It took a moment for her rage to clear enough for the words to actually register: byt’ uveren. A beat later, she realized why that looked so strange, apart from words having no business on the back of a turtle.
They were written in Russian. Be sure.
In Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series there are many, many types of Drowned Worlds that children can walk into. Or in the case of Nadezhda Sokolov, fall into while trying to help a pond turtle she thinks has been vandalized. The world Nadya finds on the other side of a floating door made of ripples and waterweeds is completely different from any Drowned World we’ve seen before; a world with no air, just different thicknesses of water, where boats are towed by friendly turtles, foxes talk, rivers give gifts, and where a misunderstood orphan – born with one arm shorter by a forearm and hand – can find the belonging and acceptance and love she’s been craving her entire life.
“We are the people of Belyyreka, and you are one of us, door-swept and Drowned.”
Nadya’s childhood could have been harrowing. Born with a missing appendage, abandoned by her teenage mother, raised in a Russian orphanage, and claimed by a couple who believe that adopting a handicapped foreign child is the godly thing to do, I kept expecting things to turn into a Dickensian nightmare. But nope, everything is mostly…fine? Nadya is resilient and unflappable, never thinking to miss the hand that she never had in the first place. The women who run the orphanage give her as much care and attention as is possible in a crowded, underfunded organization, and Nadya embraces her identity as the child who makes sure all the other children are cared for. Her adoption by American missionaries and move to Colorado throws her a little, but all the horrible places where other stories might go (abuse, indoctrination, bullying) just never materialize. Homesick for the orphanage, Nadya is still determined to fit into her new life, and she’s actually making it work.
The problem comes when her parents decide that her missing arm is something that must be fixed.
…she had never intentionally strapped anything to her arm before, never seen herself as lesser because she only had one hand, never seen the need to transform into something more. This was not her choice. This was her body, but it was not her decision…
It needs to be stressed that Nadya’s adoptive mother and father are not bad people. But, as with some of the other Wayward Children’s parents, they’re really more focused on their identity as parents than they are with having a child. It never occurs to them to ask their adopted daughter if she actually wants a prosthetic arm, and they can’t imagine why she isn’t automatically grateful when they make her wear one anyway. Given time and patience and her own agency, Nadya might have one day chosen something that would make her life easier. As it is she’s now uncomfortable and self-conscious, and all of her accomplishments with making friends at school are undermined by something that’s practically a sign with giant letters saying “SEE? BROKEN! DEFECTIVE! EVERYBODY STARE!”
Small wonder that Nadya barely gives her adoptive parents a second thought when she finds herself in Belyyreka.
…instead of sky, it looked like a shimmering sheet of water, liquid and rippling like the surface of the pond in the afternoon sun.
Ten books in, and McGuire continues to come up with intriguing variations on fairytale worlds. Belyyreka is a water world that refuses to follow the laws of physics, at least when it comes to water. What you get from that is a sky that looks like the underside of a pool, rivers that can run in two directions at once, and giant turtles that swim through the “air” (which is really just a lighter type of water). The city Nadya arrives in is surrounded by a lacework of docks at many different levels, all supported by the water around them, which is also breathable.
The way Nadya is integrated into Belyyreka is nothing short of magical. From the harbormaster of the city to the family of the fisherfolk who she first stumbled across, Nadya is welcomed by everyone as one more Drowned Girl, with a magical connection to the rivers and the possibility to bond with one of the turtles who pulls the boats of the city. Belyyreka is the place where Nadya can have a family and spend the rest of her life…
…aaaand we all know where this is going. The Wayward Children stories are for the heartbroken ones who ended up back in our world after finding everything they ever wanted in the world behind the door, and Nadya is no exception. It really has gotten to the point where I read all of these lovely, fantastical details with one part of my brain constantly asking “Okay, so when does this all go wrong?” And I think McGuire realizes this, because despite Eleanor West’s advice to her students to learn to live without their fairytale worlds, we do see some students find their way back. It makes for a slightly gentler heartbreak, especially in cases like Nadya who I was surprised to find out we’ve already seen before. (Hint, she appears in Beneath the Sugar Sky, another reason for people to read all of the books in this series, even for the mostly standalone stories like this one.)