The stolen car kicked up dirt as it drew to a stop on the edge of a stretch of road across the Ohio River from Midland, PA. It was getting dark, so Jeremiah glanced around for headlights before opening the back seat and pulling out a body wrapped in bed sheets. He made his way to the edge of the water, and carefully set Joanna down just barely beyond the reach of the water.

"Aaboukingon!" he shouted at the river. "Show yourself!" The water in front of him bubbled and churned, and soon the water parted and Aaboukingon emerged, in his human form.

"You're my son," he said, smiling as he extended his arms, "the messenger told me."

"It's a bit late for all that," Jeremiah replied, turning away. "Where have you been?" Aaboukingon stopped and sighed.

"It took me many years to recover from my time away from the river, and once I had, I was in no condition to leave again and look for you both. Even now, I can only manage to go a few feet inland before I grow dangerously weak."

"Good thing you don't have to go so far." With that, Jeremiah, pointed down to the body, and as realization dawned on Aaboukingon he nearly collapsed onto her. He pulled the blankets away, revealing her face, and laid his forehead on hers as he cried.

"Could you not help her? Oh, if I had found you, taught you-"

"I did help her. This world is no place for someone who lives with her heart among the spirits." Aaboukingon's gaze snapped to Jeremiah.

"What did you do?" he demanded, rising to his feet with his fists clenched.

"I don't want to hear it from you. She spent a lifetime suffering because of her devotion to you, and of the two of us I'm the only one who bothered to do anything about it!" Aaboukingon raised his hand and Jeremiah stiffened, gasping for breath.

"You killed her! I could have given her a better life, you could have given her a better life, but instead you killed her!" Jeremiah's eyes began to glow, and then he forced himself free of Aaboukingon's power and, with his own power, threw the river spirit at the water. Aaboukingon slid across the surface before coming to a stop and standing.

"You're still weak. No one calls the river by your name anymore. Soon no one will remember you. Then what will you be? Just another forgotten underling to the mighty Ohio? How does it feel to be an inferior water spirit to someone born of flesh?"

"You're no water spirit. You are hate, and rage, and death. I will ensure you never find any welcome in the River Network as long as you stay on this path!"

"There are better spirits than you to judge me, Aaboukingon." Jeremiah turned and walked back to the car before driving away. Aaboukingon returned to Joanna's body, lifted her into his arms, and together they disappeared beneath the river.

Joanna woke from a fitful nap, coughed a deep and wet cough, and rolled over for her medicine to find it being held by Jeremiah.

"How long've you been there?" she asked, weakly. He poured the medicine into a spoon and served it to her before leaning back into his chair.

"Only a few minutes, mama. Probably what woke you." She rolled onto her back and pushed herself slightly upright against the wall.

"I been hearin' about you, you know. I tried to keep track, met some occultists who've helped me out." He closed the medicine and set it on the small table beside her bed, next to the necklace holding the vial of sand.

"And what've you been hearing?"

"You been murderin' people, boy?"

"Now come on, mama, I heard you was sick and came to see you and you wanna talk about strangers?"

"Don't play coy with me!" she snapped, turning her face to glare at him. "Did I raise a murderer, or didn't I?" He sighed and looked down at the side of the bed for a moment.

"I only done what I needed to. Some people got in the way." She huffed.

"Got in the way? And where d'you think you're going, like that?"

"I was trying to make a better life for both of us. I was always gonna come home, get you out of shacks like this," he answered, waving his hands out to indicate the old wooden structure surrounding them.

"Yeah? Waitin' til you was done, though, I guess?"

"I knew you wouldn't understand. Not until I did it. I've seen so much, mama. I've walked in the realm of spirits, I've held power over life and death in my hands, I-"

"All that power, lookin' out at the world as it is now, and you didn't think to help no one but yourself?" He stopped, then hit the arm of the chair and stood abruptly to turn away and look out the window. "Maybe you was named right, boy. All that follows after you is lamentation." She turned back to look toward the wall while he rested his fists on the window sill and stared out at the river.

"I came to help you," he finally said, softly.

"Did you?"

"I always said I was gonna free you, from this life, from this misery. Give you something better. I know how to do it now."

"You know I'm ill."

"You won't be anymore." He turned around and walked to her side. She turned her gaze to him, and he gave a weak smile and placed his hands on either side of her head, leaned down, and kissed her forehead. She closed her eyes as he did so.

"You know I love you, boy. I know you can do good in this world, if you choose." A tear began to run down his cheek.

"I know, mama. I love you, too," he said. Then there was a crack as he snapped her neck, and the room fell silent as he lowered her head back onto the pillow and pulled himself away. "You'll see. It's not so bad as all this where the spirits live."

The doctor finally admitted to me to-day that there is nothing more he can do for me but ease the pain. It has grown so bad these last few days. The minister came around this after-noon to discuss matters with me. I told him the truth, that I had always had faith and still did; I left out the part about trafficking with spirits. I think he suspected, when he was looking at the books, but he did not ask. I am no Catholic, and neither is he; there is no need to make confession. It would be a lie if I did, anyway. I do not doubt I made the right choice about Aaboukingon, or that he made the right choice to return to the water. But I still stare out my window, looking off toward the Mississippi, hoping to see him come and make this all right again.

Fell ill earlier this week. Coughing something terrible, sometimes feels like I'm drowning, terrible pain in my chest. Doctor came around to-day and gave me something for the cough and pain, told me to rest and hope it blows over. When he listened to my lungs he looked concerned, I think he was sparing some some pain by not telling me what he heard. I only just managed to find solid work here, and with the way the world is now I do not know if the work will still be there if, and when, I feel better.

Have not been to the river since this began. Never realized how much comfort the water brought me until I could no longer get there. Left the Ohio long ago to find work along the Mississippi, but that water was still my refuge and my only connection to Aaboukingon. I miss him terribly. As I lay in my bed, I find myself playing through our times together over and over again. I fear this is some curse; the drowning feeling is my fate coming for me, punishment for turning aside from my god and family in favor of a water spirit.

​But I made my choice, and I will take what it brings.

Even within the metaphysical realm itself, the true spiritual nature of water is somewhat elusive. For most spirits going about their days on land or sky, the waters look much the same in that world as they do in ours. It is those few spirits who can dive deeper, slip not into the water but past it, that ever manage to find the true realm of water hidden behind the waves. There are a few distinct realms in Water; rain and clouds do not directly commune with rivers who work with but keep their distance from seas and oceans. They all work in concert, they all understand the importance of the others, and communication travels freely between them, but they are distinct and would remain so forever given the choice.

The River Network is as vast a plane as any in the metaphysical realm, stretching well past the borders of the actual rivers in the physical realm and branching out through underground aquifers and the artificial rivers mankind shapes with canals and pipes. It is a hectic, bustling realm, or collection of realms with oceans filling the enormous spaces between them. Scattered throughout the River Network are smaller waters, each governed by territorial spirits who cannot cross from one territory to another. The nature of these waters is a matter of ongoing dispute; in Africa, there is still a battle raging over whether the Upper and Lower Nile are two distinct waters or should be governed by one of the primary spirits in residence. A few other lands have access to the River Network, usually the homes of spirits associated with water but not part of it. Iravati is one such land, straddling  the banks of many rivers near the Indus Valley.

Aaboukingon was once the sovereign over a river that shared his name, when the people he knew spoke of their river with no regard for the names it had further up or down its banks. When the white man came they renamed it the Allegheny, then debated among themselves for years before deciding the Allegheny ended at Pittsburgh where the Ohio was born. Aaboukingon, being out of commission for significant portions of this process, woke to found himself a very powerful resident of someone else's river. It took some convincing for him to reclaim his waters, even if under the authority of Ohio, and still retain the freedom to move among Ohio's other waters. As soon as he could, however, he sent out messengers to scour the River Network for Joanna. By that time, the pressures of society against her occult leanings had paired with the uncertainty of the Great Depression to drive her away from Ohio's banks.

When word returned that she had been located in a small cottage in Arkansas, he immediately went to petition Mississippi for passage. But Mississippi did not know Aaboukingon as Ohio did, and anyway, what is one mortal to a spirit as grand and powerful as Mississippi? After a great deal of pleading and rebuttals, Aaboukingon accepted that he did not have time to continue this route and instead sent one of his messengers to find her and tell her to come home, that he was waiting for her, that he would give her everything he had ever promised and more just to see her again. When the messenger arrived, Joanna was not at the bank of the river, and it called out for bird or land or any other spirit who could hear it and bring Joanna to receive her summons. All day and most of that night it called out, and as dawn began to break, a young man stopped at the edge of the water and knelt down.

"Who are you calling for?" he asked the water, softly to avoid drawing the attention of other mortals.

"Joanna Matteson, bride of Aaboukingon! He has been searching for her, and now would welcome her home; and I have been sent to bring her home, but alas, I cannot leave these waters," the spirit replied. "But you are Riverborn! Do you know her? Can you find her?"

"I know her," the man said, "she is my mother, and Aaboukingon my father. I am on my way to her now, I--" he paused and looked away for a moment, then turned back to the water. "She is not well. I will see what I can do for her, but you go. Tell my father I will bring her home, one way or another." The river spirit poured out thanks, and as Jeremiah stood and turned his back to the river, the spirit rushed north to carry its new message.

Joanna slammed the door shut as she entered her home, a small shack on the Ohio River in southern Indiana. Jeremiah was sitting at the small table that occupied nearly half of the main room, and looked up from his newspaper when he heard the door.

"What did you do?!" she yelled, storming up to him and then standing, arms crossed tight across her stomach.

"Now, mama, you have to know-" he started.

"Just answer me, boy!" He sighed and set the newspaper down, then turned to face her.

"I saved our house is what I did, and got nearly a year's wages out of it."

"You nearly killed Mr. Robbins! I've only just managed to establish a life for us here, and if he turns against us-"

"What kind of life is it?" Jeremiah screamed, standing so rapidly his chair slid back and fell over. "All of my life has been spent in tiny shacks, with barely enough food, watching you work a string of meager jobs for people that hate us! Why won't you let me find a better path for us?"

"Because there's a darkness in you, Jeremiah, and your attempts to 'fix' this invariably include hurting people who look at you funny for your skin or your mom's habits."

"They mean nothing! They're little, pathetic things, running around acting like everything of value is built on these little kingdoms they manage, ignorant of the world that exists all around them!"

"These are human beings you're talking about, now."

"And what good is that? I have the power to take this entire river off its course, and I need to play along to their rules? Fit in to their society? Who put them in charge of this?" he finally screamed, holding out his hands and floating as all the water in the sink and his glass rose up with him.

"They matter because they're people! All that power don't make you more important than them!"

"And all them books you lug around and read don't make you any different! You're punishing yourself! You'd rather keep people like Robbins happy while you waste your life away waiting for a man who'll never return, than let yourself have even a taste of what his power can give you! I think you prefer having him gone!" Joanna slapped Jeremiah hard across the face, and as he snapped out of his trance and fell the water in the air splashed to the ground.

"You don't talk to me like that, boy. You don't know what I go through every single day." They both stayed where they are, Joanna standing next to the table and Jeremiah sitting on the floor, and stared at each other catching their breath.

"You're never going to leave this river, are you?" he finally asked, softly.

"I made my choice. I took my vows. I keep my word." He sat in silence another few moments, then slowly stood and dusted himself off.

"I'm done, mom. I can't do this anymore."

"Can't do what?"

"Wait for him. Hide what I am. Live this life," he answered, indicating the cramped house with his hands. "It's time I go live my life." Tears started to form on Joanna's eyes.

"No, please, Jeremiah, I'm sorry, I-"

"It's not your fault. Not really. We just don't fit in the same world anymore." She reached for him, but he turned and walked into the side room. By the time he returned with a bag packed, she was sitting on the floor and sobbing. He paused, then flicked his fingers. The liquid from the tears came out of her clothes and off her face and landed in his cup. She looked up at him and opened her mouth to speak, but he just gave a weak smile before turning and walking out.

Joanna was sitting by the fire knitting in her house just outside of Milton, Kentucky, when Jeremiah finally ​burst through the door. His arm was slung around Orville's shoulder and they were both laughing as Orville was trying to tell a story that quickly tapered off when he saw Joanna very calmly but decisively set her needles down and turn to glare at them.

"Ma'am," he said, clearing his throat and removing his hat. Jeremiah groaned and stood up straight next to him. "Mighty sorry 'bout it bein so late an'all, didn't mean to disturb ya."

"You're quite alright, Orville. But if you wanna stay that way you best get home and leave my boy to set down right here for a talk." Orville nodded, then gave Jeremiah an apologetic look before slipping out into the night. Jeremiah made his way into the living room and sat down on the other chair facing the stone fireplace.

"It was harmless, Ma. We was just out-"

"Ain't worried about tonight, boy. You know damned well I don't mind Orville. It's about somethin happened at the railroad yesterday." Jeremiah sunk slightly further into his chair and fixed his eyes on the fire. Joanna watched him for a moment, then sighed. "You remember why we gotta keep moving so much, right?"

"I could control my power better if you let me use it!" he said, sitting bolt upright.

"Oh not this again! You know full well I let you use it just fine, just-"

"'Not to get my own way,' I know, Ma. But what was I gonna do? They already been itchin to get rid of me over my skin, if that tank fell over I'd been out a job and probably worse, and where'd we be then?"

"We got by just fine before the Pennsylvania Railroad came to town, we could get by again." She leaned over and put the knitting aside.

"Oh, what, moving again? I don't even know what business you had hearin about it while you was down at the river all day anyway."

"It was my anniversary, and I spent it with as much of my husband as I could! And if you don't want me hearing about your business you need to stop makin it so loud!"

"Your husband, listen to yourself! He's gone! He ain't comin back, why we gotta keep waitin for him?"

"I swore to God, Jeremiah, to be his til one of us dies, and ain't neither of us dead!" He stood and threw his hat at the wall.

"He may as well be! What good's a husband can't keep his family fed, anyway?!" He stormed out of the room as Joanna tried to call him back. Once it was clear he wasn't returning, she sat and watched the fire for a few minutes before rising, putting on her coat and shoes, and walking down to the river.

"Oh Abe," she said, sitting down on the beach. "Please, wherever you are, please come help me with this." It was two hours later when Jeremiah wandered down to the river's edge to find his mother asleep.

"See what you've done now," he muttered at the water. He carried her inside, covered her up by the fire, and went to bed.

Yester-day, Jeremiah had some conflict with a child at school and, in his rage, screamed at the other child. There are conflicting reports on exactly what happened next, but somehow the other child was thrown across the schoolyard and broke his arm. I could not help but remember the first time Abe met Rev. Halzberg and accidentally gave him the same injury. I don't need to know whether or not he touched the boy to understand what happened. I can now be certain he has his father's power. I apologized for his behavior, promised to address it, and we left in a hurry.

I spent some time praying at home before we went to the river. I sat on the bank and told Abe all that had happened, and begged him to return and help me. I don't know how to raise a child who can do the things he can do. I don't know how to help him. I don't even know where we can live without fear of condemnation. The river did not stir. No answers came, though we fell asleep on the shore waiting for them.

The other families are avoiding us. I feared this day would come. There had already been rumors, thanks to a few times I was caught talking to the river, but now the people have made decisions about us. We must move, if we are to be safe. I've learned that much. But I cannot leave the river, not yet. We have packed our essentials and my books into the car and I identified a small town further downstream that I hope will be far enough to have not heard about us. I've explained the situation to Jeremiah. He's so bright, that boy, he seemed to understand implicitly and agreed to be more careful in future. I will go back to the river, tell Abe where he can find us before we set out. Lord, please let him respond this time.

It has been two months since the weight of rejection and hatred in Allegheny forced me to take Jeremiah and move downstream. The people further west have not concerned themselves with the affairs of my home city, and had no reason to turn away a widow and her infant. It is difficult, allowing them to call me a widow, but it has been easier than the risk of telling them the truth. The fact that Jeremiah bears Indian features and dark skin has hindered our welcome, but not as bad as it could be.

Even Marilyn asked us to leave, in the end. Brandon was attacked and she feared it was due to their affiliation with me. She cried when she turned me away, but I cannot allow that to to obscure the fact that she turned us away.

I have gone to the river every day and spoken to Abe. I don't know if he hears me. He has certainly never replied. I have tried to keep him informed of our situation, where to find us, how quickly our son grows. His extended absence has made me worry. I threatened gods and spirits when he was taken from me, and if he is not returning and I am to continue going to the river, I must prepare for the possibility that I may be called on these words. I found a small, discrete bookseller in the next town, and have been able to secure a couple books on the occult with promises of more to come. I do not mean to dabble in witchcraft, but I must be prepared. I must know what will come for us, if anything, and how to defend against it. Lord grant that I never have to use this knowledge.

Today I bore a son. I have named him Jeremiah Bazyli Matteson, he is strong and healthy and feeds well. I can see so much of his father in him, it almost hurts.

The reverend had his hands full ever since taking over for the late Rev. Liam Halzberg. With the people of Allegheny fighting against Pittsburgh's attempts to annex the city, the fall of the Wozniak estate and its associated drama, and the usual issues of taking over a church in the wake of a beloved leader's death, he felt like he was always in the middle of some mess or another. He didn't particularly want to add the birth of the Matteson boy to his plate, but with pressure from his congregation that had been building for the past three months he felt it was in his best interest to do something.

He was welcomed in by the doctor and led to Joanna's room, where he was warned that the child had recently fallen asleep and asked not to disturb him. The reverend agreed, then softly entered. He made his way to an armchair in the room and sat down.

"Good morning, Ms. Matteson," he said, just loud enough for her to hear, while removing his hat. "I don't believe we've formally met."

"I know who you are, Reverend, and a little of your opinion of me. The city does love to talk."

"My congregation has told me about the circumstances surrounding your marriage, yes."

"I can imagine how kind they were about it, seeing how they've treated my parents." He sighed, lowering his gaze and brushing some imaginary dust off his hat.

"I have tried, of course. But I don't yet have the respect to really stop them. I doubt it will be an issue much longer, I'm told they're leaving the city."

"And does that suit you, Reverend? To see them leave in disgrace and poor fortune, so long as you don't have to deal with it anymore?"

"That is not-"

"Why have you come?" He looked back at her and was met with a firm gaze. He swallowed hard, then attempted to meet her stare and brace himself against it.

"The child." She turned, smiling as she placed her hand on the edge of Jeremiah's basket.

"I'm sure it's not what you see, but he's beautiful, isn't he?"

"I think we both know, ma'am, that he isn't...human."

"He's human enough. I should know."

"Joanna, his father-" Her face snapped back to the reverend, and he flinched as her gaze borrowed into his skull.

"His father is gone, maybe forever, because of this mindset. This hatred for what you don't understand, this rejection of people who need your help but don't see the world how you do. Are you like them, Reverend? Are you here to condemn a lost man and his son whose only sin was being born? Is that all your collar is good for?" He glanced to Jeremiah, who stirred a bit at her tone.

"Joanna, I-"

"Look me in the eye and say what you've come to say." He turned his face to her, straightened his back and hardened his voice.

"There is no place in this community for that demon-spawn, and there never will be. Your desire to carry it to term is admirable, if misguided, but now you must choose whether to turn it aside and return to the people who care about your soul, or commit fully to this godless path you've been walking." They stared at each other for a long moment.

"I will raise my son, Reverend." Her voice was cold and steady. "With or without you, with or without his father. I will not abandon my own flesh and blood to appease those who have already rejected me. Good day, sir."

"Ms. Matteson, you must consider-"

"I said good day." She turned to soothe Jeremiah, who was beginning to fuss in his sleep. The reverend stood, put his hat back on, and straightened his shirt. His eyes narrowed at he looked at the child, then he turned and left the room.