Four Phials of Rusalka Tears

by Malina Douglas

On an ice-rimmed night when the wind's teeth cut and snow piled against a solitary cottage, a knock sounded.

A woman in black robes stood from the hearth and stretched her stiff limbs. Pulling back hair like spider silk, she strode to the door she had sealed with three locks.

“Who's there?” she rasped.

Any response was snatched by the wind.

Through a crack in the door, she saw a figure in a heavy wool cloak.

She frowned.

The face was concealed by a hood pulled low.

1. Odette was skating on a frozen lake. She knew she was not allowed to be out on the ice alone but the forbidden thrill stirred her to dizzying recklessness. Her pale skirt flared like a bell as she spun and glided in figure eights till she grew giddy. A sound rang out loud and sudden as a shot—the ice, cracking. Odette skated faster as the crack spread in her wake, but the ice parted under her feet and she fell, screaming to the white sky and snow-covered forest. Cold water snatched her breath away and she held herself up on the lip of the ice till her stiff fingers lost their grip and she sank below.

2. When Petra's childhood friend confessed his love, she did not know her sister Anya loved him in secret. She returned his affections and when he offered to marry her, she accepted. When she announced the news to her family, Anya ran from the house and slammed the door behind her. Immersed in the cloud of her own joy, Petra did not speak to her. As they squatted on the riverbank washing clothes, Anya pushed Petra into the water, grasped her neck and held her under. Petra's eyes flared and her screams produced only bubbles. She kicked and thrashed till her strength ebbed and she went still.

3. Larissa was lured by the sound of the flute to a high mountain meadow where a shepherd took her into his arms. Their trysts continued till she discovered she was pregnant. She begged her parents to marry him, but her parents scoffed at the poor shepherd's family and betrothed her instead to a man twice her age. When her tearful pleas would not move her father, she ran from her wedding and threw herself into a lake.

4. Ivana's village was attacked by marauding soldiers. As smoke rose in columns from thatched roofs, she ran, feet flying across the field as a soldier tore after her, hacking leaves aside with his sword. Branches whipped against her body and thorns tore the linen of her dress but she ran on, till the land fell away to the river and she took a breath, leapt—

A woman in black robes with a headdress of antlers knelt at the river's edge. From her lips poured a song to summon the rusalki. Mist wreathed across the churning water's surface.

She waited.

Odette emerged from the water, her small oval face and pale dress dripping. Blonde hair hung in a wet sheath past her shoulders. She cast a look behind her and Petra surfaced, bearing a grim look of satisfaction.

“I've been waiting for this,” she said.

“For what?” asked Odette. “Only men have come calling to us. I don't want to drag a woman into the deep.”

“Not that,” snapped Petra. “We've had our fun. But I feel like something momentous is going to happen.”

“What's going to happen?” asked Larissa, sliding back green hair festooned with flowers, the white lace of a sodden wedding dress clinging to her figure.

“Just wait,” said Petra. A small, tight smile appeared on her face.

Ivana rose from the water, hair wild with reeds and torn linen hanging off her shoulders. She joined the others as her eyes searched, hungry.

“What have you called us for?” she demanded.

Despite the moisture from the river bank that seeped through her robes at the knees, the Sorceress was still.

“Tell me,” she said, in a tone as smooth as milk poured from a jug, “the story of how you got here.”

“Not mine,” said Ivana. “It's too terrible to speak.”

“That's fine,” said the Sorceress, a tracery of wrinkles lining her eyes. “I want to hear all of it.” From her robes she withdrew a tiny glass bottle and uncorked it.

“On the last day of my life, as my village was burning...” Ivana spoke until tears streamed down her face and the Sorceress held the bottle out to catch them. When she had finished, her face had lightened with a look of relief.

One by one, the rusalki poured out their stories, and the Sorceress filled the bottles with their tears.

In the orange glow of a crackling fire, the Sorceress crouched with her visitor beside her. The cloaked figure sat with her hood thrown back, her youthful face puffy from crying.

The Sorceress removed a pot from the fire and filled a tin cup with hot liquid. It contained four phials of rusalka tears, motherwort, chamomile and hawthorn flowers. She passed the cup to the visitor.

Steam drifted up to full red cheeks as the young woman held it close.

That winter, the river froze hard and smooth. The rusalki huddled in the depths beneath and no one broke through the ice to join them.

Malina Douglas weaves stories that fuse the fantastic and the real. Publications include Sanitarium IV, Wyldblood, ParABnormal, and The Periodical Forlorn. Anthologies include N is for Nautical, The Monsters We Forgot and A Krampus Carol. She received an Honourable Mention in the Writers of the Future Contest and tweets @iridescentwords