WHAT DEATH CANNOT TOUCH
vi. where deep waters flow

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This evening, the dusk came with a blood-smeared sky as if the poor ewe's gore had not long seeped into Lasow's black soil but had been painted on the gloomy horizon—a herald of wrath no one beheld.

No one but Khaya stood there watching it, shuddering and with the metallic taste of injustice on her lips. She felt the ewe's death like a blade through her own throat and her missing like an orphaned lamb.

Not only because of her fight with the priest, Khaya could not bring herself to cheer up. All of her felt like mourning.

For the rest of the day, even after Majda had softly led her back inside, she hadn't spoken a word, not daring to look at the others who most certainly kept watching her the whole time. Even Majda's angelic voice that enchanted the entire room couldn't pull her out of her trance. In her sleep, she was once again haunted by the priest, his soldier, and the voice.

Let a wanderer in. Let in who you invited. And she woke up covered in sweat, with a pounding heart and the feeling of a claw on her throat.

No one talked about what had happened, and only now that she sat with Majda and Ulya alone in the little wooden bathhouse—the place where the people of Lasow cleaned their bodies and souls, children were born, and the dead were laid out, and thus, the circle of life and death closed—did her cousin break the silence the family had wrapped yesterday's events in carefully.

"What were you thinking?" she asked into the steam of the banya. "They want to help us, and yet you treat them like our enemies."

Khaya trying to hide her face from them sank her teeth into her chapped lips. Do they really want to help us? she thought but responded instead, "I know."

Warm steam and the smell of birches filled her lungs as Khaya took a deep breath. "It's just... I don't trust them."

"That you have demonstrated to us already," her cousin snapped but called herself to calm down instantly. A little softer, she added, "I simply don't understand why. What have they ever done to you?"

Nothing. Except for accusing me of being the witch they want to kill. It took her more strength to keep her composure and not simply blurt this thought out than Khaya expected. But this time she couldn't allow her feelings to destroy everything.

So, she fought down the urge to yell at Majda the truth of what had happened in the temple by reaching for a birch broom and lashing it against her skin more vigorously than usual to let the tender pain dowse the flame inside of her.

"All of this talk about a witch beneath us—can you imagine it? Can you believe that any of the women of Lasow could be that wicked?"

Majda seemed to think about it for a moment.

"No, I can't. But there are many things I didn't dare to imagine until they became reality." In her words swung the pain of losing her father and little sisters. After all, every time Dorka had to bury someone, she had been the one standing right beside her, squeezing her mother's and sibling's hands and whispering that everything would be fine. And when their grandmother died, she did the same for Khaya. Majda had been their lifeline.

"I like them," Ulya said. "Davor promised to protect us, didn't he? And he carved me a little rabbit last evening. Haven't you seen it, Khaya? It's so beautiful and cute. So why don't you like him?"

At that moment Khaya wished Ulya wouldn't have come with them to the bathhouse. Because too often, the little girl's mouth spoke truths so innocent and yet so precise and sharp to cut straight to the heart.

Yes, why can't I like them, let alone trust them, while everyone else does? Was she paranoid or simply mad? At this point, Khaya didn't even trust her own judgment anymore. All she knew was that every fiber of her bridled at the thought of those men and how the others placed their confidence in them.

Khaya almost couldn't bear meeting Ulya's big eyes. "It's not that I don't like them, zayka. But I think Davor doesn't like me very much."

"Why wouldn't he?" Ulya was a little faster to speak, but Majda, opening her mouth, seemed to have the same question.

Nervously, Khaya played with a wet strand of ashen brown hair that peaked out of her cap and had fallen over her face. "Why I don't know. But he said something strange to me. That I hide a secret and that... my voice turns prayers into spells."

Even though the inside of the little wooden bathhouse was so hot, sweat trickled shiningly down their naked bodies, Khaya felt the room turn colder, and a shiver running down her spine.

Ulya watched her wide-eyed. Majda carefully. "He really said that?"

Khaya nodded, suppressing the anxiety arising inside of her.

"And now you think..." The sentence hung in the brumous air, unfinished and thus even more agonizingly than if she had just spoken the words Khaya feared so much.

"Yes," she croaked.

"But you are no evil witch!" Ulya cried out and, as if convincing herself, repeated. "You are not. You can't be. Right, Khaya?"

The smile Khaya forced on her lips was a wry one that mayhap could pacify Ulya but not so her older sister. "Of course not, Ulyasha."

"So that's what all of this is about? That's why you had to be so rude yesterday? Haven't you, for one moment, considered that he meant something different?"

"But—"

"Has he ever accused you of being the witch? Verbatim."

"No."

"You heard what your distrust wanted you to hear, and let that convince you to wrong the people who want to save us."

The words pierced her heart like the needle had her finger two days ago. What Khaya had feared the most had been engendering doubt in Majda as well. But that was far from what her confession provoked. Majda simply didn't believe her. Somehow this was even worse.

"I'm just confused and concerned about you...," Khaya whispered. "You all."

"So am I." Their eyes met, and it hurt to see her firm conviction.

No. Not like me. For I don't make eyes at a monster.

Softly, Majda laid her hand on Khaya's. But today, it could not grant her the feeling of security since she didn't know how long this touch would last until an infinite emptiness would replace it. Even though they jumped, hand in hand, over the bonfire every summer solstice—a sign of fate that they would stay together—Khaya felt them separating. Maybe this Karachun Day would break the promise Kupala Night had made.

Majda sighed. "Mamma and your father are angry with you. You have to apologize, Khayka. Especially to the priest and Davor."

"I know," Khaya said, simply because she lacked the power to protest. Sometimes it was the soft objects that blunted a blade. "I will. I promise."

Peaceful silence spread through the room with the haze covering their bodies with its hot damp touch and cleansing the air of any trace of conflict. In it, Majda's soft curves seemed nearly translucent and reminded Khaya of her own long, bony limbs, ribs pressing against her pale skin, and sharp collarbones. These thoughts never came with jealousy of her cousin's beauty but only surprise at how they could be so different. Khaya liked her edges—they fit her.

"Khaya?"

"Yes?"

"If you could, would you jump on a horse with me and travel to the ends of the world? — Do you think the lands beyond the woods are beautiful?" Majda whispered for only her to hear.

"I think no matter how far you go sun will always set West, and no matter how fast you won't catch it."

The hint of a smile showed on her lips. "But you would try if you could."

❆

They said the banya purified body and soul alike. If so, it did not work today. The water could only wash away sweat and dirt. Deep inside her, Khaya could still feel an invisible filth cling to her, seeping from the skin right to the bone.

Let in who you invited.

While Majda was yet rinsing her and Ulya's bodies with cool water, Khaya threw her underdress over in haste and stormed out of the bathhouse.

"Where are you goi—"

But she didn't listen or answer but ran. Through the snow, feet naked, cold wind cutting her wet skin until the forest's sharp-teethed jaw swallowed her and suffocated Majda's shouts. Every step brought yet another rush of pain as the ice scratched over the skin of her feet like an icy razor. But each of them took her to the wood's endlessly wild freedom.

Why running? There is nowhere to hide. Death is near the branches whispered.

"Leave me alone!" Khaya yelled, not caring if stupidly addressing nothing but plants and squirrels and her own imagination. Bare-faced trees and shrubs stretched their claws against her, scraping the soft skin of her arms.

Soon the forest hid the grey sky, covering it in white topped green, and when they revealed it again, Khaya had already reached the mist-veiled river that languidly and half-frozen wound its way through dead fern that reached out of the snow. Though it was called Zlatava, Khaya had never found it to appear golden but rather a significant shade of green, grey, and blue, aside from the rare hours in spring when sunrays touched the fresh-melted snow innervating the stream.

Even then, it was not wise to mistake her warm color for kindliness. For golden Lady Zlatava's heart was deep and cold.

Khaya stopped, and there was silence, except for the murmuring of the river that Dorka and babushka called the Rusalka's voice and her own shaking, hectic breath. But silence, after all.

No shouts. No sermons. No threads. No voices in the wind.

When her sore toes touched the icy water, the longing to wash the memories off her body rushed through her with a chill. Step by step, as the cold violently caressed her skin and soaked her dress, Khaya felt her guard crumble.

It was only now she allowed or simply could not protect herself from the thought any more that haunted her ever since Davor said those dreadful words.

What if I am the witch? What if I am evil?

Let in who you invited she had heard in her dreams. Was it pure imagination? Only what her mind created out of her fears? Or could it really be him?

Why and how would she have invited him?

It didn't make sense to her, for she hated Karachun with a burning passion. He, who had taken her grandmother even though she was the one to tell his tales and heartily follow the Old Gods' commandments as well as the new ones. Thus, she couldn't hate his night-turned day, filled with fires and songs. But its beautiful magic turned a darker shade the moment Khaya had to mourn her beneath the dead, too.

But then again, why could she hear those voices in the wind, in the dark, in her dreams? Was it all but madness?

With a deep breath inside her lungs, Khaya submerged into the wintry river and let the memory wash over her with it. As if deep from the stream bed she heard Majda's laugh while she ran through the vernal forest.

"Come on, Khayka! You're too slow!" All she could see were bright, flowing skirts over little feet that danced through the dew-touched fern and light strands of hair that flew around Majda's head like sunrays.

But Khaya could not catch up, stumbling after her like the lost youths bewitched by beautiful spirits of the woods that would only meet death at the end of their way. Maybe that's what Majda was after all. For no one, not even Khaya—and she was faster than a young horse, her father used to say—could keep up with her. Even horses couldn't outrun a wood sprite.

Mladen who, claiming he had already seen the rusalka, wanted to come with them they had long left behind.

"Wait... please..." Her own laughter was suffocated by panting for air.

"If I were Kashchey the Deathless and you Ivan, you would never get your beloved Marya back that way," Majda teased her, still not out of breath.

A little vila she is indeed, Khaya thought in the loving words of her babushka. Fast and light-footed while she herself followed her dashing through the covert forcefully like a bear.

"Because I don't have a magical horse like him!" she yelled back when she finally reached the glade that broke its way through the forest along the Zlatava.

Gracefully like a nymph, Majda swung through the boughs of a maple tree that towered over the river, the ends of her hair brushing through the water. "Come up! Who's at the top first wins."

They ascended to the highest part of it, which would still hold their weight, and Khaya not once looked down or thought about how only one wrong step would tear her bone-crushingly down.

Falling seemed impossible.

Until a soft crack reminded her that all that frail safety rested on narrow limbs.

We all think us invincible until life reminds us how little, how insignificant, how fragile we are.

The branch broke right under Khaya's step, and she fell, her hand slipping right out of Majda's, who tried to catch her, and off the twigs, she tried to hold on to. A second later, her cousin's frightened face and her screams were drowned by the Zlatava.

Numbing pain rushed through Khaya's body, and she meant her spine must break, her lungs burst, and her ribs pierce the heart they were supposed to protect. Then there was nothing but water and darkness and a brute force tearing on her like autumnal storms on dying leaves—and a strange grip, not on her body but on her soul.

For a moment, Khaya thought she would die. Her lips parted for a silent plea for air that could only be complied with suffocating water. However, that time never came. Instead, she only felt some kind of ease rushing through her body, and with the gurgling of the water, a voice breathed. 'Her voice' as she used to call it by herself, even though until now, she had never quite understood its words.

It's no time to go into the deep waters, little girl. You need not fear it whispered. And she didn't.

It would not leave her ever since, even after they had drawn her only half-conscious out of the river and her grandmother sat beside her through the following days of fever, telling her stories. Only later would she learn that not everyone heard it nor had such a voice of their own, and with that, an innocent childish mystery had turned into something strange, and dangerous, and so she pretended it did not exist.

But Khaya heard it in the dark when the world slept, and in her dreams, and the day Yovanka Raskina, her grandmother, had died and the following when, her hands steeped in humid, black earth, Khaya had cried for Karachun to give her back.

Did all of that make her a witch? Did destiny doom her to be a servant to the one she loathed?

Now Khaya screamed into the water where no one but the river could hear.

I am not. I am not. I can't be.

Zlatava's cold and cruel embrace cleansed Khaya from these dreadful thoughts, from the memories of the priest's sermon, Davor's cruelty, Majda's faith in him, the slaughtered ewe... and left her body shivering, her lungs pressurized, her heart aching, but her soul pure again.

Gasping for air, she broke through the surface, welcoming the frosty breeze biting her naked skin.

"Khaya Abramovna." The voice rang over the glare, and let her heart freeze more than winter's touch.

So here we are with a little back story,  character development and our sweet wind talking again.

What do you think? And who could that person showing up at the end be?

I'm really writing like a crazy person the last few days to finish this story. I still feel like there is so much to tell yet, but so little time. At least, the word count and thus milestone 3 I have (unofficially) reached in my word document. But story-wise...let's say I'd better write like crazy for the next days, too ^^"

And round 2 qualifiers will be announced soon! I'm so nervous.

How is it going for you fellow oncers? Are you still in or already dropped out? Have you reached milestone 3, yet?

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16177 / 20000 words
milestone 3 ✗