Rusalka

  Pyetr for his part had no trouble getting to sleep, no matter that the dark behind his eyelids was alive with the vodyanoi’s coils and murky water, and that he still felt the deck tilting under him: he knew where he was now—tied to a forest he did not want to think about, but as far as safety it looked to be the most he was going to have—and the hand hurt, but it had hurt ever since carrying the loads down to the boat, so he reckoned finally he had simply bruised it.

  He was reasoning more clearly now that the boat was at rest and his stomach was less queasy. Uulamets certainly had other, more subtle ways to do away with him than pitching him off the boat, which Sasha would never believe an accident; and the boat, if they could get it to move at all, was surely not going to roll over tomorrow any more than it had today—not with three wizards preventing it…

  The old man got tired and the boat broke a rope and tore a sail, but it got to shore…

  Upon which thought Pyetr burrowed into the nest of canvas and blankets and just let go—not without knowing where his sword was, in the blankets with him; or knowing Sasha was an arm’s reach away. And that there was that little bit of salt in a bit of cloth, that Sasha had given him this morning.

  Keep it in your pocket, Sasha had said.—It could never hurt.

  He agreed with that.

  And agreed that a bed well back on the deck was better than near the rail, be it the river side or the forest side of the boat.

  He slept. He woke with the sun warming the blankets uncomfortably and the impression that there had been a sound a moment ago—

  Sasha was getting up. Pyetr thought about that a heartbeat or two and realized it was very late for Uulamets to be still abed, and it was very unlike the old man to let them rest.

  At which point he pushed the blanket off and picked up his sword on his way to his feet.

  “Master Uulamets?” Sasha said aloud, a small and lonely voice against the sound of the river and the trees.

  No one answered.

  “Damn,” Pyetr said, with an increasingly upset stomach. He pulled his sword out of its sheath, stepped over the spar and its mass of canvas, and walked quietly toward the stern, hearing Sasha walking behind him. He worried about tangling with Sasha on the retreat: he reached back and touched Sasha’s arm, warned him back as he edged around the riverward side of the deckhouse.

  There was nobody aft. That left the forestward side, and he beckoned Sasha to catch up and took the wide path around to a view of the rest of the deck.

  No one there either.

  “There’s the storage,” Sasha whispered, coming up beside him.

  Pyetr took a deep breath and said, “I doubt it—”

  But he had no good feeling about walking around the deck house to make that search. He took a good grip on his sword, lifted the latch and pulled the door open-But there was nothing inside but their stores—from which the basket of Uulamets’ belongings, including the book, was missing.

  “That damned old fool’s gone for a walk!” Pyetr exclaimed, and Sasha came to look for himself.

  “Unless the vodyanoi got him,” Sasha said.

  “Don’t you think we’d have heard that?” Pyetr asked.

  “He had to have made some noise,” Sasha said, walking to the forest side, a proximity to the trees that made Pyetr nervous. “We slept through it. I don’t sleep like that…”

  “We were tired,” Pyetr said. “We wouldn’t have heard thunder.” He walked up beside Sasha and looked into the depths of the woods—seeing past the dead brush along the bank the green of vines and leaves. That evidence of life should have comforted him. It only looked thick and tangled through there, the kind of place an old man however crazy ought to have second thoughts about going, afoot, loaded down with, the god witness, the basket with that damned book and whatever pots he had taken.

  More conjurings? he wondered.

  “Old grandfather probably went off to sing at something,” he muttered. “He was reading last night. He probably figured out something and decided he’d go hunt up some roots or something, what can you expect? He’ll be back.”

  They had their breakfast on the forward deck, and Sasha kept hoping for master Uulamets to come back, he did not know why—master Uulamets not having been particularly kind to anyone; but Uulamets having gotten them here, he had no confidence anyone but Uulamets could get them back again.

  But Pyetr said that they ought to see about the sail, thinking, Sasha was sure, that they should be going back downriver soon.

  So they got the cord and the awl and started sewing the rip up, himself doing the pulling and the holding and Pyetr doing the punching and threading of the cord through the canvas—his hand was purpling around the wound, but he swore it was no worse than yesterday.

  “I’ll make a poultice for it,” Sasha said. Since they had no choice but to sit and wait, it was at least a chance to help Pyetr; and Pyetr did not shrug off the offer.

  They had the sail stitched by noon. “I’ve no idea whether it’ll hold,” Pyetr said; and for the first time talking about the chance of Uulamets and Eveshka not coming back: “But I think, going back, we should just go with the current, if we can. The boat ought to work with that, a lot slower, maybe, but I don’t mind that.”

  “Me either,” Sasha said, and glanced toward the forest.

  “You suppose the River-thing got them?”

  It was the first time Pyetr had talked about that, either, not that both of them were not virtually convinced of it by now.

  “I’m not sure it ever lost her,” Sasha said glumly, and thumped Pyetr on the arm. “Come on. I’ll boil up something for the hand.”

  CHAPTER 17

  PYETR WATCHED while Sasha started a fire in the stove and boiled up a concoction of wormwood, chamomile, willow, and salt—the last of which Pyetr protested as willful cruelty; but Sasha insisted, saying that if vodyanoi disliked it, it might help.

  It stung, of course. But the heat helped, and Pyetr sat warming himself in the sun, his hand wrapped in a hot rag which he changed from time to time, between feeding the coals in the pan a twig or two—and quite uncharitably hoped that the vodyanoi had made a meal of Uulamets and his book—not, he told himself, that he particularly wished harm to the old man and certainly not to Eveshka, but he saw no reason for loyalty either.

  “Give him till the sun touches the trees over there,” he said finally to Sasha, and nodded toward the far shore. “Then let’s untie and see if we can get this boat turned around.”

  “Maybe he’s just trying to get us to break our word.”

  Uncomfortable thought. Pyetr cast a look to the nearer woods and back. “We’ve waited all morning and half the afternoon. If he decided to go off he could at least have said to wait—and hang us if we didn’t. That’s one thing. But I don’t think he had a choice. I don’t know why he left, I don’t know what he thought he was doing—but, one—” Pyetr held up his thumb. “He packed, and, two—” The first finger. “He was quiet about it. Book and staff and all. He’s gone off before, but he’s never taken the book. So, one, he thought he’d need it, or, two, he didn’t want to leave it with us, because he wasn’t coming back, or, three, Eveshka got enough of papa and stole it and ran off to her lover…”

  “If she did that, he’d have waked us,” Sasha said. “He brought us all this way—”

  “If he trusted us he’d wake us. Which he doesn’t. We know he’s on the outs with his daughter. We were talking with her last night—weren’t we? And he was damned quiet about packing up, or we were sleeping sounder than usual—which he could wish. If you were asleep you couldn’t tell a thing. Could you?”

  “No,” Sasha said.

  “So? What do we owe him? The man’s threatened our lives.”

  “Absolutely he’s dangerous,” Sasha said, “and he’s wished this boat safe, and maybe to stay on this shore. If we try to move it—”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I don’t know he hasn’t; and I certainly
would, in his place. I’d wish it with everything I had.”

  “He could have said he was going. His wishing us asleep didn’t hold up. Did it? Same with his hold on the boat.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “You can’t always be sure!” Pyetr said. “Sometimes you just have to move. You’re worried about Uulamets. I’m more worried about another night on this river. If Uulamets couldn’t out-wish his daughter or the vodyanoi or whoever, I beg your pardon, Sasha Vasilyevitch, but I’m not sure you can, either. So what are we going to do tonight?”

  “We won’t be any safer out in the middle of the river. We’re a long way from the house—”

  “To the black god with the house. We’re bound for Kiev. Forget the old man. You don’t need him.”

  “I do need him,” Sasha said. “And if he doesn’t come back, I still have to go back there.”

  “For what? God, you’re quit of him! You don’t believe his nonsense. He wants you to believe you have to rely on him. Trust me instead, why don’t you?”

  Sasha said in a muted voice, “Pyetr, I’m not sure what I’m doing. I’m not even sure what I’ve done. I’m scared of that…”

  “Because you’re listening to him. Forget it! Let’s get this boat out onto the river, let’s put this place behind us, that’s all.”

  He was halfway to his feet when Sasha caught his arm.

  “No!” Sasha said, and all of a sudden Pyetr doubted he was right, all of a sudden he was sitting down again, a little shaken, and Sasha was saying. “Please. Till tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning we’ll go.”

  Pyetr looked at him suspiciously, a little angry, but Sasha refused to flinch. He had his jaw set and looked him in the eye as straight as straight.

  “You’re ‘witching me,” Pyetr said. “I don’t like that. I ought to take this boat—”

  But he felt extremely uneasy about doing that. He thought how Sasha had been right, sometimes.

  “Stop it,” he said.

  “No,” Sasha said, “I won’t.”

  Sasha was upset, he was upset. He thought that he could get up, cast off the ropes and take them out anyway.

  “Damn it,” he said; and got up and walked over to the forest-side rail to prove the point.

  But he could not even stay mad. It was enough to drive a man crazy. He looked into the forest and thought that this was a better place to be than out on the river tonight, and he knew, damn it all! where that notion was coming from.

  He bowed his head, he stood there with his arms folded. He felt Sasha wishing him not to be upset, and insisted on being furious. He turned around, on Sasha’s grace, he suspected, and said, “Boy, that’s not polite.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sasha said earnestly.

  “Being sorry doesn’t patch it! Don’t interfere with my judgment! Don’t do that to your friends!”

  “I haven’t got a choice,” Sasha said.

  “Why? Because Uulamets wanted us here? Because something else does? What if you’re wrong and it’s not your wish, can you even tell?”

  “If it’s that much stronger than I am,” Sasha said after a moment, “then you wouldn’t be arguing to do what it doesn’t want, either, would you?”

  Sasha made a kind of sense. Pyetr hoped so. Otherwise nothing in the world was reliable.

  And Sasha wanting him not to be mad was infuriatingly hard to resist.

  Pyetr walked over to where he had been sitting, and slammed his hand into the side of the deckhouse, so it hurt.

  That was a feeling he could rely on, at least.

  Sasha came and sat down near him, contrite, Pyetr imagined: he squeezed out the water from the reheated compress and wrapped the cloth about his hand without so much as looking up.

  “Pyetr, please.”

  “Don’t talk to me,” he said, because he had decided he was going to say that before he felt sorry for the boy. But he did glance up, and the boy looked so shaken it went through him the way the pain of his hand did.

  At least he supposed it was his own feeling.

  “Tomorrow morning,” Sasha said, his voice trembling. “I don’t care how mad you get, I won’t let us have an accident.”

  “Who won’t let us?” Pyetr retorted. “Didn’t you say once, wizards are easier to affect? Maybe you don’t know better. Does that thought occur to you?”

  “It does,” Sasha said. “And I don’t want you mad at me, Pyetr, I’m sorry, I can’t help that, but what do I do?” Sasha looked to be at the end of his wits, and bowed his head, his hands tangled in his hair. “Don’t want to go. Be patient. Don’t do things like that—”

  The pain in Pyetr’s hand diminished, markedly. And the boy sat there with his head in his hands, throwing everything he had into that relief, Pyetr reckoned. He felt his anger ebb and could not even make up his mind whether it was himself or Sasha deciding it.

  He slumped back against the wall of the deckhouse, set his jaw and glared at Sasha in a moment that felt as though they were both irretrievably mad—and searched back to his first days in Sasha’s company, trying to recover his balance.

  But one never knew about those moments, either…

  Except that Sasha had attacked the vodyanoi for his sake, with a salt pot and a stick—which he could not forget.

  “You want me to remember that?”

  “What?” Sasha asked, looking up, looking bewildered.

  Innocent, then. But then, he did not in any sense doubt he could trust Sasha; what frightened him was the degree of trust he began to understand it took—to live with a wizard.

  “Let me tell you,” Pyetr said, “I don’t know how far Uulamets ever pushed us—he could, I don’t doubt it, and maybe he’s so good neither one of us could catch him at it, but I don’t think so.” He soaked the rag again and squeezed it, so he had somewhere else to look besides Sasha’s pale face. “Do me a favor. Don’t do that again. It’s not the way to get along with people.”

  “I don’t want to do it… I don’t want you to get killed, either!”

  “Fine. Neither do I. You think there’s some kind of spell on the boat. I think there’s a Thing somewhere around here that got breakfast and it’s coming up suppertime. What do you say to that?”

  “I know how to stop it.”

  “Good. I’m very glad of that. Why don’t we leave tonight?”

  “Because it could turn us over.”

  “With you wishing not.”

  “I don’t know how strong it is.” Sasha bit his lip and said, “I’m not sure that’s not what tore the sail.”

  “Are you sure about anything?”

  Sasha took a little longer about that answer. “No. I’m not. But I’m afraid if we go out there—that’s deep water. And we could be in it. And I can’t swim.”

  “Neither can I,” Pyetr said. “But we won’t know how by tomorrow morning, either. Are we going to stay here for the rest of our lives?”

  “Master Uulamets might come back.”

  “I’m not really looking forward to that,” Pyetr said. Across the river the sun was closer to the trees, but he had lost his certainty and his enthusiasm for facing the river in the dark. “Tomorrow, then.—You’re not pushing that on me, are you?”

  “No.” Sasha shook his head emphatically. “No, I swear I’m not.”

  “See how hard it is to know anything when somebody does that to you? You’re liable to make me do something backward to what I’d do in good sense. Make me break my neck. Who knows? I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t do that again.”

  Sasha looked entirely upset. “What if you’re wrong? What if I know you’re wrong?”

  “What if you’re wrong about me being wrong? You’d better be right, hadn’t you, and you’d better not do it often—had you?”

  “It’s so easy to do.” Sasha said, “and it’s so hard not to—”

  “I wish you had a choice,” Pyetr said, sure enough of Sasha’s honesty this time not to doubt himself: he felt sorry for the boy, more, he w
as suddenly afraid for the boy’s sanity as much as his own. He reached out in a rough halfway hug, a pull at Sasha’s neck. “You might be right this time. Just mind your manners.”

  “I’m sorry.” Sasha took a swipe at his eyes, his head ducked. “I’m just scared.”

  “Time to be,” Pyetr said, and dipped the rag in the pot again, and attended to his hand to give the boy time to dry his face. “You think you can keep whatever-it-is off tonight. Uulamets couldn’t.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Grandfather’s a pretty competent wizard, by what I see. And he didn’t do all that well, by what I see, either. What do we do, sprinkle salt, light a fire and hope?”

  “Don’t make fun, Pyetr. It’s not funny.”

  “No, this time it certainly isn’t.” He wound the rag around his hand and flexed his fingers, dripping water that hissed onto the stove. “But I don’t say taking the boat out in the dark is that much better, I give you that, too.”

  “What you have to understand—” Sasha said. “Pyetr, I honestly don’t know what to do. And I can’t swear to you I know it’s my idea. I just have this feeling—I have this terrible feeling we won’t make it home—”

  “Home,” Pyetr scoffed, and saw how upset the boy was, and shook his head. “I’ll allow you this—I’ve no fondness for that old man, but I ‘m getting a real understanding—” Why he’s crazy, was what he thought, but he said: “—that he’s not as bad as he could be.” Uulamets might, Pyetr thought, have done what Sasha had done. “I can forgive him.”

  God, he thought… what am I going to do with this boy?

  What if he weren’t as good-hearted as he is?

  Or if he weren’t sane as he is—or if someone crossed him, seriously?

  “If you want to go back to the house for a while,” Pyetr said calmly, “before Kiev—we can do that. Grandfather might even turn up. He’s probably wishing he was home anyway, by now. Or wishing himself back at the boat. We’ll have supper, we’ll sprinkle salt all over the deck, just in case. We probably should have done that last night. And we’ll get some sleep and in the morning we’ll untie and get out into the river.”