The Breathing Sea II - Drowning

by E. P. Clark

  “So we heard,” said Oleg. “Come on, Dasha. We might as well go now. At least that way I’ll feel like I’m being of use to someone of my kin, even if the others are too pigheaded to listen to a word I say.”

  Aunty Olga laughed at that and shooed them away, so, with a stop to say hello to Poloska, who appeared none the worse for her brisk journey the day before, they set off on foot for Priestess Street.

  It was located on the other side of Lesnograd from the Beast Market, to Dasha’s relief, off to the East. They walked through the merchant district, where the houses were all brightly painted and decorated with elaborate fretwork, and often had shops on the ground floor, where you could buy silks or tea or spices or furs or amber or precious gems or cunningly fashioned dolls and toys. Oleg offered to buy Dasha a doll when he saw her admiring a display of them that had been set out on a windowsill.

  “I’m not a little girl any more!” she told him.

  “Apparently you’re still little enough to like dolls,” he said.

  “Anyone would admire the needlework on that doll,” she told him haughtily, while, she suspected, Seva stifled a laugh behind them. She gave them both a nasty look and marched on, resolving not to spare so much as a glance for any of the toys they passed, even though some of them were very pretty and cunning…no! That was for little children! She shouldn’t think of such things any more. Which was a sad thought. Until she had her own children. Then she could choose their toys and dolls for them. Which was a queer thought, to say the least. How many children would she have? Her mind skipped right over the business of getting children, carrying them, and bearing them, none of which attracted her in the slightest, and jumped straight to a pretty picture of her little daughters—twins! What if she had twins! How sweet would that be? They might even look alike! It happened only rarely, but that was no reason why it wouldn’t happen to her—her little daughters in adorable little dresses (maybe she would sew them herself! That would require a considerable improvement in her needlework, but anything was possible), playing with their dolls. And never arguing or fighting or breaking things, of course. She might even have a sweet little son or two, which would be so handy for marriage alliances, and he would be so sweet and loving, every mother’s dream, and never become cruel or violent or do anything like what so many other mothers’ sons did. How much fun that would be!

  “You must be thinking of something nice, to smile like that,” Oleg said. “Or are you secretly laughing at me?”

  “Of course I’m not laughing at you!” Dasha said, blushing and feeling flustered, as if somehow he could see straight into her head and guess at her thoughts, and would find those thoughts bad. Which why would he? She was supposed to have children, wasn’t she? It was one of her requirements as Tsarinovna. But still she thought he might laugh at her, or be embarrassed by her, if she told him what she was thinking about, so she said instead, “Is that Priestess Street up ahead?”

  The houses on Priestess Street were smaller and plainer than the ones on Merchant Street, and had nothing on display in their windows. They came to the third house down on the left and knocked. Before Oleg had even removed his hand from the door, it was thrown open, revealing a tall woman no older than Vladya. Her robe was hanging from her rather carelessly, as if she had only sort of put it on, and she was wearing boots indoors.

  “I was just going out!” she told them. “But if you need something, my business can wait. Come in! I’m Sister Asya, by the way. You were looking for me?”

  “We were,” said Oleg, stepping through the door, which required him to stoop down. Dasha had to duck her head as well to get through. She had a vision of Sister Asya, who was almost her height, knocking her head on it over and over again. She looked like the kind of person who wouldn’t learn to duck after the first time, and would keep hitting her head on a low doorway as long as she lived there.

  Sister Asya, without asking them to remove their boots, led them into the main chamber off from the door. Dasha glanced down at the floor and noted that they were hardly the only people to walk on it in their outside shoes. By the look of it, Sister Asya hadn’t swept it for a week, or maybe ever. And by the look of her robe, Sister Asya hadn’t washed it any time recently, either. At least she didn’t smell bad. Her hair, which was a drab light brown and was falling out of the long braid that was falling out of the hood of her robe, seemed clean, and her teeth were strong and white. She was in good health, just careless about her clothes and house. Dasha wondered why Vlastomila Serafimiyevna had recommended her. Surely there had to be someone better available.

  Oleg was introducing them. When he told Sister Asya who Dasha was, her eyes (large, gray, and slanted, just like Dasha’s mother’s), grew big, and she bowed down to her boot tops, although it seemed to be more out of excitement than respect.

  “And we’re here with a request for you, if you are willing to hear us out,” Oleg finished.

  “Oh, of course, Oleg Svetoslavovich, Tsarinovna, of course! I’m so delighted to have you here, you can’t imagine! What is your request? I’ve already agreed to it!”

  “The Tsarinovna is in need of training in her gifts,” Oleg said. “The sorceresses hired as her tutors have been able to do little to help her, but the sisters at your sanctuary were of more use. Vlastomila Serafimiyevna recommended that we ask you to continue her training. It would mean leaving Lesnograd,” he went on, overriding Sister Asya’s quick words of agreement. “We’re leaving for Pristanograd tomorrow, and need someone who can travel with us.”

  “Oh, of course, Oleg Svetoslavovich—and Tsarinovna—of course! Such an honor! And I’ve been growing tired of Lesnograd of late anyway, and was meaning to ask Vlastomila Serafimiyevna to be sent elsewhere already. I’m a traveler at heart, like our—your—Olga Vasilisovna, you know; I can’t live in one place for too long. Pristanograd would be just the thing. And the Tsarinovna! Such a pretty girl!” She looked Dasha up and down. “Everything I’ve heard about your beauty is true, I see, Tsarinovna.”

  “People talk about my beauty? Who talks about my beauty?” asked Dasha.

  Sister Asya laughed. “Why, Olga Vasilisovna, of course, and Vladislava Vasilisovna as well.” That Vladya had been bragging of her beauty came as a surprise to Dasha, and she suspected that Sister Asya was exaggerating, and exaggerating even more when she went on to say, “And everyone else too—everyone knows that you were conceived here in Severnolesnoye, Tsarinovna, if you don’t mind my saying”—as it happened, Dasha did mind, but she said nothing—“and we take such pride in you, as if you were our own, which you are! Oh, and your gifts! They must be very strong! Come, Tsarinovna, let us begin immediately!”

  “Weren’t you going somewhere?” said Dasha. “We wouldn’t want to interrupt you, or prevent you from going about your duties.”

  “Oh, how thoughtful of you, Tsarinovna! No-no, I was just going to pray with a sick woman. The healers can’t do anything for her, you know, so sad, and so she asked for the comfort of prayer. But it can wait till the afternoon.”

  “You should go to her,” Dasha said firmly. “And I should go with you.”

  “Oh, Tsarinovna! That’s so kind of you. But I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you, or…”

  “It wouldn’t be inconveniencing me. I should become acquainted with my people. This woman is one of my people. Let me come with you.”

  “Oh! Well…if you are sure…”

  “I am sure. Please let me come with you.”

  “What sickness does this woman have?” Oleg interjected. “Is it anything catching?”

  “No-o, not that I can see. It is a sickness of the lungs, but none of her family has it. The healers say it isn’t the cough, not the kind that spreads, but something else, some malfunction of the lungs that they can’t treat. Soon she won’t be able to breathe at all, poor woman, and then…but we all return to the forest and the earth in the end, don’t we? Well, if you are resolved, Tsarinovna, of course you should come, but I warn you, it isn�
�t a pretty sight.”

  Dasha’s resolve was in fact beginning to waver when she thought about what awaited her. She had never seen someone sick to the point of death, and the visions that arose before her at the thought made her want to turn and run. How did healers stand it? And is that what awaited her, if her falling sickness came back or got worse? How could anyone stand it? It was too terrible!

  “I will come with you,” she said.

  “Oh! Well, let us set off, then.”

  It was spitting rain when they left Sister Asya’s house, and a cold wind was blowing from the North. Sister Asya was wearing nothing but her robe, but she just pulled her hood over her head and hurried down the street, not seeming to feel the chill or care about the rain. Dasha hurried after her, with Oleg and Seva just behind. They came to the end of Priestess Street and turned, and then turned again down an unmarked street that was more a line of mud between rickety wattle fences than an actual street, and then down another unmarked street that was even narrower and muddier, and lined with wattle fences that were rotting in the rain, till they came to a small woven gate that was half falling off its posts. There was a strong smell of chickens along with the smell of mud and middens and privies. Sister Asya carefully opened the falling-apart gate, and ushered them into the yard, which at one point had been floored with boards, but was now a morass of rotting pieces of wood and mud rising up through them. Three hens looked up from their small coop, and then went back to huddling together out of the rain.

  “Nastya here used to sell eggs at the market, but she can’t any more, poor thing, and her daughters have taken up weaving instead,” said Sister Asya in a low voice. “One married into a family with no daughters and moved out to run their flax fields, and the other two left to live with her and spin and weave the flax. They didn’t want to live in Lesnograd any more. But it means our Nastya has no one to care for her but her husband and her halfwit son, who takes more care than he gives. It’s a sad business and Nastya will be well out of it when she passes, if you ask me, though she’s all in a fret over what her husband and her halfwit son will do then. She wants one of the daughters to take them in, but they’re sick of caring for them, and who can blame them. I’ve…oh, here we are. Nastya! Nastya!” Sister Asya banged (carefully) on the rickety door of the rickety hut. “It’s Sister Asya! And guests as well.” She winked at Dasha.

  “We can’t take no guests now!” a man’s voice shouted. “Send ‘em away!”

  “You’re not going to want to send these guests away, Pasha, my head for beheading, you’re not!” Sister Asya shouted back.

  “We don’t have nothing to offer ‘em! They’ll find no hospitality here!”

  This gave Sister Asya pause, but Dasha said to her, and then more loudly, so that Pasha could hear her, “The only hospitality we need is for you to let us across your threshold. We expect nothing more. Please, do us the honor of inviting us in.”

  There was the sound of heavy footsteps coming to the door. “Is that Vladislava Vasilisovna?” called the man. “It sounds like her voice, all noble.”

  “Vladya—Vladislava Vasilisovna—has visited them?” Dasha whispered to Sister Asya.

  “Not that I know. Pasha used to serve as a guard, before Nastya took ill. He must have seen her—Vladislava Vasilisovna—then.”

  The man who wrenched open the door, making it shake so that Dasha was afraid it was going to fall off its hinges, looked old enough to be her grandfather, even though she suspected he was actually younger than that. His eyes were bloodshot, and he reeked of vodka.

  “What’s this?” he asked, eyeing them all with disfavor. “What’d’you want? We’ve already paid our taxes, more ‘n we could afford.”

  “Pasha! They’re not tax collectors. This is the Tsarinovna, come to visit you.”

  “The Tsarinovna? What Tsarinovna?”

  “The one from Krasnograd, that one! Here to visit you in your time of trouble. Now are you going to invite us in?”

  Pasha stepped aside, gawping at them as if he didn’t know what to make of this unexpected incursion of nobility. He stared at Dasha as she ducked under the doorframe, but made no move to bow, and gave both Oleg and Seva hard looks that had nothing of welcome in them.

  The inside of the hut was all one chamber, with a bed in one corner, on which a large figure was lying, a table and benches in the other, and a stove in the third. There was a pile of rags on the sleeping bench of the stove. As they stepped inside the hut, the pile of rags stirred, revealing itself to be a woman.

  “Sister”—cough—“Asya? You”—cough—“came?” The woman was all one unhealthy grayish color, and she was so thin that her jaws looked too big for her face, and her face too big for her body. Dasha’s heart squeezed at the sight. If she had been a horse or a dog, she would have been given one quick blow, and sent to her rest forever. Dasha wondered if she would find that a mercy if someone offered the same service to her. Did horses and dogs find it a mercy, or was it done because their owners couldn’t stand to look at them any more? Looking at Nastya, who was now coughing up blood, Dasha had to believe that anything, even death, would be a mercy compared to what she was experiencing now. And what was worse was that it was no one’s fault. No one had done this to her. It was just the way of things. Her body had betrayed her by taking sick and condemning her to death, and was betraying her again by clinging to life long after she or it could take any pleasure from it.

  “I came, Nastya, just as you asked.” Sister Asya’s voice was softer now, gentle and soothing. “And I brought you guests.”

  Nastya tried to smile, but it came out as more of a bloody snarl. “I”—cough—“have no”—cough—“hospi”—cough—“hospi”—cough—“nothing to offer them.”

  “You have offered us more than enough simply by letting us into your home,” Dasha said. She followed Sister Asya over to the stove where Nastya lay, crouching slightly to keep from hitting her head on the ceiling. No wonder everyone was ill in this household: the ceilings were so low the place was full of bad air, and the yard was full of mud.

  The large figure on the bed sat up, and, on seeing the strangers in his house, began to wail, his hands over his ears.

  “Now see what you’ve done! Shut up, Vitya, by all the mother-raping gods, shut up!” Pasha gave the wailing figure a hard slap on one of his hands, which only made him wail harder.

  “Why don’t you take Vitya out for some air, Pasha,” said Sister Asya.

  “What air? It’s raining!”

  “A summer rain. Put on your kaftans and take him out for an airing. It will do you both good, and allow Nastya to get some rest.”

  Pasha looked over at Nastya. She nodded, before collapsing back into her pile of rags. His lips thin, Pasha jerked on his own kaftan, which could be called such, and not a floor-rag, only as a courtesy, and then, using more force than was strictly necessary in Dasha’s eyes, jerked another equally ragged kaftan onto the wailing Vitya and half-dragged, half-marched him outside.

  “I don’t”—cough—“know what”—cough—“will happen”—cough cough cough—“to them,” said Nastya. “The girls don’t”—cough cough—“want them.”

  “A sanctuary will take them,” said Sister Asya.

  “Even”—cough—“Vitya?”

  “Especially Vitya. He will have a better life with his brothers at the sanctuary than he ever would anywhere else, even his own home.”

  “You”—cough—“promise?”

  “I swear it. And Pasha too. They will be well cared for. I have already made the arrangements; all you have to do is agree to it and it shall be done.”

  “Agree. Send”—cough—“them now. Don’t”—cough—“wait for”—cough—“me”—cough cough cough—“to die. I want”—cough cough—“to go”—cough—“quick. Just”—cough cough—“leave me. Sooner”—cough cough—“leave me”—“cough cough—“sooner I die.” Nastya coughed up a huge gout of blood, and collapsed, tears and blood running down her f
ace, her chest heaving so quickly and so weakly it hurt just to look at it.

  “We will not leave you,” said Sister Asya, bending over to clean her face. “No one is going to leave you. We will remain right by your side, for as long as necessary. Now rest, and we will pray together.”

  “Tell the”—cough—“guests”—cough cough—“to sit.”

  “We are comfortable where we are,” said Dasha.

  Nastya managed to turn her head enough to look at Dasha with one eye. “Who are”—cough—“you girl?”

  “Dasha,” said Dasha, at the same time as Sister Asya said, “The Tsarinovna.”

  “The Ts—” Nastya fell into such a coughing fit that Dasha thought, with a sick thrill of horror, that she was going to die right in front of their eyes.

  “Come to visit you,” said Sister Asya. “She wanted to see her people, and declared that you were one of her people, and that she would see you.”

  Nastya was lying back on her rags, her eyes closed, but Dasha thought one corner of her mouth turned up in a tiny smile.

  “Tell her,” she whispered.

  “Yes?” said Sister Asya and Dasha together, when she fell silent.

  “This is…how her people…live. And die.”

  “I know,” said Dasha. “Now I know.”

  Nastya nodded a tiny nod, and then went completely still, except for the panting of her chest.

  Sister Asya reached out and brushed a lank lock of hair from her sweaty brow. “Seva, is it?” she said. “Fetch some water, please. There’s a well at the end of the street.” She placed her hand on the side of the stove. “Oleg Svetoslavovich, please bring in some wood. There’s a stack in the back of the house. The stove is almost out. And then one of you run to the market and fetch some bread.”

  “We can’t leave the Tsarinovna,” said Seva.

  Sister Asya looked up at him. Her eyes were clear and calm, limpid pools of gray water. All her former flightiness was gone. “The Tsarinovna will pray with me,” she said. “She will come to no harm.”