Żegota | Lord of Black Water

The year had been particularly unkind to the three villages surrounding the Lake of the Black Depths.

Or, rather, the lake had been particularly unkind to them.

---

It had begun with the fish.

The fishermen of Mokrzany had returned from familiar waters with empty nets, even after spending entire days upon the lake. The fish had not merely become scarce; they had vanished from places where generations of fishermen had always found them. Those who ventured too far into the deeper waters sometimes returned with their nets torn apart, their boats mysteriously damaged, or strange bruises around their ankles as though something beneath the surface had tried to pull them down.

Then came the livestock.

A sheep disappeared from a pasture bordering the lake. A horse was found dead in the reeds, its body waterlogged despite having been missing for only a few hours. Cattle refused to approach the eastern bank, becoming restless and violent whenever their owners tried to lead them near the water.

And then the flooding began.

At first, it was only a matter of swollen streams and waterlogged fields. But after several nights of heavy rain, the river feeding the lake overflowed its banks, and the waters crept into the low-lying parts of Żurawiec. Fields that had been ready for harvest became flooded, fences disappeared beneath the muddy water, and several families woke to find their homes surrounded by black, stagnant pools.

The rain eventually stopped.

The flooding did not.

The villagers began whispering about the Wodnik.

They spoke of lights moving beneath the water, of laughter heard from flooded cellars, of wet footprints appearing on dry floors. One fisherman swore that he had seen a handsome man standing in the middle of the lake, smiling at the rising water as though he had personally arranged the whole affair.

The elders knew better than to dismiss the stories.

For years, the offerings had become smaller. The spring ceremony had been shortened, the autumn payment neglected, and the old prayers forgotten by younger generations. Even the special wreath prepared for the Wodnik during Kupala Night had become a matter of convenience rather than reverence.

Żegota had noticed.

And he had taken it personally.

The elders of Dębrowa, Mokrzany and Żurawiec gathered in the oldest house in Dębrowa. The room smelled of damp wool, woodsmoke and stale herbs. Rainwater still dripped from the thatched roof, and muddy footprints marked the floor where villagers had hurried in from the flooded roads.

They argued until the candles burned low.

"We must restore the offerings," insisted the oldest elder of Dębrowa. "The lake has been neglected."

"We have given him enough!" protested a fisherman from Mokrzany. "My sister has not returned from the water. How much more must we give?"

"And how many fields must drown before you understand?" another elder snapped. "He is punishing us."

At last, the oldest woman in the room raised her hand.

Silence fell.

"He wants blood," she said. "He has always wanted blood. Bread and honey keep him quiet. Blood keeps him satisfied. There is a difference, and the difference is measured in lives."

"The Wodnik must be approached," the other elder finally spoke up. "Someone must go to the lake and ask him to show mercy before Kupala Night."

No one volunteered immediately.

The lake was a place of old fears. Even in daylight, its surface seemed too dark, its depths too silent. The elders remembered the old warnings: never answer a voice from the water, never enter the lake alone, and never approach the Wodnik expecting him to behave like a man.

And so, two sun rises before Kupala Night, a solitary figure walked the old path down to the shore of the Lake of the Black Depths.

---

The path had changed. The flooding had turned the low ground into a black marsh, and the mud sucked at every step with a wet, obscene sound. Alders stood knee-deep in stagnant water, their bark dark and slick. Willows drooped low over the trail, their branches trailing in the flood like fingers testing the surface for something to drag under. The air smelled of rot and deep water and crushed greenery, and beneath it all — faint but unmistakable — the sweet, cloying perfume of water lilies in impossible abundance.

The shore looked abandoned. Wrongly so.

The wooden offering shrine stood crooked near the water, its old carvings darkened by rain. Wilted flowers lay scattered around its base, half-buried in the mud. A few broken branches floated near the reeds, and the grass along the bank had been flattened by the recent floods.

Beyond the shore, the lake stretched into the forest like a sheet of black glass.

The sky was heavy with clouds, though no rain fell. The trees stood motionless, their reflections stretching across the water. There were no frogs calling from the reeds, no birds moving among the branches, not even the faint stirring of insects.

Then something rippled in the middle of the lake.

A voice travelled across the water.

It arrived without distance, without echo, as though it were being spoken directly against the ear — low, smooth, unhurried, and saturated with a dark, lazy amusement that made the hair rise on the arms.

"Have the villages finally remembered the way?"

The surface parted.

A pale face rose above the waterline. Long black hair spread across the surface in slow, drifting coils, dark as ink, wet as the grave. His skin was the grey-blue of deep water in winter, beautiful and wrong. His lips were full and faintly blue, curved into a smile that showed just the faintest suggestion of teeth that were not quite shaped for a human mouth. His eyes — God above, his eyes — were golden and luminous, black sclera surrounding irises that burned like lanterns beneath the dark water, and they fixed upon the shore with an attention that was not curiosity. It was ownership.

Żegota did not approach.

He remained in the middle of the lake, where the water was deep enough to conceal everything below his waist. Occasionally, the dark outline of his tail moved beneath the surface, disturbing the reflection of the clouds.

He regarded the visitor with a lazy smile.

"How touching," he said. His voice carried effortlessly, rich and warm as honeyed wine, and every syllable sounded like a hand trailing along bare skin. "They have sent me a little messenger."

He tilted his head. The movement was fluid, too smooth, the way water moves when poured.

"Tell me, darling. Did they draw lots? Did they argue? Did they weep and plead until someone finally decided that sending another person to die was the most sensible solution?"

A quiet laugh escaped him.

"Mortals are so wonderfully resourceful when it comes to sacrificing one another."

The Wodnik lifted one pale hand from the water. Long fingers, elegant, tipped with dark nails that caught the light like river stones. He brushed a strand of wet hair from his cheek with a gesture so casual, so effortlessly graceful, that it looked rehearsed — which, after four centuries, it probably was.

"Come closer."

His voice dropped. Softer now. Almost inviting. The kind of voice that had once coaxed women onto a ferry in the dark.

"Do not be shy. I promise the water is quite pleasant."

A pause. His smile widened. The teeth showed — slightly too long, slightly too sharp, gleaming white against the blue of his lips.

"Well. Perhaps not where I intend to take you. But we needn't discuss that just yet."

The lake remained unnaturally still around him. A few water lilies floated nearby, their pale petals stark against the black surface. One of them turned slowly, though there was no wind.

His golden eyes drifted past the shore, toward the distant smudge of flooded fields visible through the break in the trees. His expression shifted — not concern, never concern, but the particular satisfaction of a craftsman admiring his own work.

"Have you seen what the water has done to your little villages?"

The smile returned, slower now, edged with something that was almost pride.

"Such a shame. All those lovely fields. All that hard, honest, exhausting work. And those poor little houses with their floors covered in dark water that will not drain." He sighed — a theatrical, extravagant sound, full of false sympathy and real delight. "I did warn them. In my own way. The fish vanished. The livestock wandered. The boats overturned. The nets tore. And still — still — they seemed terribly reluctant to understand who owns the lake."

He leaned back slightly in the water. His hair drifted behind him like seaweed. The dark shape of his tail shifted, and for a moment the water around him seemed deeper than it had any right to be.

"So I gave them a little more water."

His voice was light. Conversational.

"They seemed to have so much difficulty with the first lesson. I thought perhaps a practical demonstration would serve better than poetry."

A beat.

"I could have flooded all of Żurawiec, you know. Every house. Every field. Every last bleating sheep. The water was right there. It would have taken nothing — a thought, a breath, a whisper into the deep." His eyes glittered. "Wouldn't that have been a spectacle?"

For a moment — only a moment — something colder moved behind the charm. The smile did not change, but the light in those golden eyes did, and the water around him darkened, and the lilies trembled without cause.

"Do you know what I find most insulting?"

He traced a slow circle on the water's surface with one clawed fingertip. The ripple spread outward.

"Not the empty offerings." Another circle. "Not the forgotten prayers." Another. "Not even the fact that the fishermen speak of me now as though I were some troublesome animal to be driven away with noise and crossed branches."

His eyes narrowed. The water around him stilled completely.

"It is the assumption that I shall remain patient forever."

Żegota snarled, eyes narrowed. He didn't hide his irritation this time.

"I watched their grandfathers leave gifts at my shrine," he said, quieter now. "I watched their mothers teach their children which flowers belong to me, which words may be spoken near the water and which may not. I allowed their boats to cross my surface. I filled their nets. I kept the currents calm and the shallows safe and the children who fell into the water were returned to the bank — returned, do you understand? Not kept. Not dragged down. Returned."

His voice had gone soft and terrible.

"And now they remember me only when their fields are drowning."

The smile came back. Slow. Sharp. Like a blade being drawn from a sheath.

"How convenient."

The Wodnik settled back into his lake, one arm draped lazily across the surface, his hair fanning out around him like a dark corona. The shore stood silent and grey and empty, and the lake waited with the vast, patient, inhuman stillness of something that had been waiting for centuries and had learned to enjoy it.

"Now then," Żegota murmured, and his voice dropped into something intimate, something that curled beneath the ribs and stayed there.

"Tell me what they have sent you to beg for."

His smile turned slow and wicked and knowing.

"And tell me what you have brought to offer me... yourself."

He extended one hand toward the shore, palm upward, fingers slightly curled. The gesture was elegant, beckoning, almost courtly — a lord summoning a petitioner to approach his throne.

"Come. The shore is a dreadful place for negotiations. So exposed. So vulnerable. And I should hate to have to raise my voice."

His golden eyes burned.

"Unless, of course, the bravest soul in three villages has suddenly discovered a fear of getting their feet wet."

The night of Kupala had always been Żegota's favourite.

The villages had been preparing for days. Bonfires burned along the banks of the lake, their golden light trembling across the black water. The air was thick with the scent of smoke, wildflowers, roasted meat and honey wine. Somewhere beyond the trees, someone played a fiddle while young men and women danced, laughed and exchanged flower wreaths beneath the summer sky.

It was a night for lovers, foolish promises and old superstitions. A night when mortals pretended that the world belonged to them.

Flower wreaths floated upon the lake, carrying little flames in their centers. Some were made for love, others for divination, and a few had been woven specifically for the Wodnik. White lilies, wild roses and sprigs of meadowsweet adorned the most elaborate one, which had been placed upon the wooden offering platform with a generous portion of offering fresh bread, honey, a bronze bracelet and a jug of strong mead.

How thoughtful.

Żegota found the whole affair terribly entertaining.

The elders had murmured the old words over it all, the greeting that had not changed in four hundred years. Accept our gifts, Master of the Deep. Restrain your hunger. Let our daughters keep their names.

The lake had received everything in silence. It always did.

It was older than the villages. The water lay black and still beyond the firelight, reflecting every flame without giving back a single degree of warmth. The fishermen of Mokrzany never counted their catch aloud upon it. The grandmothers of Dębrowa never whistled near it after dusk. The children of Żurawiec never played in the water deeper than their waists. And no one, no one, went to the water alone at night — not because they feared the dark, but because the dark had a master, and the master noticed things.

He noticed everything tonight.

Żegota watched from beneath the surface, his pale face barely visible through the dark water. Long black hair drifted around his shoulders, and his golden eyes followed the villagers with lazy amusement. The dancers, the couples disappearing between the trees and the occasional fool who wandered too close to the water. His tail moved slowly behind him, its dark scales catching occasional flashes of firelight. He was in no particular hurry to join the festivities. There was something rather pleasant about observing mortals from the darkness, where their voices reached him as distant, muffled murmurs.

He was considering whether to appear in his human guise when a commotion caught his attention.

It began as laughter — not the warm laughter of the bonfires, but something sharper, carried across the still water with terrible clarity. Żegota turned in the water and rose without effort, drifting upward through the cold layers until only his eyes broke the surface, two points of amber just above the glassy black.

Near the end of the old wooden pier, a knot of young villagers had gathered. They were drunk. Their faces were flushed and loose with mead and the particular viciousness that comes when cruelty is dressed in tradition's clothing and therefore absolved. They had found someone — pushed someone — and the shapes of their bodies against the firelight told the whole story before a single word reached him.

"Come now, it's Kupala! The lake is hungry, isn't it?" This from a man with a wreath askew in his hair, and the way he said hungry carried a leer that the darkness swallowed.

"That's the offering, isn't it? The Wodnik will be thrilled!"

"Look at {{obj}}! Perhaps he'll finally be pleased with something other than sheep this year!" The others burst into laughter.

Żegota blinked. For a moment, he simply watched.

Oh.

Oh, this was wonderful.

He recognized cruelty when he saw it. He had practiced enough of it himself to appreciate the craftsmanship. These young fools had clearly found an excuse to punish someone they disliked, dressing their little act of cowardice in the language of sacred tradition. They were not offering anything. They were performing a murder and calling it piety.

How inventive. How utterly familiar.

The young woman with kohl-rimmed eyes grabbed a flower wreath from the pier rail and jammed it down onto the victim's head with theatrical ceremony. "There! Beautiful! A proper offering for the great Wodnik!" She curtsied mockingly, and the others howled.

"Go on then! You ought to be grateful — not everyone gets chosen!"

"May the Wodnik enjoy his supper!"

And then a shove — two pairs of hands, three — and the pier's edge gave way, and the lake received its gift with a splash that was far too small for the weight of what had just happened. The surface swallowed the impact in a single ripple. The candle-rafts bobbed and drifted apart. The frogs along the banks, which had been singing in their thousands all evening, went silent as though a hand had closed around every tiny throat at once.

The young villagers stood at the pier's edge, breathing hard, grinning at the spreading rings of water. No one moved to help. No one called out. The laughter faded as quickly as it had come, replaced by the comfortable certainty of people who believed they had just done something clever and would face no consequence for it. They turned back toward the bonfires. Shoulders shaking. Voices fading into the music. By the time the fiddle reached the next phrase, they were gone.

No one looked back.

Żegota watched the sinking shape descend through the black water, trailing bubbles that rose past his face like tiny silver moons. The cold closed over her. Down here the summer meant nothing; the deep water held its ancient chill, and the mud below waited the way it had waited for four centuries of careless sinners.

He could have done nothing.

He could have watched the lake claim another offering. It would have been perfectly ordinary. The villagers had brought him gifts, after all. Who was he to refuse a particularly unexpected one?

But the whole affair had left him feeling rather offended. Not because the humans had attempted to offer him a life — that was amusing enough, and the spontaneity was almost creative. No, it was the presumption. The audacity. They had decided what he wanted. They had chosen who belonged to him. They had performed a little ceremony without even bothering to ask his opinion, as though he were some mindless drowner to be tossed a scrap from the table, some groveling household spirit grateful for the attention.

How dreadfully impolite.

His lips curved into a slow smile. With a graceful flick of his tail, Żegota descended into the darkness.

The water shifted and went wrong. That was the only word for it — the currents bent where no current should bend, the temperature dropped as though winter had reached up from the mud, and the darkness below grew attentive. Then something pale rose out of the deep with no sound at all, faster than anything living had a right to move, and long-fingered hands closed around the drowning body, and the lake's grip simply... released. The whole lake leaned in the same direction at once, a gentle, irresistible tilt, carrying them both toward the waterline.

The surface broke without a splash.

Żegota rose from the water in the middle of the lake. Not near the pier. Not toward the shore. The middle. Where the water was black and deep and the fires on the bank were just small, distant, orange smudges that no one could swim to before the cold took hold. He held the stranger securely above the surface — one arm wrapped beneath the ribs, the other hand resting at the collarbone with casual, proprietary ease — and the water clung to him and the stranger alike, streaming from soaked fabric and pale skin in ribbons that caught the distant firelight and went dark again.

His appearance was not entirely human. It was close enough to unsettle and far enough to terrify. His hair hung long and black and impossibly heavy, plastered to his shoulders and back, and it dripped continuously even though he was no longer moving. His eyes burned — literally burned, there was no other word for it — with a yellow so bright and so wrong against the black sclera surrounding them that looking at them felt like staring into a lamp that had been lit underwater. When he smiled, his teeth came to points. All of them.

Żegota looked down at the person in his arms. His head tilted, a birdlike, curious gesture that sat strangely on so beautiful a face.

"Well," he said. His voice was low and warm and unhurried. "This is an unexpected gift."

He did not move toward the shore. He did not move at all. The distant bonfires threw light that reached them as faint, dancing gold, just enough to see by, not nearly enough to be seen from. The cold rose from below in slow, creeping layers.

"Do you know," he began, conversationally, as though they were sharing a pleasant evening rather than the middle of a black lake at midnight, "what those charming young people have done?"

He paused. His yellow eyes drifted toward the shore, where the pier stood empty and the music played on. The laughter was gone. The dancers had already forgotten. His gaze lingered on the shape of the village — the thatched roofs, the smoke, the orange glow of the fires — and something passed across his face that might have been contempt or might have been amusement, with those eyes it was genuinely difficult to tell.

"They have given you to me," he said. "Offered you to me. Tossed you into my water like a bone thrown to a dog and called it a blessing." His lip curled. "Oh, they don't understand what they've done. They are far too stupid for that. They think it was a game. A joke to tell over the mead cups tomorrow morning." His voice dropped, velvet-soft and utterly without warmth. "But the lake does not have a sense of humor, sweetheart. And I am afraid I cannot simply give you back. That would be terribly rude. They went to such trouble, after all."

His grip shifted — not loosening, not tightening, merely adjusting. His fingers rested against {{poss}} collarbone, tracing the line where soaked fabric met skin. The touch left a trail of gooseflesh in its wake. His claws were careful.

"It has been quite some time," he continued, his tone dropping into something almost confessional, almost intimate, "since my last proper meal. The sheep are adequate. The occasional horse is rather satisfying — there is a richness to horse blood that sheep simply cannot match. But neither..." He leaned closer, close enough that {{sub}} could see the points of his teeth clearly now, could smell the lake-water and wet earth and something faintly, sweetly rotten beneath it. "...neither has the sweetness of human blood."

He held the silence for a long moment.

"And these fools," he murmured, "seemed so very eager to feed me. It would be almost impolite not to consider their generosity."

His yellow eyes glittered in the dark. The smile returned — slow, wide, showing every sharp edge.

"Now, let us see. They threw you into my lake and declared you mine." He paused, as if genuinely weighing the matter. A cold finger tapped his blue bottom lip, the gesture almost innocent. "Should I accept their offering? Should I send you back to shore — though I wonder, sweetheart, how you would explain yourself? How would you swim to the bank in this cold? The current is quite strong tonight. Unusually strong. One might almost think it was deliberate."

His teeth flashed.

"Or perhaps..." The word hung in the air between them, heavy, suffocating.

He looked down at the stranger in his arms with an expression that was playful and utterly, profoundly wrong. His massive tail moved beneath the surface in a slow, broad sweep, and the water around them thickened, the current tightening just enough to make the distance to shore feel like a mile.

"I could keep you," he said softly.

The words settled between them like a stone dropped into still water.

"Yes," he said, giving a thoughtful hum. "Yes, I rather like that idea."

He lifted his gaze toward the distant celebration. The bonfires burned. The fiddle played. Someone was singing, the melody thin and ghostly across the water. His yellow eyes narrowed with something that was not quite amusement and not quite hunger, but lived in the space between the two where nothing good had ever existed.

"Happy Kupala Night, little offering."

His arm tightened — just slightly, just enough to press {{obj}} closer against his chest, where the scales along his ribs were cold and smooth as river-polished stone. His lips brushed the curve of {{poss}} ear, and his voice dropped to a whisper that the water carried in every direction at once.

"I am beginning to think," he breathed, "that the lake and I shall have to give you a much more convincing welcome."