Vodník Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2012 by Bryce Cundick, whose pseudonym is Bryce Moore

  Maps copyright © 2012 by Isaac Stewart

  Interior reaper illustration © Ozan Tekin

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

  TU BOOKS, an imprint of LEE & LOW BOOKS Inc.

  95 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

  leeandlow.com

  Book design by Isaac Stewart

  eBook conversion by Neustudio

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Moore, Bryce. Vodník / Bryce Moore. -- 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Sixteen-year-old Tomas and his Roma family left Slovakia because of mysterious attacks on his life when he was a child, but when they return, the same creatures of folklore begin to strike again and Tomas, aided by his cousin, will have to bargain with Death herself to set things right.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 978-1-60060-852-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-60060-881-0 (e-book)

  [1. Supernatural--Fiction. 2. Mythology, Slavic--Fiction. 3. Cousins--Fiction. 4. Death--Fiction. 5. Romanies--Fiction. 6. Slovakia--Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.M78227Vod 2012 [Fic]--dc23 2011042996

  For Denisa, who made it all possible. I love you!

  Alena Kováčová: AH-len-ah KOH-vah-cho-vah

  Katka: KAHT-kah

  Lesana: LESS-ah-nah

  L’uboš: LOO-bohsh

  Matúš Čak: MAH-toosh chalk

  Morena: MORE-en-ah

  Ohnica: OH-neet-sah

  Starenka: STAH-ren-kah

  Tomas: TOE-mahs

  Trenčín: TREN-cheen

  Víla: VEE-lah

  Vít’azoslav: VEE-tah-zo-slav

  Vodník: VODE-neek

  Zubatá: ZOO-bah-tah

  Fire vílas can be treacherous to deal with if you get on their bad side. They’re unpredictable, vengeful, and have memories that last centuries. Often the simplest approach to dealing with them is to bind them to flame instead of trying to kill them. Once bound, a fire víla typically becomes much more docile.

  Waking up in a hospital bed is never a good thing. I coughed, and pain shot through my lungs. My eyes felt raw, like they’d been sandblasted.

  “Tomas?” Mom came over to the bed and put her hand on my forehead. An oxygen mask covered my mouth, and they’d clipped a pulse monitor on my left forefinger. The room had a television and dresser, but no window. Fluorescent lights glared down from the ceiling, making my parents look pale and worn. It didn’t help that they both had smudges of ash at the edges of their faces.

  Even with tired eyes that betrayed a lack of sleep, Mom still managed to stay in control, with her hair in a tight ponytail and her back straight. Her complexion was normally as dark as mine, but now her olive skin looked washed out. Less vibrant. “How are you feeling?”

  I blinked. My thoughts started to click together. When I spoke, I could still taste the smoke, and I couldn’t seem to take a full breath. “The house. What happened?” The oxygen mask made it sound like I was talking through a towel.

  Dad swallowed before answering. “It’s gone. The firefighters’ response was quick, but . . .”

  What could I say to that? The scene flashed through my mind again: the smoke, the smells. Fire eating the hallway, cracking the glass in picture frames. “Everything?”

  “Everything but us,” Dad said. “And that’s all that really matters, right?”

  We were all quiet after he said that, the only sound coming from the steady beep of the pulse monitor—well, that and my breathing. I’d make Darth Vader proud, with all that wheezing. I knew Dad was right, but my mind conjured up images of the living room engulfed in flames, the computer, all my movies, Mom’s recipe books. Dad spoke again. “I—I’m sorry, Tomas.”

  “For what?”

  He ran his fingers through his hair, something he only did when he was stressed. “I should have been there for you. If we hadn’t decided to go to the midnight movie . . . When we got home, the fire was already in full force. Your mom and I rushed in to get you, but the firemen stopped us. I couldn’t . . .” He trailed off, his throat practically convulsing as he kept swallowing. He pushed his glasses up his nose, and for a moment, he seemed like a stranger. Completely powerless.

  “It’s okay, Dad,” I said, feeling guilty and not sure why. A bout of coughing hit me, and it took a moment to continue. “It worked out. I’m fine. No worries.”

  He nodded, but didn’t say anything. Mom’s face was lined with concern.

  “What happened?” I asked Mom, giving Dad some time to think. “I could have sworn I was in the middle of the fire. How am I not hurt?”

  A voice spoke from the doorway. “That’s what we’d like to know too.” A doctor entered dressed in a white lab coat over street clothes. He held a clipboard, which he tucked under his arm as he walked over to me and shook my hand. “I’m Dr. Geld. Glad to see you up and awake again.”

  “How long have I been out?” I asked.

  He smiled. “About eight hours. Enough time for us to get some oxygen into you and for your body to have the rest it needed to start recovering. You inhaled a lot of smoke. Do you remember much of what happened?”

  “No. I woke up and tried to get out, but there was so much smoke . . .” I checked my old burn scar that covered my right arm and then some, the skin mottled and rippled like a melted candle. “It wasn’t even hot.”

  Dr. Geld cleared his throat. “Yes,” he said. “Well then, that’s that. The firefighter said he found you in your bedroom, surrounded by flames. But since you say the temperature inside wasn’t too high—and your body confirms that for us—we’ll have to just say you’re a lucky young man.”

  “Yeah,” I said, coughing again. “Lucky.” Twice now in my life I’ve been this “lucky.”

  “Right.” Dr. Geld made a couple of notes on his clipboard. “I did have one question for you—or your parents. We ran a few basic tests to make sure your son was all right. There seems to be some extensive scarring in his lungs. Healed already, but if you could just confirm—”

  “He was in an accident when he was little,” Mom said. “He almost drowned. The scars are from then.”

  Dr. Geld frowned and flipped through his papers. “From drowning? I would have thought they came from when he was originally burned. The charts—”

  “It happened at the same time,” I said. “When I was five, I almost drowned, and they found me with third degree burns on my right arm and side of my torso. It’s on my records, if you’d get them from my doctor.”

  “Oh,” the doctor said. I knew what he was thinking: how does someone get third degree burns while they’re drowning? I wish I knew. “That explains that,” he continued. “You’ll need to stay with us for another day or two before we can release you. Sometimes smoke damage can take a bit to fully manifest, but I think you’re out of the woods now. You’ll be free to check out soon enough.” We went through another round of hand shaking, and he left.

  An uncomfortable pause followed the doctor’s departure, filled only by the unrelenting beeping coming from the machine next to me. The place smelled like biology class, and the bed was too soft. “Free to check out,” I said at last. “Check out to where?”

  “Well,” Dad said, sitting down in a
chair and not meeting my eyes. “About that. We’ve been on the phone with the insurance agent, and it wasn’t all good news.”

  “What’s the problem?” I asked.

  “Housing costs have soared in the last few years,” Mom said, coming over to the bed to take my hand. “And . . . well, your father and I have discovered our insurance hasn’t kept up.”

  I stared at them. Insurance? I’d never spent a moment in my life even thinking about the word. Maybe I should have. “What do you mean?”

  “We were under-insured,” Dad said, finally looking up at me. “Badly. We can’t afford to both replace our belongings and purchase another house.”

  “But that’s what insurance is for, right?” I said, drawing on what little I knew of the subject. “To pay you back for all the stuff you lost. Don’t the insurance people make sure you’ve done things right? They probably—”

  “The area became too expensive,” Mom said. “The insurance will pay our mortgage off, cover the loss of the Explorer, and maybe give us some money left over, but not enough. So your father and I can find new jobs somewhere else, or . . .”

  “Or we could try something more drastic,” Dad finished.

  “Drastic?” I said. My shortness of breath seemed to get even worse. Had someone turned off my oxygen?

  Dad nodded, then licked his lips. He stood up. “How would you feel about moving to Slovakia?”

  “Slovakia” and “Tomas” weren’t two concepts that got put together much anymore. Ever since we’d moved from Slovakia when I was five, right after the accident, I’d always shied away from it. Mom and Dad had gone over a couple of times, but something had always come up to keep me away. And yes, if someone were to really press me, they might discover the Atlantic Ocean had more than a little to do with my reluctance. Didn’t the Titanic teach anyone a lesson?

  “What?” I said.

  Mom glanced at Dad, who gave a little shrug. Mom sighed, then said, “Our savings would go much further there, and we’d be able to keep our standard of living. It’s something we’ve thought about doing for years, but there was always a reason to stay in America. Now . . . your Uncle L’uboš said he could find a job for me. He knows someone at an ESL school, and they’re hiring teachers.”

  “What about Dad?”

  “I could try writing again,” Dad said, coming closer to the bed to hold on to the metal side rails. As he talked, some of the worry lines faded from his face. Where Mom now hesitated, he was excited. “That’s what I wanted to do years ago, but so many things got in the way—my job took so many hours, and I never had the time to really dig into it. I know you’re just finishing your sophomore year and—”

  “Fine,” I said.

  They blinked in unison, eyes wide in matching expressions. “Just like that?” Mom said. “Fine?”

  “You guys are trying to be nice to me, and I appreciate it. But it’s okay. We’re in a tight spot.” Another round of coughing hit me. It felt like my body had issued an eviction notice to my lungs. Once I could breathe again, I said, “So . . . fine. It’s not like I’ll be leaving anyone behind.”

  That caused another awkward pause. My struggle to make friends had been a popular dinner table conversation over the years, with them always suggesting I try different things: sports, drama club, karate. Anything but movies and TV, which is what I really loved to do. Movies didn’t stare at your scar or make you flounder for something to talk about. What was so wrong with that? My parents were in touch with only about three people from their high school days. What did it matter if I never had friends at school?

  I could watch movies in Slovakia just as easily as I could watch movies in America. My mind was still numb from everything that had happened. What I needed right then was a television, a remote control, and about five hours of nothing to do.

  Dad was watching Mom, his jaw clenched in defiance for some strange reason. If there was an Oscar for staring contests, my parents were gunning for a nomination. All at once Dad cleared his throat and asked, “What do you remember about Slovakia?”

  She didn’t answer. He broke the gaze and turned to me, repeating the question.

  “Oh,” I said, taken aback. “You meant me?” I shrugged, trying to force myself to concentrate. “Not much. I was five. There were a lot of trees, and there was a playground near our house. That’s about it.” I only remembered the playground because there was a picture of me at it on our piano. No—there used to be a picture of it on our piano.

  “Well,” Mom said, glaring at my dad. The room, which was small enough to begin with, had gotten even smaller. Had somebody wheeled in another beeping machine? “That’s enough questions for now.” She had gone from fine to pissed in about five seconds, and I wasn’t sure why.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Mom said.

  Dad’s face hardened. “It’s not nothing. If you’re so worried about it after all these years, I don’t want us moving back at all. Let’s just ask him. If he doesn’t remember, then we can drop it. Okay?”

  Mom’s lips pressed together, but she stayed quiet.

  Dad fiddled with my blanket as he spoke, unable to meet my eyes. “When you were in Slovakia before—when we lived there those three years—you had a very . . . active imagination. It got you into no end of trouble. And even though you were always an honest kid—as honest as kids get, of course—you would swear you were seeing the wildest things. Škriatokov. Víly. Myths.”

  I hardly recognized the Slovak words. Dwarves? Fairies? Mom never told me Slovak folktales—this must be why. “So what?”

  He glanced up at me for a half second, then focused on the metal side railing on my bed, shaking it to see if it was loose. “It wasn’t just that. At the end, you had that . . . accident. Your mom—we—thought it might be connected. We couldn’t stay there and risk anything happening again.”

  “Oh,” I said, not sure how else to respond. I started to massage the burn.

  “So you don’t remember any of it?” Mom asked.

  “Not much. The accident’s a total blank, and everything else from then is just flashes and pictures. I was five, remember?”

  “See?” Mom said, trying to sound bright. She walked over to the lone dresser in the room to get her purse. “We shouldn’t have worried. Now we’ll get out of your hair so you can get some rest.”

  I wasn’t letting it drop that easily. “Why did it stress you guys that much, then?” I asked.

  “What?” Mom asked, pausing with her purse over her shoulder.

  “Dad, you’re sweating like a pig.”

  He wiped his brow. The guy was turning into a spaghetti western extra. “It’s just hot in here.”

  “Spit it out.”

  “It’s not just that,” he said. “Your mother’s mother.”

  “I think that’s quite enough for today,” Mom said. She grabbed Dad by the arm and practically dragged him to the door.

  “You mean Babka?” I said, even more confused. “What does this have to do with her?”

  Mom smiled and stepped back to sit at the side of my bed. She stroked my hair. “You’re tired. It’s been a horrendous day. Let’s leave it at that, okay?”

  “What does Babka have to do with any of this?” I asked.

  Mom swallowed, then shrugged with one shoulder. “I miss her. I don’t like people talking about her—it still hurts too much. She died when I was in high school, and going back to Slovakia again . . . it won’t be the easiest thing I’ve done. Your father’s just concerned about me. Now stop worrying, and get some sleep.”

  And with the pulse monitor beeping, the oxygen mask over my face, the rawness of my eyes, and my persistent cough, sleep sounded really good right then. My house had just burned down. My parents had picked an odd time to fight about obscure family history, but then again, their house had just burned down too. Did I really want to get into an argument over this? I was tired. I was confused. I still felt like I had a point. Mom was uncomfortabl
e talking about it, but what about me? She always pulled something like this. Didn’t I deserve some straight answers?

  Even if I did, it was clear I wasn’t going to get them without a fight, and I wasn’t up to a fight right then. Besides, I’d probably be confused by the answers if I got them. All of this was making my head spin. I leaned back in my bed. “Okay.”

  My father went over and picked up his keys from the dresser. He looked stiff—upset. But he tried to sound chipper. “All right then,” he said. “We need to see about restoring some order to our lives. You stay here and rest. We’ll go out and get you some new clothes.”

  Of course. My entire wardrobe had gone up in the blaze. The memory of my T-shirt and shorts smoldering on my skin came back in a flash. “Dad,” I said. “My clothes were burning. I remember that. How is it I’m not touched?”

  He looked at me and shrugged. “I don’t know. All I can say is that it was a miracle. That’s the only explanation we’re likely to get.”

  The ability to interact with mystical creatures is typically hereditary, although an experienced Death can grant this to humans at will on a temporary basis. Having trouble telling your friends and acquaintances what you do for a living? Turn to Appendix M for more information.

  The next month was a whirlwind of activity. My parents were waist-deep in paperwork and planning, both of them on the phone with people in Slovakia nonstop. We were going to live near my Uncle L’uboš and his daughter, Katarina. His wife had died years ago from cancer.

  The doctors were surprised at how quickly I got over my smoke inhalation. Within twenty-four hours, my cough was gone, and the redness in my eyes had disappeared. I could even breathe normally.

  We still didn’t know what had caused the fire, although the fire department guessed it had started in the office. It wasn’t a stretch to see the fire starting in my imagination. A spark at the wrong place, and a flicker appeared, small at first, then spreading. Taking over the desk and my dad’s books, and all the time I was upstairs, sleeping while my parents were out at the late movie.