Jawdocha and the water of truth

A literary legend written for Ask the Signs. The witches are fictional and nothing in the story predicts a future.

Hanusia came to ask whether she should leave. Jawdocha set a bowl of water on the table and a deck so old its cards had gone soft at the corners.

In Konotop they said the witches read cards better than anyone. They said other things too: that the river runs slower there because it likes to eavesdrop, that the roosters crow only after one of the witches has finished her morning tea, and that the eldest of them, Jawdocha, remembers a time when nobody in the town could yet count to a hundred. Jawdocha laughed loudest at that last one. "I could always count to a hundred," she would say, adjusting her scarf. "I simply could not be bothered."

She lived at the end of a street that had no name, in a cottage with blue shutters and a crooked chimney whose smoke always drifted a little against the wind. An oak barrel of rainwater stood in the hall, mint grew under the window, and on the table lay a deck so old that its corners had gone soft as river stones. Beside the cards there was always a clay bowl of water. Jawdocha said the cards tell you what is happening, and the water tells you who is asking. People nodded and pretended to understand.

On a September evening, when the smell of burning leaves hung over the gardens, Hanusia, the smith's daughter, knocked at the door. She was nineteen, with a braid to her waist, and she held an envelope so crumpled it looked as if she had carried it in a pocket for a week. She had. Inside was a letter from a distant city: she had been accepted at a school where they taught painting. Hanusia had painted since childhood, on calendar pages, on boards, on stones from the river. Now somebody had written, in black and white, that it made sense.

"My mother wants me to stay," said Hanusia, sitting down on the stool. "My father says nothing, he just hammers louder than usual. And I don't know. I want to go, and when I think about the train my stomach goes cold. Tell me: should I go or not?" Jawdocha did not answer. She moved the bowl to the middle of the table, told Hanusia to blow on the water three times, and shuffled the cards slowly, with ceremony, as if waking someone who was sleeping well.

The first card showed someone walking away from eight standing cups under the moon, toward the hills. "Eight of Cups," said Jawdocha. "This card does not say you should go. It says you have already gone, in your thoughts. The cups are full, nothing is missing, and still a person walks, because something is calling from beyond the hill." The second card was bright and cheerful: a garland of flowers strung between four staves, people waving from a gate. "Four of Wands. Home. Look, child, this house does not disappear when you leave it. The gate opens both ways."

The third card showed a naked woman under the stars pouring water from two jugs, one onto the ground and one into a pond. "The Star," smiled Jawdocha. "Hope. But look closely: she pours that water herself. Nobody pours it for her." Hanusia leaned so low over the cards that her braid slipped off her shoulder. "So the cards say I should go?" Jawdocha sighed the way all the grandmothers of the world sigh when a granddaughter will not listen. "The cards say what your heart looks like this evening. Tomorrow morning it may look different. Now look into the water."

Hanusia looked. The lamp trembled in the water, the beamed ceiling, a slice of window. And her own face, a little blurred, eyes wide open. She waited for something to appear: a road, a train, a city, a sign. Nothing appeared. "I only see myself," she said at last, disappointed. "Exactly," replied Jawdocha, and actually clapped her hands with satisfaction. "The water of truth always shows the one who is asking. People come here for other faces, for the faces of fiances, enemies and futures. And they get their own. It is the most honest water in the district."

Then Jawdocha did something strange. She took one more card from the deck without shuffling, as if she knew where it lay, and set it beside the others. Two children in a garden, a boy handing a girl a cup full of white flowers. "Six of Cups. Memory, childhood, kindness. Last night this same card lay on this same table. For somebody who sat on this same stool and asked whether she should keep you." Hanusia went pale, then red. "My mother was here?" Jawdocha put on an innocent face. "I say nothing. It is the water that talks. Water is a terrible gossip."

And she told her, though she supposedly said nothing. That Hanusia's mother had cried over that card and then laughed. That Jawdocha had told her what she tells every mother: children who are given flowers in childhood come back later with their own. That the mother had stood up, wiped her eyes with her sleeve and said: "Let her choose herself. Only let her not know I was here." "And so you don't know," finished Jawdocha, winking. "Because I did not tell. Remember that, if anyone asks."

Hanusia walked home through the dark gardens, and a lamp burned in the forge window. Her mother sat beside it with her sewing, though nothing of the sewing was visible, because she had not made a single stitch in an hour. What happened next is told differently in Konotop. Some say Hanusia left that same autumn and still paints the river, which runs slower because it likes to listen. Others say she stayed a year, taught her father to cook borscht, and only then left. Others still, that she left and came back and left again, as happens with people who have two homes.

But everyone agrees on one thing: she chose herself. And that is why none of those versions is sad. When someone asked Jawdocha how it had really been, she shrugged and poured the guest water into the bowl. "The card shows the road," she said. "The water shows you. And you always walk on your own legs. I do not mind which road you take, as long as you do not stand in the doorway until winter, because my warmth escapes."

The card shows the road, the water shows you, and you always walk on your own legs.

Cards from this story

Her whisper for today

Ask what you were given today, not what you owe. They are different numbers.

Whispers are lines to carry, not forecasts. They say nothing about other people, money or health.

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