With the late summer's heat at its zenith, the river ran low and fetid. Istoma and the other village girls made a beeline for the spring in the wooded hollow. The hush fell as their bare feet searched for slimy stones of the old track hidden among the stinging nettles.

They were on a quest for hidden water, clear as a maiden's tear, but guarded well.

Istoma sighed wistfully for the times when a druid would come out of the woods as if beckoned. He'd take their offerings to Veles, the one who rules the waters and the underworld. Then they could draw springwater by the bucketful and scour the swampland for berries and mushrooms without fear.

This summer was the first one since the Prince's riders rode in and burned the Gods-Pillars on the high bank above the river. He had ordered the godhouse built for Onegod from the South, and not one druid came out of the forest since.

The foreign priest in the godhouse blessed the girls's buckets, but he neither came out of the wood nor ventured into it. What could Onegod know about their spirits, the girls whispered into one another's ear, as they teetered at the end of the old trail, pushing and shoving, but still huddled together in a tight clump. Their empty buckets clinked together.

The spring teased them with a touch of cool air on their flushed faces. They could see the dark gurgling pool overflow into a shallow stream to disappear between the brambles. A birch-bark ladle still hung off a twisted oak-tree's branch. The tree's gnarly roots grasped the spring like an old man's fingers.

Radunya, the owner of the thickest braid and the reddest cheeks, made even redder by their arguing, jammed her elbow into Istoma's back, shoving her forward. The gaggle of girls rolled backward leaving Istoma alone.

She wanted to run to them, but the whole village would sicken if the girls did not bring water back. The men and women worked from before the dawn till after dusk to save their crops from being burned out by Yarila-Sun's anger.

Istoma shifted the shoulder-pole that held her two empty buckets, gave one more furtive look to the other girls, and stepped forward.

A slimy hand broke the surface of the pool. It was covered with brown boils, each finger tipped with a colorless nail, a hand of an expert splasher. The cold droplets arched through the air, a rainbow flickered upwards from it and blinked out. Only because she had expected mischief from the water spirit, did Istoma jump out of the way in time, slipping on the mud. The screams tearing out of her throat counted as a prayer to all the gods to not let the spring water touch her.

The other girls dropped their buckets and fled screaming, shaking their frocks off.

Istoma had the most distance to cover, but she was the first one to reach the safety of the village. There, half-dead with fear, the girls inspected one another. Istoma palmed the hems of her skirt, while Radunya trilled, "There! Vodyanoy got her! She's his betrothed now!"

They spilled away from her, then came back together in a chirping cluster, a flutter of sparrows fighting in a hedge.

"Where?!" Istoma asked twisting her neck to see. A cold patch of fabric clung to her spine.

"Maybe I am just sweaty," she said through numb lips.

The girls shook their heads as one. They all saw the vodaynoy's mark on her back.

Istoma dropped to the ground, covered her face with her hands and wept. What else was there to do but cry? She would drown soon, and become a rusalka, to join the vodyanoy's other wives on the bottom of the pool.

"Istoma's going back for our buckets." Radunya flicked her famous braid, thicker than a man's wrist, over her shoulder and clicked her tongue. "Stop your bawling. Nobody dies twice, but everybody dies once."

The girls nodded to acknowledge the self-appointed crone's wisdom, and trickled away to do their other chores. They did not even look at her. She was in charge of bringing water now because she'd drown anyway.

Istoma did not want to drown or die in any other way soon, even if it was just once and everyone had to. Before returning to the spring, she crept to the mill for her secret weapon.

The miller's dog paced round the yard, yanking its chain. The bitch had a wolf's dusky coat and murderous disposition. It snarled, muzzle lowered, showing off the black gums, saliva bubbling up around pointed teeth.

Istoma whistled, the way only she could, and the dog calmed down, let her unlock its chain. Before the miller came out, the girl and the dog ran to the woods, paws and bare feet pummeling the dusty track.

The vodyanoy sat by the well on the buckets he piled up as a throne. He looked like a cucumber forgotten on the vine, overgrown and yellowed, his body covered by even bigger boils than his hands. He had no modesty, and Istoma's cheeks flushed with fury. "Begone, monster! Get him, Zabiyaka, get him!"

The dog leapt, yanking the chain out of Istoma's hands. The vodyanoy screamed, and scrambled back into the water, sending the buckets flying. The wicked teeth sank into the slimy ankle. Zabiyaka tried to drag the monster out of the pool like a fish, but ended up with a torn strip of flesh. It would not part with the disgusting swamp-smelling thing.

***

The world sweltered for two more long weeks.

Istoma went to the spring and back, every day, to bring enough water for the village. Every time she approached the spring, her steps faltered. But she saw no trace of the vodyanoy. The boil-covered hand did not surface to splash her.

She told them the vodyanoy was gone, but they would not help her.

"He'll grab a bucket, topple a girl in, and take her down. That spring is bottomless," Radunya said. "That's what happened to my grandmother's sister. She was a rusalka, walked along the river for years. The fish bit pieces out of her dead cheeks. And she had pond-scum in her hair."

Istoma threw a bucket of water at the vixen. "Now you are a rusalka too."

"Am not," Radunya said, water pouring down from her in thick rivulets. "A girl has to be splashed by your betrothed, everyone knows that."

She draws water, our Istoma

Looks down the well,

Where her love waits with wet kisses

On his swamp lips...

the girls sang around her.

She picked up her buckets. "When I am rusalka, I will find each of you by the river," she promised, but she did not want to die. By the spring - the only place where her tormentors did not follow her - she hugged her knees and had a cry.

Someone else's sobs echoed hers.

Istoma turned round and saw the vodyanoy. "Go away. I hate you!"

The monster whimpered. "Your dawg, your dawg, it made me sick, afraid of wawter. Can't live without, can't." He sounded like a toad too. "Just splashed yaw, and will die naw."

Istoma swallowed. Zabiyaka was always a vile dog, but she'd turned rabid, and the miller had to put her down. Rabid dogs feared water. She thought it was her fault that Zabiyaka got sick, from eating the vodaynoy's flesh. But maybe she got it backwards, and the vodyanoy got rabies from the dog?

"You did not mean to drown me?" she asked.

"Naw, I was bored," the vodyanoy said. "Now I am dying. I cwied for the druids to come, but they wouldn't."

"No, they wouldn't," Istoma said. "The Grand Prince burned the old gods, even Veles."

The creature wept. "I don't want to die."

She knew exactly how he felt. "I am sorry."

"Bring the dwag, good, kind girl," the vodyanoy whined searching her eyes with his own, crystalline and inhuman pools. "Dwag is a sacrifice, like a druid would bring. It will heal me, and I will let the stream flow to the village. Good water, sweet water. You wouldn't need to carry buckets so far."

"Won't the dead dog poison the water?"

"No," the vodyanoy promised, "my well is too deep."

Overwhelmed by pity and guilt, Istoma believed the poor spirit. He felt like her only friend in the world.

***

The rye on both sides of the road stood unharvested, its dry stalks too top-light to even bend. The cracked brown soil spider-webbed underneath. The blue bachelor buttons winked at the Grand Prince from the failed crop, undeterred by the drought.

The Prince twisted his lips in distaste. If only humans were more like weeds, content with whatever came. But no. They will beg here too, for relief, for mercy, and the long list of things. Afterwards they will mutter darkly about the wrath of the old gods, Onegod's being wrong for them, as if they were special. The rest of the world belonged to Onegod, the god of the distant and mighty lands.

He was tired of hearing about the gods, putrid water and the disease in every village he'd passed. His tax collector's bag was a sorry sight, and a few fires he set to the heretics in retribution for destroying godhouses did nothing to reduce the unseasonable heat.

He had to do it, he wanted to scream, all of it, for their own sake. How quickly they had forgotten that the old gods turned blind eye to the heathen crop-burning nomads, and that it took armies to ward them off. The armies took treaties, and the treaties took princely marriages, and the marriages needed the blessings of Onegod.

He brought up his horse, and his retinue slowed down, two steps behind him, as always.

The village looked quiet, no children's faces looming behind the curtains, no hens panicking underfoot, no swine rooting in the middle of the street for refuse. No fresh refuse either, a scary sign even in this cursed heat.

The Grand Prince gritted his teeth and looked up at the wrathful sun. Another disaster. Might as well add the village's name to the chronicles.

"The name of this... hamlet?" he asked.

"Klyuchnik, m'lord," his retinue answered. The name, the spring-place, made him lick his parched lips before he signaled for his page to blow the summoning horn. A formality, nobody was left alive here. 

The Prince turned his horse to look for a shady place when the demanding sound of the horn brought out a lone person onto the road.

She did not look wretched. On the opposite, she looked pretty and fresh, a graceful spring shoot, with bright green ribbons in her hair. Light-footed, the maiden did not even rise the dust as she walked towards the Prince's party.

Two water buckets burdened the ends of her shoulder-pole. A little bit of water splashed over the sides with each step, cleaner and colder than maiden's tears, sweeter than mead. She carried a birch-bark ladle in her hands.

The Prince watched her set the buckets down, dip the ladle into the water and offer it to him with a shy smile. He took the offering eagerly. "What's your name, lovely maiden?"

"Istoma's what my parents named me, and Irina after Onegod's blessing, m'lord."

"Why, thank you, Irina," the Prince said and lifted the ladle to his lips. The moment water touched his mouth he saw that the ribbons in her hair were not silk but pond-scum. The stench of swamp sickened him.

He held the ladle away, caught the sight of her eyes.

"What are---"

Crystalline and inhuman, the eyes compelled him. "I am a rusalka, m'lord. Drink Veles's water."

The water cradled in his palms became irresistible. Dead-water they'd called it, Veles's water. 

The Grand Prince drank every last drop of his death.