Rusalka (v1.3)

by C. J. Cherryh

  Pyetr scowled at Uulamets when he arrived at the fire, ready to give the old man word for word anything he was ready for; but Uulamets said not a word to either of them, only squatted down with a thunderous frown and began to pack up his little jars.

  “So what do we do now?” Pyetr asked.

  “Stay here and do nothing]” Uulamets snarled under his breath, took his bag of pots and left, with the Thing scurrying behind him.

  “Good riddance,” Pyetr said, gave Sasha’s shirt a furious twist and stuck it on a long branch, toasting it over the fire while Sasha stayed bundled up in his coat. “Get the breeches off. And the boots. Hold this.”

  He went after more wood, squishing as he walked, warming himself with temper and with work. He gathered a good armload up on the ridge, keeping an eye on the boy at the fire, and came back to build the fire three times its size.

  “Could you see master Uulamets?” Sasha said, worried. “If it came back—”

  “Let it choke on him.” Pyetr sat down, pulled his wet boots off, pulled off his own breeches and wrung them out, making a puddle in the grass. He sneezed violently, wiped his nose, and put the breeches back on, wet as they were.

  “I don’t think I even know where the house is,” Sasha said.

  It was a grim thought, for a moment. Then Pyetr jutted his chin toward the river. “Good as any road. I know where we are. Use your wits, boy. You don’t get everything by wishing.”

  Sasha’s face reddened past its pallor, and Pyetr remembered then calling him a fool and half drowning him.

  “You did all right,” he said, and pulled his coat off and laid it on the grass, figuring the shirt was the only thing that was going to dry in any reasonable time. He wrung it out a second time, found himself a couple of sticks and spread it on them, to hold over the fire. “Just for the god’s sake what did you think you were going to do?”

  “Bring you your sword,” Sasha said. “Then it came out of the hole. I knew it was out. Before I went in the water.” He started shivering again, having trouble with his tongue. “What was in there?”

  Pyetr stared at the fire, keeping his shirt out of it, concentratedly keeping it from scorching, keeping his eyes on the bright warmth. “Bones. Lot of bones. I think I know what happened to his daughter.”

  “You think he knew?”

  Pyetr shrugged, recollecting a pretty face. A girl Sasha’s age. Not a ghost, a memory of a ghost. “Maybe,” he said. “He knew about the Thing in the river. He wasn’t surprised, was he?”

  “He says he can bring her back.”

  “Bones are damn hard to bring back. Aren’t they?” He remembered Sasha saying, the morning after his own illness—Pyetr, you were dying and he brought you back-He did not want to remember that. He did not want to guess what the old man was doing over the ridge. He did not want to remember the inside of the cave, or the feel of the vodyanoi’s body or that mud in the entrance, with the bones in it.

  He said, in Sasha’s long silence, “About time we got out of here. We’ll get grandfather home, get him settled. He owes us, this time. He can’t say we didn’t try.”

  Somehow the prospect of trekking down the riverside was both more and less frightening than it had been. At least, if there was such a thing as a vodyanoi, it could be cut, it—whatever master Uulamets said—hated the sun, it preferred the water, it skulked around in underwater caves and there was a way to avoid it on those terms, simply keeping to the general line of the river for a guide through the forest and never spending the night without fire, which they could get the same way master Uulamets got it, with a clay firepot.

  “We walked in,” he said to Sasha, “we can certainly walk out again, in a direction we want to go.”

  “We still need his help,” Sasha whispered, as if anything they said could carry across the ridge. “Just please, please don’t fight with him, don’t make him angry.”

  He had seen Sasha’s face when the wizard was talking. Sasha’s deference to the old man infuriated him. But he had thought the Thing was a dog; and sometimes it still looked that way; and he had thought a vodyanoi was a bad dream; and it still felt that way; and he would have said Sasha’s wishes were no likelier to come true than anyone’s—but he saw at least the chance that an old man twice as stubborn and set on his way could scare a youngster like Sasha, who was convinced his least ill-wish could work terrible, far-reaching harm.

  “The old man’s damned me often enough,” Pyetr said. “If there was anything to that, do you think that Thing down there would have gone running?”

  “He wanted it to.”

  “Oh. god,” Pyetr said in disgust, and rescued his shirt from scorching. It was hot, and burned his hands. “Damn!”

  “Please don’t. Not here. Not now.” Sasha was shivering again, hands clasped between his knees, hardly fit to get the words out.

  “Good luck to him, then,” Pyetr said, to have peace. “He needs it.” And on a more charitable impulse: “He needs somebody to talk him out of this woods, is what he needs. He needs to go downriver, get among sane people. Maybe he is a wizard.—Maybe all this is because he’s a wizard, maybe that’s all it is, did you ever think of that? Maybe he makes people think they see things.”

  “You’re hopeless!” Sasha cried, as angry as ever Pyetr had seen him. “Do you think all this is for your benefit? It’s none of it a joke, Pyetr! His daughter died! Don’t make fun of him!”

  With which Sasha got up and pulled his coat around him and headed off toward the river, three steps before Pyetr flung his sticks and his shirt down and caught him.

  “Don’t you be a fool! All right, he’s a wizard, he’s anything you want, just stay away from there, I believe in it, I believe anything you want, all right?”

  Sasha stopped fighting, out of breath. “Something’s wrong,” he said, trying to twist his hands free, casting anxious looks toward the hill. “Something’s wrong with him. You said that—and things just stopped…”

  “I’m not any wizard,” Pyetr said. The wind was cold on his back. The boy’s nonsense upset his stomach. “He won’t thank you for going over there. If he’d wanted you, he’d have asked. Just stay out of it.”

  “Just up the hill,” Sasha said. “Just up the hill. No more than that.”

  The boy was set on it. Pyetr tagged after, shivering all the way, as far as the top of the ridge and the view of the willow below.

  The old man was lying there, sprawled on the hillside, his pots scattered about him. Sasha started to run. Pyetr did, with a sudden curse remembering he had left his sword back at the fire—slipped and slid down the grassy slope on the boy’s track.

  The Thing from the yard was lying in the middle of the old man. It snarled at them as they came running up.

  The old man was breathing. Pyetr felt an uncharitable regret, seeing that, and the Thing growled the moment the thought crossed his mind.

  Sasha spoke softly to it. It sank down then, whining like a dog, and holding to Uulamets’ robe with tiny manlike hands.

  “Careful!” Pyetr said, when Sasha bent closer.

  But it scuttled off Uulamets’ chest, seeming smaller still, and hid its face against the old man’s sleeve.

  Master Uulamets shook his head and stared into the fire, that was all the response he gave to the most careful questions Sasha posed. The pots were scattered and broken, whatever powders master Uulamets had mixed were lost over by the riverside.

  And the sun was past noon.

  “/think we’d better get him home,” Pyetr said grimly. “And start now. That Thing likes the dark. How long do we want to sit around here?”

  Master Uulamets said nothing to that, either. Sasha looked desperately from one to the other of them, unable to figure why everything came down to him, or why Pyetr was asking him what they ought to do.

  Except, when he thought about it, there was no one else to consult. Master Uulamets hardly seemed able to know what had happened to him. And someone had to agree that that was the cas
e.

  “I think we’d better,” Sasha sighed. “I’d better go back and get what I can salvage—”

  “Leave it,” Pyetr said sharply. “We’re not risking another trip over there. We’ve had enough accidents, thank you.—Come on, grandfather.” He took master Uulamets very gently under the arm and pulled him to his feet. Uulamets did not protest, and Pyetr said, “Get his staff. I suppose he sets some store by it.”

  Sasha picked it up, and poked the dying fire with it, to spread it out a little in the circle they had made. They had nothing to dig with. He went to the edge of the pit, lay down and took up a double handful of the loose earth, ran back and dumped it on the fire, did it three more times in breathless haste, before he grabbed up the staff and went running down the knoll and up to the ridge where Pyetr and Uulamets had stopped to wait for him.

  “Out?” Pyetr asked.

  Sasha bobbed his head, winded, expecting Pyetr to find fault with his caution; but he hated fire, he never trusted it, not in the kitchen, not a candle in the stable. When he thought of them arriving back at the house, safe, he thought of a great fire sweeping through the dead woods, taking everything. He wished it dead back there on the knoll—last effort dial he could make—with a force that for a moment left him breathless.

  “All right, boy?”

  He nodded, leaned on the staff and caught his breath. Pyetr clapped him on the shoulder and shook him. “Plenty of time. We’re all right. Hear?”

  He nodded again, no more able to talk than Uulamets was. It might be fear of leaving a fire. It might be the vodyanoi wanting harm to them. It might be the ghost, it might be all the dead Pyetr said were in this place.

  He had only this terrible feeling of leaving something vital undone and unaccounted for, even after he had tried to tie up all the ends. “Master Uulamets,” he said, laying his hand on the old man’s arm, “is there anything else? Is there anything I should do?”

  Uulamets did not answer, gave not even the shake of his head or the nod that he had given before. He stood there looking back toward the knoll. Perhaps he had not even heard the question.

  Pyetr took Uulamets’ arm and pulled it over his shoulders. Sasha took the other side and they started down the ridge.

  Thunder muttered beyond the woods.

  “Wished the fire out, did you?” Pyetr said.

  He threw Pyetr a look past master Uulamets. It was good to know that Pyetr still could make light of their troubles, but he was too frightened and too worried to appreciate it at the moment. He had no desire to have Father Sky vexed with them into the bargain. “ Don’t—”

  “—do that,” Pyetr breathed, still mocking him.

  “I’m sorry. I’m scared.”

  “Smart lad,” Pyetr said. “Mind your feet.”

  Master Uulamets took the offered cup in trembling hands, stronger, now, with the fire going strong in the hearth, and the warmth in the house sufficient finally to dispel the chill. Sasha poured another cup and gave it to Pyetr, who likewise sat at the hearth, coughing and worn to exhaustion—master Uulamets’ strength not having been enough, after all: Pyetr had had to carry him.

  And all master Uulamets had had^to say for it was, once, when Pyetr slipped on a leafy bank’and fell, “Fool.” After which Uulamets had struck Pyetr with his fist. Pyetr had sat there in the rain hardly able to get his breath and said, not joking atall, “Old man, you can crawl home from here for all I care.”

  But Uulamets had been out of his head with what had happened at the river, and Pyetr half out of his with exhaustion, and when Sasha had tried to carry the old man the way Pyetr had been doing, Pyetr had gotten up, roughly shoved him aside and hauled Uulamets up again…

  Sasha poured himself a cup of tea, strong and laced with honey and vodka, and sat down by the fire to sip it.

  The Yard-thing had not come back. Babi, whatever its name was, had just gone away at some moment and Sasha had no idea where.

  “Have you seen the Yard-thing at all?” Sasha asked Pyetr quietly.

  “I’ve no desire to see it,” Pyetr said, wiped his nose and suddenly sneezed. “Damn. If grandfather could just wish this cold away—”

  “If you had done as you were told—” Uulamets said with sudden violence, and slopped tea on his quilts. “Damn your interference!”

  “What’s wrong with him?” Pyetr asked furiously. “What did I say? I nearly drowned with his damned bottle. I carried this whining old man in the rain—”

  “Pyetr,” Sasha pleaded, and held out an entreating hand. “Just—no. Let be. Let be.”

  “Leave a simple matter,” Uulamets muttered under his breath, “in the hands of your ilk. You don’t believe in things, do you? Not even simple instructions to stay on your own side of the hill.”

  “Master Uulamets,” Sasha said, “I was the one who crossed the hill. Something had already gone wrong. We saw that. Then we came down after you.”

  Uulamets wiped his mouth. He looked years older, and full of uncertainties. “It should have worked,” he said.

  Pyetr shook his head.

  “What do you know?” Uulamets asked him sharply. “You’re the fault. You’re the flaw in this. If you had lent even your most desultory support to this, instead of carping at every turn—I’d have my daughter back. She’s gone, do you understand? I don’t know what the result was back there. It all went to pieces. And she’s gone. What do you say to that? What do you care? What do you care about anything?”

  Sasha braced himself for Pyetr’s outburst, but Pyetr shook his head a second time.

  “What does that mean?” Uulamets said.

  “Nothing. It means nothing.”

  Everything felt dangerous. Sasha wished most earnestly for peace, and master Uulamets turned a scowl his way, at which Sasha froze, paralyzed with the thought that master Uulamets had just felt that wish, and that he had made wishes throughout their venture, though he had tried to make them wisely.

  “What are you looking at him for?” Pyetr asked. “What did he do?”

  “One wonders,” Uulamets said, and reached out and took Sasha by the shoulder, a terrible look in his eyes. “You’ve gotten very forward in the last couple of days, boy, altogether forward—”

  “Let him be,” Pyetr said, but Uulamets did not give up his grip, and Sasha felt colder and colder.

  “You do have ability,” Uulamets said. “We both know that.”

  “I never wished anybody harm!”

  “You wished your own safety. And his. At what cost? Did you care for that?”

  “And yours,” Sasha said. “And that you’d find your daughter, and that everything would go right. If one worked, the other should have, shouldn’t it? Should it only work halfway?”

  Uulamets’ mouth made a thin line, and trembled. His fingers bit into Sasha’s shoulder.

  It is my fault, Sasha thought with a sinking feeling. It seemed entirely, appallingly possible.

  Uulamets let him go of a sudden, swung around and flung his teacup into the fireplace. It shattered. Like the pots.

  Pyetr flung his cup after it. It smashed, and the fire hissed and flared. But Pyetr said nothing, just got up, hitched his quilt around him and took another cup and the vodka jug off the table. He came back and sat down this time in his usual spot at the side of the fire, looking fury at Uulamets, between unstopping the jug and pouring a cup for himself.

  “The boy did you no harm,” Pyetr said. “I’d go to bed, old man. Since this is mine, I’m in it. Good night to you.”

  Uulamets stared at him a moment with an expression Sasha could not see: he only felt threat and desperately wished Pyetr well, because he was very much afraid of what master Uulamets might be wishing him. Uulamets was surely aware of that defiance too, and angry.

  “You,” Uulamets said to Pyetr, “mistake your place in this house.”

  Pyetr lifted the cup in salute. “Then fetch another cup and have a drink. Fetch your own cup for a change.”

  Sasha felt the dange
r, felt it and threw ail his effort into stopping it.

  The cup in Pyetr’s hand—shattered. Pyetr jumped and recoiled, wide-eyed and only then seeming to realize there was nothing accidental in it.

  Pyetr began to pick the fragments off his quilt-covered lap with a visibly shaking hand. Sasha got up, quickly, grabbed his blanket about him and said, touching master Uulamets on the shoulder, as carefully as he had ever intervened with a trespassing customer, “Please, sir. It’s late. Can I get you anything else? I’d be very happy to.”

  He was afraid. He felt Uulamets’ anger touch him.

  And grow quieter then.

  “Sir?”

  “More cups,” Uulamets said, not: cup; cups. Sasha ran that through again, nodded anxiously and went and brought them, one for Uulamets and, as Uulamets seemed to intend, one for Pyetr.

  Pyetr poured from the jug, still shaking a little, whether from exhaustion or from having a cup break in his hand that should not have broken. He leaned forward and poured for Uulamets, too, and put a little in Sasha’s cup.

  Sasha sat down, picked up his cup, and took a sip, only half feeling the burn as it slid down his throat.

  Outside, thunder rumbled. A fresh spatter of rain hit the shutters.

  “My daughter,” Uulamets said quietly. “Did you see her—at any time I was beyond the hill?”

  Pyetr shook his head. “No.” And looked up as if he had remembered something. “On the river. Before that. At the willow. Just a single glance.”

  Uulamets rested his elbow on his knee and ran his hand back over his hair.

  “But I’m not sure,” Pyetr said, “that what I followed there—”

  A footstep sounded outside, on wet boards, a little louder sound than the rain.

  They all froze in mid-breath. The footsteps hesitated, then came to the door. Someone knocked.

  A second knock, then: Pyetr moved to take his sword from its rest beside the fireplace, with the thin hope that if a vodyanoi had no liking for it, other things magical might not—and his first thought for visitors on a night like this was the vodyanoi itself. But Uulamets was already struggling to his feet, with Sasha trying to help him: Uulamets shook him oif and headed straight for the door, his blanket tangling and trailing in his tattered robe.