[Fic] The River Girl

[archosauria]

Title : The River Girl
Characters : One-sided Belarus->Russia, OC
Rating : G
Genre : Character Study/Drama
Word count : ~5000
Summary : Once upon a time, I met a girl by the Dnieper who called herself Natalya, and she told me she was waiting for someone who might never come. Contains folklore and possibly creepy allusions, but hey, it's Belarus.



The girl called herself Natalya, and her eyes were the color of the bluest river. Her skin was not as pale as snow, like stories often told of such girls, but it was the color of newly-blossomed white flowers in springtime. And when she laughed, in the rare times that she actually laughed, she sounded as if her heart contained the purest of mankind's happiness, a joy of such profound depth that had not been felt since the day God cast Adam and Eve out of Eden.

I found her when the Dnieper was just thawing. It was a habit of mine in those days to go to the banks and examine the purpose of my existence, as was the custom for those of my age. It was the sort of time where the future seemed limitless, and the past still hung as fresh as a newly-fallen deer. Others found their places to ponder; my sister, for example, favored an orchard where the golden birds sang in the summer, the golden birds with their melancholy songs. I preferred the water because of how it flowed : always in one direction, slowly from the surface, a rush below, a current that both ushered the lives of humans and drowned them. At this age I would call it a trite metaphor, but back then, I felt it to be eerily like the cruel nature of time.

It was late by the time I managed to sneak out of the crowd and find my own space. The air was cold and the moon was bright. There were no clouds in the sky, for it had just rained the day before, and the river was swelling. Ice floes seemed to come from everywhere, strangers to the river now broken free of its winter cage, yet part of the river all the same. I could not see what was in the river; it was too dark, even with the lights of the sky above me. Doubtless it contained the detritus of winter; things that people lost on the frozen banks, now unbidden from the ice and snow, snapped fishing lines, perhaps a dead body or two. Still, it was my luck that I did not have to look into the river that day. Natalya was sitting on a singularly smooth rocky outcropping, clothed in nothing but a ragged blue gown. It matched her eyes well, and made her seem to melt into the blueness of the moonlit night. She was not shivering, despite her lack of decent clothes and the chilly air, and seemed concerned with nothing except the shape of the river flowing before her.

"Little sister, you will catch a cold," I called, making sure to keep my voice calm and soft, so as not to frighten her. I did not call her such out of random whim, but because there was something about the girl that seemed very familiar, as if she was one of my own. You must know the feeling, a bizarre sense that people sometimes get when you look at somebody else and know that they are right and kin, as if God had put them there especially for you, for that moment, but nothing more. Therefore I was compelled to be kind to the girl, even if there was something else about her that seemed very strange.

The girl was startled. She turned to look at me with her large blue eyes, and it seemed as if she would have jumped into the river if I did not immediately raise my hands up in a placating gesture, as if I was trying to calm a wild deer. She eyed me warily, hands and feet in a position ready to bolt, and her eyes never left my face. We stayed like that for many a moment before she, apparently finding something in my face to her liking, sat down on her haunches and stared at me curiously.

Slowly, I removed my own fur cloak, and then quickly threw it to her.

"Here," I said. "Wear this. The river is beautiful, but this is no season for spending the night by the banks with a mere nightgown."

The girl's eyes widened. She turned her attention from me to the cloak, old and worn at it was, and examined it as if it was something completely alien, something that could either turn into a poisonous snake all at once, or a fleece of gold. I took a few steps backwards, giving her the space to think, and finally she decided to pick it up and wear it. And now she turned to me again, with for the first time an expression that seemed more man than beast.

"Who are you?" she asked, in a voice as quiet as the river. "Why are you here? This is no time to be out and I've never seen you before."

"The same can be said of you," I smiled. "As for me, I am no one of importance. I happen to be staying in the village for the season, and thought it would be nice to watch the reflection of the moon over the water."

The girl looked at me for a while, then smiled back in a motion so painfully dissonant that it seemed more like emulating a particularly difficult gesture for the first time.

"How strange. I've never heard of such a reason before."

"There are as many reasons as there are hearts, although none of them are important saved for the one that is known to God," I replied. "And what of you? I've never seen you before, either, and more can be said of your attire than 'strange', in this season. Do you live in this village?"

Her smile was faint, and said nothing more of her intentions than the moon's reflection might say of the moon's. "My name is Natalya. I'm here to watch the river, although my reason is probably far less romantic than yours."

"Why, then?" I asked this as one person obsessed with the river to another. The majority of people did not, and likely does not, share my fascination with things that flowed and froze and turned into the air, much less rivers, and I was curious to hear what she might say. It was unlikely that her reason was the same as mine; girls with eyes so blue and skin so white did not think about such things. There must be a reason, nonetheless, and I was keen to hear what it was.

Natalya looked at me for a few moments, then her smile grew sad, and this time I felt that the expression was genuine, that it belonged to her face.

"There is a country up the river, far, far to the north," she began. "A long time ago---I can't remember how many years---I used to live there, and it is a harsh place, and not beautiful. Yet like all places which are too frustrating to remember, there are things to endear you to it and make sure that you never forget."

"There's someone you love."

"There is a boy."

Natalya was indeed in love with a boy named Ivan, who was as cheerful and bright as she was strange and beautiful. Though he was simple, he was tall and strong, with a smile that lit her heart with the scent of summer. The small act of being near him made her feel as if there were birds fluttering in her chest, and when he came to her with small, worthless wildflowers, it was as if her soul itself could sing. It was not a feeling I am unfamiliar with, and soon I grew sad and apprehensive, for I was beginning to see where Natalya's tale was going.

"We grew up together, and when we were children we made a promise. That is, a promise that we will grow up and get married," said Natalya, her gaze drifting away in the darkness across the water. "I don't know if it would make sense to you, but I pledged my heart to him since that day, and I don't know if he realized that I remember, but it is one of my most treasured memories."

I remained quiet, though I looked at her kindly. The wind had started to pick up and it was even colder than before, but Natalya seemed to pay it no mind. Indeed, it was if she was impervious to the cold itself, some kind of inhuman being that could no longer enjoy the simple miseries of mortal existence.

"There was a war. He remained there, while I came to this place. He did not promise to follow me, nor did he even promise to return alive, but I cannot bear to forget him." She buried her face in her knees. "So I look at the river, which is the same river that flowed through our town, back then. I feel as if it is a part of him, I think, a part of us. And I come during the day it becomes too easy to remember that our town and this are far different, so I come at night. It is what keeps me from going mad."

Though the temptation is there to do so, it would only be rude to comfort her physically. Therefore I merely said, "Surely, one day you will meet him again." And at the time I believed this to be true.

Natalya looked up at me and smiled, her eyes still full of tears. "Thank you. You are very kind."

My own smile was faint, and perhaps a little unhappy. "It is nothing."

As the ice melted in the weeks that followed, I met Natalya----or, as I called her, Little Natasha---a dozen more times, always at the same rock on the same bank. She still wore the same coat I gave her, although it had started to look frayed around the edge, and there were times when I thought it smelled faintly of mildew. We did not talk very much, and when we do it was most often about the boy she loved, her Vanya, and it felt right to see small miles appearing on her face. Natalya was strange and ethereal, but when she talked about the boy she was simply pretty and girlish, no different than the other young women of the village in that age and time.

"And he is afraid of the silliest things, can you imagine! Although he is stronger than any other boy, he is very shy, he is very afraid of being hurt. And he tends to fall for the most outrageous of lies," she said, giggling. Apparently Ivan was an awkward boy, despite his strength, and tended to get taken advantage of because of his simplicity. This frustrated him, and sometimes he did things that he regretted to others because he was simple and could not express his thoughts very well. This was why, it seemed, Natalya was intent on being his bride, so that she could understand him and love him forever, when all others eventually leave him.

"He must be a wonderful boy, your Ivan," I said, smiling gently at her. "Yours must be a wonderful love. I am happy that you found each other."

Natalya's face turned to a pretty shade of pink, and immediately she hid her face under the cloak, bashful. She mumbled something that I could not catch, then for a moment remained in the awkward silence of lonely seagulls.

"...you?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said, what about you? I have always been the one speaking. Have you anyone that you care about?"

The question stabbed at me like a soldier's knife, and twisted the wound unbidden until the festering place in me almost broke loose. Immediately I thought of my family, of my brother and sister, of her gardens and melancholy birds and his longing for the land where the birds go in wintertime. The thoughts, the memories rooted me in place, and I must admit that my feelings on the matter had never been buried very carefully. We were far flung apart. The grandmother who wanted to eat us, the mother whom we have eaten, the father who went away from us, my brother and sister and me in the rickety house where the winter winds always blew. How I missed that house. How I missed it so. I remembered the summers where we spent doing small jobs for the townspeople, confused and afraid, and the autumns where we went running in the woods to look for wild strawberries. My feet were bare upon the autumn grass and the dew, and my brother held my hand, and my sister held his. Together we chased the seasons until both my sister and brother decided to chase the call of the birds. The day when, alone, I woke up in the orchard and realized that I, too, must go.

"I have my siblings," I said simply, for the whole truth of the matter was long, and it was neither her affair nor an interesting tale.

"Are they fair siblings? You love each other very much, yes?"

"I do."

Natalya turned away from me and made a thoughtful noise in her throat, as if she was truly pondering what I said. I looked at her, uncomfortable and touched by a strange anxiety, and I only realized that time had passed when I felt Natalya's fingertips on my shoulders.

"I am sure that you will meet each other again someday," she said. She was returning my cloak to me.

I said nothing more, and did not realize that she was gone until I felt the rays of sunlight on my face.

During the next few months, I did not see Natalya. To the point, I did not leave my cottage at all, for I was ill and bedridden. I did not tend to get sick very often, even though I was not particularly healthy, and at any rate it was not an era where sickness was very prevalent, therefore I was not used to dealing with my own affairs while the sickness lasted. Most of the time I stayed in my cot, trying desperate to pass the time, and in my less lucid moments I thought of the smell of my sister's soup and the sensation of my brother holding my hand. Even though it was doubtlessly our conversation that night that brought the memories, I must confess that I did not think very much of the river-girl with her deep blue eyes.

When the illness subsided, as it always did, it was at the point when my neighbours were seriously considering whether to barge into the door and drag out my rotting corpse, for they were certain that to be sick for so long must mean death. The questions that I must answer to these villagers, and to others who were concerned about my well-being, were immense, and it was ten days or so before I could remember Natalya.

When I told the village chief that I would be going to the river, he gave me a frightful expression and explicitly forbade me from such an act.

"There have been people drowning at the river, of late. You mustn't go, especially as weak as you are."

"I am not weak," I protested. "And people have always drowned in the Dnieper. You make too much out of this."

The chief shook his head. "You do not understand. Six people have drowned in the past month, and there was more still. It started with the death of young Piotr, I believe, poor lad. He was herding his goats along the river one day, then quite simply he's gone and washed up as a corpse the next morning. It must be his vengeful spirit looking for company, and therefore you mustn't go."

I stared at him for one long moment, and said, "No, my good man. It is a vengeful spirit, and therefore I must go."

------

The river was dark that night. It was supposed to be full moon, but a storm appeared to be approaching, for there were many clouds in the sky and the angry winds were making crested waves on the surface of the water. I had to douse my lantern or risk it falling somewhere, spilling its oil and creating a firestorm on the bushes and grass, and it was difficult to see. Fortunately I was accustomed to the area, and it only took me a few slips and bruises to find my way to the outcropping by the riverbank. The villagers, including the resident priest, insisted on coming with me, but I equally insisted on coming alone, and there was little that the village could argue with me about once I had made up my mind.

"Little sister, little sister," I called, though there was no human shape that I could see on the mossy rock. "Little sister, I am here."

Silence answered me, and for a while I thought the night might be wasted. Before I turned back, however, there was a splash in the river and the sound of some fleshed thing scraping along the shore. I closed my eyes, and called again.

"Little sister, little sister, are you there? I am here, and I brought fruit and wine, for I have been ill for a very long time and would like to have a good feast."

The scraping sound paused, and then I heard a low, quiet laugh, and the sound of another splash, of some light fabric being dragged in the muddy earth.

"How long have you known?" Natalya asked, laughing, although there was neither mirth nor madness there. "How long have you known?"

I opened my eyes. Natalya stood before me, very much the same as the day I met her, with her beautiful blue eyes and pale skin, and in this darkness her wavy hair seemed as if they were tresses made of seaweed. Her blue dress was the worse for wear, the colors faded and torn in a few places; doubtless that in a few years it would have fallen apart entirely.

"Ever since you spoke of your Ivan, for I am not unknowledgeable in these matters, and I had the sense that part of what you said might be a lie," I said.

"But you asked me nonetheless."

"Yes, I did."

"We talked for many a night about Vanya. I spoke of his clumsiness, and you asked me of his habits, of his laughter, and how much I love him, how much our parting was breaking my heart."

"Because you were smiling, when you spoke of the boy."

"And you kept saying that I will meet him someday."

"Because it's true."

Natalya laughed again, and this time there was a low, menacing thing in her voice. Not a threatening growl, not even close, but something that one might hear if one passes through a town dying of the plague, and attempt to pull a dying babe out of its mother's arms.

"You are very cruel, sister," she said. "You are very cruel."

I closed my eyes, for that is something I---indeed, none of us---can deny. "The boys who drowned---they are not your Ivan. Indeed, I believe some of them have their own Natalya's, and at least all of them have left things behind that will torment someone for a very, very long time, even for you. Does that make you feel unhappy?"

"No," Natalya shook her head. "No. No, no, no, no."

"And that much is true," I said, smiling, for it was the matter of her nature. I may as well ask the Dnieper itself if it could feel grief. "And what of Ivan---do you love him still?"

"Yes," she said, tears running from her eyes. "Yes, yes, yes, yes."

"Will you love him forever?"

"Yes!" Natalya answered, her anguished voice torn between a snarl and a scream. "I will love him! As long as the river runs, I will love him, I will wait for him! Those dirty fools---it's their fault they're not him!"

Ah, yes, the drowned boys were fools indeed, but if there was anything I had learned in the course of time, it was that humans could not be expected to understand, let alone feel, a grief so profound. For a moment I wondered what it was that her sweetheart and betrayer must have done to turn her this way, but only for a moment. Human life is but a fast-burning candle, and all the stories it could tell have already been told. Something inside me would know it as well as the back of my own hand, if I took the time to examine it, the same story had been repeated countless times, and it will still be repeated to the day we all return to where we came. Perhaps he spurned her, and she did not take lightly to such disappointments. Perhaps he betrayed her in worse ways. Perhaps he truly left and died, never to return. To her, the world would have ended cruelly. To me, I know that the world only goes on.

"Poor thing," I said, loud enough for her to hear. Poor thing. Poor, miserable thing. "Do you have a concept of 'forever'? It is a long time. A time for kings to fall, countries to die, and rivers like this to turn to dust. You will wait and wait, wait until you forget the language of men, until you forget your own name. You will forget the very face of the man you are so in love with. There will be nothing left of you but your shape, and your sorrow, and mothers will tell their children of the rusalka who lived in the river, desperately pulling in anyone who reminded her of what she once lost. You will not be able to accept such things as kindness without wanting to smother it in your depths. Are you still saying that you will remember your love, at the end of forever?"

"There are things that live," she whispered. "There are things that live, on and on and on. It is like the cold of winter. Once you have found it, you cannot forget it. Even if I become a mere animal with no soul to return to God, that is the sort of thing you cannot forget."

I closed my eyes.

"Yes. It is."

I was right about her, after all.

When I opened my eyes again, the rusalka was looking at me intently, confusedly, as if it could not comprehend what I said, and why I treated her like a normal village girl all along. It was not surprising. While the fairies and goblins and spirits of the land were easy enough for us to see, simply because they were not part of us, to anybody else we would seem no different than a human being. We bleed. We fight. We make petty quarrels over wine and games of chance. We also were, of course, susceptible to a particular kind of human madness that most spirits of the land could not grasp, and that most spirits of the dead could not imagine anybody else to understand. We were also kind enough to be cruel.

"This river runs to the sea. Across that sea, where the birds fly to in winter, lies the land where the dead awaits. The directions are mostly forgotten with the words of God, but the land lies there still. If you would forget and you wish to go, you may escape this misery and wait for your Ivan there. I will tell you how, if you promise to forget."

Natalya shook her head. "I can't. I won't. I will remember, as much as I can remember, and time will have to fight to take it away from me."

"You will keep on killing."

"I don't care. If you do, find a way to end me."

I smiled. "I will, but not for the reason you spoke of." For every time she pulled a man under the waves and into her caress, her heart would be filled with joy that she had found her love at last. I knew all too well of the pain in the realization that the man was merely another fool, another frigid corpse, another slippery bag of flesh, grease and bones.

She stared back at me threateningly, as would a cornered rat. The wind had picked up, sending her hair streaming in it like a forest of seaweed. I felt that the wind was ripping my shawl away from me and indeed would rip off my flesh if it could, but it took far, far stronger things to take my blood. I merely kept on smiling, inasmuch as I could smile.

"Come with me."

Natalya took a step back, and her voice faltered. "What?"

"Come with me," I repeated. "Have you not realized? I am no ordinary human. There are things in the world that men have forgotten that I remember. If you come with me, your love will burn forever, and you will need not fear time. And you will find no more grief from those fools, nor the tales of the village will tell of you as time goes by, nor the loneliness of being forgotten as more time passes by still."

"Who are you?" the rusalka asked warily. "Are you a sorceress? What do you want in return?"

"I want nothing, and there is nothing that you can give me," I said, sadly, when I remembered the times this had happened before. "In return for the safekeeping of your heart, you will help me safeguard mine, and that is all. You, and the rest of you---is it not amusing? Only the flow of the river can withstand the tides of time."

"You haven't told me who you are, sister," she said, her voice soft. "At least, tell me your true name."

I shook my head. "I haven't decided, and the names the human call me by change as swiftly as the direction of the wind. But I promise you this : I will remember, and so will you."

It only took Natalya only a few moments to decide, as it always happened with these things. Perhaps they felt, in some part of their still-human soul, then they were once mine, and that I was once them. Perhaps they could see how alike we were, and why I would not lie in these matters. Perhaps, like the way I could vividly see the image of laughing, simple Ivan, these girls could equally see the image of my brother as he held my hand and tried to feed me from a bowl of tasteless soup, in a house where the walls leaked snow and the floors were frozen ice. Perhaps they could as easily feel the warmth of his hands as he held mine, the blurry smile on his face, the way he talked at dinner, the way he wore the scarf my sister made like it was the most precious thing in the world.

We were equally miserable creatures, after all.

I walked closer to Natalya and pressed my hand on her forehead. Her sorrow was mine. Her despair was mine. Her determination was mine. She was more mine than she used to be when she still walked barefoot on the earth and among the stalks of rye, more than when I would call her my beloved citizen, more than when she was part of me. It was with these things in the heart, these things that live on and on despite all attempts to kill them, both mine and time's, that made us the same being. We were all waiting in the river, looking for the day when our loves would come for us, or come to be killed by us. We were all the same.

Natalya's shape shivered as I touched her, not as a human in the cold of winter, but as the light of a newly-risen star. I whispered her name. I whispered the name of her beloved. I sent the thought to my heart, and promised to never forget. And then Natalya disappeared.

The village chief would be glad that the drownings would end, but I could not care less. Just like my sister had chosen the sweet, melancholy songs of Alkonost, and my brother had chosen for the yet unseen land where the birds fly in winter, where it was warm enough for the dead and for sunflowers to grow, I had chosen the rivers that flowed and froze and the murmurs of the women who dwelled in them. Together we will wait. We will share our hopes and despair. And though none of the girls would ever have their wish fulfilled, perhaps one day, one day, the end of the waiting would come for all of us.

"When last we spoke, my brother called himself Ivan," I told the river. "Perhaps I should call myself Natalya, as well. It would not be for you, for it would not be fair for the others, but I think among all of you the one named Natalya understood me the most."

For there are things that lived on and on. Things that could not be forgotten. Things like how you learn of warmth in winter, how you hold someone's hand as you walk on the ice for the first time, how you realize there is a place you'd never want to leave. Some things bury themselves in your heart and stay there forever, and even if one day I forget the way my brother looked when he was young, when he taught me how to throw snowballs, when he gave me and my sister his first wild-caught fish, when he looked at me and smiled and sadly said that my sister had left, when he looked at me and laughed and said he had his own birds to follow---

---these are things we do not know how to forget.

Author's Note : In my headcanon, Ukraine => Alkonost/Sirin, depending on which version you're following, Russia => Baba Yaga and Belarus => Rusalka, as far as personal totems are concerned. This was meant as a three-parter for all of them, actually, but alas---after years of trying to write the things to no avail, this is the best I could come up with.