Page 66 of The Sister's Curse
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Mom and I went hunting for the source of the pollution that summer.
A green flash washed over me, and I was a girl again, sitting in a low tree branch. Mom was hunting. She’d called the authorities about the poisoned water several times, left messages in hopes that something would be done.
But no one ever called back. So she hunted.
She didn’t hunt the way my dad did. Dad would’ve followed the tracks of men in the woods, their feet and their tires. He would’ve been able to determine the ages of the prints in the dust and what kinds of men made them.
Mom hunted with sticks. She tracked water with her dowsing rods, searching for the root of the pollution. Her sticks led us deeper into the woods, pulled by the magnetic veins of water. I soon began to distinguish fresh from poisoned; fresh water hummed and flowed evenly, while polluted water seemed to crackle in my ears, like static.
My mom and I spoke little, but the silences weren’t hostile, like before. My shoulders relaxed from being hunched around my ears, and I soaked in every bit of instruction she gave me. Now, she seemed focused on analyzing a stand of dying cattails beside the river. The cattails had yellowed, and dead fish had washed up on the beach. We buried the fish so that hungry herons wouldn’t eat them. There were tire tracks here, and footprints, but little else.
The day was brutally hot, and the tracks vanished near the road. Mom scooped river water into a black coffee mug, staring into it wordlessly without drinking. I thought at first that she was staring at her reflection, but her unfocused gaze seemed too slack, staring beyond the bottom of the cup.
It reminded me of the way she looked into the mirrors in the house. She hung mirrors she collected from garage sales, reflecting light back and forth into the shadows. I used to think she was vain, looking at her reflection, but maybe she saw something more there.
She often invited me to look over her shoulder at the mug, telling me to sit and soften my gaze. I saw clouds in the water sometimes. Sometimes, a coin-sized moon. I concentrated very hard now, wanting to see my dad, but all I saw were flower petals drifting near the bottom of the mug.
The trail of my mother’s quarry had gone cold. I sat with my back to the tree, paging through a library book of fairy tales.
Today I read a story called “The White Snake.” It was about a servant boy who tasted the king’s supper—a cooked white snake—which gave him the power to speak to animals. The boy found the queen’s missing ring, which had been swallowed by a goose, and he was turned out into the world with a little money. While on his travels, he helped animals, and found his way to a kingdom with a princess whose father would sell her hand in marriage to the man who could complete a series of tasks, including retrieving a ring from the bottom of the sea, collecting spilled grain, and stealing an apple from the Tree of Life. The boy completed all the tasks and was awarded the princess. Everyone lived happily ever after.
I slammed the book shut and scowled. I jammed it back into my pack.
“What’s wrong?” Mom asked, finally noticing my rage.
I rolled my eyes. “The boys always get to do the cool stuff in fairy tales. The girls are just furniture. They don’t get to pick their husbands. They don’t get to go anywhere. They’re like dolls. They do what they’re told.”
Mom laughed and sat beside me on the tree branch. Her laughwas pretty when she used it. “How about I tell you the story of some women who don’t do what they’re told?”
I crossed my arms over my chest, but leaned forward. I wanted to hear the story.
“In a part of the world covered by dark forests, there was once a peasant girl who caught fish for her family. She would sit by the river and whisper to the fish, and they would fling themselves onto the bank. She kept her family fed in lean times and was content in the deep woods, singing to the birds and the deer. She had a beautiful singing voice.
“One day, a boat came down the river. It belonged to a local prince who had gotten lost on the many rivers that spider-webbed over the land. He heard the girl singing and followed her voice. When the girl saw him, she was instantly lovestruck. And so was he. The girl directed the prince back to the main river, and he would sneak away to see her over that long summer. They planned to get married, envisioning a shining future together.
“When the prince told his parents, they disapproved. They forbade him to marry the peasant girl. He was meant to marry a girl of his station, a proper princess. The prince told the girl what had happened, that they must break it off.
“But the girl was steadfast. She wanted to run away to get married. The prince agreed, and told her he would meet her at midnight by the spot in the river where they first met. She waited at that spot at the appointed time and date…and he didn’t arrive.
“In the morning, the girl’s parents found her drowned among the cattails. They were furious, but had no recourse. Did the boy kill her? Did his parents? Did she drown herself in grief after he failed to show up? No one knew.”
I made a face. This was starting to sound like another one of those fairy tales where the girl got the short end of the stick.
“But what they did know was that the place became haunted, haunted by the spirit of the girl who drowned. People would hear her singing or see a dark shape swimming in the river. If they had sense, they ran away. The spirit never harmed women or children, who usually had the sense to flee. It was the men who would be ensorcelled by her song, who would be invited to come into the water, where she drowned them.”
I leaned forward. This sounded more like my kind of story. “What happened to the prince?”
“The prince went on to marry a respectable princess, and they had a son. One day, the prince was on a hunting trip with his son, when they heard singing. They were beckoned into the water by the spirit of the girl, who gleefully drowned them both.”
I nodded. This was more satisfactory, though I felt a little sorry for the boy, who was blameless.
“This happens often in that part of the world. When a woman is murdered, or commits suicide, she can haunt the rivers and streams. She stays there for all time, seeking revenge. There are hundreds such spirits, and they are all called by the same name: Rusalka.”
“Rusalka.” I repeated the word, rolling it around in my mouth. It tasted exotic and powerful, so much more so than the word “princess.”
She gave a sly smile. “I think you’ve just been reading the wrong kind of fairy story.”
