What the River Takes

12/1/4722

The rain has stopped, and something else has taken its place—a mist, rising from the river’s surface, pale and slow, rising like something called.

Kong perched on the rowboat’s gunwale, head swiveling—left, right, left—scanning the river, shoreline, the dark toll tower above. The others are inside. Every now and then he hears distant combat through ancient walls or sees eldritch light flash through the tower’s small windows.

He doesn’t notice the small things on the riverbank. The ring of river-smoothed stones half-buried in the mud, each placed with intention. The strips of cloth tied to a dead willow’s low branches—faded to grey, some recent, some ancient, all knotted in the same deliberate pattern. The worn groove in the flat rock at the water’s edge, shaped by generations of knees.

The first piksie lands on his shoulder like a mayfly, small and unnoticed. Its wings hum below hearing—a vibration that loosens things. Important things. Threads of memory pulled gently, like silk from a cocoon. The second alights on his other shoulder. The third nestles into feathers at the base of his skull, tiny fingers finding where memories root.

Someone has to watch the boat. Kong is practical. Kong remembers—What was he remembering? The thought dissolves like river foam. Kong blinks. There was something. His sister? A story he told her warning of—No. The boat. He’s watching the boat.

Who taught you the old stories, little raven-child?

His big sister. Yoru told him about… about… The memory frays. Dark feathers. Sharp eyes. She said something once about rivers. About never answering when the water calls your name.

Shhhhh. You don’t need that one.

The piksies feed—quick, precise withdrawals that leave the structure of his mind standing while they carefully empty it. Yoru’s warnings go first. Then the crossroads. The fey tokens. The Winter Court’s cold eyes. Gone. All gone.

Kong stares at the river. Black silk, rain-swollen. His timber sentinel stands dormant—awaiting command. The command doesn’t come. He can’t remember why he summoned it.

Why did you come here, little bird?

He was looking for someone. A sister. Her name was—

You don’t have a sister. You never did.

Kong’s head droops. The piksies account have eaten past surface memories into the foundations. His connection to the Wood feels distant, like music barely heard through thick walls. His ancestors’ voices—the ravens who ferried souls between the gates of slumber—fall silent one by one.

Poor little bird. So alone.

Then the river sings. Not with sound. With something older. A vibration rising through mud and stone and hull into Kong’s bones, calling from the black current with a sweetness that tastes of river lilies and drowned moonlight. Kong’s head lifts. Eyes glassy, pupils blown wide

She rises from the river like a memory surfacing—hair dark spreading across the current like river weed, skin the green of sunlight seen through murky water. Where moonlight catches her throat, her scales glimmer iridescently. Her eyes burn pale green.

She speaks his name in the old Tengu tongue that even the piksies can’t eat because it was never learned—it was hatched into him, bone-deep.

“Sora,” she whispers. “Sora no kongen.”

And it sounds like his sister’s voice, because he can’t remember what his sister’s voice actually sounded like anymore. Kong stands. The timber sentinel doesn’t move—wood gone cold and still as driftwood, a dead thing that forgot it was alive. His taloned feet step off the gunwale. Cold water closes around his ankles, his knees, his waist. It doesn’t feel cold. It feels like coming home.

The rusalka’s arms open. Her fingers are long, faintly scaled blue at the knuckles, and where they touch his feathers, they darken and flatten into sleek talons.

“I’ll keep your memories safe from the Vergesslings feen,” she breathes. “I’ll hold them where the current can’t reach.”

And Kong, who cannot remember why this is a lie, believes her.

The river closes over his head without a splash. The surface smooths. The rain resumes, dimpling water as if no one was ever here at all, and the mist continues to rise.

On the shore, where Kong’s vanished under water, something small now sits on the river bed. A doll. Small enough to fit in a palm. River reeds and black feathers and knotted twine, two black river pearls pressed into its face for eyes. Smelling of river mud and something sweeter. It is not crudely made. The knots are precise. The feathers woven in a pattern—the same pattern as the cloth strips on the dead willow.

The timber sentinel stands frozen beside the rowboat, bark cracking, its carved face locked in an expression that might be grief or might be nothing, because it is only wood, and wood does not mourn.

The doll stares up through the water at the tower with its seed-black eyes. It is smiling. Behind it, the river is calm and well-fed and very, very patient.