“You know the old pond is haunted, right?” you say tongue in cheek as I lead you up the forest trail. It’s not typical for you to leave a party early, especially not when the whole town is gathered at the square for a night of guiltless, church- and state-sanctioned revelry. It’s Rusalia week, and not even a god-fearing wife can keep her man from raising a glass or twelve to the summer crops’ health. Yours certainly couldn’t.
“Surely you don’t believe such silly wives’ tales?” I say, grinning.
Your gaze glimmers with desire or perhaps from all the booze. “I’m following you there, aren’t I?”
I shiver in my thin dress, sensing the growing dryness in my throat. I shouldn’t have drunk that poison you villagers call alcohol, but I had to get your attention.
It’s not like you made it hard for me, either. Not even a quarter-hour had I been sitting in the town’s only so-called pub, hidden in the folds of the carousing crowd, when you approached.
“What’s a fine young lady doing drinking rakiya all alone on this bright holiday?” you said. Leave it to a middle-aged married man to pass judgment on your age, lack of company, and choice of beverage in a single breath, all while courting a girl young enough to be his daughter. I smirk at the last thought.
A few playful looks, some innocent inquiries into my business in town—confirming I’m not sweetheart or kin to anyone you know—and here you are. You’ve followed a stranger into the woods on an unspoken promise of the kind of sinful entertainment that not even the most hypocritical religious holiday can provide.
The other men on that square will watch and whistle as barely clothed girls dance through the Rusalka Burial, symbolically banishing the dreaded water spirit to the bottom of the well she had dutifully crawled out of to bless their precious crops. The other men will stumble back to their houses, sink into inebriated slumber to the fading sounds of their wives’ reproaches, and call it a great night.
Not you.
You are the mayor.
You’re sitting on the bridge, shirt half-unbuttoned, toes caressing the water’s surface. You haven’t taken your eyes off me, yet I’ve managed to slip off my dress and into the pond’s dark embrace without letting you see a thing. Funny how the shadows of the willow trees can play tricks on you.
“Aren’t you coming in?” I ask, dousing you playfully.
You giggle and send a few ripples back. “Nah. I told you this place is haunted. Besides, I’m enjoying the view.”
Liar. The only view you’re enjoying is the one in your imagination, and you’re getting impatient.
“Why do people say that about the pond, anyway?” I ask. “Is it because of that girl who drowned herself here?”
The spark in your eyes vanishes.
“I… don’t think so. Folks are always telling tales of evil spirits and such.” Nice try. “Who burdened your pretty head with this wretched tragedy?”
“Tragic indeed,” I say. “You didn’t know her well, then? They say she was the most beautiful girl in town, with emerald-green eyes and tar-black curls. A bit like mine, actually.” I straighten up, my breasts only covered by two wisps of wet hair.
Had it been any other night at any other pond, you would have rightly interpreted my coy self-flattery as an invitation to move past the spooky bedtime stories and on to more mature pleasures. Instead, you’re staring at me, white as a sheet.
“N-no, I didn’t know her. I mean, everyone knows everyone here, but we weren’t…”
“Close?” I offer. “Then you wouldn’t happen to know what drove her mad? What, or who, could possibly make a healthy young woman come here one day and…” I dive in, releasing a few exaggerated air bubbles.
My feigned drowning doesn’t seem to do much in the way of lightening your mood.
“It’s a well-known story,“ I continue, “funny you haven’t heard of it. Poor farmer’s daughter meets the mayor’s handsome son. They fall in love, make plans: city, university; then marriage, daddy’s mayoral office. What’s maidenly virtue worth with such bright prospects?”
“Maybe we should go,” you mutter, glancing back at the trail. “It’s getting late.”
“Wait, you don’t want to hear the rest of the story? Of course, you already know it.”
Something, or someone, pulls at your feet, slowly dragging you down as your legs begin to slide off the edge of the bridge.
You shriek. “What is this? Let me go!”
“Tell me, what happened to those shiny plans when farm girl got pregnant? Did her beloved support her? Did he agree to delay his prestigious studies by just a year, to help raise the baby before taking on the world?”
“I—I don’t know…” Your pathetic kicks only speed up your descent into the water.
“What about months later, when in her lowest of lows she asked at least for money for the city clinic, to fix the problem for good? By then, word had gotten around. Did mayor-to-be and his esteemed daddy at least leave poor little farm girl be, or did they pay off her own father and the stable boy to claim the latter had knocked her up?”
“I—I wasn’t the mayor back then… Please, what do you want? Is it money? I have money!”
I’ll give it to you, the audacity to attempt lying or buying your way out of this once again takes me off-guard. “And who was the mayor, Mr. Chernyshki-Son? Who was it, Sava?” My voice starts to shake. “Why didn’t you want us?”
Your hands cling furiously to the slippery beams that hold the bridge together. Our faces are an arm’s reach apart when it dawns on you.
“Maria? How…?”
You feel the invisible clasp loosen around your ankles, and for a second, you allow yourself to believe you still have a chance.
Then she emerges, her emerald eyes unmistakable even in the darkness of the night and in your feverish mind.
“That would be her.” I glance at my mother, then back at you. “Hi, Daddy.”
You’re all sobs and wails now, desperately flapping your arms and legs, knowing it’s pointless.
“Tell me, Sava, have you at least once during all those years wondered what it feels like to drown?” Mother says. “What final images flash through your mind as you sink with stones tied to your legs? As the water overtakes you, its unbearable heaviness crushing your skull, and that of your unborn child?”
“Maria, please forgive me! I’m a changed man… I have a family!”
“Yes, I know,” she continues, “wife and daughter. They too begged for their lives.”
“No! You lying b—”
Before you finish, two bodies float to the surface, white-blue as the moon.
“Nooo! You monsters!”
“That’s what they said too, at first. But now, they understand,” I whisper as the corpses awaken.
“Hello, Sava,” my stepmother says.
“Hi, Daddy,” my half-sister chimes in.
Each of us grabs a limb. Your screams turn to gurgles as the four of us drag you to the moonless bottom with the weight of a thousand stones.
Somewhere in the distance, men cheer and bagpipes roar in synchronic frenzy as a naked girl dances atop a covered well. The rusalka has been banished.