Rusalka

  “I don’t know, I’m telling you! I don’t know everything in the world, I wasn’t born knowing. I don’t know what the leshy’s talking about—”

  A wizard who lies is one thing; a wizard who lies to himself—is another…

  “You’re not missing anything,” Pyetr asked, “are you?”

  “I’m fine! I’m doing quite fine. Better than I was, as happens. I kept you going, didn’t I? That’s real magi?, Pyetr, not just wishing…”

  “So what have hearts got to do with anything? What was that creature talking about? What was the River-thing meaning, that morning, about Eveshka losing hers?—Has she taken anything from you?”

  “No!” That part came through to him’ and joggled things like pots on a shelf, so he was afraid they would fall and break if Pyetr kept nattering at him—nattering was what aunt Ilenka would call it, aunt Ilenka would say: Shut up, Pyetr Illitch! you’re giving me a headache!

  He was.

  “What did you mean about getting things from the forest?” Pyetr asked. “What were you doing, that made the leshy mad? And why did it let us go? Why did it say it had no choice?”

  Sasha swallowed a tasteless lump of stew and looked at Pyetr with a feeling that might have been fear if he could have reasoned it out. It came down to a sense of things dangerously out of order, with his thoughts racing in various directions trying to find an answer, whether he had made a mistake beyond what had angered the leshy, a wish that might have flown much too far…

  “I don’t know why,” he said.

  “So what are you doing?”

  “As little as I can! I’ve made mistakes by worrying about things, that’s one thing I’ve learned, I’ve been worrying about stupid little might-happens, till I can’t see what I’m doing just by hoping things don’t happen, do you see what I mean?”

  “You mean you’re not worrying about things. We’re in the middle of this forest and we can’t find Uulamets and you’re not worrying!”

  “That’s not what I mean!”

  “I think you’re going crazy. Stop it.”

  “I’m all right!”

  Pyetr finished his stew with a last bite, flung the spoon into the dish and wiped a hand across his mouth, staring at him anxiously in the firelight. “That doesn’t make me feel better.—If Uulamets is in this woods, wouldn’t a leshy know it? If he’s here, why couldn’t it just save us a lot of bother and tell us?”

  Sasha tried to remember, but even that much of his thinking about the leshy kept going sideways, just out of his reach.

  That told him that worry might indeed be in order, if he could hold on to his misgivings long enough, but holding on to that particular memory and trying to compare it to Hwiuur was like gathering sand in a net.

  “Sasha. What’s going on?”

  He lost it again, the thing he had just gotten the shape of in the back of his mind—

  Pyetr set his plate down. The spoon clattered. That seemed equally important with everything Pyetr was asking. That was the trouble. In a situation so full of chance everything was equally important and there was no way to balance things without understanding. He was losing the threads of things he had tied together—

  Pyetr got up and stepped around the little fire to grab him by the shoulder and shake him hard. “Sasha, dammit!”

  He felt that. Like everything. Pyetr walked off, and he watched where Pyetr was going.

  Not where he wanted. He thought he ought to stop him if he could sort it out of all the other things that were happening, from the snap of the fire to the rustle of the leaves.

  Danger, he thought vaguely.

  His thought took shape again.

  Eveshka had color this evening. The leshy had fed her enough for days-She was stronger than she had ever been tonight. Much stronger, brighter, more solid in the world…

  “Pyetr,” he began to say. But Pyetr was already at the stream-side, Eveshka was already turning her head to look at him… a lifelike gesture that itself said how substantial she had become. He wished… and the effort cost him, so that his heart raced and he was aware of the rush of blood in his veins and the rush of wind in the leaves—like the sound of water…

  The fire actually cast light on her tonight, picking up subtle color in her gown, and the trees along the brook touched her with shadow, making her real—a girl, no more than that, vulnerable and uncertain as she cast a glance over her shoulder.

  “Pyetr,” she said, turning to him with arms outstretched.

  He stopped. He took a step backward when she came toward him, and she came no further, looking at him with wide, hurt eyes.

  “What did you take from Sasha?” he asked harshly, which was what he had come to ask. “What was the leshy talking about?”

  “I love you,” she said.

  He backed up another step, because somehow she had taken one he did not notice; he was aware of her eyes and aware of how the shadow bent around her cheek. “That’s fine,” he said, sweating, struggling to keep his thoughts together. “I’m flattered. Try answering me.”

  “Don’t hate me.” She reached toward him. He knew his danger, he knew he ought to back up and for one heartbeat he wanted to fail—wanted her to touch him and prove she was, after all, harmless, and not to be responsible for that failure—

  “Stop it!” Sasha said, from somewhere behind him. A shadow crossed between them and the light. “Pyetr!”

  He really regretted his rescue. What he was feeling was more powerful than wanting to live. But Eveshka drew back her hands and clenched them under her chin, her eyes full of pain.

  “Get away from her,” Sasha said, as if he were the boy, the absolute, heart-shaken fool, and grabbed him by the arm so hard it hurt. Probably Sasha meant it to. Not even that seemed enough. Probably Sasha was wishing him to use his wits; and that was not enough either.

  “Stop it!” Sasha said harshly, not to him.

  Tears brimmed in Eveshka’s eyes. “I won’t hurt him. I didn’t.—Sasha, don’t do that…”

  “I’ve no pity for you,” Sasha said. “You should know that.”

  “I know,” Eveshka whispered. “But I do. And I won’t let anything happen to him.”

  “Then don’t talk to him! Let him alone!”

  “I came to her,” Pyetr said, Sasha having gotten that part wrong, at least. “I want to know what’s going on.”

  “Her looking to have her own way is what’s going on,” Sasha said. “There’s nothing else, there’s never anything else in her thinking.—Leave him alone!”

  Tears spilled. Eveshka looked at Sasha a long moment, and then turned her shoulder and walked away to the side of the little stream.

  “Eveshka,” Pyetr said, but she did not look back. Her tears affected him: he felt himself all but shaking, even while he knew Sasha was trying to do the right thing. He wanted her not to be in pain, wanted her not to be wrongfully accused—

  Sasha turned and the firelight touched clenched muscle in his jaw, anger that Pyetr resented from the gut.

  “Let her alone,” he told Sasha. “She didn’t do anything.”

  “She wants you to feel sorry for her. I’ve told her let you alone.”

  “You’ve no damn—” Business, was on his lips, but, dammit, that was the fool talking, even a fifteen-year-old knew that much. A fool would go after the girl, go against everything Sasha was doing to keep them apart, get himself killed so she could go after Sasha next.

  Of course he would.

  He felt her trying her spell on him, trying to draw him back.

  But Sasha was in the way. She seemed suddenly too real to touch his imagination: the glamor faded and she could only use what she was—which was a sixteen-year-old girl with the notion—probably it had worked even with Uulamets, pretty child that she was—that a few tears could inevitably get her what she wanted.

  But he knew that song, line and verse: he had learned it in Vojvoda, on one notable occasion, and he was too old to play some bored girl’s games
. Ask anything, he thought, of a shallow girl wanting someone else to make her happy—except to give her your heart and expect good care of it.

  The glamor tried to come back. Something pushed it away. Maybe it was his own intention, maybe Sasha’s. He looked in Eveshka’s direction and his hand hurt when he clenched it… it had, he remembered, since sometime during supper, when he had started fighting with Sasha, and that bothered him.

  Maybe Sasha meant it to remind him, he thought, and then suffered a chill feeling of something going increasingly wrong.

  “Stop it!” he said aloud, sharply; but:

  “It’s not me,” Eveshka said, and turned, her face distraught. “Not me doing it.—Can you feel it?”

  Sasha seized his arm and pulled him urgently toward the fire, while—Pyetr cast a look over his shoulder—Eveshka stood by the little stream, looking down its course into the dark.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded, ready to resist this sudden craziness, but not sure where the craziness lay. “What’s happening?”

  “Something’s out there,” Sasha said as they walked.

  Eveshka was standing there unprotected. The feeling in his hand told him what that something likely was, which he did not immediately say because everyone in the world knew better than he did: he only thought that somebody should look to Eveshka, who was, damn it all, in particular, immediate danger.

  “Get our things together,” Sasha said as they reached the fire. “We’re getting out of here.”

  “In the dark? With that? It’s after her, is what it’s after!”

  “We know that. That’s why we’re going. Hurry.”

  “Where?” Pyetr snarled. It was too much. Nobody was making sense, people stopped in the middle of arguments to run off into the dark with a River-thing waiting out there to make supper of all of them.

  But Sasha paid him no attention. So he joined Sasha, angrily snatching up their belongings, stuffing them into the baskets, in a despair beyond any fear of what might be out there. He wanted them out of this woods, he wanted, dammit!—to give up and go somewhere with Eveshka and lose himself to whatever she did, if that was what it would take to get Sasha clear of her and maybe set her free once for all of whatever power the vodyanoi had over her—

  Go on, he recalled Uulamets saying, cursing their stupidity, go running off alone. One of you will feed her. The other will be extremely sorry…

  The leshy, damn its rotten heart, had sent them off with help, but no protection, no knowledge what to do or where the old man was, and now…

  Things stalking them in the dark. Eveshka playing tricks, the god only knew if this whole alarm was not one—

  “Where’s Babi?” he asked, suddenly missing the Thing he had last seen bolting down fish and mushroom stew by the fireside.

  “I don’t know,” Sasha said, tying up their bedrolls.

  “Babi?”

  “I thought you didn’t like him.”

  He glared at Sasha’s back. “He has reasons for his disposition. I’m coming to appreciate them.” He jerked the tie on his basket tight, picked it up and slung it onto his shoulders, with a glance back—

  To the vacant waterside where Eveshka had just been standing.

  “She’s gone!” he said, looking at Sasha—whose face, turned toward him in the firelight, was beaded with sweat.

  “We won’t lose her,” Sasha said. “I know where she is.”

  “Where’s she gone?” A man could grow suspicious in the doings of wizards and leshys and such, and of a sudden, seeing Sasha’s face, seeing the evidence of exertion, he had the feeling that there was far more violence going on around him than an unmagical man could feel. “Sasha, dammit, what’s going on? What are you doing?”

  “Helping her.”

  He was bewildered. A host of possibilities came tumbling in, not least of them collusion between Sasha and Eveshka.

  “Come on,” Sasha said, shouldering his own gear.

  “Where? Where’s she going?”

  “To find her father. As quickly as she can. She knows where he is, by the Thing knowing where we are—and it’s not far from here. She doesn’t need us slowing her down.”

  “Doesn’t need us—” Everything that had happened since supper, even his anger and hurt, were suddenly in doubt where it came to wizards, both of whom had a piece of him, both of whom were surely wishing things at him. “God! What have you been doing to me?”

  “Anything I can,” Sasha said hoarsely, and stood up and looked him square in the face, looking older than his years in the underlighting of the fire, looking haggard, fire trails in the sweat on his temples. “I rescued her from you, if you have to know. You disturbed her concentration.”

  “What did you do? What did you wish for, dammit?”

  “For you not to like her too much,” Sasha said. “So does she. She’s scared. I told her go, while she could go, and we’re following her: I think she’s finally stopped lying to us. And herself. She knows what her choices are.”

  They were on their way, on what track he could—god!—feel, like two lines strung between him and elsewhere, one downstream, deadly, that had to do with the pain in his hand, one moving upstream, sweetly dangerous, that had to do with the pain in his heart…

  “How could you do something like that?” Pyetr exclaimed in outrage, dodging branches Sasha passed him, stumbling over roots and brush—remembering what mistakes of his youth Sasha’s spell had raked up, nothing a man wanted a fifteen-year-old boy and a sixteen-year-old girl knowing about him… especially Sasha and Eveshka. “You don’t know what I’m thinking! You can’t pull things like that out of what I remember!”

  “I don’t have to,” Sasha said. “I don’t have to know what you’re thinking. I just wish. That’s all. Things change the way they can change.”

  “Dammit!”

  “I know. I know you’re mad at me. But I don’t care, as long as it saves you from being stupid; I’m sorry, Pyetr.”

  “With what?” he said to Sasha’s back, and shoved at a branch that raked him—lost in this maze of wizardry, a grown man tossed about by two children as if his own innermost feelings were nothing. “What are you sorry with!”

  But the boy was only trying to keep him alive. The boy evidently knew what he was doing, was allied with Eveshka in whatever was going on—which had to revise all opinions of her.

  “God,” he exclaimed, “tell me who’s not lying!”

  “I’m not,” Sasha said over his shoulder, out of the tangled dark. “You know I’m not, Pyetr Illitch.”

  CHAPTER 22

  A HARD WALK from day into dark and now out onto the trail again in the mid of the night, tired as they were—townfolk without Eveshka’s woodcraft to guide them… “Dammit, can’t you magic us through?” Pyetr cried, still with that feeling of imminent danger behind them: there was a thorn-brake where Sasha had led them, and it was not the way Eveshka had gotten through: she was far too substantial, he was sure she was.

  “I’ve got other things on my mind,” Sasha said.

  “We’re losing her!” Pyetr protested; “We won’t,” Sasha said in that maddening, lately-acquired inscrutability of his, but all the same they had to go far around. Thickets closed about them and forced them to backtrack too often, branches raked their faces, snagged on their packs, and they found themselves going far aside from the course Pyetr knew was right—because there was no way through the thorn thickets and the brush.

  Pyetr’s hand was hurting, his feet had blisters, his forehead hurt from a scratch a branch had put on it, and something about supper was not sitting well on his stomach.

  Worse, he suddenly lost touch with what he knew was behind them and still knew where Eveshka was with unsettling certainty. Her state of mind, terrified for herself and terrified of their pursuer, muddled him and made him misstep and miss branches, which only made him angrier and more desperate.

  “It’s gone,” he muttered at Sasha’s back as they slogged along, trying to fin
d a way through this thicket, “it’s gone out.—Sasha, can you still feel it back there?”

  “I’ve lost it,” Sasha said. “I don’t like it.”

  “Don’t like it! Don’t like it—God, hurry us up.”

  “I’m doing what I can.”

  “Maybe it’s been lying to us all along. Maybe she has.”

  The doubt came to him suddenly, left again. He had no idea what the source of it was—

  And did.

  “God, next time wish me to know you’re wishing me to think something, do you think you can do that?”

  “I’m not doing it now,” Sasha said.

  “How do I know that?”

  “Believe me.—Stop talking to me!”

  The boy he was talking to had no deep feeling of his owner he had, but Eveshka had it instead, if Pyetr guessed anything that was going on. He was embarrassed, he had been made a fool of in his most private thoughts and he hated both of them—between moments that he wanted her with all his heart, or moments that he reckoned if the intention that drove her now truly was Sasha’s, then she was likely doing everything she had done for good reasons—for Sasha’s kind of reasons, Sasha being so ready to blame himself for others’ fault; and Eveshka, damn her, having so much real blame for this situation.

  Maybe, he thought between times, that was where she had found the strength to realize what was going on, that there was something stalking them—or found the strength to defy it before it killed them. If it was Sasha’s heart in her, it must be near breaking with the guilt she really deserved—and if that guilt was somehow hurting Sasha he wanted to wring her neck—or shake sense into her, because a girl with Sasha’s heart was all too likely to do something brave and foolish where that damned River-thing was concerned, endangering everything in the world he loved—

  His feet skidded suddenly on a slick, leaf-covered slope; he caught himself against a sapling trunk—a branch jabbing him painfully in the eye. “Damn!” he gasped, flailed out against the brush and fought his way on downhill to keep up with Sasha.

  Sasha waited for him. But Pyetr sat down when he got to the bottom, out of breath, with a stitch in his side, and Sasha slumped bonelessly down beside him.