Rusalka

“Climb that,” he said.

  It took Pyetr bracing the staff up the unstable slope with his body length, and Sasha climbing up over him and up the length of the staff, while he showered a great deal of dirt down on Pyetr, who spat and swore and held on.

  Sasha reached the top, hauled himself over the rim on his elbows and on his knees to find master Uulamets sitting on the grass arranging his pots in a half circle in front of him.

  Sasha turned about and lay flat on his stomach on the rim of the pit, reaching down after the staff Pyetr reached up to him. He grasped it and tried to hold on while Pyetr climbed, but he failed to hold it and flung the staff aside on the grass.

  “I’d use a limb,” Uulamets said disinterestedly.

  “Master Uulamets says get a branch or something,” Sasha called down. Pyetr looked up at him distressedly. The Yard-thing was still in the pit with him. Pyetr was resolutely not looking at it. “Then do it,” Pyetr said.

  Sasha got up and ran down the slope and up again to the edge of the dead woods, where there were rotten limbs in plenty. He picked a likely big one that was already lying on the ground and dragged it back as quickly as he could, past master Uulamets, who was sitting there with several of his little pots in hand, shaking out powders and muttering to himself and singing.

  Sasha heaved the dead limb over the edge and Pyetr pulled it to the bottom, breaking off twigs and lesser branches which were in his way. Sasha lay down to hold the topmost branches steady while Pyetr flung himself at the dead limb and climbed, stepping from branch stub to branch. Finally he reached Sasha’s arms and hauled himself up and over, while Sasha clenched his teeth and held himself as steady as he could.

  “Babi!” the old man called.

  The Yard-thing came scrambling up the branches, face on. Sasha yelled and flung himself aside and sat down beside Pyetr as it scuttled over to Uulamets.

  But Uulamets simply muttered to himself and scattered powders on the ground, ignoring it crouching there.

  “What’s he doing?” Pyetr asked. “What does he think he’s doing?—What is that thing?”

  “I don’t know,” Sasha said. He thought that he ought to feel something if it was true magic master Uulamets was doing. Or if what he was doing was working at all. He felt nothing but a shiver in his bones and a queasiness at the pit of his stomach.

  “We ought to get out of here,” Pyetr said, Sasha thought quite calmly and reasonably under the circumstances. “We don’t know where that thing went. We don’t know what it’s up to.”

  “We’ll go,” Sasha said, wishing that they would, wishing that he understood what Uulamets was up to. “Soon now.”

  But Uulamets kept scattering pinches of powder and singing, and finally piled up a few handfuls of grass and asked for wood.

  “For what?” Pyetr asked. “A fire? Here?”

  “I’ll get it,” Sasha said under his breath, seeing nothing else to do. He got up and ran back to the woods and gathered up twigs and larger pieces, ran panting back to Uulamets and dumped it down, falling to his knees. “Master Uulamets—”

  The Thing growled at him. Master Uulamets ignored him and went on with his chanting, which reminded Sasha very unpleasantly of the night Pyetr had almost died. It was the same kind of singsong, under the breath, it was the same oif-key tuneless wandering. He saw Uulamets pick up the twigs and break them and put dry grass into the midst. He saw Uulamets take a pungent bit of wool from one little pot and tuck it into the grass. Then he took a cinder from a small fire pot, and Sasha jumped in spite of himself when the pile burst into flame.

  “Fool,” Uulamets said under his breath, interrupting his singing. And handed him another pot, an empty one. “Water.—And be careful. The vodyanoi’s not to trifle with in his element.”

  “Was that what it was?” The question jumped out before Sasha remembered the master was incanting. He ducked his head, murmured a quick Excuse me, and hurried up the ridge and down again where he recollected a stream—terrified at the mere thought of going to the river if that was lurking there.

  But something came behind him, and he looked back through the dead woods to see Pyetr coming down the slope.

  “You don’t have to go!” Sasha said, and held up the pot. “I’m just going after water!”

  “What are you, his servant?” Pyetr skidded down the slope. “Let him fetch his own.”

  “Please. Don’t fight with him.” He reached the little stream, hardly ankle-deep, and dipped up the water, then hurried back again. “He says that thing was a vodyanoi.”

  “It can be whatever it wants,” Pyetr said. “I’ve nothing more to do with it.” Pyetr had, overall, the look of a man who wanted very much to say what he had seen was only a log or a large snake or whatever, but who had gone very much beyond that safe limit. Pyetr stayed with him as he hiked back up the slope and down again to bring the pot to master Uulamets.

  This master Uulamets took, and set in a forked stick he held above the fire.

  “Listen, grandfather,” Pyetr said, taking a step nearer on the slope, and Sasha winced. “I’ve a notion to be on to Kiev. Whatever we owe you, we’ve just paid it. So we’re leaving. Hear?”

  “Onto the river?” Uulamets asked. “Or through the woods? The vodyanoi or my daughter?”

  Pyetr scowled, and beckoned Sasha.

  “He’s telling the truth,” Sasha said. “Pyetr, we won’t make it.”

  “We did well enough. And small help grandfather was, there. ‘Bring me wood. Fetch me water.’ So he can have his morning tea, I suppose—while we fend off his damn pet and whatever-it-was—”

  “A vodyanoi,” Uulamets interjected pleasantly, without looking at either of them.

  “Vodyanoi. River-thing. Whatever it is, it ran. It didn’t like having its nose hit. Your daughter runs cold fingers down a body’s neck, but the most she’s done is fling a few pots and rattle the shutters. A pretty weak ghost, I’d say.”

  “Quite,” Uulamets said. “I’ve kept her that way, deliberately. Go on, go running off alone. One of you will feed her. The other will be extremely sorry. You won’t go, Pyetr Illitch. You’re not a fool. Don’t act like one.”

  For a moment everything Pyetr said seemed reasonable; then everything Uulamets said overpowered it, with such a feeling of danger in the woods around them that Sasha felt impelled to look behind him—but he resisted that impulse, jammed his hands into his belt and thought very hard about Pyetr being right.

  A chill ran down his neck. A second one. He was sure that something was behind him, even if Pyetr was facing him and showing no sign of anything amiss. For a moment he was not even sure he could rely on Pyetr, or if Uulamets might not have cast some spell on him to keep him blind to danger.

  “Stop it!” he said. It was the hardest thing in the world to speak out against the old man. “Master Uulamets, you’re doing that, I know you are.”

  “So I am,” Uulamets said, but the feeling did not go away. Uulamets turned his head and looked at Pyetr. “The boy trusts you. He’ll fight me for you, and for a lad of his sensitivities, that’s considerable courage. But he’s quite young. He can be persuaded against his better judgment—by a plausible scoundrel. Very much like my daughter. That’s why I’m patient with him. But you—having none of his sensitivities, and a rebellious and an entirely selfish attitude, in which the god forbid there should be anything in the entire world outside your personal understanding!—have no hesitation about taking this boy off to your feckless purposes, for what? For Kiev? A place no better than the last that failed to satisfy you, or the next, or the next. Your lacks, sir, are in yourself; and you most unfortunately carry that baggage to whatsoever place you find yourself. Most significantly, you pass for a man, sir, in this boy’s eyes, and I suggest you examine the responsibilities of that position.”

  “And what do you pass for?” Pyetr retorted. “A wizard. A scholar. A man of learning. About what? Sitting alone out here in the woods mixing stinking potions and talking to birds and snakes!
”

  “If you’d had the wit to talk to that one, we’d be better off. Sit down. Stop talking nonsense. What if you’d not had my advice about the sun, what if you’d blithely assumed it was yourself that drove the vodyanoi back, and you’d been fool enough to chase him into his hole? Then you’d have regretted it. So would the boy.”

  “It did run from the sword,” Sasha objected. It upset him that the old man said things so hurtful to Pyetr, even if he knew they verged on true. It upset him the more that Pyetr just stood there, angry, and not doing anything.

  “Since the sunlight weakened it,” Uulamets said. “Yes. And it’s doubtless not feeling well. Hope that’s the case. I have a job for you.”

  “What?”

  “There’ll be a cave on the riverward side of this hill. There’ll be a nest there. I want you to put something in it.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Pyetr said.

  “Or you can do it,” Uulamets said with a particularly unpleasant grin. “Soon, I’d say, since I’m relatively sure the vodyanoi’s out of his lair at the moment, and I wouldn’t give odds he’ll stay away long.” Uulamets held up the pot in the forked stick. “This. Just throw it in. You faced down the creature once. You don’t really have to go inside. And of course your sword’s enough to protect you.”

  “No,” Sasha said.

  “It’s after all for his own rescue,” Uulamets said. “I’ll do it myself if I have to. Or you can. But our brave fellow so wants to prove he’s right about the sword—”

  “I’m not a fool!” Pyetr said.

  “Of course not. Nor a coward, are you? Shall I do it? I’m certainly not as agile, or as strong…”

  Pyetr walked up and held out his hand for the stick and the pot, scowling.

  “No,” Sasha said. “Pyetr, don’t.”

  “It’s easy,” Pyetr said nastily. “Your wizard says it is.”

  “It should be,” Uulamets said, “if one isn’t a fool.”

  “Old man.” Pyetr said on a deep breath, and rocking on his feet, “I’ve a great deal more patience than you and far better breeding. Which, considering I was born in a gutter, I’ve never been able to say before.”

  With which Pyetr took the pot in hand, flung the stick down, and walked off while Sasha was still standing there numb.

  “Let me go!” he said to Uulamets, and felt the release as sudden as the relaxing of a fist.

  He ran, then.

  CHAPTER 12

  PYETR HEARD the boy coming behind him as he crossed the ridge, turned around in mid-step and thought with honorable motives the old man had denied he even owned that he ought to order Sasha straight back to Uulamets.

  But he thought then, too, that the boy had made a difference against the thing before, that between them, they had been able to handle it, and that if he got himself killed altogether needlessly, Sasha was in a great deal more difficulty being left to Uulamets’ keeping.

  So he stood there until Sasha caught up, then walked on down the slope to the river, passing the uncomfortably warm little pot from one hand to the other.

  “Why don’t you let me—” Sasha began.

  “No,” he said. “Absolutely not.”

  “He was trying to make you mad.”

  “I am mad.”

  “Please be careful.”

  Decent advice, he thought. He said, “Know how to use a sword?”

  “No,” Sasha said.

  “Take it anyway.” He drew the whole sword belt off and passed it to Sasha as they reached the bottom of the hill, on the green, grassy margin of the river. “Point or edge, it doesn’t matter. Aim for the eyes. Nothing likes that. Take it! I don’t want it banging about my ribs. I’ve got one hand full.”

  Sasha took it from him and hung it over his shoulder. “Be careful of—”

  “I’m being careful, for the god’s sake.” The edge of the river was a clean one here, except where a young willow stood, and that—judging where the knoll was situated on the other side of the ridge and where the hole had been on that other side, in the pit—was the likeliest place for a den unless it was entirely underwater.

  It was also the likeliest place for the snaky thing to be hiding, and when he came closer and saw there was indeed a dark space among the willow-roots, he had a very queasy feeling in his stomach.

  “Well,” he said, “if I toss grandfather’s potion into the wrong hole, he’s not going to be happy. But I don’t know how I’m to tell.” He set his foot on a willow root and grasped a trailing bunch of willow strands. They were lithe and strong, leafless but budding.

  “It’s alive,” Sasha said in the same instant he realized it. “The tree—”

  He looked around into a pale face not Sasha’s, and yelled and scrambled back for another foothold as something whipped around his ankle.

  He yelled as it jerked: he went down under the water and the yell became bubbles. Muscular flesh wrapped him about. He shoved at it and it threw more coils about him as he suddenly found himself in air again, in the dark, traveling backwards and upwards in the wet soft embrace of a Thing the shape of which seemed to be changing by the instant. He choked, spat, swore at it and kicked it in its soft body with all his might, and when it disliked that enough it spun rapidly about, carrying him upright with it. Breath cold and foul as a swamp’s bottom gusted down on his face.

  “Damn you!” he cried, terrified, and struggled and kicked for all he was worth. He lost the pot he had in his hand, he hit the soft muddy floor and he skidded down the slick bank into the water.

  Huge coils slipped past him like a river in spate and battered him left and right.

  He came up choking and spitting, scrambling as far from touching anything as he could—heaved himself up onto the bank and put his hand on something sharp and hard, among a great number of small, sharp objects that rattled with a bony sound—at which he stopped very still, caught a mouthful of air and listened.

  He moved from his awkwardly braced position. A bone rattled softly. He braced again, hearing no sound at all but his own breathing, and began to shiver, a slow quiver of one leg and an arm.

  It was making no noise. It might be in the water waiting for him. It might have coiled up on the other bank of the cave. The place was full of dark, cold water, and bones; and the longer he delayed the more terrible it seemed to die there. He could see least lightening of the water in the direction he took for the river, and with a great gulp of air he let go, slipped into the water and ducked under the surface, clawing his way toward the light for all he was worth.

  His fingers found something soft and oozing at that threshold—only mud, he told himself; and then something hard and odd—more bones on the bottom. The eyeholes of a skull. He shoved it away with a shudder, fighting to escape the hole and the roots.

  Then something grappled with him, and he kicked and fought his way to the surface, blind and struggling against what he suddenly realized was a wet and equally frightened boy.

  “God!” he yelled, grabbing a willow root and trying to hold on to Sasha at the same time, Sasha gasping and thrashing and trying to hold on to him, flailing with the sword in his other hand.

  “I thought you were dead!” Sasha cried.

  “Then what were you doing?” he yelled, and choked and dragged the boy as high as he could hold him, so that Sasha could get a grip on the willow.

  Sasha climbed, flung the sword onto the bank and hauled himself up where he could be of some help himself, hauling at Pyetr’s coat, pulling him up where Pyetr could climb, shivering and coughing, onto the roots and the bank and as far from the water as he could pull both of them.

  “Fool!” he shouted at the boy, shaking him, still himself trembling with fright.

  Then it dawned on him by the boy’s white face and his lack of a coat and his having the sword that Sasha might not have fallen in. That so shocked him he sat there with his fist knotted in the boy’s wet shirt and the boy staring at him as if he expected to be murdered, and could not mo
ve, except he had to cough, and let Sasha go.

  “Don’t ever do a thing like that!” he said when he could get his breath. “God, boy.”

  Sasha just stared at him with his teeth chattering and his lips turning blue. Pyetr gathered his shaking limbs under him and gave Sasha a shove toward the coat that was lying on the bank. “Wrap up,” he said, shivering. “Get moving. You’ll take your death…”

  He picked up his sword. He found the sheath. His coat was running a steady stream of water, water cold as the wizard’s daughter favored—

  He looked back at the willow, the only living tree in all the woods, and recollected the bones down in the cave.

  Sasha pulled at his arm, said, with his teeth chattering, “Come on,” and he gathered his wits back and made what speed he could up the hill.

  Uulamets still had the fire going. He looked up with a certain surprise—maybe to see two of them, Pyetr thought, with thoughts of wringing Uulamets’ neck—which perhaps the black fur-ball quite well understood, because it ran forward and growled and hissed as they came stumbling down the hill soaking wet and shivering.

  “Get out of my way!” Pyetr snarled at it, and gave it a swipe with his sword. “Get!”

  It spat and hissed and kept its distance as they came up to Uulamets.

  “I delivered your damn bottle,” Pyetr said. “I think we found your tree. It’s the other side of the hill. I don’t think you’ll like the company it keeps.”

  Uulamets looked alarmed, and got up and went running off up the ridge, abandoning his pots, his bag, everything but his staff. The Thing went running after him. Sasha looked as if he was thinking about it, but Pyetr grabbed him by the arm and shoved him toward the fire. “Keep it going,” he ordered the boy, tossed him the sword and went over to the edge of the pit, lay down and dragged the dead limb up the slide.

  What he could break off it kept the fire going, at least, built a fair good fire, at least enough to take the chill off, enough warmth for him to work his coat and his shirt off and to wring out at least the bulk of the water and heat up the shirt before he put it back on. He was doing the same for Sasha’s shirt when the old man came back over the ridge, furiously angry, striking at the grass with his staff, the Thing dogging his track down the slope.