached home, where I might be hungry, but at least I felt safer.
