THE WHISPERING HEALER

THE WHISPERING HEALER, by Larisa Walk

“What you want at this hour?” Anisia squinted at the man on her doorstep. He held a small bundle in his arms. The light from her oil lamp trembled in yellow blotches on his fish belly-white, too-smooth face. Newborn babes didn’t have skin that unmarred. Yet his eyes seemed decades old, knowing, wary. Anisia’s right calf muscle twitched.

“Are you Anisia Tereshchenko, the whispering healer?” He didn’t sound like a simple Cossack that had never seen the inside of a book. Unlike Anisia and all but the priest in her village, this man had surely received schooling. Then what of his peasant garb: a rough linen tunic, a hemp rope for a belt, and patched trousers? He wore no boots. Not even lapti, the peasant shoes woven from tree bark fibers. And now, when spring was so young that puddles got ice-crusted overnight!

Was he a learned serf that had run away from his lord in Northern Russia? Fugitive serfs sometimes robbed and murdered those that helped them. A solitary middle-aged woman like Anisia would be an easy target.

 Sour saliva burnt her throat. She coughed to clear it. “Whispering healer, that be me. What of it?” Did he have a knife in his bundle?

“Is it true that you can cure anything?” As if trying to dislodge dirt specks from his eyes, the man blinked almost nonstop. His long tongue swabbed his lips and nostrils.

Anisia’s fingers cramped around the oil lamp’s handle. “Cure anything? No. God’s the only one what can do that.”

“I need healing for a baby.” The man’s eyes blink-blink-blinked.

Anisia glowered at him. “Healing from what?” If he tried anything, she would throw the oil lamp in his face.

“Are you so distrustful because of my clothes?”

“You a runaway serf? I don’t need no trouble with your kind.”

“No, not a serf.  And I’m not here to harm you.”

“Aha. That’s what the fox told them chickens in the coop.” Anisia stepped back and started closing the door.

“Wait,” the visitor called out. “The baby might be dying. What kind of a healer are you to walk away from a little one in need?” He stopped blinking and glared at Anisia.

She glared back, opened her mouth to tell him to go away, and closed it. Something inside the bundle in his arms stirred.

HerThe visitor lifted a folded corner to reveal an infant’s face. Gaunt cheeks, thin lips, sunken eyes. Prolonged starvation seemed to have turned the baby into a small skeleton, wrapped in almost translucent skin. “Will you help her, Anisia Tereshchenko?”

Anisia lifted the oil lamp to see the baby’s face better. It looked jaundiced even in the yellow flame light. “Why didn’t you tell me she got yellow sickness?” she snapped.

“I’ve never dealt with newborns. Didn’t know—”

“Well, don’t just stand there like a poplar stump! Bring her in at once. She don’t have much time before God takes her back.” Scurrying ahead, she led the visitor through the antechamber of her two-room wattle-and-daub house. Wilted onions and cabbage pickled for winter scented the air.

In the main chamber, Anisia set the oil lamp on the bleached oak table and lit a second one for more light. “Put her on the table,” she ordered.

The infant’s dirty swaddling blanket smelled like dry urine. Her twig-thin arms and legs twitched when Anisia unwrapped her, but she didn’t wake.

“God in Heaven! When’d she nurse last?”

The man frowned but didn’t reply.

 “Well? You just going to stand there till you sprout roots?”

He wouldn’t meet her gaze. “Her mother is dead. I had nothing to feed her.”

“And you couldn’t find some woman what could put her to the tit? You brought her to me in hopes I’d take her off your hands?”

Although he hung his head, shame didn’t color his face at all, as if he only pretended to feel it. “No.”

“No? You men know how to make them babies, but got buckwheat porridge for brains when it comes to caring for them. She yours?” Anisia touched the baby’s cheek. The little girl didn’t wake or even turn toward her.

“Mine? No. Her mother abandoned her and committed suicide.” He gnawed on his bottom lip. “Will she… live?” The question sounded like a plea.

 The soft spot on the baby’s head felt too sunken. Her breaths sounded too fast. When Anisia lifted her eyelids, she saw what she had feared: the yellow whites.

“Live? Maybe. If the yellow sickness don’t kill her. She been much too starved. That’s what turned her yellow and sleepy. Get me a piece of cloth from over there.” She nodded at the iron-bound chest with cornflowers painted on its humped lid. “A blanket, too.”

His bare feet slapped on the floor as he walked toward the chest. A musty scent trailed in his wake. It made Anisia think of dank basements and open graves in swampy ground. God help her! What had she been thinking letting him in?

Digging through the chest, the visitor seemed unaware of Anisia’s misgivings. “These?” he said, handing her the cloth and the blanket she had requested.

With a curt nod, Anisia took the things from him by the edges, avoiding his touch.

Silence settled on everything, dust cloud-thick and muffling. The straw and dry manure crackling in the whitewashed brick stove, the house’s creaks and pops, a dog’s lonely bark somewhere in the village. Anisia heard these familiar noises like someone with thick wool jammed in her ears. The only loud thing was her thrashing heart.

On the table, the baby stirred. Her thin mewl broke Anisia’s dread-fetters. “I’ve got to…” Her throat spasmed. She swallowed, swallowed, then managed to say: “I’ll whisper over her.”

From the kitchen cupboard, she took twelve half-burnt candles and lined them up on the table. Warm beeswax scented the air as she lit them. “Twelve candles for the Twelve Apostles. That’s how I do it,” she said, just to fill the silence.

Not a word from the visitor. His feet shifted, making the floorboards and the bench he had settled on creak.

Pretending to be at ease, Anisia turned to the icon corner. Maria and Christ Child looked back at her from the sepia-toned, framed print. Her thumb pressed hard against its two neighboring fingers as she crossed herself. “Holy Maria, Mother of God, attend to me. I beg for your blessing in healing this young one.” She repeated the familiar prayer three more times before it smoothed away her fear enough to continue the ritual. Breathe in, out, taste the air. Burning straw and manure, wilted onions, the baby’s stale sweat. Then a thin breeze brushed her tongue: sweet and flowing, like liquid honey, like petunia nectar in summer.

She opened her mouth wide, let the sweetness melt and become heat. When her lips started tingling, she knew she was ready.

Words fell from her tongue in the form of tiny light crystals. They glowed white, these words, as they sank into the baby’s yellow skin, sugar grains into soft butter.

As always, she had a feeling something in the house and the yard and the steppes beyond the village was listening to her whispered healing. Something very old, from the ignorant times. She crossed herself. She wanted nothing to do with such things. Somewhere far in the steppes to the east, a dog howled. Or maybe a wolf. Anisia shivered.

Eyes now open, the infant seemed to listen to Anisia with her whole body. Like flowers in the sun, the tight fists unfolded. The thin hands reached for Anisia.

The last whisper left her mouth. Her lips stopped tingling. The liquid heat cooled on her tongue.

Afterward, Anisia couldn’t recall the healing words she had spoken. That’s how it always was. The words weren’t important, she supposed. Perhaps they simply served to guide her healing power to where it was needed.

She examined the infant’s face. Less yellow, but still starvation-creased and thin. The frail little body couldn’t hold on to its spirit for long. Exhausted from hunger and healing, the baby fell into an instant, too heavy sleep.

“She needs milk,” Anisia said. “But first I’ve got to give some strength to her soul to stay put. I’ll sprinkle her with holy water.”

The visitor tilted his head to one side, hands gripping the bench. “But your air words… That wasn’t enough?”

“Air words? What you talking about?” Anisia glanced at him over her shoulder as she rummaged in the cupboards for holy water.

His tongue darted out to swab his lips. “It’s… I’m sorry. I just thought your whispering would heal her.”

What he said sounded off to Anisia, as if he meant something else. She busied herself with uncorking a clay jar and asked no questions, watching him from the corner of her eye.

The oil lamp light flickered. Its tremulous glow revealed things Anisia had missed before. The man’s skin looked dry, chapped. In the webbing between his fingers and toes, thin cracks wept clear liquid. Never before had she seen such a strange sickness.

He shot a nervous glance at Anisia, dipped his left hand into the wooden bucket next to the bench where he sat, and rubbed his eyes with wet fingers. His constant blinking slowed.

When Anisia looked directly at him, he sat there, left hand fisted in his lap, as if nothing had happened. Was the man lunacy-struck? Best not to set him off, then. Being gracious around an easy to set-off man was something she had learned well when her husband Petro was still alive.

She dipped her hand into the holy water in the clay jar. “What’s your name?” she asked, just to break the weighty silence. The calm way she had said it pleased her.

“Foma.”

 Fingers still in the jar, Anisia waited, but Foma didn’t seem to be in any haste to reveal his family name. She didn’t dare to ask.

The clay jar wobbled as she withdrew her hand from it. With a flick of her fingers, the holy water rained on the baby’s face, the table, the floor. One droplet flew wide and landed on Foma’s cheek. He screamed. Where the holy water had touched him, his skin turned black. A wisp of smoke rose from the burn.

“Merciful God!” Anisia snatched up the still-sleeping baby and scrambled back, away from the thing that called itself Foma. “What is you?”

It clutched its face and moaned. From underneath its fingers, cracks spread through its skin, running down the neck into the tunic, forming in its hands and feet. Water leaked from those cracks and gathered in puddles on the floor. The creature collapsed with a whimper.

Anisia crossed herself and the baby. No way the creature in the throes of such pain could stop her if she ran. She could run, now. She should. She had let a beast of the unholy powers into her house. Father Mikola had warned her that whispering healers like her sometimes attracted such things. But she drew her powers from the Virgin and Christ Child, not some spirits from the ignorant times when people had worshipped wicked gods.

Why was she still standing here? Only a half-wit would stand around like…

The creature wailed. Such misery in its tortured cry.

Maybe the house moved around Anisia, or maybe she turned. She didn’t know for sure. Foolish to look at the unholy powers. Her soul could be damned. But she did look.

Its skin was peeling off in grayish-white, curling strips. Under them, green fish scales glittered. The patched trousers ripped, and the creature’s legs banged together. It convulsed. The legs fused, and the feet reshaped themselves into a fish tail. Wide webbing formed between elongated fingers. Instead of hair and beard, the creature now wore something that looked like curly-leaf pondweed. Pike fish teeth, sharp enough to rip an arm off, protruded from its open mouth.

Foma was a vodyanoy, a water demon that drowned people. And Anisia had invited it into her home!

The ground seemed to tilt under her. A vodyanoy. Here. Yet, it had never tried to harm her. Or the baby. It had brought the little one to her for healing. Water demons never left their pond. Everyone knew that. But it had come here, and at a horrible cost to itself, the way it squealed and jerked in pain.

“What… what you want with me, vodyanoy? Best explain yourself, or I’ll fetch Father Mikola to cast you out.”

The vodyanoy lifted its head. Water dripped from the cracks in its face. Mouth opening and closing, it gasped. Eventually, broken words burbled from its fissured lips: “Don’t need a priest. Can’t last… long on dry land.” It winced. “Take care of the baby. Please. And… and give her mother a Christian burial.” With a choked cry, it crashed back down.

“Where’s her mother?”

For a long moment, the creature didn’t move. Its green scales were drying on its body in patches. Then it slurped water from the nearby puddle, which seemed to give it some strength back. Right side of its face pressed into the puddle, it spoke with an effort: “Drowned herself. In my pond. Couldn’t save her. She left her baby. On the shore. I used my water magic. Transformed into a man, took the baby to you. Feared she’d die.”

Anisia remained standing by the door. “You lie, demon. You lured the baby’s ma into the pond with your songs and drowned her.”

“No. Mother jumped in. Suicide.”

“Ah-ha. You probably put her up to it.” Anisia sniffed. “Why’d you care about her baby, anyway?

“I was human. Once.”

“You what?” Anisia clutched the baby to her chest.

The vodyanoy mumbled something. It sounded like ‘ninety.’

“Ninety?”

“Ninety years ago,” the creature replied in a gurgle-like whisper. It slurped more puddle water, rested. Then: “Schoolhouse fire. My pupils burning. Fourteen boys.  Tried to save them. Failed. Parents blamed me. Couldn’t stand life after that. Drowned myself.”

“Suicide? And God didn’t send you to Hell for it?”

“No.” Slick green hands clenched and unclenched. A wet cough rattled in the vodyanoy’s chest. “Died. Woke up in the Mill Pond. Vodyanoy for eternity. Could’ve been Hell. Guess my sin wasn’t grave enough.”

Anisia stared. She should fetch the priest. The unholy powers led folks astray, into damnation. Yet Foma seemed nothing like that. It… he had braved going into the village where he could have gotten killed for what he was. All to save a motherless baby. Petro would never have done it. He had only known how to get drunk and use his fists on Anisia.

Fool that she was, Anisia took a step toward Foma, and then another. “How can I… How can I save you, Foma?” When had he become a ‘Foma’ and a ‘he’ to her instead of an ‘it?’

Foma coughed like someone dying from consumption. “Why?”

Anisia’s answer seemed like it had come from someone else: “If God didn’t see fit to put you in Hell, who’s I to second-guess Him?”

Foma’s lips moved without making sounds. Perhaps he wanted to ask her something or argue with her. For a while, he lay still, maybe gathering strength, maybe dead already. Then he managed: “Mill Pond. Its water. Heals.”

“Right.” Anisia’s brain must have turned into buckwheat porridge, because from then on, the vodyanoy, Foma, became someone under her care, and she his healer. A healer did what she had to do to save those in her care.

Anisia settled the sleeping baby in a basket. Madness what she was about to do, but she did it, anyway. The copper cross on its red string swayed with jerky motions as she took it off her neck. She felt naked without it, but she couldn’t give the care Foma needed with it on.

From a wooden bucket, she poured water on him, from face to tail. Foma didn’t stir.

More water. More stillness that couldn’t be told apart from death. But water was all Anisia had. Her healing powers came from the Heavenly Mother and Christ Child and the Apostles. Surely it would kill Foma, maybe send him to Hell. She continued pouring.

When he opened his mouth and started swallowing water, Anisia let herself take a deep breath. Their eyes met. In his green gaze, she saw no evil.

Finished, she tucked a pillow under Foma’s head and told him to rest.

He squeezed her hand gently with his cold, wet fingers. “Wish I could repay your kindness, Anisia Tereschenko,” he whispered.

Flustered, Anisia looked away. “Tell you what,” she said as she dried her hands on a linen towel. “I’ll bring another bucket of water, so you can keep yourself wet. Then I’ll take the baby to my daughter Paraska to nurse. She just gave birth a moon ago. Got enough milk for two young ones. When I come back, I’ll wrap you in wet towels to keep your skin from drying out, and take you to your pond in a horse cart. That suit you?”

“This is more than someone like me could ever hope for.”

#

Wind drove cloud wisps across the moon’s bright yellow face. Its light made it easy to see the road. But it also made Anisia and her loaded horse cart easily seen.

Along the roadsides, the village houses shifted their color from white to grey and back as the thin clouds covered and revealed the moon. The houses looked huddled under their cattail rooves. Every unshuttered window seemed to have a face just beyond the glass.

The cart’s wheels creaked and bumped on the dirt road. As Anisia urged the old gelding onward, she kept an eye out for people. Maybe no one would notice her. Just a spell longer. The reins bit into her clenched hands.

“Good eve to you, Anisia. Where’s you headed this late at night?” a male voice called out from the shadows under the large cherry tree to her left.

Cursing under her breath, Anisia pulled the reins. Her shift stuck to her sweating back.

A tall and portly man stepped into the moonlight. Puffs of tobacco smoke rose from his wooden pipe. He wore a tall sheepskin hat, an open wool coat over a white tunic with an embroidered collar, and voluminous dark trousers.

Anisia recognized him at once: Stetsko Nehoda, the wealthiest Cossack in the village. “Good eve to you, Stetsko. I…” Her tongue refused to move. Stalling for time, she broke into a cough. “This cold. Going out of the village to… to bury my hog.”

Stetsko took a drag from his pipe. Smoke curled upward from his meaty nostrils. “What for?”

“What for? It died.” Anisia’s teeth clanked. Thank God her gelding snorted, which covered up the sound.

“Died? Why’s you taking it out of the village?”

“Gut rotting sickness. Had them green runs with foam and all. Killed a few birds what pecked in its pen. Didn’t want to bury it in my garden. Could poison them vegetables and fruit trees.” Her explanation sounded false. At least her voice hadn’t cracked.

Stetsko walked up to the cart. “Don’t smell like no dead hog.”

“It just barely died. Didn’t have no time to make a stink.”

“Looks too big for a hog. Don’t stink like no runs, neither.” Stetsko peered into the cart. “You isn’t smuggling one of them runaway serfs from the north? We don’t want no tsar’s army burning our houses down for giving shelter to them serfs.”

He jerked the burlap sacks off Foma and gasped. “Mother of God! What’s…” His face paled. The pipe fell from his mouth. Eyes bulging, Stetsko drew a breath for a shout and made no sound as a quiet song rose from the cart.

The song made Anisia think of waves slapping on the shore, a brook whispering against stones, rain gathering into puddles. Its melody dripped and splashed and gurgled.

Spellbound by the song, Anisia moved as if under water. Her body rotated slowly, obedient to the melody. She wanted to hear it, absorb it, drink it in.

Foma sat in the cart, singing. Their eyes met, and he stopped. His lips moved. He was saying something, but Anisia wanted him to sing again, not to talk.

“Anisia!” Foma whispered, glancing over his shoulder at Stetsko’s house. “Put your fingers in your ears. Now! Recite a prayer, any prayer you know. Just quietly. Someone might hear us.” And when she just sat there, staring at him in stupor, Foma shook her. “Do it, or the song will take you, too. It’s the song that vodyanoys sing to lure mortals to drowning.”

Anisia swiveled her head to dispel the clinging fog of befuddlement, stuck her fingers in her ears, and recited the Lord Have Mercy prayer. When Foma resumed singing, she could still hear him, but his song no longer held her prisoner.

Stetsko had no such resistance. He lumbered toward Foma like someone sleepwalking. Rupture had taken over his pudgy face. Not a muscle twitched, not an eye blinked as he bumped into the cart, wobbled, and dropped to the ground.

After Foma stopped singing, Stetsko just lay where he had fallen, snoring.

Foma looked up at Anisia and said something.

She unplugged her ears. “What?”

“I said, he’ll wake up in an hour or two, and be fine.” He pressed his webbed hands to his temples like someone weary to the bone.

“Ah.” Anisia peered at Stetsko, then at Foma. “But your song? You didn’t finish it? That why Stetsko just fell asleep?”

Foma nodded but wouldn’t look her in the eye. “If I continued, he would’ve been compelled to seek some place to drown himself.” He spoke the last two words in a thin whisper.

“Drown himself?” Anisia shifted in her seat. “You ever…”

“No.” This time, Foma did meet her gaze. “I have never drowned anyone.” He made a weak chuckle.

“What’s funny?”

He swayed, steadied himself against the cart, and said, “I guess I failed as a teacher and as a vodyanoy.” Foma slumped like someone suddenly boneless.

“What’s wrong?” Anisia reached for him.

“The song,” he muttered. “It took what was left of the water magic that protects me on land. Goodbye, Anisia. Thank…” His eyes closed. A seizure made him twitch. Afterward, he lay still.

“Oh no, you don’t. You isn’t going to die on me now, Foma.” Anisia hastened to tuck his limp body under the towels and sacks. His slick skin felt cold as melt water.

Anisia scrambled back into the cart. “Get,” she snapped at the gelding.

Outside the village, she prodded the horse into a trot. Gallop would have been better, but the animal was too old for that.

Did she even need to rush? Anisia clenched her jaws. She was not hauling a dead man in the cart. She was not. The water from his pond would revive him. He had said so.

They arrived at the Mill Pond when the moon stood directly overhead. Anisia threw aside the burlap sacks. Deadwood-unresponsive, Foma lay on his back. The moonlight silvered his fish scales.

“Foma?” Anisia probed for the pulse in his neck. His skin felt even colder than meltwater, now, and somehow less wet. Less alive.

No pulse. She pressed harder. Nothing. “Foma? You can’t be dead. Unholy powers is immortal, isn’t they?” She shook him by the shoulders. He didn’t stir. Maybe he was mortal because he had been a man before becoming a vodyanoy?

A man, then a vodyanoy. She had never heard of such a thing before. She had thought a vodyanoy was always a vodyanoy. Until Foma had told her otherwise. So, what did she know about such a creature being dead or alive!

Imploring Foma to hold on, Anisia grasped him from behind, under his arms. She dragged him down the wooden board that she had used to help him into the cart. Her back cramped, legs quivered, but she kept pulling him toward the pond.

Her shoulder muscles spasmed. “Oh, won’t you move or something!” she snapped at Foma. “Sorry, I’m sorry. Shouting at a dead… unconscious man. Unconscious man, not dead.”

When she stepped into the pond, her warn boots started taking in water. The deep chill that seized her feet soon made them numb. She endured.

Dragging Foma became easier in the water. It gave buoyancy to his limp form.

Anisia halted with a splash. Foma was in his pond! Shouldn’t its water have revived him? Instead, he looked ready for the grave.

His fish tail floated on the choppy waves as Anisia towed him deeper into the pond. She slipped in the silt and landed on her butt. Cursing, dripping and shivering, she righted herself.

Only Foma’s face and tail showed on the surface now. And still he lay motionless. Maybe he needed to be fully submerged?

She pushed his head and tail under, held them there. No response.

She lifted his head out, pried open his mouth and poured water into him by the handful. Nothing.

Time was running out. Anisia could sense it. She felt like she was trying to drown Foma instead of saving him. But how did you save a vodyanoy? He had said the pond sustained him. It didn’t seem to.

Panic turned Anisia’s shivering into jolts. She fought it back. Not much fight was left in her, though. If she didn’t get herself warm soon, she would die here, right next to Foma.

Resignation and urgency fought inside her head. Thoughts clashed with thoughts: No point trying to save Foma—the pond would revive him—the pond only drowned, not saved—there was something she could still do—all she could do was lie down next to him and die.

To the east, a steppe wolf howled. Another answered him, and another. The wolf song jerked Anisia out of her stupor. Her mouth seemed to open on its own to form the familiar words: “Holy Maria, Mo—” She snapped her mouth shut. Foma was of the unholy powers. Her usual healing prayer would kill him.

The panic again. Then dull sorrow. She could just lie down here, and it would all be over. But she was a healer. She had to do something.

Anisia held Foma’s dripping head to her chest. If the first part of her ritual couldn’t be used, then maybe… Breathe in, out, taste the air. Mold, silt, rotting cattails. No liquid honey sweetness of the healing power here.

She opened her mouth wider, breathed in deeper, waited. Decaying wood of the old mill, putrefying fish, swampy soil. There was nothing here but death, and death always got its way.

From the east, the steppe wolf song came again. It sounded closer. Wolves brought death, but also, life and guidance. In a fairytale, Grey Wolf helped Prince Ivan. For a price. High price. And it was a fairytale form the ignorant times. Father Mikola wouldn’t approve. But Father Mikola couldn’t and wouldn’t save Foma.

Anisia opened her mouth and drew in air, facing east, from where the wolf song came. Decay and rot filled her nostrils. Nausea sat like a rancid grease lump on her tongue. Her ears rang with the howl-song. But no healing power filled her, and she couldn’t ask the Virgin for help.

Deeper breath. Chest inflated till her ribs seemed about to break. The wolf song, boots full of mud and freezing water, moonlight scraping across her vision. Dizziness.

A vague feeling of being watched. By someone. Something. She was too numb to fear the watchers. Then, a breeze, thinner than spider silk, tickled her tongue. No honey or petunia nectar in this strand of air, just vague sweetness. Like strawberries that hadn’t seen enough sun. Anisia drew it in, anyway.

Never in all her time as a healer had the power felt this cool. Yet it carried some warmth, enough to thaw a little life back into her lips and fingers. She leaned close to Foma’s ear and whispered the healing words. They glowed paler than the fading stars at sunrise. And when their glow winked out, Foma stayed as lifeless as someone already in a coffin.

With a wail, Anisia fell to her knees. Cold water splashed into her face. “Come back to me, Foma,” she pleaded. “Your pond needs you, the fish need you, I need you. You’s too good for Hell and not good enough for Heaven. But you’s good enough for me.”

She didn’t know how many times she repeated the words. They seemed like a prayer, the way they fortified her body and mind. But this power hadn’t come from the Virgin or the Apostles. Her sorrow and her will gave her prayer fire that seared her tongue. Fire of Hell?

Anisia screamed, then spewed the fire into Foma’s open mouth. Emptied, she tossed handfuls of pond water into her own mouth to quench the burn. Foma sank to the bottom. The surface rippled with widening rings over the place where his body had been. The waves made small, dying sounds that soon faded into silence.

Head bowed, eyes closed, Anisia wept.

A wind blew from the north, breaking the lifeless quiet. A loose door creaked in the mill. Something brushed at her ankle. She yelped and jumped aside.

A big fish tail surfaced. Next, Foma’s head emerged. He spat out a wad of silt. “I was leaving, or my soul was, but I heard your words, saw them, how white they glowed. They warmed me from such horrible chill, gave me life enough to come back.” Slowly, he stood up, wobbled, steadied himself with his flapping tail. Tired smile spread on his face.

Dumbstruck, Anisia stared at him. Water cascaded from his pondweed hair and beard. It didn’t matter to her when at last she threw her arms around him. “You’s back, back. I couldn’t find no pulse in your neck, but you’s back,” she mumbled into his chest through sobs.

“I’m not really alive the way humans and animals are alive, Anisia. I haven’t had a pulse since I’d died. I’m an unholy power.”

“Not to me.” She kissed him on his slick cheek and let him go.

Later, when she sat on a log by the pond, wringing water from her sodden skirt and shivering, wrapped in towels and burlap sacks, she said, “Tell me something.”

“Anything.” Foma sat down on the log next to her.

“You miss being a man?”

“That I do. Once in a while I use water magic to transform myself into a man, so that I can talk to someone besides the fish.”

“Water magic,” she repeated, drawing a burlap sack tighter around her shoulders. “Back at the house, you said I used ‘air words’ when I whispered to heal the baby.”

Foma nodded. “More accurately, air magic. I could feel you use it when you did your healing spell.”

“But I draw my power from…” Their gazes met, held, and the silence between them revealed rather than concealed what didn’t need saying.

“I’ll come and see you with a bowl of cheese dumplings,” Anisia told Foma. “Reckon you probably miss human food, too.”  

“Makes my mouth water just thinking about it.” He grinned. Moonlight glittered on his pike teeth. But neither his teeth, nor his half-fish body made her afraid. Not anymore.

END

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Larisa Walk grew up in a snowy Siberian town of around 500 people. She now lives in hot California with her husband Andrew, two cats, hard-to-count goldfish in two ponds, and a visiting parakeet. As a means of mentally escaping from her eight-to-five job, she writes paranormal fiction, sings soprano showtunes to entertain her coworkers, and looks for portals into other realities in her small garden.