Even though she was afraid, and remembering that even though she could swim a little, she was not very adept at it yet, Calla was not willing to give up that easily. Before the creature could go very far from the surface, she kicked out; even though the water forced her to move more slowly, she felt her shoe connect hard with something. There was a bellow of pain in her ear, and one of the hands started to release her. She took advantage of it, and wiggled her left arm free of the lasso, sending a concentrated blast of power over her shoulder at whatever had ahold of her. Much to her relief, despite it not being a lethal or even hurtful blast, it enabled her to break free, clawing her way to the surface.
She barely took a moment to gratefully breathe before grabbing the plants on the shore, and starting to pull herself up. However, she had not gotten far before she was being seized again. Frantically, Calla kicked out, writhing and wrapping some roots around her hands in an attempt to anchor herself in place. In desperation, and almost instinctively, she raised her head and called out for help-in Ghoulish.*
Calla didn’t even know if there were any Ghuls in the immediate vicinity-it just came out, probably an instinctive result of her connection to Sharky. And it seemed to startle her captor; the grip faltered enough for her to scramble all the way out of the water, turn around, and come face to face with whatever it was. Which, if you hadn’t guessed already, is what she did.
It looked, more than anything, like a giant frog masquerading as a man. He had a wide, sagging mouth, bulbous, fiery gold-green eyes, a large flat nose that sunk into his face, slimy green and brown skin, and long, webbed hands. Long, green, weedy stuff drooped from his chin and the top of his head; it took Calla a second to realize that it was actually hair, albeit very lank and greasy hair. And she could see that he was dripping with algae all over.
After her brief examination, Calla, hating to do it but thinking it was the fastest way of communicating with the creature if he didn’t speak English, stared into his eyes. And was promptly overwhelmed by a flood of strange thoughts and emotions. They mostly seemed to consist of shock at the moment-shock that she spoke the tongue of the vurdalaki, and shock at how efficiently she had gotten out of his grasp, and shock at what was happening now. And with a quick scan of his thoughts, Calla learned that the creature was known as a vodyanoy. It was a Russian water spirit, like the nymphs back home, except this one seemed far more aggressive. When she probed around to figure out why he had tried to drown her, his thoughts became somewhat indignant.
Drown her! He had no such intention! The truth was, he was lonely and seeking companionship. He had been here for hundreds of years, and the only other sentient creatures in this lake were some silly rusalki** who called him fat and giggled at him behind their webs when they thought he wasn’t looking.
That doesn’t give you the right to just kidnap me! Calla retorted.
However, as she looked at his thoughts, she felt a pang of sympathy for the vodyanoy. She knew how it felt to be lonely.
Could you try going to another lake?
He twisted around in the water a bit, until he was able to hold up a fat tail. Calla began to see the problem, since this lake was completely land-locked. He was stuck here, with nowhere else to go, and despite the other creatures there, he was completely alone.
But there are other ways besides kidnapping…
She spent maybe an hour sitting by the side of the lake, talking mentally to the vodyanoy, whose name she learned was Pavel. He was overjoyed at finally being able to talk to someone, and determined to make the most of it. And the mental connection was beneficial for Calla, too; not only was she helping someone and being distracted from her worry about what was happening to Tristan, but it enabled her, after a time, to start figuring out the basics of the Russian language; in a way, killing multiple birds with one stone.
Finally, though, she had to say, I need to go back now. Baba Yaga needs me to bring these plants to her.
She couldn’t help questioning the veracity of that statement a little bit; both that the witch actually needed the plants, and that she needed Calla to be the one to go and get them. But Pavel understood; nobody around here ever wanted to cross Baba Yaga.
She would come back, wouldn't she?
...I’ll try.
Calla looked away, rubbing her throbbing temples, and cut some fresh plants to add to the bag, before going back to where she had left the mortar.
Baba Yaga barely bit back a cackle when Calla stepped into the cottage: damp, muddy, a little bloody around the hands, and windblown.
“Have a good time?” she asked innocently.
*Ghoulish had become her word for the Ghul language, if you could call it that, which her blood bond with a Ghul had kind of helped her to understand better. It’s based on a series of screeches, growls, snarls, and inflections based on current emotions. A call for help is a sort of long, high banshee-like wail, that if done right, can reach an octave usually saved for dog whistles.
**Russian water nymphs. Often purported to be the spirits of women who drowned themselves, and well-known for luring young men to their deaths by drowning or something. A lot like mermaids and other types of woman monsters in mythology, really.
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