Vilena swung the hoe with all her strength, and as it struck the hardened earth, beads of sweat broke free from her brow, her eyebrows, and her chin. The land knew no mercy — it yielded food only to those who wrested it through devoted, heavy toil.
At her next strike, weaker than the first, she cast a glance from the corner of her eye toward her father, mother, brothers, and sisters, who worked the field alongside her. No one paid attention to her, and she seized the moment to brush a hand across her stomach. For a cramp had stirred deep within her body — the first one, the one that foretold the storm of pain.
Perhaps it was only my imagination, a thought passed through her mind, frightened like a doe fleeing hunters through the forest. Gods, please, let it be nothing more than my imagination.
But the gods remained silent. All of them. Svetovid, Dazhbog, Lada, Jarilo, Mokosh… every one of them. None answered Vilena’s plea, none offered comfort or encouragement, none showed her the path she ought to follow.
She was not surprised. She expected their contempt, for what she carried beneath her breast, what grew within her womb, had not come from the blessing the gods bestow upon a newly wedded husband and wife. The child growing inside her was born of deception. Vilena was not married, and yet she had given herself to Hrastomir, who had courted her long enough for her to trust his honeyed words.
Oh, how bitterly she had been deceived. She believed there was love in him, that he dreamed of her at night and awoke each morning with thoughts of her filling his mind. That was what he told her, and she was gullible enough to believe. Hrastomir wanted only one thing, and once he had taken it, he never looked at her again.
Several weeks later, Vilena realized that her credulity would cost her far more than a broken heart. She was carrying a child. The seed of Hrastomir’s treachery was taking shape within her. From that day forward, she stopped wearing the belt around her waist, allowing her dress to hang loose. She ate more often and in greater amounts, her cheeks grew fuller, and her household found nothing strange in the slight rounding of her belly. In this, at least, the gods had shown a measure of mercy: despite the child growing within her, Vilena’s figure changed so little that everyone assumed she had merely put on weight from food, visible only in the gentle curve of her stomach.
And now, as she worked in the field beside her family, the first sign had come that the fruit of Hrastomir’s deception was ready to enter the world. A sharp pain suddenly tore through her. Fortunately, it did not last long. Even so, the hoe nearly slipped from Vilena’s hands.
But she endured. She kept digging. And then she felt dampness. She felt water, running down her legs and soaking the dry earth beneath her feet. And in that moment she knew the time had come.
– Father, a weakness has seized me. A burden weighs upon my soul… May I go home, Father? For pain cuts through my body like the sword our prince’s soldiers carry at their belts – her voice was as if at its last breath, and her father needed only a glance to see that some heavy affliction had indeed pressed upon her body and soul. He merely nodded and went on digging.
Grateful for her father’s leave to depart, Vilena set out across the field toward the forest. As she walked, another wave of pain slashed across her belly, yet she managed to stay on her feet, driven mostly by fear of drawing her family’s eyes upon herself.
When she entered the forest, the thicket hid her from their sight, and for a moment she halted to catch her breath, then continued walking. When she reached the road that led to the village, where her ancestors had dwelt for centuries in houses of clay and wood, beneath roofs of straw, Vilena halted. For now she was compelled to make a choice of life and death concerning that which she bore within her.
One path was to go to the village and give birth there, beneath the roof where she herself had been born and raised. And to bring shame upon herself and her family. To be looked upon with scorn, to have fingers pointed at her, to hear whispers of reproach behind her back — for Hrastomir would never admit the child was his.The tears that streamed down her face seemed to whisper that such a choice must not be made.
Therefore she set out toward the river, through the forest, to avoid curious eyes, for what she intended to do was not for others to see. Nor even for her own, now blurred by tears.
The river greeted her like liquid emerald — green, sparkling in the sun, with whirlpools that gurgled as the water swirled into the depths. Vilena was once more pierced by pain. But this time she lay down upon the bank, right beside the river. The birth had begun, and the pain erased the whole world around her, leaving her only the strength to strain, to cast forth from herself the fruit of her trust and Hrastomir’s deceit.
How much time had passed while she strained in agony, clenching her teeth so she would not scream, so that no one might hear — she did not know. To her it seemed that an eternity had gone by. And when the pressure vanished, when the spasm that had seized her body suddenly departed, leaving only pain in her widened loins, she breathed out loudly, blowing away a few drops of sweat in which her face was bathed. Silence, born as if by the blessing of the gods, lasted but briefly, for a child’s cry split the air above the river.
Vilena with her teeth severed the umbilical cord and bound it. She took the child into her arms, and it cried aloud. Her hesitation endured less than the time it took for the drops of sweat from her face to fall to the the ground.Then she brought the child to the surface of the river. Tears clouded her vision, so that she beheld not its face clearly when she gave it unto the waters.
The whirlpool drew the small body into the green depths, and the child’s cry was silenced as suddenly as it had burst forth but a moment before, heralding the coming of new life into this world.
And all was finished.
Vilena lay for a while longer, to gather her strength.
When she arose, she set forth toward her home with steps dragging one after the other. And all the while she wept, hoping that the sweat and tears, which ceaselessly streamed down her face, would become drops of forgetfulness — that each of them, as it slid across her brows, her forehead, her cheeks and lips, and fell upon the earth, would carry away a part of the memory of what had just happened, until nothing remained but emptiness without images, without recollections, without thoughts or feelings.
Of course, the first nights were the hardest. For though the bodily pain had passed, there remained the sorrow for the blood of her blood, for the flesh of her flesh, for the child she had slain to protect her honor and the honor of her family. Thus, in the nights, while the household slept, she wept in secret and swallowed her sobs as though swallowing morsels of pain.
At times she would dream of him: in them the little boy, surrounded by the spirits of the river, came forth from the depths and stretched out his hands toward her, cold and lifeless, to embrace her and draw her down with him. Then she would awaken suddenly, stifling the cry that threatened to break from her lips, and in fear she would gaze upon her kin who lay in the room, upon the straw mattresses, peacefully dreaming.
Yet, though some wounds can never heal, time teaches a man to live with them. So too did Vilena learn. Deep within her, beneath all thoughts and feelings, there remained hidden the memory of the boy she had given to the river spirits, and she went on living as though it had never happened.
The following summer Hrastomir vanished. None knew whither he had gone, though the folk spake of many things: that the fairies had bewitched him, that in foreign lands he served in a host of mercenaries, that in a nearby town he had wed some widow… many tales were told.
Vilena cared nothing for those tales, for since he vanished, it became easier for her to bear the memory of that accursed day when she drowned her son.
That year, when he disappeared, she was wed in the autumn. Vratoslav was the name of her husband. He was a good man. Attentive. Measured. After Hrastomir’s disappearance, Vilena, thanks to Vratoslav, pushed the deed she had committed closer to forgetfulness. And when the next year she bore a son, she felt true joy, such as had not been within her since the day her firstborn — the one she had given to the river — had cried.
The boy was given the name Mihajlo. The following year, she bore another — Vukan. And life went on. Year after year.
When Mihajlo had turned eight, and Vukan seven, within Vilena the trace of the misdeed she had wrought ten years before was as a shadow issuing from another world, from the life of some other mortal — one who bore her name, but with whom Vilena, save for that name, had nothing in common.
Her sons helped her greatly in this, for they were mischievous, curious, and ever eager for play, so that beside them there was neither time nor peace to dwell upon the past.
When she called them by name, for the meal was prepared, they did not answer. So she called them once more, and then stepped outside the hut.
They were not there, so she went out onto the village’s dusty road. No one was there either. Only the air trembled, heated beneath the midday sun.
– Vratoslav, the children are gone! – she called to her husband, who, having just returned from the field, had sat himself by the hearth.
– How can they be gone? – he replied with a question, as he appeared upon the threshold.
Vilena helplessly shook her head, feeling that somewhere within her, from a depth she had not even known she carried, there rose an evil foreboding — like a shadow stretching its hands from the abyss toward the heavens, to darken the sun’s radiance.
As though Vratoslav too had sensed the same evil foreboding, his face grew grave, and the two of them set out in search. Each went their own way.
Vilena knew not how her feet had borne her toward the forest. Neither did she know why she had gone in that direction. She only desired to reach the river.
And when she came to the place where ten years before had happened that which she would not remember — she beheld them. Both of them. Mihajlo and Vukan. They were laughing, and step by step they entered the river, as though they had gone forth to play.
Vilena stepped into the water after them as though hurling her body against an eternal foe. As though she would change the river’s course. The children laughed, gazing into the green depths, but she seized them by the waist, drew them to herself, and then, carrying them beneath her arms, pulled them onto the shore.
– What are you doing?! – the words passed over her lips, spoken with a voice full of wrath.
– We are playing, Mama. Brother called us – answered Vukan, pointing his little hand toward the river.
– But now he is gone. You frightened him – added Mihajlo.
Vilena turned sharply toward the water, and that foreboding which had all the while risen within her from the abyss, to darken the sun, the sky, and her whole life, now took form. That form was the river.
And now she knew — the spirits of the river, those evil fiends of the water to whom she had given her firstborn son, had now set their will upon Vukan and Mihajlo as well. They wished to take them too, to draw them down into the green abyss, as they had taken the nameless one whom she had willingly surrendered.
With a rough, resolute motion, she took her sons by the hand and led them toward the village. She pulled them along, and they walked swiftly, as though the fiends of the water would crawl forth from the river and pursue them.
In the village a great crowd awaited them, for all had heard of the children’s disappearance. Among those gathered before the house she saw her mother and father. Brothers and sisters were there too. Her husband’s kin, and many folk from the village. When they beheld them, all rushed to meet them, and the quickest were Hrastomir’s mother and Vilena’s mother. Vilena released the children, and they flew into their grandmothers’ embrace. The villagers surrounded them, and before anyone could ask where she had found them, she slipped out of the throng and vanished behind the nearest house.
When she was certain no one saw her, she set out again, back toward the river.
Her steps were not as swift as when she had led the children to the village, for now she knew what she was going to meet. She knew that the misdeed she had committed ten years before had not gone unnoticed. The fiends and the souls of the drowned had seen her, and now they sought more of her sons.
When she reached the bank, at the very place where ten years before she had brought forth a life only to extinguish it at once, she halted and gazed upon the river.
There was no one. Only the whirlpools gurgled.
– Here I am! – she cried, her voice carrying over the water like a scream that would echo for centuries. – Show yourselves! Come forth! I will bargain with you, for the lives of my sons! Them I will not give you!
Silence was the answer. And the gurgling of the whirlpools.
Perhaps the children had only imagined it, she thought, with hope awakened anew. Perhaps they had seen nothing. Perhaps it had all been only their fancy…
Perhaps she had misunderstood everything, for here there was no one.
With these thoughts in her mind, she turned back to return to the village along the path by which she had come, when behind her a wave crashed against the bank.
And at once she knew that something great had risen from the water, that it stood there behind her, like the doom of fate that had waited for years.
Slowly, as though bidding farewell to life, fearing what she would behold, she turned once more.
And at once she ceased to breathe, for before her, in the water that reached his chest, stood Voden. With a crown of water-grass, with a thick, long, white beard down which the water streamed, with skin entwined with the growth of the deep, the God of rivers and lakes looked upon Vilena with eyes in which there was no mercy.
– It is time for debts to be repaid – he spoke, with a voice like the sound of a tree when its roots are torn from the earth and it falls in its age.
Vilena gently spread her arms, as though with her palms she revealed all the torment she had borne since learning she was with child by Hrastomir. All the shame, for she had believed his lies of love and would bring disgrace upon her family.
– You are not guilty of his lies – Voden answered her unspoken plea. – That is why I gave you a decade. But now it is time to devote yourself to him as well, for you have other children. Have you forgotten him?
As he spoke these words, from the green depths, without rising to the surface, a boy appeared. He was ten years old. His skin was pale; white like that of a drowned one who has lain beneath the water for days.
Though she had seen him only once, and then but briefly, though at that time he had been but a few moments old, though her eyes had been clouded with tears as she surrendered him to the river, Vilena recognized him at once.
Her firstborn son, skin white and bloodless, hovered beneath the surface of the river, and toward her he stretched out his arms, that she might take him into her embrace.
Beside the boy another appeared. At first a shadow she did not recognize, and then her eyes widened in astonishment when in the drowned one she recognized Hrastomir.
– Yes, he too is here, for the child needs a father – said Voden. – And now you shall all be together, where none will condemn you.
– No, I do not want… – Vilena shook her head.
– If you do not wish it, you need not – Voden’s voice was gentle. – But you know the price. Today you have seen it.
Yes, Vilena knew the price. The lives of her sons were that price. Sooner or later, in a day or two, in a week or a month, or in some year to come, her sons would end at the bottom of the river or the lake.
Therefore she bowed her head in submission. She stepped into the water. Then she took another step. When the water reached her chest, she gently submerged. The surface of the river closed above her head, and the cold hands of her firstborn son embraced her and drew her into the green abyss.
