The Wayward Children Series, Part 4
by Seanan McGuire
Reviewed by Galen Strickland
Posted January 13, 2025
Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear / ?
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I have no reason to believe this tenth novella is the last Wayward Children story Seanan will write. This is the fourth page I have created for them (see links below for the others). Recently asked how many we could expect, she answered, "As many as I am allowed to write. There are currently ten under contract, which is not the same thing as 'ten planned'." After all, she is still adding books to her earlier series, October Daye (the nineteenth novel coming in September), and InCryptid (the fourteenth in March).
This story focuses on one of the Drowned Girls, Nadya. Yesterday I re-read my previous reviews, and in several instances I said I needed to re-read the stories themselves, since I had forgotten details about some of the characters. Jack and Jill Wolcott have been featured several times, and even then I might not remember everything that happened to them. The only time I had mentioned Nadya was for the third story, "Beneath the Sugar Sky," but she was just a support character in that one, along with her friend Cora, the other Drowned Girl. Nadya, or Nadezhda, was born in Russia to a very young, unwed girl, who ran out of the hospital as soon as she was able, without identifying herself. One of the nurses, or maybe it was a matron at the orphanage, gave her the name, along with the surname Sokolov. She was born with a disability, her right arm ending above the elbow, but she wasn't discouraged by that. She couldn't miss what she never had. At the orphanage she helped with children younger than her, especially presenting them in the best way possible when people came around for adoption. She was nine years old before that happened for her, an American couple that may have wanted a 'complete' child, but they chose her anyway, taking her back to Denver.
Nadya knew very little English, and her new parents, Carl and Pansy (Karen would have been an appropriate name too) Sanders, knew next to no Russian. They all attended language classes to address that issue, and while the Sanders did learn some Russian, they never spoke it in front of Nadya. They tried to make the best of the situation, but their usual way of trying to help their new daughter was buying her things, new clothes, shoes, toys, etc, and bribing her with ice cream and pizza. Something she didn't want or need was also provided for her, a prosthetic arm, which was uncomfortable and irritating for her to wear, but it fascinated her friends at school. While at the orphanage she had found an injured tortoise which she nursed back to health, but later gave him away to adoptive parents since Maksim deserved a better home than she could provide. She spoke of Maksim often, which prompted Carl (she balked at calling him Dad) to show her a small pond nearby, home to several turtles (not tortoises, she knew the difference). In previous stories, the children entered their portal world through a door which had the words "Be Sure" inscribed on it. In Nadya's case, on one of her visits to the turtle pond, she noticed one of the turtles had been defaced, with "Be Sure" scratched into its shell. That angered her, and in trying to get close enough to assess the damage, she also noticed what looked like a door in the pond, or else it was just a shadow in the weeds. In any case, she fell into the pond, into and through the 'door.'
She came back to consciousness beside a river, not the pond she had fallen into. She was wet, and muddy, and tired. Before she could orient herself, a very large frog came out of the river, which projected out its tongue, drawing back her prosthetic arm, swallowing it whole. She ran into the woods nearby, eventually meeting a talking fox, which helped her find another river. She had come out of the Winsome, but the Wild was where she would find other people. She didn't realize it at the time, but she was already underwater, actually breathing thinner water. The people she meets are fishermen, whose boat could submerge in the Wild, taking her into a lake under the river. Their boat was towed by large turtles, which delighted Nadya, and later she was paired with a smaller turtle whose name was Borlien. She is adopted into the family of the unwed Nina, who had arrived in Belyyreka, the Land Beneath the Lake, many years before, through a door in her apartment in Manhattan. Nina's grandparents had been immigrants from Russia, so they had that in common. They say that time moves like a river, but it also moves differently on the other side of a door. Nadya guesses she is about nineteen when she marries Alexis, whom she met when he taunted her about her missing arm. He was poor, upset that she was in a better place, envious of her privilege. But they grew to be very good friends, and obviously more.
Another thing that was said: most doors presented themselves to those who needed to go through them. Nadya would agree she needed to be in Belyyreka. Alas, that was not to be, at least not for the end of this story. Maybe she can return to the Land Under the Lake later, return to her new husband, and all the people, and turtles, she had grown to love. She had learned to ride her turtle Borlien, and she had become a scout rather than a fisherman, or a farmer like Alexis. She wanted to return to the Winsome, to see if things she had heard about it were true. A large frog, but not necessarily the same frog that menaced her before, attacked. Before she knew it, she was off Borlien's back, submerged in the river. And then she woke up, beside the turtle pond near her home in Denver, a man performing CPR on her. She is ten years old again, and she knows Carl and Pansy will be furious she has lost her new arm. Even if she is never able to return to Belyyreka, I hope this is not the last time she appears. I'm sure I am much older than what Seanan thinks of as her target audience, but I love the Wayward Children. Perhaps I was unlucky not to find my door when I was a child, becuase there were many times I felt I did not belong where I was. At least I can pretend while reading, which I will continue to do. Highly recommended.
Related Links:
Go back to the beginning with the first three Wayward Children stories
Follow that with Wayward Children 2
Then Wayward Children 3
Links to all of my Seanan McGuire Reviews
Seanan's Official Website
Her bibliography at FantasticFiction.com
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