(Think over 2000 years ago)
High above the river, clouds raced across the sky, carrying time with them.
Day after day. Century after century.
On the banks, people appeared and disappeared again. Along with the water, they stood at the center of his world. But while the current was steady and faithful, people were like dragonflies in the reeds. Born, grown, aged, dead. One replacing another in an endless cycle.
The river spirit didn’t abandon them. He saw that, despite their fleeting lives, they were like him — and he was like them.
He was not here only for the river.
He was here for them as well.
The beautiful thing about them was that they brought music to the water. He didn’t need to understand mortals — but music resembled the river. It flowed, swelled, quieted again — and if he tried hard enough, it yielded to his hands just like the waves did.
Perhaps that was why he longed for it so fiercely.
He usually kept a safe distance from people. But the first time he heard the sound of a bow on strings, it felt like a calling.
A simple spell allowed him to look human. After that, all that remained was to gather courage.
The guests had already scattered away, and the musician stepped out of the tavern. He had earned enough to survive until tomorrow. That was something.
“Teach me to play like that.”
The quiet voice from the shadows startled him at first. Then he relaxed when he noticed the thin man standing by the well. He had seen him inside earlier. He hadn’t been drinking — only listening. Closely. Not like that pack of drunks.
“We’ll see about that,” the musician laughed. “You won’t learn unless you have at least a bit of talent.”
The stranger nodded seriously and pulled a flute from his pocket. He played. The musician’s smile vanished.
“Well?” the stranger asked softly when he finished. His eyes were dark. Hungry. “Will you teach me?”
The musician swallowed. “At that rate, in a few weeks you’ll be teaching me. But fine.” He held out his hand. “You’ll travel with me from village to village. In our spare time, I’ll teach you the bow. What do they call you?”
The river spirit hesitated — then clasped the offered hand in his own.
He rarely heard his own name.
“Ješek,” the musician grinned. “lord Ješek of Nowhere.”
Johannes, lord of the entire river, smiled politely at the joke.
From that evening on, they wandered the countryside together. They played in taverns at night, and in spare hours Hannes learned.
He knew his time was limited. The river was already calling him back. But he had a few weeks before having to return. And even if his fingers would bleed, he wouldn’t stop practicing.
Ješek was mesmerised by his companion’s dedication. Hannes didn’t speak much — but he would have breathed for music. It didn’t ake long before that feverish hunger for perfection seized them both. Teacher and student alike.
“Who are you, really?” Ješek asked one day. “Where are you from?”
“Me? I’m simply from around here,” the river spirit smiled, evading the question.
And Ješek did not press. The smile was enough.
“Watch your fingers,” he corrected the placement on the strings. He noticed how, at even the slightest touch, Hannes stiffened almost imperceptibly.
His fingers slid along the river spirit’s spine — Hannes nearly flinched. But he was growing used to it. He had to. It was a small price for the skill he craved.
Stranger still — he was beginning to need those hands. A different thirst awakened in him, apart from music. The thirst of skin for touch.
He knew the pull of the current, the cold of spring water, the reeds cutting into his palms. That was a familiar melody of his solitude.
This was another music entirely.
And yet he didn’t now its basic tones. He had never heard them before.
Perhaps that was why it stole his breath.
A few days later, they had a triumphant evening. Worth celebrating.
When they finally stepped out into the cool summer night, Ješek finally had to know.
“I could never have done this without you.”
The intimate, quiet tone. A hand caught in his. The unspoken question of careful longing.
Silence is traditionally taken for yes.
I should know what to do, the river spirit thought. I should understand what this means. But I don’t.
He didn’t even know how to finish the sentence. Never had his hand caught in another’s? Did he not feel that the body, too, has a longing for something it doesn’t understand?
Ješek drew his own conclusions and didn’t etreat.
In the darkness, fish rush toward light.
They know nothing of fishing nets.
For the next three weeks, they did not abandon learning music — but the nights belonged to very different lessons. Words were scarcely needed in either.
“Come with me,” Ješek urged, knowing he would soon move on.
Hannes shook his head. The river was waiting. Duty wouldn’t tolerate any more delay.
In the years that followed, Ješek often asked himself how Hannes could have left so easily, without a single glance.
But he got himself his own violin.
High above the river, clouds race on and carry time with them.
Twenty years pass like water.
The current dragged a body. It was a mere luck that the river spirit noticed it — a thousand times greater luck that the poor man had not yet drowned. He was almost gone, but when Hannes pulled him ashore, he coughed the water from his lungs.
As soon as he caught his breath and looked up at his rescuer, the blood drained from his face.
The water sprite recoiled. From the ravaged face of an old man, familiar eyes stared back.
Ješek did not know which horror was greater: that he was looking into the face of a river demon — or that he recognized it, unchanged, not a day older than twenty years ago.
Hannes smiled apologetically. “I don’t age. That’s simply how it is.”
Half-drowned, the musician burst into hysterical laughter. It was, after all, the most reasonable thing to do.
“I always knew there was something weird about you.”
“It’s like looking back across time…”
Hannes said nothing. He knew very well what he was looking at. In Ješek’s hollow cheeks there was written more than just years of wandering. Even if it couldn’t reach him personally, the river spirit recognized death when he saw it.
“Come. You’ll stay with me for a while.”
It is easier to die in a bed than in a ditch by the road.
“Do you still play?” Ješek asked suddenly, as if this were the only thing that mattered.
“Then you’ll play for me. At least that much you still owe me.”
The riverside cottage was modest. From the main room, stairs led down, seemingly into the cellar — though in truth they ended in the river. Upstairs, by the stove, any guest could find a place.
“You’ll sleep here,” Hannes said, nodding toward the only bed.
“I sleep below. Under the surface.”
Time was shortening. Instead of sleep, he kept vigil beside the bed, together with patient Death.
Consumption had to torment Ješek for a long time. Now it was advancing swiftly.
“I don’t want this anymore,” the dying musician said one day, disgusted. Exhaustion no longer allowed him even to lift a hand.
“It won’t be much longer now,” Hannes answered quietly. He didn’t like to watch it — but it had never occurred to him to lie.
The river spirit looked at him in surprise. “It’s not a pleasant death.”
“Dying like this is worse. And longer,” Ješek rasped.
Hannes nodded gravely. “All right then. If you’ll want the same thing tomorrow, I’ll do it.”
The sick musician wished time would run faster.
Hannes wished Death would take him in his sleep.
Neither wish was granted. The night was cruel — but not cruel enough.
In the end, he had to carry him in his arms. It surprised him how light the old man’s body was.
“The water is cold,” he said as they stepped onto the stairs.
Ješek did not answer. He only laid his head on Hannes’s shoulder — and Hannes hesitated.
The body always resists, whatever the mind once believed. The river spirit had enough experience with that.
“Look at me.” Underwater, his voice echoed hollowly as he finally took Ješek’s face in his hands. “You’re almost at the end.”
When the soul left the body, he let it go.
He didn’t grieve for Ješek.
But for a long time afterward, he still felt that head resting on his shoulder with trust. Nothing washed away that icy, dreadful sensation — except when he took the violin in his hands.
Long ago, he had come to think of its sound as entirely his own.
Years passed. Centuries perhaps.
Many things happened in the meantime — but only one was truly worth mentioning: two beings who had come into the world born of human faith, and whom no one had ever taught how much of humanity they would inherit, were fortunate enough to find one another.
They became friends. In their world, that was a rarity.
One night they walked through the forest and spoke of everything and nothing.
“It really isn’t that difficult,” Shadow shook his head. “You can catch a nightmare too. Once it’s finished, it’s independent.”
Hannes watched with faint disdain the fluttering dark moths, black as coal, that appeared when his companion waved a hand. Against all logic, they shimmered faintly gold in the moonlight and sometimes passed through one another. They didn’t look like something anyone but their creator could touch.
“I’m not saying you can turn into a fish either.”
Shadow considered this. “I probably could,” he shrugged. “Well, I could take the shape of one… but that’s not the point. It’s just technique. It’s about speed—”
And then he did something the river spirit didn’t expect.
Without any warning, he slipped behind Hannes like smoke, slid a hand beneath his arm, pressed it to the water sprite’s chest, and pulled him slightly back against himself.
“—and then it’s mostly about balance—”
Hannes swayed like a puppet.
Shadow fell silent immediately, because a wave of absolute terror shot through him. Hannes’s — dread struck Fear directly.
The river spirit gasped for air. Shadow stepped aside carefully to see him properly. From his friend’s face all color had drained away; Hannes pressed his hands to his mouth like someone barely fighting nausea back.
The horror was tangible. Vast. But shapeless — like drop of ink spreading in water.
Hannes shook his head helplessly. He still couldn’t draw a full breath.
Shadow withdrew slightly. He knew that sometimes fear flooded others simply because he stood too close. But this wasn’t like that — and distance alone wouldn’t help.
So the dark spirit reached out a hand and slowly lowered it, as if soothing a raging animal.
“You have to breathe. In — and out.”
The terror receded reluctantly.
After a while, Hannes managed to catch a breath.. Then he sank into the grass, exhausted, pulling his knees to his chest.
Shadow sat down beside him.
“Do you want to tell me what that was?” he asked after a moment.
“Can’t you tell?” Hannes whispered.
The inkblot was taking shape — but Shadow drove it from his mind. It would be useless.
“I’m asking you if you want to say it aloud.”
Hannes swallowed. He had never done that. All those years… he had tried not to think about it.
“The way… you grabbed me…”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“No — that’s not it. It just… reminded me of something.”
He rested his forehead against his knees.
Shadow smiled patiently. “Fear rarely does to me.”
Still, he had to wait for the answer.
“Schatten,” Hannes said quietly at last, “what if I really am afraid…”
The sentence hung unfinished.
And at that moment, something clicked shut.
Shadow asked. He didn’t have to. Perhaps he understood Hannes’s fear better than Hannes himself. But he asked.
Someone else, long ago, had not.
Something deep inside loosened.
“No,” the river spirit smiled faintly. “I’m not afraid. I just… remembered. It’s been many years. I remember someone who also didn’t want to frighten me — but did. But I didn’t understand it then.”
Shadow was silent. Waiting. Some stories begin in the middle.
Only then Hannes added, almost inaudibly:
“I only wanted to learn to play the violin. Nothing more.”
The story he told Shadow then, he told for the first time ever. Not only to someone else — but even to himself.
At the very end, he said:
“But you haven’t stop playing.”
“No,” Hannes murmured. “I couldn’t let that be taken from me. And besides… it helps.”
Then he reached out, took Hannes’s hand, and squeezed it.
Then for a long while they stayed sitting at the edge of the forest like two exhausted orphans.
