Rusalka (v1.3)

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Papa had a student, Kavi,” Eveshka said. “Long ago. I was very young—very foolish. I believed he was innocent of the things papa said. He was very handsome. Very persuasive. But when I did find it out, I was so—” Eveshka. looked down, then looked at her father. “I was so embarrassed. You were absolutely right. But I was too ashamed to say so. That was why I left that morning. I only wanted to sit down on the dock and think a while. Then the vodyanoi—”

  Tears clouded her eyes and she stopped talking. Sasha sat there beside Pyetr wishing he knew what to do or say to an upset girl who had—he began to realize—been a ghost for perhaps more years than he had been alive, and who was at once a girl of sixteen and much, much older. His stomach felt upset. He remembered the vodyanoi and its malice and felt doubly upset, thinking of Eveshka dragged down into that watery cave.

  “I was afraid,” Uulamets said quietly, “that she’d killed herself—or that that scoundrel had murdered her. I put nothing past Kavi Chernevog, absolutely nothing.” He patted Eveshka’s hand. “But you’re back. That’s all. To the black god with Kavi Chernevog. Do you know, I tried to keep your garden, but I’m afraid all I have luck with is turnips.”

  Eveshka dried her eyes with her knuckle and suddenly laughed.

  “It’s all there is to eat around here,” Pyetr said, and Uulamets frowned. “But,” Pyetr went on irrepressibly, “I can say this place has brightened considerably since yesterday.”

  The compliment pleased Eveshka. It clearly did not please Uulamets, who immediately stood up and suggested they clear away the dishes and straighten up the house.

  Chests in the cellar gave up blankets and clothes—Eveshka’s own, one supposed; and more shirts and trousers, fine ones, all of 3. size. Eveshka ordered a rope strung from the bathhouse to the porch and ordered the laundry tubs rolled out—which activity trampled into submission the weeds around the bathhouse, and meant, Sasha foresaw it, an incredible number of heavy buckets carried up the hill.

  But this time—Sasha had not expected it—Pyetr bestirred himself to help, even taking the harder part of the course, carrying the buckets to the top of the muddy, root-laddered path from the river and letting Sasha carry them across the yard to the bathhouse.

  Pyetr wore his sword while he was doing this, by which Sasha knew exactly the danger Pyetr was thinking about. Pyetr did not go down to the river with one bucket while he was delivering the other: Pyetr took the harder way, carrying both at a time, then sat on a tree root and waited for him to bring the buckets back, a choice which kept them always in sight of each other, and that, too, said that Pyetr was concerned.

  So was he, out under a clear sky, with time enough to get a breath of rain-chilled morning air and to consider that they had had an uncommon amount of good luck in the last couple of days. He was tempted to congratulate himself: perhaps Uulamets’ few pieces of advice had helped him manage his gift; or perhaps, as Uulamets had said, it was at least possible to stifle one’s ability, to keep a tight grip on it in crises—

  “Most people have the instinct for magic,” Uulamets had said to him, that morning that Uulamets had begun to teach him. “Some have a minuscule ability—and don’t manage it at all except by smothering it entirely. Or they smother their good sense instead, and make a thorough mess of themselves, wishing this and wishing that to patch what they last wished and never understanding anything: I tell you, good hard work and talent enough to nudge luck a little is a good combination. But everybody wants the one without the other.”

  “And mine?” he had asked, full of trepidation.

  “Might not be small,” Uulamets had said. “Let me tell you: it’s a law of nature: magicians and magical creatures can be affected by magic more easily than ordinary folk. The very talents which extend them into dimensions impossible for ordinary people likewise mean that wizards can be affected by incantations against which ordinary people would be immune—”

  “Can a person—stop these things? Can he—?”

  “Turn a spell aside, you mean? Yes. You know how.”

  He did. He had thought so.

  “Let me tell you,” Uulamets had said then, at the table that morning: Sasha could still see the old man’s cautionary lifting of a finger, feel the danger in the air. “It’s always easiest for the young: remember I told you that. Remember this with it: it’s very easy for a naive talent to get quite deep into the spirit world, rather too little resistance to be safe—”

  The other clothes they were washing—

  Papa had a student, Eveshka had said, Kan…

  “—and the deeper you get, the easier it is to bind and to be bound, do you understand, boy? Be careful. Power is very attractive. Aggression is easier than defense. Using is easier than restraining, doing than undoing. Set things in motion only in one direction at a time, or at least remember the sequence of things you wished and know everything you’re moving, directly or indirectly. That’s very important. Most of all beware of ill-wishing anything.”

  To the black god, Uulamets had said, with Kavi Chernevog…

  Most particularly…

  “Where did the flour come from?” Sasha asked, out of breath, as he handed the two buckets to Pyetr. “Where did the flour come from this morning?”

  “Sometimes I have trouble following you,” Pyetr said.

  “At breakfast,” He realized he had started in the middle of his thoughts. “This morning.”

  Pyetr gave him a very odd look. Or maybe Pyetr was thinking. Pyetr headed down the path to the river and Sasha sat down on the tree root to wait.

  He watched Pyetr go down to the riverside and dip the two buckets full. Pyetr came up the trail, hard-breathing, set the two buckets down and said:

  “The old man must be trading with somebody. On the river, maybe.”

  “It wasn’t there. Or he had it hidden. Why hide a jar of flour?”

  Pyetr gave a large sigh. He looked worried. “I don’t know. Maybe it was just left. Maybe she knew where it was.”

  “Flour won’t keep forever. The forest’s been dead for ages. Nobody sails the river…”

  “So maybe he put a spell on it. Don’t wizards do that kind of thing?”

  It was a thought. It was better than the thoughts he was thinking, that whatever they had really had for breakfast might be very odd. There was oil. There was flour enough for six cakes, and more, assuming one would hardly use up one’s entire store on one breakfast. Oil and flour and berries. It was entirely odd.

  Sasha trudged back to the bathhouse with the heavy buckets, up in the yard where Eveshka worked amid clouds of steam. “There,” she said; he poured the buckets into the rinse tub and negotiated the boggy ground taking them back to Pyetr at the tree.

  “Mostly,” Pyetr said when he got there, “I want to know why the spell worked.”

  “Which spell?”

  “The one for her.” Pyetr took the buckets. “There were bones in that cave. How do you do anything with bones? How do you bring a body back?”

  “I don’t know,” Sasha said. “That’s what that book is, all the things he’s ever done or heard, written down.”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “That’s the kind of things wizards have. He told me. You have to keep track of things. You can’t forget what you’ve done or you don’t dare do anything. He could have worked years on that spell. Pieces of it. Step by step.”

  Pyetr looked at him as if he thought he was lying. After a moment he turned and went down the hill.

  When he came up again, carrying the buckets full, he said, frowning, “All that book?”

  “I don’t know. That’s just what he said.”

  “But hasn’t he ever tried this before? Why did it work this time?”

  That was one worrisome question. He could think of others. “Where’s the domovoi? Where’s the dvorovoi? Babi, he calls it. We haven’t seen him since out there by the knoll.”

  Pyetr gave a worried grimace, and looked toward the house. “I don�
��t know. I never saw a place that had any. Maybe grandfather just conjured them up to keep him company. Maybe he’s forgotten about them now.”

  Not impossible, Sasha thought. It could be the case. He picked up the heavy buckets and trekked back to the bathhouse, panting by the time he arrived.

  “You don’t have to go so fast,” Eveshka said.

  “It’s all right,” he said.

  “Would you tip out the rinse water for me?”

  He did. He poured fresh water in. Eveshka’s dress was wet and clung embarrassingly and he tried not to stare. He took his buckets back to the tree.

  “I haven’t seen the raven either,” he said to Pyetr. “I’m worried.”

  “About that damned bird?” Pyetr was being deliberately obtuse, which meant he was annoyed.

  “About everything.” He was afraid-Pyetr was going to pro pose running off into the woods. But he was far from certain that was not safer than where they were. “I don’t think we ought to go running off from here. Master Uulamets may be in trouble, but the kind of trouble I’m afraid of—he’s the only one who can handle it. I can’t. And a sword can’t stop a ghost.”

  Pyetr frowned more and more darkly. “You think she is.”

  “I don’t know what she is.”

  “You know better than I do. I never paid any attention to the granny-tales. I never had a grandmother. What’s out there? What could be?”

  That was a terrible question. All sorts of tales leapt into Sasha’s head, things with clutching claws and long, long teeth, things that led you astray and things that pulled you into rivers and things that just took away your mind. “Leshys and such,” he said.

  “Worse?”

  “They could be.! don’t know. Sometimes I think Babi’s all bluff. But we saw him when he wasn’t.”

  “Damned dog’s tucked tail and run,” Pyetr muttered, snatching up the empty buckets. “Or something ate him.”

  With which Pyetr flung himself away downslope at some speed. Sasha saw him stop at the bottom and stand, just staring up the river a moment before he filled the buckets and slogged back up the hill.

  “She was never malicious,” Pyetr said, setting the buckets down.

  “Maybe she couldn’t be,” Sasha said. “Maybe she couldn’t do anything. Now—I don’t know. He said—he said the more magical a creature is the easier it is to control it.”

  “That’s rot! Cut Uulamets and he bleeds, I’ll bet you. That Thing didn’t.”

  “For magic to control it,” Sasha objected, but it seemed to him that Pyetr had pointed out an essential flaw in Uulamets’ reasoning, and he thought about that, and about what a rusalka might do in ghostly form and in a human one.

  “What good’s magic,” Pyetr asked, “if a fool with a sword can cut your throat?”

  “I wonder if anything could hurt her.”

  Pyetr looked upset, and threw a glance up the hill, in the general direction of the bathhouse.

  “Then what could she want?” he asked. “If she’s a ghost, and she’s lying, what’s she waiting for? Ghost stories never made sense to me. What’s all this mincing around, popping up and scaring people, except that they’re trying to touch you and they can’t. What’s to fear, except a guilty conscience? But she can touch things. So if she’s a ghost, what’s she here for?”

  “Because master Uulamets wanted her,” Sasha said, increasingly disturbed by this line of reasoning. “Because he’s a wizard and he wanted her more than she could resist. And he wants her to be what he wants.”

  Pyetr rubbed the back of his neck. “What if he wants us to stay here? I’m not sure it’s safe to go. I’m not sure it’s any safer to stay here. I’ve got two wizards wishing this and wishing that and I’m not sure what I want. I don’t like it.”

  “Three,” Sasha said. “There’s three.”

  Pyetr glanced a second time up where Eveshka was working. Slowly his hand fell from his neck. “Four,” he said, half a whisper. “There’s the vodyanoi: he’s not out of the game, is he? How can you ever make up your mind if wishes work? You don’t know who’s pushing you.”

  “We don’t,” Sasha said. “But Uulamets is flesh and blood like us, and I’m not sure anything else is, around here. If something goes wrong, I’d rather be near Uulamets than not. That’s all I can think of. I don’t want to be out there in the woods or on the river all by ourselves with all this going on, that’s what I think.”

  “You think he made her up?”

  From not believing in magic at all, Pyetr had gotten to more precarious thoughts than was good for anyone, Sasha thought, and asked questions he had no idea how to answer, because he had no idea what nature would bear.

  Maybe—worse thought—Uulamets himself had no idea: perhaps no wizard who tried the untried could ever know that, and the really powerful ones had no real idea what they were doing. By that reckoning, the more powerful a wizard became, the more foolish it was for him to do anything at all.

  He picked up the buckets. “I don’t know,” he answered Pyetr. “I’ve no idea.” And he added, because a new thought was troubling him: “I wonder what happened to this Kavi Chernevog. I wonder where he is.”

  “Five wizards?” Pyetr asked.

  Sasha looked at him and for a moment could not move, no matter that the weight of the buckets made him short of breath. “I don’t know,” he said. He thought of asking master Uulamets. But the peace seemed already too precarious. Everything did. Anything might tip it in directions that no one could predict, if there were that many powers with contrary purposes. It was crazy.

  No one could predict, if that was the case. If anything master Uulamets had told him was the truth, then no one involved could know the consequences of even the smallest, weakest wish he made.

  Wish only good, master Uulamets had advised him, and don’t work without knowing what you’re doing.

  And would a bad man, Sasha wondered, have given him precisely that advice?

  One would, perhaps, who was powerful enough to brush aside a boy’s efforts and proceed deliberately about his business despite them—but master Uulamets did not seem to be in control of things that were going on. Master Uulamets had ignored his own advice, and worried over that book, and worried over it, and Sasha desperately hoped that master Uulamets was worrying now, much more than showed.

  CHAPTER 14

  SHE HOUSE had smelled of fresh laundry and herbs and baking all day—a curiously disturbing smell, Pyetr decided: not at all like the spirituous odors of the inns in which he had cheerfully misspent his years, smells compounded of smoke and horse and onions and wash water and the god knew what else; or the musty oil-and-wax smell of the homes of the wealthy, to which he had all his life aspired. Eveshka’s assault on the senses set a man to thinking about home, whatever that was, about modest little houses and cozy firesides with bread baking.

  Which was foolish, Pyetr thought, because he could not for the life of him recall any such place in his entire life, except The Doe’s kitchen on holidays: that was the closest Ilya Kochevikov’s son had ever come to domesticity—nipping cakes off the table and catching a cuff of mistress Katya’s well-floured hand—

  And here he was, sitting down to dinner, clean-shaven, smelling of soap, splendid in a fine white shirt and clean trousers, beside an uncommonly combed and curried Sasha Misurov, and—god witness—Ilya Uulamets with his hair and beard washed crackling white and not a trace of dirt under his fingernails.

  Eveshka, her hair plaited with rose and blue ribbons, ladled out their supper into the waiting bowls, sat down at a tableful of waiting men and took up her spoon with a grace that made a man only hope not to spill anything on his shirt.

  Every move she made was like that, every glance of her eyes, every soft, cheerful word. She prattled about the cleaning and the state of the stores and sweetly chided her father for his housekeeping—

  Pyetr bit the inside of his lip, hard, and thought about getting up, getting the jug, creating a little noisy le
vity in the evening, but the hush around the table was too deep, and Eveshka’s gracious hospitality too genteel to offend.

  He wanted something to break the spell. He avoided Eveshka’s eyes and tried to find fault with her gentle voice and her laughter, which went straight for the soft spots in a man. He even reminded himself where his sword was, beside him and against the wall; and reminded himself Sasha and Uulamets both had said once, on a saner day, that they should never let her get into the house.

  He wanted the boards to creak and the domovoi to manifest itself in the cellar, even for the black ill-tempered ball of fur to show up—Pyetr Ilitch Kochevikov sat there wishing as hard as he had ever wished in his life, in the hope that Sasha was doing the same thing, and in the remote, slightly foolish reckoning that a gambler’s luck might be worth something—Sasha swearing that he had none of his own.

  But there was no groaning of the house timbers, there was no scratching at the door.

  Maybe, he thought of a sudden, it was all due to the fever Sasha swore he had had. Maybe he had never gone into a cave with a vodyanoi. Maybe the girl across the table had never died, and all the rest of it had never happened, and he had only come back to his senses this evening, still a little muddled after fever from his wound. Thoughts like that kept troubling him, complete turnabouts of reason, utterly persuasive if a man did not keep careful hold of what he had seen and had done—improbable as it was.

  And two or three times during supper, when he was most tempted to distrust his memory, he took deliberate hold of his sanity and recollected that watery cave in some detail, remembered the skull and the bones and tried to keep from falling under Eveshka’s spell—for spell it surely was, if there were spells at all. He told himself that. Or he clung to the belief that he believed it, which might of course mean that he was mad.