The Breathing Sea II - Drowning

by E. P. Clark

  “I wish I could ask you,” Dasha murmured to the doe, who remained steadfastly silent, as she had all along. Or rather, Dasha thought, she was silent in the sense of not speaking as a human would, but she had spoken to Dasha as a deer would, hadn’t she? And very clearly, repeating herself patiently until Dasha had grasped her meaning. Probably she considered Dasha to be deaf, dumb, and blind compared with her kin. Compared with the animals of the forest, Dasha was as foolish and as helpless as a newborn fawn.

  Dasha closed her eyes. Visions of terrible things that could befall her—starving, falling and breaking her leg or her neck, being attacked by a wolf or a bear—paraded before her inner sight, but it was as if they were very far away and happening to someone else, not so close and viscerally real as they usually were. Another part of her was aware of the feeling of the ground beneath her, the warmth of the fawn against her shoulder, the scent of the spruce boughs above her. It was as if she were suspended between the two states, awareness of the certain present and the possible futures, and could float back and forth between them at will, with neither of them claiming her, neither of them keeping her trapped.

  Dasha opened her eyes. It was now full dark, and she realized that much more time must have passed than she had thought. The deer was quietly chewing her cud. She reached her head over to sniff at Dasha’s face, and then rose to allow the fawn to nurse. When that was finished, she settled back down and became still. Dasha turned her head to look at her. There was just enough light for her night-sensitive eyes to catch a faint gleam coming off the doe’s own eyes, but the doe was lying there without moving, as if asleep. After a moment she began twitching and blinking the way sleepers did sometimes when they were dreaming.

  “I wonder what you’re dreaming of,” Dasha whispered. “What do deer see in their dreams?”

  The doe came awake, her waking body filled with a tension her sleeping body lacked, and she regarded Dasha thoughtfully.

  “I’m sorry,” Dasha told her. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I was just wondering what you were dreaming.”

  The doe cocked her head at Dasha, and then went back to chewing her cud. Dasha closed her eyes again.

  This time it was she who dreamed—or was she? She could still feel the ground beneath her back, and the warm fawn curled up against her side, but she was also flying, sailing high over the treetops in the light of the waxing moon, now a large crescent hanging low in the sky. From her vantage point Dasha could see versts and versts of unbroken forest, even more vast than she had imagined. She lifted up higher, and saw there, off in the distance, a clearing, and there, ahead of her, a line that must be a road. It stretched off to the West, the direction of death.

  That’s where I should go tomorrow, Dasha thought. If I keep going West, as I have been going, I’ll come to that road.

  She opened her eyes. She was back in her body, underneath the tree. The doe was sleeping again, but when she felt Dasha’s gaze upon her, she awoke. She contemplated Dasha for a long moment, and then rose to her feet and slipped out from under the branches, disappearing into the night. The fawn watched her go, and then settled down more snugly by Dasha’s side.

  Dasha closed her eyes, and slipped back into the same half-dozing, half-dreaming state as before, awakening only when the doe came back to join them, settling down beside them and chewing contentedly on her cud.

  The rest of the night, which seemed to Dasha to last much longer than any other night she had ever experienced, while also fleeting by at twice the speed of a regular night, passed in much the same way, with Dasha and the doe alternating between dozing and waking, occasionally getting up to stretch and relieve themselves, and in the case of the doe, to nurse the fawn and feed herself, and then returning to the shelter of the hollow under the spruce boughs. Dasha saw many things in her dreams: the forest, and the lives within it, and the stars and the sky, and in the end it felt to her as she lay there unmoving as if her body had fused with the forest floor, and that the water flowing through its streams was the blood in her veins, and the wind blowing through the treetops was the breath in her lungs. She was immobile, paralyzed in her vastness, but with no need to move, encompassing as she did everything around her.

  The gray light of dawn filtered in through the spruce branches, waking her and pulling her apart from the giant body she had gained. She sat up stiffly, shaking off the spruce needles that were stuck to her back. The doe also rose, and slipped out of their shelter.

  “I have to go now,” Dasha told the fawn. “I have to go back to my own people. But I thank you for your trust.”

  The fawn snuffled at her, and lipped at her hand, before getting to her feet and cautiously stepping out of the shelter after her mother. Dasha crawled out after them. It was very early in the morning, still practically night, considering how early the sun rose this time of year. The doe was walking towards the stream, the fawn at her side. Dasha followed them, staggering slightly and shivering in the chill morning air.

  They stopped at the stream and drank. When they had had their fill, the doe raised her head and looked Dasha in the eye.

  “Thank you,” Dasha told her. “Thank you for keeping me through the night. I have to go now. I’m sorry I couldn’t save your sister.” Tears prickled behind her eyes at the memory. “I would have saved her if I could,” she said. “I wish I could have. I wish my own people didn’t kill yours. I wish I was one of you, rather than one of them.”

  The doe came over and pressed her muzzle against Dasha’s hand. The fawn came up and pressed her body briefly against Dasha’s leg, before scampering off. The doe gave Dasha one last look, and then wheeled around and leapt after her fawn, disappearing into the trees behind her. In a moment, it was as if they had never been.

  Dasha shook her head, attempting to clear it, and ease the aching in her heart at their departure. It was, she thought, as close to forgiveness and a benediction as she was likely to get, and certainly more than she deserved.

  “West,” she said to herself. “I should go West, towards the road.” She turned her back on the rising sun, and set off.

  ***

  Navigating her way across the forest floor in the pre-dawn grayness was tricky, especially as her lack of food began to tell. By the time the sun had risen her stomach was gripped with a painful hunger, the like of which she had never experienced before, and she felt so tired and weak that she had to sit down on a fallen log and lean against a tree to rest. The very high likelihood that she had many more versts to travel before she reached the road, that it might be all day, or even several days, of this, was such a miserable thought that she almost cried. Only the persistent attacks of the mosquitoes that were hovering around her made her get up off her perch and begin slogging grimly forward once more.

  But by midmorning the hunger and the weakness were gone, replaced with a euphoric lightness that made her smile for no reason and burst into snatches of song as she strode along, stepping lightly over downed logs and branches, and stopping at every stream to take a handful of water. The nature of the forest changed, with dark, close-spaced spruces giving way to cheery, wide-spaced birches, with a springy carpet of moss underfoot. The thought of spending the rest of the day, or even several days, out here alone brought an even wider smile to her face, and even the whining of the mosquitoes was not enough to dim her mood.

  She stopped around midday at a broad, swiftly-flowing stream and settled herself on a thick patch of moss at its bank. Her water-sense stretched out towards the cool liquid flowing past her, and she plunged her hands in, reveling in the sensation of it sliding past and through her fingers, before drinking greedily from it, tasting its faint earthiness and its delicious, clean water taste.

  When it came time for her to carry on, she realized there was no way to cross the stream and remain dry. She considered taking off her boots and wading, but the bank where she was sitting was high and overhung, and the water looked to be above her knees, and even if she did make it across without mishap,
she would have wet, muddy feet to contend with. She contemplated the situation for a moment, and then, without knowing why, although certain in her choice, she turned right and began walking upstream.

  She had only gone a few dozen paces when she came to a double-trunked birch that had fallen over, forming a natural bridge across the stream. Dasha’s stomach twisted so hard at the sight that for a heartbeat she thought the water must have been bad, and that she was about to vomit. She clutched at a nearby tree to steady herself, and after a few deep breaths she realized the pangs were from hunger, which had returned with redoubled force.

  It’s only hunger, Dasha told herself. It passed quick enough in the morning, and it will pass quick enough now. Just cross the stream, and keep going! She let go of the tree that was currently supporting her, and made her way unsteadily towards the natural bridge, her knees quaking beneath her as her feet sank into the deep moss.

  The fallen trees were still fresh, not rotten at all, and, Dasha judged after bouncing on them lightly, not likely to break under her weight, even if they shook and moved under her with every shift of her body. She took two steps forward—and then had to throw herself off in a diving leap that only just took her onto the ground rather than into the water, as the tree bucked beneath her.

  It’s not that hard! she told herself angrily, as she got back up from her hands and knees and checked for damage to her body or her clothing. Tumblers walk across thin little ropes all the time, and here you are falling off a tree trunk wider than your foot! If they can do it, so can you! Those words were more in the way of encouragement than actual truth, she knew, since tumblers trained for years to achieve their feats of balance and dexterity, but they did remind her of an important point, which was that tumblers walking on high ropes often held long poles in their hands as they did so. The first time Dasha had seen that, she had been very puzzled, convinced that it must make their task that much harder, but Boleslav Vlasiyevich had explained to her that no, the pole actually helped with balance, and had demonstrated to her, walking on a fence with and without a stick in his hands. He hadn’t let her climb up on the fence with him, no matter how much she had begged, but he had set up a narrow plank on the ground, and let her practice with that. Even staying on the plank, much lower and wider than the fencetop he had walked on, had been more difficult than Dasha had thought it would be, much to her chagrin, but holding a stick crosswise in both hands had allowed her to traverse its length without tumbling embarrassingly onto the ground. That memory, from at least ten years in the past, came back to her, as clear and as real as a vision, so that she could feel the stick in her hands, and the solidity it would give to her footsteps as she attempted to cross on the fallen tree.

  She cast about her for a suitable stick. Movement caught her eye, and a tiny frog hopped away from her, leading her gaze to a branch lying on the ground. She went over and picked it up; it was thin and straight, and near as long as the span of both her arms, the perfect balancing pole.

  “Thank you, little frog,” Dasha said. There was no reply, but she realized as she returned to the fallen tree that her head had cleared, and the hunger pains had gone.

  Armed with her makeshift balancing pole, she stepped back up onto the natural bridge. The double bole meant, she discovered, that she could walk with one foot on each trunk, which meant she had to shift her weight frequently, as each trunk moved independently underneath her, but made her feel less like she was about to go tumbling off to the side.

  Step by cautious step, pausing between each one, she made it halfway across the stream, and then had to pause and wait for the motion of the tree trunks to stop. She glanced down at the deep pool beneath her, and saw small fish flashing back and forth in the water. For a moment the sight distracted her and she thought she might fall in, but then the tree trunks, which had been shaking from her footsteps, stilled from her immobility, and she was able to look up and begin walking again.

  One step from the far edge of the stream, the tree trunks, which had grown very thin, began to bend beneath her weight, threatening to spill her into the water, and she threw herself forward in a desperate leap, her foot tangling in the leaves and twigs of the tree’s crown. She slipped and stumbled, using her pole to catch herself and propel herself out of the tangle and onto solid ground.

  A hissing came from the treetop. She looked down and saw a brown-and-yellow viper rear her head up and hiss at her in warning, her mouth gaping open in a wide grin.

  “I’m sorry, little mother,” Dasha said to her, scrambling backwards. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to disturb you.” She tried to peer over from a place of safety and see if she had injured the snake or any of her young. She could see no sign of that, and after another hiss of warning, the viper slid back down into the leaves and disappeared.

  Now that she was safely on the other side, undunked and unbitten, Dasha could see all the ways things could have gone wrong, and especially in the end, when she could have fallen into the water, she could have stepped on the snake and killed her, she could have been bitten, she could have been bitten and fallen into the water, where she would have drowned as the poison flooded through her system, incapacitating her, and those little fish she had been admiring would have eaten her flesh, and she would have been gone forever, or perhaps come back as a water-maiden like Vika, dragging others under the water to join her in her cold and watery fate…

  Stop it! she ordered herself, dragging herself to her feet from where she was crouching by a tree. She looked around nervously several times, her feet crawling with the fear of stepping on a snake, before setting off again.

  The crawling sensations abated as she continued to walk along, but the pains in her stomach intensified, and soon her head was swimming again, until the sounds of her footsteps seemed to fill up her ears. So it took her a while to realize that it was not just her footsteps she was hearing.

  She froze. There was another footstep, and then silence. She took another step. There was another step, and then more silence, punctuated after a moment by a snuffling snort. A bolt of terror, so keen Dasha was surprised not to see blood welling out of the wound, pierced her chest. She wanted to sink down onto the ground, curl up like a hedgehog, scuttle away like a mouse, bolt like a deer, slither off into her hole like a snake, but her body felt enormous, so huge it must be visible from half a verst away, with her blood pulsing through her veins so loudly that surely every other creature in the forest could hear it.

  After an agonizingly long pause, she looked up into the tree beside her. Could she climb up into it? But it was a spindly thing, with branches that only started above her head height, and that wouldn’t bear her weight anyway. Her eyes darted to the neighboring trees. All the same. There was no safety to be found that way.

  That panicked thought was followed by the slightly less panicked thought that, while she hadn’t found a place of refuge in her desperate survey, she also hadn’t seen her invisible stalker. So it must be farther away than she had originally thought. Her heart thundering in her ears, and her eyes so alert that even the shade of the forest seemed painfully bright, she took a step forward. Her ears were ringing so much that she couldn’t have heard anyone walking even right beside her, but nothing launched itself out of the woods and pounced on her, so she took another step forward. Still nothing. Another step. Her heart quieted down enough for her to hear heavy steps off in the trees, to her right, accompanied by snuffling and snorting.

  A wolf? she wondered, but then she remembered how silently Serenkaya had moved. A bear, then? She had never seen a wild bear. Occasionally tumbling troupes would bring tame ones with them as part of their act, and force the poor things to dance, shuffling sadly from foot to foot, iron rings through their noses. Dasha had always looked away, not understanding the pleasure that others seemed to take at this horrid spectacle. But she doubted the bear, if that’s what it was, here in the woods with her would care. Even if he knew what was in her heart, she hadn’t done anything to stop the c
ruelty to his kin, despite abhorring it. And she rather doubted that bears cared about such human considerations anyway.

  Stay, or keep walking? she asked herself. Perhaps if she stood here long enough, the bear would go off on his own way and leave her alone, and she could continue her journey. Or perhaps he would come over and investigate her, or she would be stuck here all day, which meant all night as well. Her stomach twisted painfully, flooding her mouth with saliva. She took a step, and then another, and another. Her shadower continued to move parallel to her, just out of her sight, but made no move to molest her. She began walking more confidently. Her shadower picked up his pace as well, but came no closer.

  This continued for at least, as best Dasha could judge the distance, another verst. The birches began to be interspersed with more and more firs, and then gave way to them entirely, as the light open forest through which she had been moving became dark and dense once again. This slowed her pace; she hoped that her follower would turn aside and return to the open woods, but the snuffling and the heavy footsteps continued, keeping pace with her just out of her sight, although she began to have the sense that they were drawing closer and closer. She turned to her left, off to the South, for several dozen paces, but the unseen stalker seemed to turn with her, so she turned back West again.

  The sun was already below the treetops, and Dasha was beginning to think that she couldn’t take another step, when she stumbled out into a little clearing. She clutched at a tree for balance, disoriented by the sudden lack of barriers around her. The heavy footsteps off in the distance kept going, and they were not so far off in the distance now.