---

Vedritsa of the River

by Adriana Kantcheva

 

The Kamchia river had grown turgid after a storm. I surfaced from my habitual pool and bent over the young girl as she lay washed on the bank, her limbs cold and pale as the settling twilight. A small tin boat lay near her half-opened hand — the reason she took a tumble into my river.

I paused.

Yes, though weak, a current flowed beneath the child’s skin; her heart still worked. I placed a palm on her chest.

The river water in the girl’s lungs had no choice but to obey me. I willed it out, and it obliged in a single great spurt. As if she had waited for just that, the girl’s eyes flew open, her hand clamping around my wrist with desperate strength. Her grip tightened while she coughed and choked to take that first breath. She finally managed, yet still she held onto me, her eyes — ah, those eyes the color of storm clouds — taking in my long, green hair, my crown of living dragonflies, my gown of moss and lilies. We stared at each other for an eternity.

“Vedritsa!” The call came from the direction of the village, startling us both. A search party for the girl no doubt, already nearing.

“Let go, my darling,” I said and tugged.

But she only held on tighter. “I know what you are,” she croaked, hoarse from the heaving.

Of course she knew. Hard not to.

“You saved me. Why would a rusalka save me?”

Which showed how popular my kind was and, probably, still is. Dangerous, supernatural beings we’re said to be. The myths are not wholly mistaken.

“Vedritsa!” The call came again, now closer.

“You must let go,” I said, the river behind me rising with my panic.

Startled by the surging water, the girl released me, and I dove under the surface, the dragonflies on my brow dispersing just in time, my long, green hair now resembling algae. But even from down there, I sensed her tears flowing. After all, the girl — Vedritsa — had been raised drinking my water filtered through sandstone and pebbles.

I let my head break the surface. “When you turn sixty, but not before, come to this place, and you’ll meet me again.”

By then, she should be safe from me. My kind has no interest in children — we can’t draw power from them — but I could already intuit she’d grow beautiful to others and intoxicating to me: the alluring currents within her veins, the beating of her heart as it pumped her life’s blood — they whispered to me, reminding me of a dangerous instinct I could barely ever resist.

I kicked away from the bank, ready to dive under.

“Wait!” Vedritsa called. “I must give you something. It’s bad luck to be indebted to a rusalka.” Her young face, still pale from the ordeal, grew matter-of-fact. She proffered her boat to me.

I’d heard of this notion before, which is, frankly speaking, superstition. But her deep concern made me stop. I couldn’t leave without satisfying her — and taking a toy away from a child would do exactly the opposite.

“Your name,” I said. “Give it to me for my own.” I’d never had one before. My kind doesn’t need a name to know who we are. My river is my defining essence.

Sticks snapped in the undergrowth just beyond the bank. I dove as she nodded her acquiescence, both of us unaware the gift of her name would one day exact a much bigger cost.

---

I am Vedritsa, and the Kamchia is my river to guard, to command, to haunt.

---

These days, I don’t wear my crown of dragonflies. My hair is cropped short, its green color no longer something extraordinary. I often get asked what dye I use. The girl Vedritsa grew into an old woman. She goes by Vedra now, having yielded her name to me.

There she is, arriving at the parking lot near the small floating pier, scaring the wildlife in the Kamchia Biosphere Preserve with her ancient scooter. Finally, mercifully, she kills its sputtering engine. I watch with fondness how she approaches in her simple flower-print summer dress, her arms swaying in the same purposeful manner I’ve known for a good while. After all, she’s in her seventh decade. Unlike mine, her body ages with every passing day, yet her powerful strides attest that the anchor of her spirit isn’t tied to her impermanent flesh. To her, the wrinkles are merely the next of life’s outfits. They sit beautifully on her thanks to her graceful acceptance. I can’t take my eyes off her. Never before have I met another who so earnestly yearned for my love, so willingly accepted it, so unquestioningly returned it.

She still owns the small tin boat.

“Slow day?” Vedra asks, still some paces away. She tugs on her sweat-glued dress to peel it from her sizable thighs.

“It’s getting too hot,” I say. “Everybody’s on the beach. People don’t appreciate the Kamchia in such weather.”

“Can’t blame them.” Vedra plonks down on the foldable chair next to mine, inching it closer to hide under my humble beach umbrella. It sports a bleached “River Boat Tours” printed in English and Bulgarian.

Yes, that’s my current disguise: a tour guide on the Kamchia estuary before the river’s inevitable emptying into the Black Sea. For a small fee, I show off my murky, green waters and the verdant floodplain forest as it tumbles over the banks; show me some enthusiasm, and I wax poetic about the waterlogged elm roots and mosquito-infested silk vine lianas. After all, it would no longer do to lurk in murky pools as a creature of pure myth and legend. One has to move with the times, and the times have certainly moved on with cameras and sonars and satellites everywhere. Hard to stay hidden. Cleverer to find a job that keeps me close to my river without raising suspicion.

From the rickety shed behind the pier — the headquarters of our bustling business — I hear Dimo snore. My boss is setting a good example. There’s nothing else to do in this heat but soak in a body of water or sleep. As I’m now an employee, and Vedra is terrified of water, we choose the latter option.

Before I nod off, I take her hand in mine. Vedra has never shirked from my love. Even with her advancing age — while I remain young — she’s never thought of herself as undeserving of my tenderness. I’m grateful for that.

I settle deeper in my chair, making sure my toes dip in the river so I keep hydrated, then check Vedra’s blood isn’t getting too thick for her weakened heart. I hand her my bottle of water.

“You can’t keep me alive forever, you know.” Lately, she’s taken it upon herself to prepare me for a future without her. I have never told her I have a choice in the matter, though it would be a hard one to make. None of my kind have ever taken this path, for there is no going back. When I don’t blink or smile, she unscrews the cap and drinks, then adds, “You could instead take better care of the river.”

I’ve been doing my best given my diminishing abilities, the stranger-than-fiction climate, and efforts to hold back the floods in unnatural ways. Building a wall is rarely a solution. So aggressive, so constricting.

“Sure,” I say. “How about you bring along one of your grand-nieces next time? Both Milena and Lora are old enough. One of them would definitely give my powers a boost.”

It’s Vedra’s turn to give me a deadpan face, her piercing, storm-colored eyes pinning me. “Hilarious.”

This was poor taste on my side, though she knows I’m not serious. I’ve worked hard to change. My human name has helped, making it easier to act, well, more human.

“Sorry.” I gently pat her hand, but now it’s really too hot to talk. We pull our straw hats low and snooze.

---

“Are you open?” a voice from the world beyond my hat’s rim asks in Bulgarian.

I’ve just dozed off, but now nudge my hat to reveal a young woman in a loose, white t-shirt and tight jeans shorts. Her auburn braid snakes to her hip. Her brown eyes are like chocolate. For a moment, all the currents in my river still.

“How much for a ticket?” she asks, a little charming impatience sharpening her tone.

Vedra elbows me, and I straighten up, nearly tipping my chair in the water. “Hello. Yes. We’re open. Nine leva per person.”

The woman nods, her eyes lingering on me a tad too long. She walks back to Dimo’s rickety shed, where a man with curly hair and sunglasses waits. I follow her a step behind.

“They’re open, Mees,” she says in English. “Nine leva per person.”

That’s how it’s normally done. In Bulgaria, any foreigner better find a Bulgarian friend to ask about prices.

“Alright,” he says. “How long will it last?”

The young woman turns to me to translate, but I answer in English. (What’s one more language? I’ve learned plenty over the centuries: Thracian, ancient Greek, Latin, Turkish, Bulgarian, Romani.) “An hour. An hour and a half if you’d like it.”

“Sounds good,” Mees says. “Let’s go.”

“What are you doing?” Dimo has awoken from his beauty slumber. He’s leaning out of the shed’s window, watching me help our customers in the small boat.

“It’s just the two of them,” I say. “Why take the big boat?”

Dimo turns to my clients. “This one’s for VIP tours only. It costs double, or you can wait for a group to gather for a regular tour in the bigger boat.”

VIP tours? Since when? I feel a blush ripen as my eyes fall on the rust-eaten paint of the Pup, which is what we call the small boat.

The young woman translates for Mees. He looks at his watch and shrugs. Judging by how little he seems to care about the doubled price, Dimo could’ve asked for triple. Mees hands him forty leva and doesn’t care about the change.

Vedra creeps next to me while I stoop to untie the Pup’s rope. “An hour and a half, is it?” she murmurs close to my ear.

“Dimo doubled the price. I might as well double the time.” My hands never stop working, but they shake, which translates to ripples in the water.

Vedra glances at the river and stills my hands with her own. She’s known me far too long. “You doubled the time before Dimo woke up.” Her grip on my wrist reminds me of that time I saved her life. But now, she releases me at my first tug.

“Careful. Don’t lose control,” she says.

“What? It’s nothing like that. I just —”

An eyebrow lift from Vedra.

“Fine,” I concede. “It is like that. But you know me. I no longer listen to the old instinct.” I throw the rope in the boat and climb in next to my clients. The young woman slides closer to where I sit as if by chance.

“You promise?” Vedra calls over the din of the boat’s motor.

“I don’t need to,” I call back, but the motor’s racket swallows my words. I steer the boat away.

---

Of course, Vedra didn’t wait for her sixtieth year to return to the river. I still remember how yearning and fear vied in her voice as she called for me a dozen paces from the water’s edge, her eyes scouring Kamchia’s dark pools — as dark as her long curls.

“Rusalka, show yourself!”

I lurked in the darkest pool under a willow, my hair floating around me in green swells, spying on Vedra through the transition between water and air. Twilight was settling, just like when I had saved her from drowning. But now, she was a maiden of twenty and as beguiling as I had predicted she’d become. She wore a simple shift that clung a little tight around her heavy thighs, her hair loose but for its braided ends.

“Won’t you show yourself?” she called again.

It’s not that I couldn’t emerge from my river. The Kamchia innervates the entire floodplain forest. I can walk for miles and not lose my connection to it. Once, long ago, I could even reach Mesembria, today’s Nesebar, and still survive.

No, what stopped me was doubt: I had never embraced a lover away from the tight cradle of a deep pool;  I couldn’t imagine caressing Vedra with my bare hands rather than Kamchia’s currents. A part of me — an ancient part — hungered to conjoin with her sweet youth, to have my waters explore every nook of her body. What irony to now take the life I had earlier saved.

Tongues of river water surged forward, snaking over the bank towards Vedra’s sandaled feet. She yelped and retreated even further from the river, her shift catching in a bush.

Still, she didn’t run away.

“Rusalka, show yourself,” she called for the third time, and then, from the depth of my pool, I saw her grey eyes round as a thought struck her.

“Vedritsa, show yourself.”

The name… my name.

It pulled me out of the water like a fish on a line. I emerged, dripping duckweed as my clothing, damselflies like jewels on my wrists, navel, and a nipple, my green hair trailing behind me. I stopped short of exiting the river.

“Won’t you come into the water?” I said out of habit rather than sense.

Vedra’s leaden eyes roamed over my exposed flesh, yet she paled at my request. “I never enter water anymore.” She backed some more until the soft fronds of the willow above my pool embraced her shoulders. “But why don’t you come out, Vedritsa?”

My name again.

I stepped out of the river, my feet squelching in the velvety mud. “You should be afraid of me.”

“How about you be less scary?” Vedra’s frantic pulse roared in my ears. Yet, she didn’t retreat.

I stepped closer, then closer still. There, under the willow’s whispering shroud, I learned new ways to sate my passion and many ways to know another’s.

---

I steer the Pup upriver, stealing glances at the young woman, who introduces herself as Slava. Her hand rests on the bench far too close to me, even if she pretends to only pay attention to the scenery.

It’s happened before, of course — the infatuation with a young body. It has nothing to do with what I feel for Vedra. But my nature is what it is. My urges will never change even as I choose not to act on them; even with a human name to hold me back.

“Are you staying at the beach resort?” I ask in English over the labored roar of the boat.

“No,” Mees says. “We’re staying upriver. We’re in the region for a work project.”

I can’t place his accent, but he’s not a native speaker. “What project?”

“We’re studying the river.” Slava’s brown eyes twinkle like my sun-dappled water, stirring dangerous needs inside me. “I’m from Technical University of Varna and Mees here is our Dutch liaison with RECONECT.”

Mees hands me a business card.

 

RECONECT Consortium

European Reference Network on Nature-Based Solutions

2611 AX Delft, Netherlands

 

Apart from “reconect” missing an “n,” it seems like serious business. “Nature-based solutions to what?”

“The floods,” Slava says. “We’re trying to figure out how to deal with them in a nature- and society-friendly way.”

I can’t help myself. “Nature-friendly as in a wall?”

“Certainly not.” Mees chuckles, also charming, but nothing like Slava. “Nature-friendly as in a soccer field or grazing land, where the water can spread when it needs to without damaging crops and property.”

I nod, thinking how nice it would be not to fear suffocation each time a rainstorm hits. Ironic, as I’m the one prone to drowning people. “So, this tour is about your work?” I wonder if their backpacks contain any equipment like cameras. I’d rather not have my flesh further immortalized in a photograph.

“No work today,” Slava says. “We just want to enjoy the estuary. It’s beautiful.”

I like her even more. Countless times I’ve wished I could take Vedra on such a trip, but her water phobia would make the experience unbearable to her.

We circumnavigate a bend, which puts us out of Dimo’s sight. I kill the motor, then click the oars into the oarlocks.

“Are you sure you want to row?” Slava asks.

“You paid for the VIP tour.” I smirk. “That includes not scaring off the wildlife.”

I want to hear the Kamchia. A little of it has seeped into the Pup, and I promptly dip my foot in the puddle. If I’d been alone, I would’ve plunged overboard to sense the entirety of the tangled forest with my whole body. My water innervates everything: it gurgles in the swamps; it carries the swishing of aquatic snakes; it drips off leaves and beaks and paws.

All these sounds weave a rhapsody in my consciousness as soon as the boat’s motor quiets. I row and watch Slava as verdant shores pass by in a mosaic of lilies and rushes and driftwood. She has this vibrant effervescence. I sense the pulsing river of her blood. She doesn’t know it yet, but a headache is budding as her blood vessels dilate. It’s all that moist air and heat.

I could’ve yapped at them the tour-guide facts I’ve memorized — about the sandspit at the river’s mouth growing every year; about the myriad endemic species sustained by my water — but I don’t think Slava and Mees have come for that, and they probably know most of it. Instead, I furtively drop my hand into the river — a summons. A roe deer parts the hawthorn scrub.

Slava touches Mees’s elbow. “Look. There.”

Her hand stays on him, and I watch this link enviously. Her other hand, though, has inched even closer to me, almost touching my thigh. They stare at the deer for a long time, breathing soft exclamations at the protracted spectacle. They needn’t hush or hold still. The deer won’t run.

After some time, I again slip my hand in the river. The cable of an otter’s tail splashes the water, startling the deer. I bid the otter swim circles, and it obliges, twisting this way and that, slick and nimble, waving its short paws in the air as it rotates from belly to back to belly.

Mees and Slava are mesmerized. We stay in silence long after I’ve dismissed the otter: they, hoping to witness another spectacle, and I because I don’t want to go back. But I don’t dare stage anything else apart from summoning a flock of dragonflies, who zip along the bank like sparks of fleeting color.

“I can see why you wanted to cut the engine,” Slava whispers. Nothing like a river-lover to swirl a vortex of desire inside me.

To disguise the ripples my fluttering heart spreads across the water, I lift the oars and move us towards another bend in the river. While I row, I call for summer snowflakes and marsh marigolds to sprout in a dense blanket on the narrow, wet meadow behind the bend. When we round it, I’m satisfied to elicit another gasp from my guests. Slava is gripping her long braid, smiling, smiling, leaning ever so slightly in my direction as if her skin is metal and I — a magnet.

When we return to the dingy pier, Vedra has gone, and I think it’s for the best. Better if she doesn’t see me splashing a little water on my guests as if by accident; better not to witness how my hands grip the rope while tying the boat so I don’t grip Slava. It’s not that I’m afraid Vedra would be jealous. But she would be worried. She knows the signs of me losing control, which has nothing to do with me losing my love for her. My heart and my nature have been at war ever since Vedra came back to the riverbank to summon me by my new name.

I let Mees help Slava out of the Pup because I don’t dare touch her. But my eyes trail after her as she walks away, her auburn braid swishing with her movement. She throws me one last, thirsty glance, and I plant my feet lest I drag her in the water. When they reach their car, I cave and send a dragonfly to kiss her nape before she gets in. The feel of her skin warms my lips for the moment before the dragonfly flutters away. A stolen parting gift. I call on a black stork to come forage conveniently close to the parking lot so I can gaze at her through its eyes. A provident breeze — the first and probably last for the day — flattens Slava’s t-shirt against her body. I’m hard pressed not to sprint after her.

Something brushes against my leg. I revert my sight back to my own eyes to check what it is. Vedra’s straw hat. She must’ve forgotten it. I scowl at it, imagining Vedra walking about in the heat bareheaded. I’ll be giving her a talking-to next time I see her.

A car door slamming makes me realize that just the sight of Vedra’s hat has swept all thought of Slava out of my mind. By the time I look up, she and Mees have driven away from the parking lot.

---

The next day, I stash Vedra’s straw hat and some bottles with river water in my scooter, and set off to Sestrite — the Sisters — where Vedra lives. The village is the furthest I can manage north of the Kamchia these days. I remember when it used to be two separate settlements: Goliama Sestra (Big Sister) and Malka Sestra (Little Sister), my forest all around. Today, they have fused into one, but many of the familiar-to-me landmarks remain, even if half the old wells are now dry, and wire fences rather than rustic stone walls border the gardens.

In the south-west, clouds are gathering in a rippled, slaty mass, preparing to unleash a summer storm in a few hours. Rain is already pelting upriver. If I focus, my skin prickles with a myriad of heavy raindrops swelling my waters. The quickening river is pushing against flood walls, streaming past banks and fallen logs, engorging shallow pools and low meadows. Come nightfall, the flood will reach us.

I pass the first houses with their blooming yards, the grapes already thickening with juices. Children are playing in the shadows under the vines. Chickens and stray dogs strut over the pavement as if they own it. When I ride by, the chickens scatter, but a couple of dogs chase me all the way to the mehana. Its two-storied building used to be the house of a rich peasant merchant — a chorbajia. But his line is now extinct, his proud abode converted into an inn, the dry well in the courtyard just a part of the decor.

Vedra is sitting at her usual table under yet another specimen of the ubiquitous grape vines. The yellowing plastic chair has deformed to the shape of her bum after her long-standing, singular use of it. I, on the other hand, will soon have to stop coming here, or people will notice my static appearance.

I produce Vedra’s straw hat from my bag. She’s drinking her customary hot chocolate despite the heat, a bowl of semki — unpeeled and salted sunflower seeds — next to it. Another bowl is half filled with the husks. Vedra squints at the hat in my hand, her white curls bare to the elements.

“You forgot something.” I place the hat directly on her head. It’s askew, and she looks utterly charming.

Regrettably, she straightens it. “I thought I better leave you a reminder of myself.” Her bemused expression hints at a challenge, the filigree of crow’s feet crinkling at the corners of her eyes.

She’s joking, yet I ache to profess my devotion to her. I resist and play it cool.

“A wise move,” I say, then pull her hand under the table, gripping it with the strength of the emotions that buffet my heart, and she knows.

When the server comes, I order an apple soda, in which I covertly pour some river water from one of the bottles in my bag.

“Will it be bad this time?” Vedra is looking west across the street. An angry gray sky peeks in a gap between two houses. Sestrite is far enough from the river to be safe from the smaller floods, but there are people here who own cropland close to the waterfront.

“Not too bad, I think. I don’t know.” My feelers have lately been embarrassingly stunted. Decades ago, sensing the Kamchia and sensing my body meant one and the same. The river network was like a second nervous system, innervating far, wide, and deep. Today, the area of my awareness has constricted to the diminished floodplain forest.

“I don’t understand why people persist in planting so close to the riverbank,” I grumble, though I know it’s a mean question, born out of my feeling of inadequacy.

“Trust me.” Vedra’s crow’s feet now pucker with a scowl. “If they had the money, they would’ve bought other land long ago. But parcels near the river have become too cheap to pay for a good-sized field further off.”

This reminds me of Slava and Mees, and their talk of grazing land and soccer fields.

“Can you do something about it?” Vedra asks me the same question each time a flood is imminent. Her concern quickens the beats of her aging heart. Her fingers tap the mug of hot chocolate, which she hasn’t touched.

I nudge it towards her. “Drink,” I say. “You’ve been sweating.” She just stares at it, so I add, “You know I’ll do what I can.”

The Kamchia be my witness, I’ve always tried. But the longer I’ve been rebelling against my nature — the nature to consume a lover in one suffocating gulp and leave no living body for a second filling — the more my control over river and forest has been slipping. Sometimes, I can’t help but feel left behind, watching how the world and my river change, moving on without me.

Vedra takes a sip, and we sit quietly for a moment. Just when I’m about to say something unrelated, Slava walks out of the mehana. My mouth remains open, though no words are forthcoming now. Slava sees us and comes our way. Under the table, Vedra’s fingers give me a cautionary squeeze.

“You’re still here,” I say to Slava by a way of a clumsy greeting.

“Yes.” She flips her long braid out of the way, brushing my cheek with it as if by accident. “We decided to stay another day. A storm’s gathering, and now that we’re here, we might as well observe the estuary in case it floods.”

“Would you like to sit?” Vedra asks, mostly out of politeness, and pulls out a chair.

A part of me hopes Slava stays, and another wishes she doesn’t. I’m afraid of what I would do if I’m to spend more time close to her. But Vedra’s hand is still in mine, so I keep calm for the moment.

Slava doesn’t take a seat. “Mees is waiting for me.” But she also doesn’t leave. She scrutinizes me through her brown lashes. “Why don’t you join us on the sandspit? We won’t only be doing measurements. We’ll light a fire, Mees will fry some fish . . .” She trails off, her chocolate eyes fixed on me as if trying to spy what’s hidden under my skin.

“I . . .” I’m trying to say no, and in my agitation I knock over my glass. Slava and Vedra spring to my aid. We try to contain the liquid to the table’s surface, all our hands touching.

The influx of sensations is so sudden, I gag. But there it is: a fluid network mapped over my body, bright in my mind — the Kamchia’s entire demesne. An instant inrush of power leaves my fingertips numb. I gulp some air, trying to keep the contents of my stomach where they belong.

“Are you ok? Did you get drenched?” Slava swipes the last of the liquid off the table and away from Vedra and me. I’ve gone limp, unable to answer.

“We’ll dry soon enough in this heat,” Vedra says and nudges my leg under the table.

“Do come to the sandspit.” Slava is now gazing back at me, oblivious of my state. Not so Vedra, who gives my knee another bump.

“As a thank you for all the rowing yesterday,” Slava adds.

“Aren’t you afraid the river will flood the sandspit?” Vedra is trying to give me more time to recover.

“We’ll be in constant contact with our colleagues upstream. They’ll let us know in plenty of time if we need to leave. You’re welcome, too, of course,” Slava adds as an afterthought.

“The evening breezes don’t agree with me,” Vedra claims, though I know it’s her fear of water that holds her back. She never goes swimming, let alone near the river’s edge when a flood is imminent. I often think it’s for the best. “But thank you,” she adds.

I finally take charge of my spasming insides. “Yes,” I stammer. “I’ll come.” How can I resist her after tasting my old powers? I hide my face under the pretext of wringing my wet t-shirt.

“Great. See you tonight.” Slava walks away with a wink that leaves me yearning. Each step she takes dampens my awareness of the Kamchia’s far-flung network. Or could it be that the mixture of soda and river water has evaporated from her skin?

A shout makes me pry my eyes away from her receding form.

“Look! The well!”

Soon, many voices are clamoring, all of them about the well.

I swivel to look. The old well in the mehana’s courtyard, its stonemasoned walls covered in moss from decades of disuse, is brimming with water.

---

Many generations ago, a drought came, and the Kamchia dried out in its bed. But if one dug deep enough in the silt, they could reach hidden vestiges of the river, fed by the groundwater. I knew exactly where to dig; I could call on the water to gather there for cattle to drink. The waterways in my domain, hidden or not, were like an extension of my body — oh, that wondrous expansive feeling! My world used to be so much larger. Of course, the local villages paid a toll in lives so that their rusalka could remain a master of her river, but, in my defense, I did try to help them during droughts and floods.

Today, the maidens and youths of the settlements around the Kamchia are mostly safe from me, but they’re paying a different toll as I’m losing my grip on the river. And, oh! How I miss stretching my senses and testing the limits of my power. The taste of it Slava gave me at the mehana reminded me of all that I’ve given up so I could look my love Vedra in the eyes.

These are my thoughts as I make my way to the sandspit, where the Kamchia joins the Black Sea. The campfire on the dark beach is a beacon calling me.

“Ah, here you are,” Mees says when I get there. “We thought you weren’t coming.”

I tried not to.

“I never asked your name,” Slava says.

This is nothing new. Some people instinctively know one such as I is not supposed to have a name.

“Vedritsa,” I say.

“Like the flower?”

I nod. “It’s endemic here.”

“Pontic fritillary,” Slava translates to Mees, who nods comprehension.

I’m impressed. They might’ve enjoyed my tour-guide soliloquy after all.

I sit near the fire and take a swallow from my bottle of river water. If I’m not careful, the flames will dry me out. Mees is frying sprat in a battered pan, the little fishes jiggling in the oil as if alive. Next to him is an open bag with various scientific instruments, some of them already wet. Slava is slicing big, pink tomatoes into rough chunks. She bites into one with relish, the seeds running down her chin. I watch her mesmerized, forgetting to drink, until the dull ache of drying reminds me.

Slava wipes her fingers and hands me a plastic cup of wine. Inevitably, we touch. I wait for the dizzying surge of my old powers, but that never comes. Of course it doesn’t. Our hands are dry of river water. I have to fight the urge to drag her to the nearest brackish pool and try again.

“Let’s go swimming!” Slava exclaims in Bulgarian as if reading my terrible thoughts. Mees is clearly not invited. She’s looking at the sea, though.

I’m not that kind of water creature. It’s not where my domain lies. “I don’t like the sea,” I murmur, embarrassed at my strangeness.

“Really?” Slava arches a glossy eyebrow. “Pity you live here. Then let us swim in the river.”

She flings off her t-shirt and heads for the brackish water behind the sandspit, unbuttoning her shorts as she goes. I have to close my eyes to the inviting lines of her shoulder blades, then glance at Mees. He has dug a warm hollow in the sand for himself and seems immovable.

“Go ahead,” he says. “I’ll mind the fish.”

I feel Slava splash in my water. Nothing can hold me back now. I haven’t bothered with a swimming suit and don’t care. Slava doesn’t either. I wade in after her. In the dark, she doesn’t see my hair growing, spreading all around us. I undo her braid and let her long, auburn strands mingle with mine. I’m about to pull her under when a deep rumble wrenches me out of my lusty reverie.

The Pup. Is Dimo drunk again?

And then, I notice it. A taste of hot chocolate and sunflower seeds in the water — my water, which conveys a well-known rhythm of a beating heart, every third pulse weaker.

Vedra.

Suddenly, I realize something else. As intoxicating as being with Slava is, I don’t feel what I felt in the mehana.

“I have to go.” I release her from my grip and kick away, not answering to her “Wait! Where are you going?”

Behind me, a phone rings. A moment later, Mees’s voice announces, “The water level is rising. We better take one last sample and leave.”

Yes, do leave. Go far away and never return. I’m dangerous. They shout at me some more, but I never look back.

I manage to preserve the semblance of a human being swimming until I round a bend, but as soon as I’m out of sight, I dive. My kind are fast underwater. Slava is still calling after me by the time I reach the Pup. It’s bobbing midstream, incompetently maneuvered.

I surface by its side. “What are you doing here?”

Vedra shrieks and chokes the engine by mistake. In the sudden silence, her next words hit me hard.

“Saving that poor girl’s life is what I’m doing.”

She must be terrified in the tiny, helpless boat, the river surging around us. Yet, I see her rolling up a sleeve.

“Vedra, don’t. I can’t hold back if you touch the river.”

“This flood will be bad, won’t it? I’ve been watching the news. The storm’s big. They’re evacuating upriver.”

“Vedra, please. Stop. I can’t —”

“I know what happened at the mehana. That well . . . it wasn’t because of Slava, was it?”

I whimper, but can’t hide the truth. “No. It was you. Touching me, and some of my water spilling on us.”

All these decades together, I’ve never allowed my water to caress Vedra, respectful of her phobia. I never knew how strong she could make me.

Vedra plunges her entire arm into the river. “How about you do some more of that well-magic?”

Even with so little of her submerged, I once again become the soul and body of the Kamchia, all the powers vested in my natural state flooding back to me. The river, from its many beginnings to its one inevitable end in the sea, is my spine; its tributaries are my limbs; the plants and animals drinking from me are my eyes, my ears, my skin, my many mouths. I hear the Kamchia whisper to the groundwater; I know how to guide it deeper.

This would’ve been enough to shatter my restraint, but Vedra’s sweat and sweetness mingling with my water make it worse. I pull her all the way in and rip her dress, coming skin-close to her, my water even closer, exploring every nook and wrinkle. All these dry years between us, they don’t measure up to a single minute of this experience now, which I take in with a thousand-fold expanded awareness.

My yearning for total and pervasive closeness isn’t cruelty. It’s merely the only way my kind can love fully and completely. In water, through water, wholly submerged.

Unlike my lovers, I don’t need to breathe.

Vedra probably doesn’t even notice us going below the surface, as tangled as we are, my mouth on all the places I know she wants me to kiss, gentle fluxes I’ve called forth caressing her every inch. I hold on tight, wrapping hair and limbs as if I can fuse with her.

She begins to writhe in my arms, but I can’t stop. Oh, forgive me, Vedra, but I can’t stop. Her weakened-with-age heart can’t take much of my love. I haven’t even had my fill yet when it quiets.

Finally, with its beats receding in my ears, I manage to get a grip on my lust and push a limp Vedra above the surface. My tortured wail starts underwater and, as I break the surface, it reverberates in every leaf and dragonfly wing around. I hold my slack Vedra to me and scramble to the riverbank. I press my fists to her chest to will my treacherous water out of her lungs. It gushes out, but this time, Vedra’s eyelids stay closed.

I hear one last straggling heartbeat and know I won’t hear another. Unless . . . unless I bestow the one gift allotted me to use when I meet the soul I cannot part with.

In seconds, I make the hardest choice in my long existence — the one choice I thought I will never resort to. But deep down, I know I’ll never meet another like Vedra. Besides, there’s this weariness having crept inside me, dripping over the years to fill the container of my forbearance. Suddenly, I feel it acutely. It’s time to let go; step down and move on.

I pull Vedra back into my water. I have little time, but I do take a moment to calm my surging river, guiding her into fallow fields and empty wells and through deep cracks in the ground. Tomorrow, the populace of Sestrite and the other villages around will wake up to a miracle of every dried-up well brimming. Slava and Mees won’t know what to make of their measurements.

By the time I’m done with this, I have Vedra floating in my arms in the middle of the Kamchia. I’m so strong now. No lover before has given me so much. And I use it all. Life started in water, and water is the best conduit to empty the bottomless well of my life force into Vedra’s body.

This time, as I pull her under the surface, calling on the Kamchia to enter her lungs, I don’t invite death into her — but life.

---

Two hours later, Vedra wakes up next to me on the floating pier. I’ve covered her in a blanket, so she’s warm and snug.

“It’s too early to wish you good morning,” I say. Unlike her, I’m cold. The river and forest are mute to me. But Vedra clearing her throat is the most wonderful sound right now.

“What happened?” she croaks.

It’s best to show her rather than explain. I turn on the electric lantern I’ve kept dark until now because of the mosquitos; I can no longer will them to leave us alone. The light falls on both our faces.

What I see of Vedra is black hair streaked with gray. The crows’ feet are smaller, but they’ll have enough time to blossom again.

I’m not sure what Vedra sees. It’s not like I’ve done this before. It’s a one-shot, one-way activity. Her mouth, though, quivers. “What have you done?” She clasps her hands around my face.

“I’ve bought us a few years.” Darn! My voice sounds old.

“And the currency seems to have been your youth, your immortality.”

Not only.

Vedra knows me well. She reads me like a book. “No. Who will take care of the river now?”

I shrug. “Slava and others like her.”

Vedra stares at me with her deadpan expression. When she doesn’t speak, I say: “Shall we have a swim? Let us swim together every day until we’re too old to do it.”

I lead the way, and a stunned Vedra follows. If she’s afraid of the water, she doesn’t show it, and I’m deaf to her heartbeats to know. Still, I’m certain it’s a healthy and a somewhat younger heart that works in her chest now.

My feet touch the water. I had not dared to hope, but there it is: a faint echo of my former sensitivity. The river song is but a whisper to me now. Yet, if I listen carefully, I can catch it. Hard to do, though, when Vedra takes me in a wet embrace, planting kisses all over my face, which is now probably as wizened as hers.

No matter. An echo of my river and years with my Vedra, swimming together, is more than I could have ever asked for.

---

Host Commentary

…aaaaand welcome back. That was “Vedritsa of the River” by Adriana Kantcheva, and Adriana has been over at Lasers before, for Escape Pod 857 Salvaged, a “loose retelling of Snow White set in the orbit of a decimated Earth”. There’s plenty of other stories linked from her website, too, catchingwords.com

Adriana sent us these notes on “Vedritsa of the River”: I wrote this story because the myth-creating power of water, which is as great as its life-giving force, has always intrigued me. I spent my childhood in Bulgaria, so I drew — very loosely — on the Bulgarian folklore surrounding the water spirits called rusalkas. Though the village the story takes place in is fictional, the river Kamchia exists and its estuary is, indeed, a wonderful place that can use protection. However, beyond my affinity to water, another impetus to write “Vedritsa of the River” was to contribute, even in a small way, to normalizing aging, especially women’s aging. I wanted to create a character who was unapologetic about her wrinkles and large thighs, and who incited passion in her lover both in youth and late maturity.

Thank you, Adriana, for the thoughts and the story—and, of course, the conscious efforts in your writing. I loved this, because it was a love story, and I am still a hopeless romantic. And what I really loved about it was… okay, let me explain from another angle.

Most stories—certainly fairy tales, but even contemporary novels, films, anything—focus on the falling in love, the will-they-won’t-they, the love triangle and the enemies-to-lovers and all the other trope tags plastered across TikTok marketing images. And that’s wonderful escapism and it absolutely works on me and yes I do enjoy a romantic comedy, but the problem with it is the Happily Ever After. Such an imbalanced approach to romantic narratives, where we always focus on the build-up, risks creating a real life narrative that all the struggle is in attaining love, and after that is the reward, and that’s all plain sailing. The quest, the effort, is finding love. After that is just denouement.

But that’s not what real love is. Love is not finding that person that’s one in a million and fits you just right—because even one-in-a-million love gives you 8,000 options on Earth right now, and as Tim Minchin once sang to us, “of the nine-point-nine-nine-nine-hundred-thousand other possible loves, statistically, some of them would be equally nice”. Love can be about that instantaneous connection like a spark of static between you, but it is never only about that.

Falling in love is, so much of the time, about the anticipation and the fantasy of what life with that someone would be like; being in love is about picking up their laundry off the floor after you’ve stumbled over a pile of it, again, and still not walking out the door.

To be clear, lest anyone think I am casting aspersions upon my delightful wife, that pile of laundry is always mine. I am a flawed and imperfect being in many ways.

Love is not a state, it is an action. Not a noun, but a verb. And I know I’ve said that on here before, but I think what today’s story really gets at, apart from showing what mature love is like—and I don’t necessarily mean that the participants are mature, but the relationship is—is how part of being in love is growing together and shaping each other and being different as a result of love. There are a lot of very strong opinions about trying to change the other person in a relationship, or about resisting that change and finding someone who loves you for you, but frankly if you’re not changing over the course of a five or ten or twenty year relationship, that’s called “arrested development” and it is bad!

We are meant to change; change is encoded in us from the very beginning, when we have all the instructions for a lifetime of development built in to every cell of our being. And like all living things, we change in response to our environment—which includes the person we love. It is good and right and natural that being with someone should change you: and that does not mean that they should prune you and tie you and force you into unnatural espaliers of yourself, but it does mean that you will be like two trees growing tall together, your crowns shaped around each other to be sure there is enough light for both of you.

Love is not locking eyes across a crowded room, or from beneath a river’s surface. Love is knowing, in your bones, who the other person needs you to be, the shape they need you to flow into to support them best, and being happy that you are in a position to do it. Love is taking the time and the effort to make yourself a better person so you can live up to the image they hold of you. Love is always working to make them proud of you, and impressed by you, and never feeling like you can rest on your laurels in that regard; and love is knowing that they would do, will do, are doing the same for you. Supporting each other by growing together, branches entwining and crowns shying just short and leaning on each other until you are inseparable, until you cannot be yourself without them by your side.

That is why I love today’s story. Because it knows what love really is.