Into the Deep Wood

He saw her at the lake first. Only her eyes above the water, she floated underneath and watched him from afar. Her hair was swirling behind her in a long, dark trail. Small white flowers and larger lily pads had gotten tangled in it like a bride’s veil following her movements. The first time, she did not approach.

He did not know why he had not left then, and he did not know why he had gone back.

The second time, she had gotten closer. She emerged up to her shoulders from the murky lake and rested her arm on a tangle of thin roots hanging down into it. She watched him still.

On the third evening, the skies were dark and menacing. A storm was coming. He sat on the dock like the night before. He thought of his brother, of swimming. Of how he hated swimming.

She crawled out onto the land behind him. She was slow and slippery. He heard her, and he did not react. He heard her call to him, yet she did not say a word. Her presence pulled, it tugged, it asked to be let in.

“Why the sad face, soldier?” she murmured. Her voice was smooth, like a warm summer evening listening to waves caress the shore. His muscles slowly lost the tension they had held.

She understood the invitation. Her hands enveloped him, her warm breath against his neck. “But you have been on the road too long, too long, and you should rest. What is your name?”

He closed his eyes, allowing for her touch to soothe him. She ran her fingers through his hair.

“Marat.”

“Marat.” She repeated, almost giddy. “On the road to find a gift - a gift for someone else. Freedom, for someone else.”

Each day he returned, her hands ran more lovingly across him. Slower, she spoke words into his ears, and her voice sounded more and more like a deep forest brook. He leaned back against her, and she would trace each of his veins from his face to his chest. She brushed her fingertips across his arms, making the hairs stand up and sending shivers through his body. She cooed to him.

“You’ve lost so much, given so much. You were so young, my love. Too young to lose her. Too young to see the life fade from her eyes. A mother dear, gone, gone before her time. You held your brother’s hand as he had cried, he did not even understand. Not like you, not like you understood, my love.”

The more nights he came, the closer she would get. He never touched her, not until she took his hand and brought it up against her cold, naked flesh. She was so pale, fragile. Her skin was so unnaturally smooth. Her hair fell against him, dark, silky, always dripping wet.

“He lived his life only for himself while you had lived for him. Your father’s mortal soul left, but his body had remained draining, wanting, asking, and never giving anything back. He lay in the streets, his body poisoned with drink. Your brother had been just like your father. He followed in his steps. He was never grateful, never thanked you, never so much as went out of his way for you, my love.”

He was so tired. Yet, in her presence, he could rest. Her voice would drown the world out, washing away all fears and doubts, all pain. Her hands slipped and slid over him, and his began finding her, too.

“Their flesh was warm, but they were not, my love. What’s a body? What is a body without a soul? To touch, to caress, to hold? Like I hold you? Like I want you? Here with me always. And do I usher you out into the night or demand things of you that you do not wish to give, as they did, my love?”

She gave him a gift that night. Producing a single blue iris from her hair, she put it in his hand and closed it for him, holding it in her two smaller ones.

“Take this, and you will remember me and my warmth when you are not near. Smell its scent, and you will return here mind and soul - even if your body can’t.”

In the winter, he came to look for her. And where she would emerge from the water was not winter but a warm spring day. The snow and ice would melt away with each of her dainty steps. And when he touched her, his fingers burned, and the frost and winds over the lake did not touch them as long as he was there.

“Say your name, my love. Whisper it to me as you wish I would whisper it to you?”

“Marat.”

“Marat…”

She sang it, and she moaned it. She took his name and cradled it - and she did not hold it hostage; she returned it to him better than before.

And then there was the force with which she spurred him on—demanding strength and power, persuading him that he was the only one who could sate this in her. She would leave him drained, fatigued, and consumed. And awaiting more with such impatience that the daylight hours when he was awake would bring him anguish until he could return.

“You have been so alone, and he, so careless, you’d gone to so many homes and begged them for their aid. They all turned you away; the name you once carried on your own had drowned you beneath the weight of their mistakes. Once in the royal courts, but then you had nothing, nothing to offer any longer but yourself. Nothing but your knife, your bow. And you were willing, you were willing, and you offered yourself up for the vultures - and he took your sacrifice as if he was owed it.”

They spent the night in each other’s arms. He was afraid he would break her were he to squeeze too tight. Like glass, her skin would curl around him, and he would forget. He would forget that he had lost his leg. He would forget that… what was it he would forget…

“She took you in her arms when no one would, whispered sweet nothings to you. To her, she said, you were a king. And when the world took you from noble to a slave, she got on her knees for you, still. And what had she done? Expose you, humiliate you, oust you to the court - and name you in that you had marred her honor to save her own skin. The whore.”

He was returning to the farm; the cold after the warm embrace had stung his skin. His mind was still afloat among the waves that she awakened in him. But something broke, a twig, and instinctively, he disappeared from the path. Hidden away in shrubs, he listened –there was someone coming. There was someone coming to steal her from him.

Oh, the rage he felt in that instant. The idea that another man would lay his hands on her where his had been. He lunged - and came face to face with the girl. His heart was already heated.

He did not realize what he was saying. She looked scared; she shrunk away from him. His heart sank. Too real in that moment, he took in her face. The shawl around her hair - the stray strand clinging to her forehead. The texture of her skin was so real, tangible, especially the rosiness of her cold-stricken cheeks. Her eyes, their pale green, reflected any light that found them. They were not like the milky, blind eyes of the thing.

It was a blur, but suddenly, in his clarity that seeing her had brought on, he got scared. Scared that she wandered too close to the lake. That the water maiden would hear the girl, and in her jealousy, she would kill her.

He had to get the girl away. He was unable to speak as words had already been spoken. Away, away from the lake. By the All-Father, he had to get Valeria away from the lake. In desperation, he grabbed her, unable to explain why he had to hide her. She resisted. The poor thing had not known what she almost stepped into.

The collar of her coat had ripped in his insistent grip. She cried harder. His heart hurt more. This was a real, painful feeling in his chest. It was as if he had awoken for the first time in days, maybe weeks. How long had it been?

They stopped. They were in the alley between the houses, far from the water maiden’s domain. Far enough, he hoped.

He dared to look at her, and her tears tore him apart. He dropped to his knees. He held her face in his hands.

“I’m sorry, Val, please, you cannot go looking for me. You cannot follow me. Promise me you will never follow me.”

She nodded in between her tears. She was so frightened. Frightened of him.

He pulled her into his chest, cradling her; the need to protect her from what lay at the lake was the only thing that mattered at that moment.

“I’m serious, Valeria. Never. Ever.”

He told himself that he would not go back. It had gone too far. He allowed it to plague his every thought. He could not return. Never again.

But the hunger came, and when it came, it consumed.

And he went back, just like every night before.

As he showed up, as always, she greeted him with her naked body. But her expression changed. She neared him, and she took in his smell. She did not like something. He felt her rage as a disturbed sea. He felt the cold of her jealousy screech in the air around him. But then she calmed very suddenly, returning to the warmth, the slow, loving dream.

“Marat?” She purred.

“Yes?”

“Do you miss your brother?”

“Yes.”

He would tell her anything. Everything she asked.

“He does not miss you. He never did, and on the road, he only wished that he could bed her,” She swirled around him, pulling him in, “They laughed, you know, that when you get them to the city, they planned to wed. He had no intent on granting you your freedom, my love.”

He felt a strange sensation. She spoke as honey, and her touch raised goosebumps on his skin, but there was an air of danger, something that did not feel as it had. He felt it take him tightly in its grip - as she caressed his hair.

“Together, they planned it together while you slept. Had you not interrupted them, they would have laid together even then,” she murmured in his ear again, “Had you not banished him, he planned to kill you for that, my love. He had only been protecting her. And once he had gone, she tried to take her own life as well. She dreads your company, hates your soul, my love. She is not like I, as I crave every minute with you.

He knew she lied. But he stayed, and he returned every night again and again.

And then, she saw. She saw the girl before he had, in the trees by the lake. Valeria ran, and he tried to throw the water maiden off, but she had sunk her teeth so deep into his chest that he could not break free. She let go then, staring after where the girl had gone. He first felt the boiling of it, the jealousy, her wrath and indignation, frothing and directed at where Val had disappeared.

He ran as fast as he could when he broke free. He did not catch up to the girl, but to his relief, she had gone to the barn and not the main house. He knocked, praying that she would answer. Knowing that were he to ever, ever go back again, the water maiden would kill Valeria.

There was no just one more.

There couldn’t be.