**We Will Wait**

You’ve probably heard that swimming after Elijah’s Day is a sin. And of course you’ve heard the scientific explanations too—that the nights grow colder and the water no longer has time to warm up. Dark nights and cold water. That’s exactly how it is. But you hardly know the true source of this belief. I do. It’s simply that August is when their time begins.

At first they are very weak, drowsy, and all they can do is touch you in the water with their narrow, icy palms, or tickle you with stiff, tangled strands of hair like old riverweed. They cannot stand the light and they hate warmth. You will never meet them in clear water; you will never see them in shallow river backwaters well warmed by the sun, nor in fast, ringing streams leaping over stones. They love small forest lakes—dark, peaty, fed by cold springs—the very ones people say have double bottoms, where several people drown every year and the bodies are never found, remaining down there, in the depths, beneath the treacherous layer of silt and roots. They also love sluggish river reaches, deep pools with almost motionless, murky water. Some call them the river folk; I might call them “rusalki.” My sister calls them *plachënki*. She says she can hear their voices even in winter, through the reliable armor of ice.

They become truly dangerous after the autumn equinox, when they rise almost to the surface. On a clear day you don’t have to fear them, but as soon as swift autumn twilight thickens and fog lifts from the water, they begin to sing. Their thin, sobbing voices are like sticky threads of September gossamer—yes, exactly like spiderwebs. My sister even says so herself: “a web-song”—and laughs, frighteningly, strangely, without joy. Or she starts spinning around the room, awkwardly flailing her arms, as if trying to catch something invisible in the air. Later she freezes, staring at a single point. Mother brings pills; she obediently swallows them and then sits for a long, very long time, rocking, silently moving her lips. But I know what she’s saying. Only I know.

She was eight then. I was thirteen. It seems it was during school holidays—or maybe just a weekend, I no longer remember. The autumn was surprisingly mild, and we went to our dacha near Losevo to pick mushrooms—for the last time before the frosts. Firm autumn honey mushrooms on thick stems, fluffy pink milkcaps, black milk mushrooms reeking sharply of bitter milky sap… To get to our favorite spot we had to walk about four kilometers: first along the concrete road, then along forest paths to a river with a sluggish current and opaque brown, almost black water, which by some irony was called the Bright. Its banks were overgrown with dense spruce forest, closer to the water giving way to young birches and aspens—their round leaves had almost all fallen already and now lay on the ground as a dirty yellow carpet speckled with small black dots, somehow resembling the one that hung in my sister’s and my bedroom. Only on that one, if you looked closely, you could still make out a worn image: several deer and an orange-red band on the horizon—either an autumn forest, or a fire, or a sunset. Just beyond the aspens began a steep clay slope. The river bent sharply there, as if suddenly deciding to turn back on itself.

That morning Grandfather—he was still alive then—woke us before dawn. It was cold; heavy drops hung from the branches, and from below, from the bend, damp whitish strands of fog stretched upward. We spread out fairly far, occasionally calling to each other. I was terribly sleepy and didn’t immediately realize that I hadn’t heard my sister’s voice for too long…

She was lying on the bank, half-submerged in the water. Wet hair clung to her face, so pale it seemed waxen; her eyes were wide open, and only the pupils pulsed, expanding and contracting. Somehow a lot of people appeared; they were saying something to me—I don’t remember. Because I heard them: they were calling. They didn’t want to let her go.

“We will wait,” they said.

We will wait.

We will wait.

We will wait.