Rusalka

by C. J. Cherryh

  That was what he sensed about Pyetr, and Sasha was greatly put out with the ghost-girl, who after all was cruel—rusalkas were always cruel, it being their nature—but still, still, he was the one of the two of them who truly would have wanted a glimpse of her, and the one of the two of them who might have-he hoped—had at least a chance of reasoning with her; and she had gone and played her tricks instead on poor Pyetr, who could have gone all his life quite happily thinking there was a dog in the yard and a bear under the house and that Sasha Misurov’s wishes had no power over him.

  He wanted Pyetr safe. That was all he let himself think about, sitting there beside Pyetr, listening to the slow turn of pages in Uulamets’ book; and knowing that the domovoi beneath the house was mightily disturbed and manifesting itself with all the threat it could muster.

  He wanted himself safe. He did not forgive Uulamets for tricking them, most of all for not forewarning him, when a forewarning might have helped. He did not forgive himself, for losing his wits in the chase after Pyetr and not remembering that against a magical thing, his wishing might have some virtue. So he sat and wanted them safe now with all the strength he had, quite collectedly, and did not want to-see the rusalka: he dis missed all curiosity toward her, and simply did not want her, as hard as he could.

  After which decision the domovoi at least settled down and quit meandering about the basement. He thought that that was a good sign.

  He did not let himself think otherwise.

  Only, eventually, there came a prickly feeling to his left, and he was aware that there had been a long silence of pages, and that Uulamets was looking at him.

  Then he knew by wishing that way he had made a great mistake.

  For a long while Uulamets looked at him, and finally crooked a finger. Sasha let go the blanket and got up and came over to the table, with a greater and greater feeling of hazard. Under his feet the domovoi stirred and shook the house beams. He thought of wishing it quiet, directly against master Uulamets, of trying himself against a wizard, but that was only the merest passing thought, and he knew it was foolish, foolish now to do anything but be polite and show respect and not even to attempt to defend himself except as the most extreme last hope.

  He bowed. He looked up at master Uulamets and the timbers of the floor creaked softly.

  “Who sent you?” Uulamets asked softly.

  “Master Uulamets, no one sent us. We haven’t lied. Only—”

  “Only?”

  “When I was very small my relatives thought—” He was going to stammer, he knew that he was, and he locked his hands behind him and got a quick breath. “—I might be a wizard, or unlucky, or something of the like. But the wizards in Vojvoda just said I was born on a bad day.”

  “Born on a bad day.” Master Uulamets snorted and reached after his cup. He took a drink. At the same time Sasha felt his breath stop and his heart lurch and ache and start again, along with his breath. He went very dizzy for a moment, and master Uulamets said, “They’re fools.”

  He had no idea what to answer. He hoped master Uulamets meant fools because they were wrong, and not fools because they failed to drown him at birth. He hoped master Uulamets had no disposition to correct that mistake, if that were the case—and he even hoped, for half a breath, that master Uulamets might tell him something better about himself than any of Vojvoda’s wizards.

  “How have you gotten this far,” Uulamets asked, “without killing someone?”

  Uulamets might have stopped his heart a second time. It felt like that. He said, feeling as if he were strangling, “I don’t know, sir. I try not to.”

  “How do you try? Explain to me.”

  “I try not to wish for things that can go wrong.”

  “Who told you to do that?”

  “Just—when things go wrong. I know better after that.”

  Uulamets lifted a brow and looked at him a moment before the edge of his mouth drew into a crooked, unpleasant grin. “Know better,” he chuckled. “Know better. Indeed.” He chuckled to himself for a moment. And a very uncomfortable feeling crawled up and down Sasha’s neck. “Know better than to try me, for instance.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Smart,” Uulamets said. “Smart lad. Your friend’s very lucky.”

  To be with me? Sasha wondered, and clenched his hands, suddenly beset with a very unreasonable hope in this old man, who was more knowledgeable than anyone who had ever laid eyes on him: but, again, Uulamets might only mean Pyetr was lucky not to be in worse trouble, considering his company.

  “Altogether taken,” Uulamets said, “you’ve managed very wisely—concealed yourself quite well, till your inexperience betrayed you. And so impeccably dean a warding. Very well done, lad.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Sasha whispered, and wished himself and Pyetr safe against the attack he was sure would come.

  “Wary, too. You don’t trust flattery.”

  “No, sir.”

  Uulamets’ brows drew together. He crooked the finger again, beckoning him still closer. No, Sasha thought, and stayed where he was.

  Uulamets smiled, and the smile became that unpleasant grin. “An impeccable ward. But an egg is impeccable. And vulnerable. Inexperience and too little strength, young Sasha. I had a student once. He was a fool.”

  He wished harder that they were safe, wherever they were. He wished so hard he stopped seeing the room around him, or Uulamets in front of him. Only himself and Pyetr, equally, inseparable, indivisible. He was aware of Uulamets getting up, taking up his staff. Walking around him. He let that go. It was Pyetr and their mutual safety he thought about and he did not look at anything.

  “Stubborn,” he heard Uulamets say. “I’ve met fools before.”

  He stayed as he was. Then pain struck his ankle, and the floor came up under his knee.

  “Very good, boy. Very good. Magic’s so simple for the young.” He felt a touch on his hair, and heard Uulamets say: “But much simpler for a creature that is magical. Your friend’s in danger, you and your friend are in terrible danger, and you can only thank yourself you found this house before my daughter found you. But now she has. I admit I had somewhat to do with that—but I didn’t let her have her way, did I? Nor will, if you’re reasonable; otherwise—you’ll lose, boy. I was strong enough to hit you. I chose not to harm you.”

  Or the wish worked, Sasha thought, even on Uulamets. So he wished farther, and farther, to forever, and he let go then, and stood up, because that was all he could do.

  “The effrontery of you,” Uulamets said, standing back, leaning on his staff.

  “You said you’d let us go. You said if I did what you asked you’d let us go and give us food and clothes and blankets.”

  “Oh, that I will,” Uulamets said. “But getting out of this woods—that’s another matter.” Uulamets walked back to the table and leaned his staff against the wall. “The strength of magic depends on age; the ease of magic depends on youth. Simplicity of motives, you understand, makes magic ever so much easier. My daughter is older than you are—but her motives are ever so much simpler. You might say—a rusalka is motive. Could you stop her tonight? I think not. Perhaps you’ll want advice.”

  He wanted advice—from someone other than Uulamets. But Pyetr would be for running; and Uulamets was telling the truth in one thing, that they were in very deep trouble, and there was no one else to ask.

  “What should we do?” he asked meekly enough. But he was not prepared to believe anything Uulamets said.

  Surely Uulamets was wise enough to know that. Uulamets gave him a long, calculating look.

  “I want my daughter back,” Uulamets said. “It’s very simple. She wants your friend. You want your friend alive. Your wanting has a certain force that may prove useful—if you can hold on to that single mindedness of yours and learn a thing or two.”

  “What, sir?”

  Uulamets grinned. “The nature of your enemy. The nature of what you want. The nature of nature itself. I’ve wa
nted someone like you, boy, for much longer than you’ve been alive.”

  CHAPTER 10

  PYETR COCKED an eye, lifted his head and winced at the pounding ache in his skull.

  Much too much vodka last night.

  Some muddle of a dream about woods and a drowned girl, a most vivid dream about running through the woods and seeing a face—

  That was the pleasant part. The unpleasant part was waking up with a head like this, with the light coming through shutters the old man had been cruel enough to fling wide to the sun.

  Uulamets was back at his book, at the table beneath the window. Moreover—Pyetr lifted his head and winced—Sasha was sitting on the end of the bench, in converse with the old lunatic, their heads together as if they were sharing some direly important secret. Most disturbing of all, they stopped whatever they were saying and looked at him, both of them with one solemn expression, as if he had discovered them in conspiracy.

  It was all the same thing as the ghost, too much vodka and, he recalled, god knew what in the stew last night. That had been the start of the trouble, after which nothing had made sense, and they had gone out in the woods—

  Or he had dreamed that they had.

  He let his head back and stared at the shadowed, dusty rafters where there was no light to afflict his eyes, and tried to keep his stomach from heaving.

  He heard a scrape of wood, heard footsteps. Sasha came and

  S

  leaned over him, a worried young face against the dark of the rafters.

  “Are you all right?” Sasha asked.

  “I will be,” he murmured. Talking hurt.

  “Do you want some tea?”

  His stomach turned. “No,” he said, and shut his eyes. “I’ll just lie here.”

  Sasha patted his shoulder. Pyetr’s skin ached. He heard Sasha go and say to master Uulamets, “He’s all right.”

  He recollected, he thought, Sasha and Uulamets talking about him last night. He saw them this morning, cozy and full of whispers, and his stomach felt upset for a reason that had nothing to do with last night’s vodka.

  He suffered the morning long, until Sasha brought him honeyed tea and some potion Uulamets insisted on. He drank the tea, he refused the nasty concoction Uulamets had made for him: Sasha pleaded with him, assured him there was no harm in it, but he pitched the contents of the cup into the coals.

  “Pyetr!” Sasha said.

  “Let him suffer,” Uulamets said with what Pyetr was sure was satisfaction.

  “I’ll keep my headache,” Pyetr muttered to Sasha. “At least I know it’s mine.—Stay away from him!”

  “It’s all right,” Sasha said.

  “Fool!” Pyetr whispered. His head all but split from the effort. He sank against the stones of the fireplace with his knees tucked up. Sasha went back to his wizard and Pyetr sat there with his head spinning in a disquieting muddle of last night’s dreams and this morning’s discomforts.

  His sword was leaning against the wall, behind Uulamets. He marked its whereabouts, and that of the blankets, and the clothes on the pegs and the rope over the rafters, and he laid a plan of escape.

  Overpower the boy and carry him down to the boat, he thought. The boy would come back to his senses. There was nothing the old man could do against a young man with a sword and an outright intention to escape: Uulamets’ apparent skill with the staff and his influence with Sasha were the only things to fear—as long as he avoided the stew.

  Pyetr set himself carefully upright finally and went outside, down to the river, for necessities and to reconnoiter.

  Sasha tracked him, appeared at the top of the bank and came on down the steep path to the dock where the old boat rode creaking against her buffers.

  Pyetr frowned and folded his arms as he came.

  “Please,” Sasha said, “come on back to the house.”

  “Of course,” Pyetr said. He might have been talking to a dangerous lunatic. He was thoroughly patient. And so doing he measured Sasha’s size against his own and decided that indeed, Sasha was tall and strong for his age and possibly more than he could manage in his present condition if Sasha decided to resist being carried.

  So he simply turned and walked down the dock toward the boat, and Sasha of course followed him, saying, “Please, Pyetr. We don’t belong here.”

  He paid no attention. He reached the end of the dock and took a jump across to the deck of the aged boat, disturbing the dust and accumulated leaves.

  “Pyetr!”

  Sasha followed him. He had reckoned so. He walked further, with no intention to alarm the boy or to involve himself in a stationary argument—just to lead him farther toward the shelter of the little deckhouse: no sense starting anything near the edge where the boy could fall in, and no need, either, for the extra work of dragging an unconscious body half the length of the boat, especially considering his headache.

  “Pyetr, please!”

  “There’s no danger,” he said, and kept ahead of the boy. “I’m just curious. Aren’t you?”

  “You’re in danger. Please come back.”

  He walked around the other side of the deckhouse, back to the stern, and heard Sasha coming. Sasha caught up with him; he had the sudden thought that it might be well to be certain first that the boat was truly sailable, so he shrugged and walked back to the tiller, which swayed and moved in the river current, restrained by a mouldering rope.

  “Looks as if it could get us a little way toward Kiev,” he said to Sasha, racking at the bar to test whether the bolts were sound. “Doesn’t it to you?”

  “We wouldn’t get that far,” Sasha said. He had almost come close enough. And stopped. “Pyetr, please, she’s dangerous.”

  “Looks perfectly sound to me,” Pyetr said.

  A sudden cold wind came up the river, or he had a sudden touch of malaise. He looked up and saw a shimmering in the air in front of him, a pale wispy thing. He blinked.

  “Pyetr!” Sasha grabbed him and pulled him back from the rail. He gave backward in shock, seeing something like a veil and a face in empty air where nothing should be, and smelling a waft of water and rotting weed as something wet and cold touched his skin.

  “Run!” Sasha cried, and he ran, looking backward, colliding with Sasha in a sudden stop at the side of the boat.

  It was gone, then. He stood there with his knees weak, his head pounding, and the wind still icy cold on his wet hand and face. He was not accustomed to run from spots of cold air. He was not accustomed to have them touch him with what felt like fingers.

  “Something dripped on my face,” he said, looking to the overhanging trees. But no branch overhung the stern. “A fish must have jumped.”

  “She’s looking for you,” Sasha said, pulling at his arm. “For the god’s sake, she’s still here, Pyetr, wake up!”

  He wished (hat he could. Maybe it was still the vodka. Drunk old men saw things in the streets. Maybe they thought watery wisps ran fingers over their faces, too.

  “Pyetr! Get back to the house! Please!”

  He stepped up on the rim of the boat and jumped for the dock, only scarcely keeping his feet. Sasha landed beside him, seized his arm and hurried him up the hill, but once and twice again he felt that chill.

  It went away then with a last swipe of cold fingers, and Pyetr ran all-out this time, came panting and stumbling up the walk-up to the porch before he stopped, leaning against the wall of the house and holding his side.

  It was not real. He was ashamed of running, and he looked around again to see only forest and the riverside, but so also was there water running down his neck.

  Sasha pushed the door open, and cried, breathlessly, “Master Uulamets, she was here!”

  Pyetr stayed where he was, leaning with his back against the wall, as Uulamets hurried out and into the yard, to stand there as if he expected to see the apparition somewhere about.

  “Your daughter has cold hands!” Pyetr said, with as much sarcasm as he could muster, taking his pa
rt in Uulamets’ little play, or Uulamets’ madness, or whatever it was. Uulamets came back up the walk in every evidence of anger and disturbance, and said, on his way, “Fool. Stay to the house or there’s nothing we can do for you.”

  Pyetr opened his mouth to protest, but Uulamets brushed past him and inside, and there was nothing to do now but follow or carry out his escape, and what with the tremor in his knees, the throbbing of his head, and the condition of his stomach, it did not seem the moment for it.

  “Pyetr.” Sasha caught his arm as he started inside. “You saw it this time, in the daylight. You saw it, didn’t you?”

  He nodded, since that course offered peace. It was not really a capitulation. He did not intend any such thing. He simply went inside and sat down by the hearth and thought about it while Sasha jabbered with Uulamets about how it had come up the river and he could not see it—”But Pyetr did. It touched him. In broad daylight.”

  “Daylight or dark doesn’t truly matter,” Uulamets said. “It’s only that light distracts us with other details. You can’t entirely see her with your eyes.”

  “You’re crazy,” Pyetr snapped, from his place by the fire. “How does anybody see without his eyes?”

  “Easily,” Uulamets said. “We all do it—don’t we? You see her in your imagination.”

  He hated Uulamets turning his arguments back on him and leaving him nowhere to stand.

  “That’s precisely where she is,” he said testily. “That’s all she is.”

  “You’re wrong. A danger of her kind is most unfortunately not limited to your feeble powers of imagination, Pyetr Kochevikov. Your mischief just now endangered your young friend, which may or may not be a matter of concern to you, and if it weren’t for his good sense, you would have no further concerns. Lives have gotten very scarce in these woods.”

  Pyetr looked away across the room, wiped his neck against the persistent sensation of damp and cold, and told himself it had been a branch shedding dew—or some such.