He and she halted a yard apart and lay free a while, regarding each other.
He was not naked like her; besides headband and knife belt, he had a cloth wrapped about his loins. Huge of stature, fair-skinned, golden-haired, green-eyed, he hardly differed from or-dinary man save in his beardlessness, webbed feet, easy breathing under water. Yes, hardly: to one of the halfworld, the outward unlikenesses were little, set beside the blazing identity. In him was a human, Christian soul.
“Oh, welcome, be very welcome,” ,the vilja munnured when she had gathered courage. Her tones, which reached his mennan’s hearing clearly, were tremulous as her smile.
Sternness replied: “Why do you think I am here?”
She retreated. “You. . . are you not he. . . memory is like mist,
but an autumn and an autumn ago-you drove the vodianoi hence?”
“That which then was me did so,” said the deep voice.
“You were frightened of me.” The vilja could not but giggle.
“Of me! You!”
Mirth released joy. She cast her arms toward him wide apart for him. “You’ve learned I’d not hurt you? How that does gladden me. Let me gladden you.”
“Be still, foul spirit!” he roared.
Bewildered, she shrank back from his wrath. “But, but I
wouldn’t hurt you,” she stammered. “How could I? Why should I wish to, I who have no one for friend?”
“Tentacle of darkness-“
“We’d be happy together, in the summer greenwood, in the
winter waters. I’d warm me at your breast, but you’d have me for
your cool cascade, your moonlit leaf-crown—“
“Have done! You’d haul men down to Hell!”
The vilja shuddered and fell mute. If she wept, the lake drank
her tears.
The other calmed. “Oh, you may not know yourself what you are,” he said. “Father Tomislav wonders whether Judas really knew what it was he did, until too late.”
He stopped, watchful. Seeing his fury abated, she eased in her quicksilver fashion, ventured the tiniest of smiles, and asked, “Judas? Should I know him? . . Yes, maybe once I heard-but it is gone from me.”
“Father Tomislav,” he said like the stroke of an ax. She shook her head. “No.” Frowning, finger to cheek: “I mean yes. Somebody dear, is it not? But remembering is hard down here. Everything is so quiet. Maybe if you told me—“ She tautened. Her eyes grew yet more enonnous. “No,” she cried, hands uplifted as if against a blow. “Please don’t tell me!” He sighed, as best he could underwater. “Poor wraith, I do believe you speak truth. I’ll ask if I may pray for you.”
Resolution came back. “Just the same, today you are a lure unto damnation,” he said. “Men fishing the lake for the first time, this past year, would glimpse you flitting through dusk; some heard you call them, and sore it was to deny such sweetness. They will be coming in ever greater numbers. You must not snatch a single soul from among them. I have come to make sure of that.”
She quailed, for this was he who had prevailed over the vod-ianoi.
He drew his knife and held it by the blade before her, to make a cross of sorts. “For the sake of the man who baptized me, I would not willingly destroy you,” his words tolled. “It may be that somehow even you can be saved. Yet certain is that none must be damned. . . on your account. ‘
“No more luring of Christians, Nada. No more wanton tricks,
either, raising a wind to flap a wife’s washing off the grass, or
stealing her babe on its cradleboard while she naps at harvest
noon-“
“I only cuddle them for a while,” she whispered. “Soon I give them back. I’ve no milk for them.”
He did not heed, but went on: “No more singing in human earshot; it rouses dreams best left asleep. Vanish from our ken. Be to the children of Adam-born or adopted-as though you had never been.
“Else I myself will hunt you down. I will carry the wormwood you cannot bear the scent of, and scourge you with it, once and twice. Upon the third time you offend, I will come bearing a priestly blessing on me, and holy water for sending you into Hell.