Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear (Wayward Children, #10)

by Seanan McGuire

Sing to me a river song, wide and swift and running: Sing to me of river fish, silver-bright and cunning. Sing to me an ocean song, deep and wide and true. Sing to me of ocean fish, and they will sing of you.

She had spent a lifetime in Belyyreka, and they had always called her a Drowned Girl, even when she was away from the water, and she had never considered how literal that might be, not until she had fallen into a river and felt hands yanking her by the shoulders, away from the surface, away from the real world, back into the false one, where mothers left her, one after the other, where nothing ever stayed.

“You understand nothing, little songbird, but even a stone can comprehend kindness. You’ll have time enough to learn, I promise you.”

If certain tasks would always be more difficult for her, well, wasn’t that true of everyone? No single person could do absolutely everything without aid, and so her own limitations weren’t limitations at all, merely different standards.

“And we’ve filled her head with stories of Mother Russia. She believes she already has a family. Her country is mother enough, and all the other orphans are her brothers and sisters. She wants what’s best for her family, and that’s why the children who want to leave us are always front and center when she arranges these little displays.” Her tone turned fond. “Again, she’s only six. She’s going to be a terror when she’s grown.”

(the idea that she might not think of herself as lacking anything had yet to form, and wouldn’t for years yet; the idea that a child who didn’t conform to his exact ideas of shape and function could be completely happy, and not consider herself lacking in the least, was even further away).

The idea of asking Nadya what she wanted had never occurred to either one of them. Children were people, absolutely, but foreign orphans were sure to be so consumed with gratitude that all they could possibly want was to make their new parents as happy as possible.

This was not her choice. This was her body, but it was not her decision, and that alone made it very heavy, and difficult to carry.

Privately, Nadya thought Pansy was less than perfectly content, and maybe shouldn’t have been allowed to have authority over another human being until she figured out how to be kinder to herself.

Pansy knew the little girl she had wanted better than the little girl she had,

She’d never really considered her missing arm a disability—it was just the way she was made, and always had been, and it didn’t stop her from doing anything she wanted to do—and now it was all the other children could see.

Stories had to have beginnings, which meant someone had to be where they were beginning, or there was no purpose to them. She was just at the beginning of a story, that was all, and this was perfectly possible.

The rivers don’t give gifts. They give obligations, and only the unlucky attract that much of their attention.”

“Trust is an important gift, difficult to give and easy to break. But if you trust me, I shall do my best to trust you, and believe you when you speak to me.

“This is a new place, and like all new places, it will have new rules. We’re glad to have you, and we’ll do our best not to confuse you too badly.”

“You saved yourself,” said Vasyl. “I would think that is the most important adventure of all.”

That’s the first thing new arrivals have to understand: water has weight, and different water has different weight. The water of the lake is very light, almost like the substance some people call air. You can breathe it and never notice, but you’re still breathing water, and you’re still Drowned. The water in the rivers is heavier, which means it falls to the bottom of the lake and runs there, heading for the great spouts that will drive it back up into the clouds, where it can fall again. Water loves falling.

next. If we don’t make sure this is your home, you might lose your certainty, and the doors might come to take you back.”

TIME IS A RIVER, or so they say in almost every world where time runs in a linear fashion and not in awkward, disconnected pools of causality that may or may not remain the same from day to day: time is a river, and like all rivers, it runs where it wishes, and cannot be stopped. Our time together is never as long as we would like, and so we must now move downstream perhaps more quickly than we would like. It is a pleasant thing, to linger in currents clean and clear, where we know nothing will hurt us. Sometimes, though, the fishing is better where the water moves more quickly. Sometimes, we must move on.

A future is a monster of its own breed, different for everyone, and ever inescapable.