Exultation flooded through my veins in a surge, and celebratory heartbeats thundered with joy, for my Arianna had finally been released from the shackles my principles had placed upon her. If I hadn’t stopped her from killing her father that night: these terrible and wretched circumstances which brought us to death would not have happened!

  There was a clear and evident difference between her father still living today and her father having been slain back then: we were now suffering from this unholy afterlife while he yet lived! Perhaps the attackers and the Cardinal weren't such an obvious connection inherently, but an incredibly suspicious correlation had become clear to us when those soldiers had spoken in Italian around us!

  They'd known whom to target before beginning their attack, which necessitated that they’d first been made extremely well informed of the potential risks that might arise prior to their assault. Certainly, that still could be the work of an exceptionally clever breed of banditry… but such a intelligent group would never have struck us immediately before winter, nor in such a manner as these soldiers did!

  Our attackers were too well-prepared, too well-organized, too well-equipped, and far too fluent in the Vatican dialect to be mere raiders — indeed, what a strange thing that was to consider, for they’d behaved like no raid I’d ever heard the account of! Certainly, there was a wanton element to them, for I had seen it myself, but where was the looting? They killed with little distinction — only a few absolutely unspeakable creatures saw fit to spare anyone for even a short while — and they’d had a plan that didn’t pan out quite as rehearsed!

  There was the distant possibility that indeed some silly band of organized Roman brigands found themselves out here in the frontier with knowledge of Arianna’s person, and as they’d never engaged before in a raid: they simply didn’t know how bandits were supposed to function! Proper bandits pillage and plunder in a craven manner, they don’t totally despoil and ravish a population of farmers so brazenly as to face them in a remotely equal number!

  Banditry is a dangerous game to play, for it’s best played in small numbers, and for a very short time. The moment that normal brigands have had a successful raid is the same moment that ordinary marauders begin to squabble amongst themselves, which rapidly degenerates into scuffles with each other, which themselves erupt violently into all out hostilities between the evildoers! There is no honor among thieves, for they’ve seen that their fellows have money and goods, and they covet these things!

  Why would a bandit group bother to rob from some near-destitute farmers far beyond the fringes of society in autumn? They’re supposed to be opportunistic! Robbing us on the cusp of winter was risk, and they are supposed to be rather risk-averse sorts! They had just weeks to beat it past the snowfall, and the terrain of the frontier can be treacherous even in summer!

  Even supposing that such a group did come upon us: there was simply no sanity in murdering and raping all the farmers in a place where food is hard to produce, and so far away that there was no possibility that we might ever find justice for their crimes! If they truly were stuck by winter’s snows: there would be no more people left to produce more goods to rob in the spring!

  Regardless, there was just no excuse for murdering us all, for conventional bandits simply wear masks so that they will not be recognized by their victims, but each of these ‘would-be outlaws’ had their faces bare and visible! No matter how I framed the argument for ‘coincidences’ upon ‘coincidental’ circumstances: I simply could not reconcile their actual behavior with these motives!

  “Wow, oh my God, Mira… like, I never thought that I’d hear you say that, and you promised too! I can’t believe this, I’m just… this is just so fucking awesome!” My Arianna’s voice just gushed inside me with utter release, for she’d been withholding herself from this for almost twenty years, and entirely on my account. She’d shortly continued as was her usual when she was feeling particularly excitable: without any pause if she wasn’t made to,

  “I’m definitely happy that you said it, I mean, I’m still like really angry, but I’m just sooo glad to be done with pretending that I’m over it! I am so not over what that fucker did to Carmen! I’m going to tear him apart, and I’m so starting with his smug fucking face! I'll burn his eyes right out of thei-”

  “Rianna!” I interrupted her incredibly rude ranting before she’d quite gotten into the full swing of it, as even if she was going to murder her own father: I would not have her speak of it with such imagery as that! Not because I cared one whit what language and graphic details she used away from the ears of children, but rather that I didn’t want to think about it, and she’d already managed to put such a disgusting thought into my mind as to make my stomach growl in false protest!

  I’d stopped her in the middle of her thoughts, and her mind seemed to have somewhat stalled for the disruption, if the stuttering steps I felt upon my heart were anything to judge by. Rather than keep listening to my heart as it absolutely clicked inside me in such a nauseating manner: I decided that I should strike up conversation with the rusalka in my bucket,

  “Welcome to our village, Katherine. I pray that you’ll like it more than that river.”

  The watery woman began to form up the top half of herself, for she didn’t exactly have room to ‘stand’ in the bucket, and I was quite thankful that she saw fit to clothe herself at the same time. She then turned to me with her sparkling jewel-like eyes and spoke, 

  “Hey, sweetie, I see the one house and the bandstand,” and she gestured to the Fredrickson’s place and the new feasting area that my beloved had designed on a whim, before she continued, “and a few ruins, but where is the rest of the village supposed to be?”

  I wouldn’t have known what Katherine had meant by ‘bandstand’ if she hadn’t indicated the pavilion when she’d said it, and this was far from the first strange and unplaceable comment she’d made in my presence. I’d figured that Katherine was from very far away, for her accent continued to elude me all the while. I would absolutely have to ask her where she was from later, for I was dreadfully curious, but it wasn’t as if she would be going anywhere: there would be other opportunities, so I answered her with as tight a grip on my emotions as I could,

  “Two nights ago, our village was annihilated when men of Roman stock came upon us. There was an exchange of death, and my Arianna performed an ascension ritual with the last of her life. It went awry, and there was an accidental aetherial discharge which ate at the surrounding matter.”

  Katherine’s eyes had no lids by which to blink, but she affected such a confused look before me that I couldn’t help but to laugh at how utterly confounded she’d appeared to be. Arianna’s voice came to me in that interim, for her mental blockage seemed to have cleared,

  “Mira, that may have been like the single most clinical thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

  Arianna had the right of it, for I’d been very much trying to keep any errant feelings from entering my voice. I was simply unable to endure their intensity, so I ‘hefted’ the wheelbarrow which was as light as a feather to me, and I moved my feet towards the few buildings that still stood.

  For most of the way there we had a blissful silence between all of us, and Katherine came out of her astounded state as the vision of children playing and freely feasting came into her eyes. A tremendous toothy smile appeared on her face, and her lidless eyes reshaped themselves to resemble a joyful expression.

  She seemed so greatly enthused to be seeing other people — and in such numbers as this — that I very much hoped her amiable cheeriness meant that she’d quite entirely forgotten about my extremely understated summary of events! That was by far the better outcome for me, as I didn’t terribly desire to speak of that night if I could help it, but I’d found myself shortly near enough to the Fredrickson’s house for what I’d been planning.

  “Rianna,” I spoke to my dearly departed, “how difficult would it be for you to dig a new well?”

  My beloved’s thinking-ants didn’t even wriggle into step before she’d come out with what I’d been hoping to hear, “Easy. That’s not even a little hard, Mira. I’ve got so much aether to me that I won’t even have to do it in batches anymore. Where do you want it?”

  I pointed out to a place only a small distance away from the pavilion, which happened to be within a few meters of me, and the black mist pooled out of my phylactery. It swarmed into the grass at the designated location like a cloud of locusts, and the darkness soon ate away at the earth as the dark aether tunneled towards the aquifer.

  Stones embedded themselves into its walls all down its length, and the hole just radiated with a blackness deeper than any I’d ever before seen. It wasn’t a minute before my dearly departed spoke to me,

  “And that’s water, Mira, so you can bring her over now. Ah, we can reuse the bucket too!”

  My Arianna was usually so clever, so it was always such a strange thing when she missed an obvious fault. This bucket was utterly unusable for a well-pail as the flimsiness of its plastic carry should have indicated to her, but although I had some vital disagreements to argue with Arianna: I felt that we should first have asked Katherine where she might’ve wanted to be moved to.

  I hadn’t considered how very cramped a well might’ve been for someone who’d felt trapped in that river for so long, so I was a feeling far too regretful to admit that I’d been thinking of pouring my newest friend into a well and being done with her until morning! While I felt so cognizant of the matter: I very much prayed that she was entirely ignorant of the implications of building a well right before the barrow she watched from… so I did my best to pretend away my rudeness as I quibbled on to find Katherine’s actual wants,

  “Katherine, I don’t believe that I’ve specified our intentions yet, but I don’t mean to be so uncourteous as to leave you unknowing on matters that involve yourself. We’d intended for you to test your toes in the water of a natural aquifer today, but we would happily leave aside such experimentations until the morrow, or never if you should prefer. Would you like for us to build a large pond of aetherwater for you before we continue our well work?”

  The watery ghost’s gaze broke away from the children, and she smiled so sweetly at me that I rather had to close my eyes to remain unaffected by her radiant beauty… which rather didn’t work as I’d intended, for the soft sounds which came into my ear retained her attractive influence,

  “A pond sounds lovely for a night, sweetheart, but you don’t have to drop what you’re doing. I’ve wanted out of that river forever, and magic is just fascinating to witness, so I can wait til you two are done with the lightshow.”

  What a relief it was for her to ignore my heartless original intentions, for I hadn’t meant to be so negligent and cruelly careless about helping Katherine. I was decidedly less than relieved of her voice’s effect on me, though… for it was a shuddersome thing to listen to, but I nevertheless nodded to her as I took her words to heart, and I turned again upon my Arianna,

  “Rianna, this handle simply won’t hold up to the directed pressure of a rope upon it; it will strain, and it will snap. This bucket was not at all designed for use in a well, and you can surely see that the total lack of stabilizers or weights upon it would lead to it floating near-uselessly at the bottom! Just imagine the struggle there would be to tip it into the water sufficiently for it to stick!”

  Arianna must’ve been ready enough for my argument, for she shortly disagreed with part of my assessment, even as she acceded to the rest,

  “Then all we have to do is change out the handle, and it’ll hold up properly! It may not have been designed for being a good well-pail, but think about how much easier it’d be to pull it up!” Here she stopped to draw breath in through my lungs, and I found myself giving in to her need for air before she was satisfied enough to continue,

  “Plastic is impossibly light, Mira, like I know you’re incredibly strong now and everything, but do you remember that stupid wooden thing we had to use before Gerald got us a leather one fixed up? Fuck that sodden thing was heavy. We absolutely should make the new pail out of plastic, even if we don’t use this one in particular!”

  Arianna’s excitable raving had a convincing-enough ring of truth to it, and I figured that I might as well build an example bucket for us to better debate the best design. I began to manipulate the evil energies which swirled inside me, and they answered my call to form up into another fluorescent orange plastic bucket, but with a slightly modified design!

  Its bottom was elevated slightly from the one I’d built for Katherine, for I had created a hollow which I then weighted with stone on one side. The plastic handle became a nest of metal wires that came into a rope-ring at their end, and in a stroke of inspiration: I widened the bucket’s opening such that it more resembled a plastic bowl with its flanged edges. I smiled with a satisfaction at my work, and then I addressed my Arianna,

  “What do you think of this then, Rianna?”

  Little feet danced across my heart as my beloved studied my prototype with a critical eye, and although I could feel a general approval arising from her phylactery: her words were not quite so generous as I’d hoped, and they had a judgmental bent to them,

  “Better, but we’re not there yet, I think. If we have to weight it, then we lose many of the advantages of using plastic from the start, Mira… and why didn’t you use a heavier substance for that instead? That little stone won’t even push against the buoyancy! Like, lead or gold might have done it, but not mere stone, Mira. So we need to completely forgo the weighting process, or else maximize it, and I’m sure everyone would prefer that we abandon trying to make their work harder than it needs to be.”

  The blackness ran out of my pendent of her accord, for it seemed that she'd meant to debate our designs in the same manner as I. Darkness wrapped around the bucket like an inky cloak, and when she was done iterating upon it: it rather resembled the leather bowl of Gerald’s make, except that it was made entirely of plastic aside from the few metal hoops inset for multiple ropes.

  “The buoyancy Mira,” Arianna continued while I scrutinized her work, “I just don’t think we can actually burden plastic sufficiently to cause it to sink. To even try would make it just absolutely unusable, so like, why fix what isn’t broken? We can just ‘scoop’ the water into it like Gerald used to. I’m not really all that good with knots though, and I don’t know that yours are going to work for this, so maybe we should get Bart to… Bart. Oh, Mira, we’re idiots.”

  I groaned as she’d said Bart’s name for the second time, for I felt truly ridiculous. We’d been arguing so much regarding our better bucket prototypes for manual pulling that we’d entirely forgotten about a system which forwent such a tired old method, and it was better enough that it made our debate wholly pointless! That was a lot of intellectual energy gone for nothing, and I was so exhausted with being awake as it was!

  Bart had long been the most scientifically adventurous person in the village after Arianna and myself, and he was the reason the village had such an easy time with water, for he’d been the one to build and install the ‘draw handle’ we used to have. Simple, he’d called it with a hearty laugh, as all we had to do was ‘crank’ the handle and it would bring up the bucket with an ease that bordered on effortless even when compared to Gerald’s old system, which had itself been a Godsend.

  ‘Simple’ it may have been in hindsight, for the machinery involved was easily enough understood once a person was shown the device, but when the Fredricksons arrived in our village, and Bart had first performed his own brand of ‘magic’: we’d celebrated with a fete, and Olga herself deigned to preside over the exultant prayer and song that rang out that day! It was so joyous an occasion that I even saw a cheerful smile upon Olga’s face, as Providence had surely visited us through Bart’s works! Of this — and this alone — the two of us were in total agreement for.

  As simple a thing as his mechanism had been: it had quite evaded us in our discussion about drawing water before Arianna had said Bart’s name, and it was therefore very lucky that absolutely nobody from the village was gawking as we had our useless discussion of comparing buckets. That every one of the living children aside from Petyr and my son were gathered in attendance was nothing short of a fanciful lunacy! An engineered vision brought forth by my shame for failing to account for Bart’s ingenuity from near a decade past!

  Certainly, I couldn’t say what might have actually drawn the children over, for there was hardly a single interesting sight for which they might’ve come to congregate before! There were simply no incredible feats of the fantastical for them to witness; not our incredible mystical powers of creation, and there was positively nothing of any note to be said of the most beautiful creature the Lord placed upon this Earth rising out of my bucket like a fabled djinn from its lamp!

  No, my eyes framed with a red tint as the scent of life flooded through my nostrils, so it would seem that we’d actually had pests aplenty in attendance to our foolishness, for they numbered in near to a score, and only the two eldest children among their stock were absent! Even Roger was gawking like a young child faced with the most wondrous sight to have ever graced this Earth, for he stared with such a stupefied expression at the rusalka in my bucket, though he was nearing fifteen years of age himself! His awe was not to be outdone though, for the thirteen year old Alexander had been so very enamoured with the beauty beside me that he had absolutely fallen onto his face after tripping over his own feet!

  Well, I had no room to chide their behavior, for my own experience with Katherine had gone well beyond mere wonder and fascination, as the mere sight of her had very nearly sent me into felicity itself! My eyes glanced in her direction to be quite sure Katherine was still clothed, and I breathed a short sigh of relief to find that she most certainly was.

  I turned back to the hole for the well, and I then realized that if I hastened now: I could potentially reclaim a small portion of my lost pride, and so I cast out the blackness to form up the shape of the well we’d known for the last eight years, with its axle, wheel, gear, handle, bucket, and rope.

  A determined focus held for me, but I could still sense that my Arianna felt compelled to join in, so it was no surprise to me when stones began to coalesce from a split she’d formed in the dark particles I commanded, and they shortly appeared in a neat stack underneath the mechanism I was recreating!

  Although I’d done my very best to will their existence from my mind: the underfoots continued advancing around us all the while, or so the smell went! I had to blink the Thirst from my eyes, for it was a dreadful enough distraction that I’d rather had to recreate some small portions of my evil efforts, which had fallen away as the blackness lost its cohesion! I could only pray that they all stayed far enough away for me to quite complete my remembrance of Bart’s old mechanism, and I was immensely enthused when at last the well’s functionality had been restored!

  Such a progress my lover and I had made, that we’d entirely disregarded the audience we’d never intended to attract, and the mist went out of Arianna’s and my will at once to complete the well’s cover. It didn’t matter anymore that the bucket which connected itself through our memories wasn’t made of plastic, for it was such an easy task to bring it to the surface that the task of drawing water had long fallen to the chores of children!

  Still, there was some small manner of disagreement between us over the roof as Arianna and I otherwise worked in tandem, for she’d rather wanted to adjust it to being ever so slightly larger. I didn’t see the reason in ‘fixing what wasn’t broken’ as my dearly departed had earlier said, and so the roof repeatedly ended up as some mismatched and warped thing completely despite our entirely pure intentions for it!

  The redness soon painted my vision in blood-tones, and the smell coming to me as I squabbled with my Arianna over the proper size a well cover should ought to be was rather causing me to further malform the very roof I’d felt so driven to repair! My concentration gathered tightly in response, for the difficulty of my task had increased in small steps, and this was so frustrating a thing for me that I stubbornly refused to allow for Arianna’s inane design!

  “What are you doing, Missus Mira?” I heard Talia Fredrickson’s voice from a small distance in front of me, though I didn’t turn to see her. My annoyance with my own failures was at near the maximum I could quite endure, but I wasn’t about to take it out on a six year old sickly child, so I affected as gentle a voice as I could to explain this dire matter to her,

  “Miss Mira, Talia; Arianna and I aren’t married, though we do love each other very much,” I corrected her as I felt myself slowly losing the battle over my own dark powers to Arianna, but all the same I couldn’t simply ignore her query, so I answered in as elucidating a manner as I then felt capable,

  “And as you can see: I’m vying with her over the size of this… roof. Mercy, what am I doing?”

  I sighed with a heavy sense of defeat, for although I was unreasonably loathe to allow my Arianna full control over destroying the roof: I was surely above this pettiness — it really was just a roof after all, and when she inevitably broke it by overburdening the struts: she was able enough to fix her own mistakes! — so I finally released my will from the blackness, and I let her bend the conical shape to her will entirely.

  The roof was thus symmetrical in short order, if perhaps slightly overlarge — it was so very comically oversized in its contrast with the structure beneath it,  and it rather sparked the beginning of a cathartic fit within me! — and the well appeared almost entirely as it used to be, although in a different location, as there was no logic in keeping it so far away from the Fredrickson’s when there were no other houses around anyway.

  There was a deep satisfaction in this construction, and we were both silent for a spell, but our reverie could never have lasted… for the roof began to sway, and it shortly teetered itself free of its comparatively tiny holding boards! It landed with a thump, and I had to laugh with such abandon then that I fell to my knees!

  I had so many snooty inquisitions in mind to play before my Arianna then that if there’d been no bystanders around: I might’ve mercilessly teased my poor lover, and I would have been well rewarded for it, to judge by the embarrassment which pumped into me from her phylactery! Even the bloodthirst I was affected with was dissipating in small amounts before my sheer humor, such that I could shortly see that Talia’s also giggling form was immediately before me!

  So confident was I then in my relative harmlessness that I could not resist the adorable girl before me, for we had bonded well over the last six years, and I spread my arms around her in a hug. Immediately, the rational part of me regretted my arrogance, for her tiny heart pounded the red back into my eyes like a hammer… but this newly emotive side of me would not release her, for she’d wrapped her own smaller arms around my back, and it very much reasoned that there were some things so wonderful that a person simply had to suffer for them!

  It was regretful that I couldn’t any longer see for the deep bloody haze that covered my eyes, but I remained the very image of restraint. Talia shifted in my arms, and my emotive and logical sides compromised such that I was able to release her for long enough to take her minuscule hands in mine.

  “Who’s the pretty lady, Missus Mira?” Talia asked me, and I could only assume that she’d meant Katherine, for I was entirely unable to imagine that any other otherworldly beauties might’ve appeared since I’d lost my vision to Thirst. Naturally, since I was entirely blind to the world aside from the crimson beacons that vaguely outlined each of the children, I refrained from trying to gesture at Katherine as I introduced my newest friend to Talia and the crowding underfoots,

  “This is Katherine, Talia, everyone. She’s a rusalka from the nearby river. We were just about to build her a pond in the village, actually.”

  One of the cleverer teenagers — likely Natalie Orlov, though I could not see her for the blinding crimson outlines of life — very responsibly came out with a caution-minded warning for the rest of the children before they all drew so close as Talia, though she addressed it to me as a question,

  “Doctor Mira, if she’s really a rusalka: why did you bring her here? Will she not drown us and eat our bodies if given the chance?”

  A small smile turned onto my lips as the nostalgic image of Natalie sneaking into our house at odd hours for tutoring came into my mind. The girl was always too bright for the frontier, and if her mother hadn’t been Olga Orlov: I might’ve tried to match her with my son! With the elder Orlovs gone before her, perhaps my Luca might finally find a worthy romance in this frontier village!

  Not that I’d actually interfere with his decisions on the matter. My own forbidden love had been far too important in my life, so for me to tell him precisely whom he was allowed to love was as hypocritical and needlessly cruel a thing as I could do. I wasn’t his only parent to think this, for Arianna’d had enough suitors arranged to her absolute exasperation that the mere mention of an arranged marriage could cause a spontaneous conflagration around her! Just as the barest consideration of fire now brought me to shiver inside, but I was thankful to have something else to immediately distract myself with!

  “That’s what I’d thought at first too, dear, but I was mistaken. It seems the only thing Katherine will drown you in is sweetness. Probably.” I answered Natalie’s fears as best I was able, and I was relieved to find that the exchange stopped there.

  Arianna stirred inside me, as if she were mentally rousing herself from her meek and defeatist mindset. I felt the blackness pour out of me again, and it traveled back towards where I remembered the well being in relation to Talia — whose hands I made myself release — so I knew that Arianna was trying to fix the roof again. I might’ve let her continue, but the other children all began to properly approach the elegant stranger in my bucket, and although I didn’t know that my bloodthirst could be any worse than it already was: I was shortly given a lesson I’d never wanted to learn.

  Drool escaped my mouth before I’d quite realized it, and I swallowed the gathering saliva back as my vigilance rose. I figured that it was as good a time as any to retask my beloved’s talents, for I needed anything which could distract the children away from me, and I very much felt that Katherine was the key. The beautiful, charming key to my salvation that I couldn’t properly interact with while I was so thirsty!

  “Rianna, stop playing with the well,” I said, and then I gulped down still more of the pooling spittle, “I need you to make the pond, and drop Katherine in it.”