The Musing of R. L. Frymire

The next morning, the stars were still visible in the predawn sky when Yakiv—unable to sleep, afflicted by memories of hallucinations he couldn’t explain and left bereft of his heart’s desire—set off towards the mountain. This time, he left his fishing rod at home and brought only a hemp cord. His stride was long and purposeful, while on the inside, a storm raged, threatening to tear his sanity to pieces.

Don’t think, he chanted, desperate. Don’t think. Just act.

When he reached the outskirts of the village, he nearly jumped out of his skin when an urgent whisper startled him from behind.

‘Yakiv! I must speak with you.’

Terror abated, realizing another apparition hadn’t come to claim him. Something far worse had come for him. Or rather, someone.

‘Now isn’t a good time, Elena.’ And never would be.

‘It can’t wait.’ She grabbed his arm. Recoiling, he jerked away without looking at her. After a heavy silence, she murmured, ‘So it was you. You saw us. Loukas and I.’

Caught. Humiliated. Denial came swift. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You’ve always been a poor liar, Yakiv.’

‘You don’t know anything.’

‘I know I hurt you.’

Emotions choked him into silence.

‘I’m sorry you had to see that,’ Elena said quietly. ‘I know you have certain feelings for me—’

Pride smarting, he snorted rudely. ‘Don’t flatter yourself.’

She didn’t relent. ‘I know you made an offer to my father—’

Unable to bear her words of rejection—or her pity, he interrupted. ‘Our families have been trade partners for decades. Our union was just good sense.’ Now, he turned to her. Angry. Heartsore. ‘Except, a harlot wouldn’t make for a good wife, would she?’

Instant regret. And shame. Never had he spoken to a woman in such a disrespectful manner, but his ego demanded to be assuaged. He’d convinced himself the Divine had done him a kindness by revealing Elena’s immorality. Her rejection hadn’t been his failure. She’d been unworthy.

She slapped him. Hard.

Rendered mute, the shock he felt was reflected in her wide eyes. His cheek stung, but it was nothing compared to the injury of love spurned. Before she could speak, he pivoted, and marched away. Fast.

Running. Again.

Coward, he castigated himself harshly.

Elena chased after him. ‘Yakiv, wait! Please, I still have to talk to you.’

‘Well, I don’t wish to talk with you.’

She persisted, frantic. ‘If you would just keep what you saw between us… My family would be so disappointed.’

Just the thought of anyone discovering his humiliation made him recoil.

Without breaking his stride, he assured, ‘What you do with your betrothed—’ How he loathed that word when not attached to him. ‘—has nothing to do with me. Now, leave me be. Unless you wish to be caught alone with another man.’

With that parting insult, she finally—blessedly—stopped following him.

Hours later, he was back at the river, and his father’s rod was where he’d left it. Elena’s loss had been a brutal blow to his heart, savaging his ego. But to lose his father’s gift as well?

Intolerable.

It would forever be a reminder of his failure to secure Elena’s devotion.

Determined to fish his rod from the river, he began wrapping his hemp cord around a sizable rock, when the water’s surface rippled. A dark head emerged, slowly revealing a face of impossible perfection.

He blinked, disbelieving.

The raven-haired woman continued to rise from the river. She was tall, lithe, and indecently clad. His breath caught, heart pounding, and ran further south. His cord fell from nerveless fingers as his gaze dropped. Dressed in a simple, white shirt that fell to mid-thigh, the fabric was soaked through. Translucent, it left nothing to the imagination, the garment clinging to her generous curves.

She came to him, her voice drifting like mist over water.

‘I long for my dear beloved; if only he yearned for me.’

Captivated by her ethereal beauty, her melody entrancing, the strangeness of her arrival was lost on him.

‘Return to me, return to me…’

Halting directly in front of him, she cupped his face in ice cold hands, and felt them warm as though touching him made her catch fire. Just as she made him burn—for her.

‘Our destinies entwine,’ she continued crooning, while lifting onto her toes. Then her lips brushed his, as soft as butterfly wings. Her voice penetrated his mind. ‘To a handsome young fisherman, I offered him my heart.’

They were kissing, deeply. Passionately.

A powerful shudder shook him, and his arms clamped around her. Never before had he held a woman, only to chafe at the bulk of his coat separating her from him. Unbearable. As though she felt the same, she shoved at his coat, until it slid to the ground, forgotten.

Distantly, he knew what they were doing was wrong.

They were strangers.

Unmarried.

He had no right to the haven of her arms, nor the sweetness of her lips, but neither could he deny himself temptation, not while the taste of her desire appeased his wounded pride and bruised heart. Bespelled by her—by his own lust, Yakiv abandoned all he’d held sacred and embraced the forbidden.

Maneuvering him backwards, he didn’t protest when the beauty pushed him against a tree, or stop her from encouraging him to sit on the ground. Rather than snow, he sat on his coat. How it came to be, he didn’t know. Didn’t even think about it. But when she took her lips from his, he wanted to object—until she straddled him. He nearly forgot how to breathe when she began loosening the cord at his waist.

Surely, this was all a dream? Just another hallucination. One he fervently clasped, willingly.

A harsh breath escaped him as her delicate fingers slipped inside his trousers…and groaned when she clasped him. Her fingers had lost all semblance of coldness. They were warm—and real. She was real. Stroking him, gently squeezing.

Torment!

Rapture.

His hips bucked into her fist. There was no shame, only heat and desire.

Needing to touch her, her damp clothing impeded him. Impatient, uncommonly rough, he tore her shirt, forgetting that it was winter—in the mountains. Hardly feeling the cold himself, his breath caught when her lush breasts swung free. As though kissed by moonlight, her skin glowed frost-white, but for the rosy hue of her nipples.

He hesitated, yearning. She enticed, unabashed.

Taking his hand, she placed his palm over her heart. Unfettered, he squeezed. At her heated moan, his cock jerked in her palm. While she stroked him, he pawed both her breasts, pushing them together, creating a lovely valley that tempted him to kiss, to lick. He didn’t deny himself the pleasure, nor the allure to suckle on her peak.

The sound she made nearly unmanned him. Suddenly, she rose higher on her knees and angled his cock towards her entrance. The moment his cockhead kissed the soft heat of her desire, he nearly embarrassed himself by spending right then and there. Gnashing his teeth, he held on to sanity by a frayed thread as she began lowering herself.

Too damn slowly!

Throwing his head back, a tortured groan escaped.

Tight. Hot. Wet.

Desperate, he grabbed her hips and forced her down, impaling her. She cried out. He shouted. And was lost. Even as his passion erupted from him, flooding her, Yakiv bounced her on his shaft, up and down, his hips flexing. Harder. Deeper. When he shouted again in completion, her feminine wail of joy echoed around him and seemed to ring through his mind in a melodious choir.

Boneless, he collapsed against the tree, and felt the woman nestle against him. Spent and filled with male satisfaction, Yakiv went to caress her spine. Expecting the smooth glide of warm skin, he met a dry column of…knots? While his palm grazed the uneven surface, his fingers collapsed inward. Without thinking, he wrapped his hand around the strange, bumpy segments rising along the center of her back. Simultaneously, he explored the empty cavern with his other hand.

Halfway up her back, he felt several rows of narrow ridges. Delving deeper, something…fluttered against his fingers. He grasped for it. A stone? It was cold as ice, but as soft as silk, and pulsed within his grasp.

Yakiv stiffened in dawning horror, the euphoria of release fading like frost in sunlight.

The woman leaned back, and for the first time, he noticed her eyes. They were so black there was no distinguishing between pupil and iris.

She sang to him. ‘I long for my dear beloved; if only he yearned for me.’

Her voice was heartbreakingly beautiful, but the compulsion of before was absent. Reality crashed into him. Beneath his fingers, there was no flesh, no blood. Just bones and a fragile heart.

Fisting both, he thrust her away from him with a terrified shout.

He heard a sickening schlurp, felt the wet pop, as his shaft left the warm clasp of her body. Nausea twisted his stomach. Aghast, Yakiv surged to his feet and fumbled with his trousers.

The woman came to him, arms raised to embrace him, singing, ‘Return to me, return to me our destinies entwine.’

With another fearful shout, he shoved her away. Too hard. The creature stumbled back, twisted, and fell with a helpless cry. And a faint, hollow rattling. On her hip, half turned away with her long, black hair obscuring her lovely face, she appeared as fragile as a bird, her shoulders curled inward, as though protecting herself from further abuse. A pang of regret clamoured within his chest for being so rough.

An apology burned on his tongue—until he saw the ruin of her back.

A tremor shook his hands.

As though some mighty force had torn the very skin and meat from her spine and scooped out her organs, he stared at the corpse-pale stripes of flesh that hung along the edges of her back from nape to narrow hips. She should be bleeding from such a grievous wound, yet no blood pumped through veins that had long ago turned to dust.

She should be dead.

Yet within the dark cavern of her body, where organs should have been mashed together, only a shriveled heart remained. Unable to look away, he saw it pulsate with supernatural life. In the poor light of the rising dawn, the sky was uncommonly cloudless, revealing the skeletal bones of her spine and the span of perfectly aligned ribs. So delicate. So white against the grey mass of a heart that should have ceased to beat.

All at once, the tales of old haunted him with portentous implications. Voice shaking, he uttered a single, terrifying word. ‘Mavka.’

Understanding slammed into him. The strange melody. The hallucinations. Or rather, memories—of a dead woman. Yet not. For she yet lived and breathed, old—evil—magic animating a soul that refused death’s peace.

‘To a handsome young fisherman, I offered him my heart.’

Not an offering. An exchange.

A heart for a heart.

Petrified, he wheezed, ‘No.’

Love. Acceptance. These were things he yearned for. But not like this.

At his rejection, an ear-splitting shriek erupted. Pain exploding through his skull, Yakiv stumbled and would have fallen had strong hands not grabbed him. Pulling him—towards the river. Foreboding slithered down his spine.

‘No!’ He dug his heels into the dirt and snow, but the Mavka was stronger.

Yakiv fought desperately, when she turned on him with an animalistic snarl, her enchanting features now twisted and grotesque. He recoiled, but she spun him. As though he weighed nothing, she threw him into the river, where an unnatural current grabbed hold, and pulled him from the shallows into the deep.

Ice enveloped him, stealing his warmth. His very breath.

Choking, he felt arms and legs wrap around him, preventing him from pushing towards the surface. Opening his eyes, cold water stinging, obsidian entrapped him. The darkness of the Mavka’s eyes had bled into her sclera completely, revealing a black void filled with hate and spite—and deeper still, of hurt and grief.

He opened his mouth to scream, but only bubbles emerged, and the river flooded in, drowning him in the Mavka’s misery—as she once had drowned herself.

As with the visions she’d given him of her past human life, both at the churchyard and later by the stream, Yakiv was now compelled to reenact the end of cherished dreams—both his and hers.

And together, they sang the Mavka’s lament of loss and ruinous yearnings.