Rusalka

  “I don’t want you here, papa, I don’t want you, let me alone!”

  “That’s foolishness!”

  “I want them out of here! Both of them! Now!”

  “For fear they’ll see your handiwork? They’ve seen your victims, girl, they’ve seen it plain! If that hasn’t put your young man off, I don’t know what I can tell him. And what will you do else, leave them to this woods?”

  Eveshka began to come apart in threads again, turning her face away from them.

  “Eveshka,” Pyetr said, “listen to him. Look at me.”

  She would not. She looked out into the woods, all shrouded in blowing hair and tattered gown, her face in profile to them. “There’s nothing for you to fear from them,” she said. “They’re trying to warn you. It’s an obligation on the dead.”

  Whereupon she drifted off through the brush where they could not follow. Uulamets swore and began to follow her, as Pyetr jerked his sleeve free and held the brush with his back, keeping the way open for Sasha long enough to get him through, while he kept his eye on Uulamets’ steps. But Uulamets, thank the god, was going slower this time.

  “There’s ghosts following us,” Sasha muttered after a moment, at his back. “Eight or ten at least.”

  “Won’t hurt us,” Pyetr said to himself, “won’t hurt us, god, I want out of this damned woods.”

  “Won’t help,” someone whispered against his ear.

  “They’re back,” he said to Sasha, panting, planting his feet carefully on a slope the old man ahead of him took faster than he dared.

  Being master of his own luck.

  “Wish me to find the right way,” he said to Sasha. “Damn that old man.”

  “Don’t—”

  “I’m not a wizard, I can’t wish for myself, I can’t even curse him—”

  “Can’t escape,” another voice said.

  “I’m doing all I can,” Sasha protested. “It’s not doing any good.”

  “It’s so cold here.” A third voice, up against Pyetr’s ear. Instinctively he swatted at it, and chill numbed his hand.

  “Don’t trust her,” something said at his other side.

  “Don’t go.”

  “Go back while you can…”

  “Thanks,” Pyetr muttered, panting, overtaking Uulamets with a major effort. But Uulamets only moved the faster, then, and Eveshka still went ahead of them.

  “Go back,” the ghosts whispered. White shapes flitted in the tail of his eye, almost having faces. “Don’t go,” one said. Another: “Go back while you can—”

  “Eveshka!” Pyetr called out, and shuddered from a cold, reeking touch at his face. “God! Eveshka! They’re back! Do something!”

  Insubstantial hands touched him, tugged at his sword, one attempted his pocket. Bandits and thieves for certain.

  And an old man’s voice whispered, “I miss my wife. I want to go home.”

  Pyetr did not want to hear that one. He wanted to think that deer and rabbits and birds had fed Eveshka; and one by one, the trees—at worst, the bandits, who well deserved it; but there was that voice—

  Then a young, frightened voice: “Papa, mama, where are you?”

  A chance thorn branch ripped across his neck, and he clumsily fended it off, aware he was bleeding, remembering, even if he had had no grandmother to tell him tales, that there was something about ghosts and blood; and ghosts and guilt—

  Not even Sasha’s wishing could cure the truth or mend the past: the ghosts streamed raggedly through the brush—not threatening now, but wailing into his ears, rushing at him and circling him.

  “Go back while you can,” they said.

  Not armed now, but altogether desperate, anguished, importunate: “Go back!” they wailed. “You’re going to die!”

  “Go away!” Uulamets snarled, swatted at one and hung his own sleeve in the brush. “Damn!”

  So much for Uulamets’ pious advice, Pyetr thought; and in the same moment Eveshka came streaming back to them in tatters, confronting the ghosts with a wild and frightened countenance.

  “Leave them alone!” she cried, and the woods seemed to howl and to swarm with ghosts then. White shapes whirled around them and swept away with an ear-piercing shriek.

  “God!” Pyetr said, and shuddered as a ghost came up in his very face, but it was Eveshka, when she looked at him, Eveshka who brushed his hand with hers.

  “Come on,” Uulamets said, and Pyetr was willing to go anywhere that got them clear of this, but Eveshka cried, “No, papa!” and shook her head so that her hair streamed like smoke. “No, no further, no closer—we aren’t strong enough! Listen to me! Don’t be crazy!”

  We’re in deep trouble, Pyetr thought, with cold touches starting to come at him from his left, and voices starting to whisper again. He had a sudden, sinking feeling that they had finally found their stopping place, for good and all, the wizards all fighting each other and the ghosts wearing them down touch by cold touch.

  “Keep going!” Uulamets said.

  “No!” Eveshka cried, catching at him with insubstantial hands. “Papa, you’re failing, you’re all slipping deeper and I can’t hold on any longer, I can’t! Make a fire—quick, papa, please!”

  “In this thicket?”

  “Do what she says!” Pyetr said, it seeming to him that someone had to make up his mind and do something; and it seeming to him that it was a lot easier to keep one’s wits in the light: Uulamets himself had said that once, or Sasha had. “Let’s not panic, shall we? She’s a ghost. And a wizard. Doesn’t she know what she’s talking about?”

  While he was shivering, himself, and trying not to, considering Eveshka owed no one any sympathy about dying.

  Uulamets jerked a sleeve free of the brush, shoved a branch aside and squatted down to open his bag of supplies, snarling, “All right, all right, then, let’s get a little clear spot here, let’s get some dry tinder.”

  Pyetr broke branches for tinder and to clear a space overhead for the fire, Sasha cleared a small spot of leaves from the ground, while ghosts howled and dived right past their hands, bitter cold.

  Uulamets coaxed a tiny spark to life, bright and brighter, catching a pungent lump of moss, a little drop of fire that grew by what they added to it and blinded the eyes to everything but itself.

  Then the sound of the ghosts sank away, less now than the sighing of the trees, and the cold touches stopped.

  Sasha gave a little sigh, and rubbed his face for warmth before he sank down beside Pyetr, to warm his hands at the little fire. “That’s better!” He was still shivering. He could not explain to himself why he had lost his wits, or why he had started believing the ghosts, or precisely why he had been able to think clearly again at the first gleam of light, except that one wanted the light, and it grew, and that one little moment had turned things around.

  “Better, indeed,” Uulamets muttered, and looked up beyond the fire, where the only ghost in sight was Eveshka, so dim she hardly showed at all. “If you’d kept your wits about you, and not kept us harried—”

  “I don’t want you here.”

  “Don’t be contrary!” Uulamets cracked a larger stick and fed it in, while the raven fluttered to a perch somewhere nearby. “A daughter that won’t use the sense she was born with—”

  “A father that won’t listen!”

  “Stop it!” Pyetr said. “It’s not helping.”

  The anger in the air was thick enough to breathe. One thought of angry ghosts—and tried not to.

  “They—” It was another one of those slippery thoughts, the sort that kept sliding fishlike out of Sasha’s grip and wriggling away, but he calmed himself and held onto it long enough to ask, “Why the bandits? Why here?”

  “Hers,” Uulamets said. “He’s using them.”

  “Our enemy?” Pyetr asked.

  “No, fool!—Of course our enemy! Have we friends?”

  “You’ll not win any.”

  “Don’t press me.”

  “Mind
your—”

  “Pyetr!” Sasha said, and seized his arm, scared, distracted and knowing what could get at them if he or Uulamets let that take hold. “Pyetr, for the god’s sake—be patient. Master Uulamets is working. You’re distracting him.”

  “Thanks,” Pyetr muttered under his breath.

  “And me.” Sasha squeezed his wrist, desperately afraid. “Don’t fight. You said it yourself. Don’t fight.”

  Pyetr said nothing. Firelight showed his jaw clenched, his nostrils flared.

  “Don’t be mad, Pyetr.”

  “I’m not mad.”

  “I’ve got to think. Please. Don’t ask questions, don’t want things from us, not now. I’m losing things—I’m scared, Pyetr, don’t distract me.”

  Pyetr scowled and shook off his grip, looking into the fire with his arms locked around his knees.

  Bandits, Sasha recollected, careful of the thought of ghosts, fearing they could gain a foothold in his wishes. Bandits. And ordinary people. Traders and travelers from long ago, maybe, when the East Road had been open and there had been no bandits in the woods—

  The grandmothers said ghosts haunted the places of their deaths, and he had never known—another slippery thought—that Eveshka had haunted this side of the river, where the trees were still alive.

  He’s using them, master Uulamets had said, and Sasha held on to that thought, desperately reminding himself to remember and sure now they were under attack from worse than ghosts.

  He saw Eveshka standing looking out into the dark as if she were guarding them, faint, gossamer figure all in tatters.

  She did not speak to them now, in any sense, only kept staring outward like that. Toward what, he wondered, and wanted Babi back, desperately. He was afraid Babi was not coming back, and he was sure if they had had Babi along on this stretch, they would not have been half so afraid—and then Eveshka would not, Uulamets had said it, have distracted them so with her own panic: they might have gotten all the way—

  Where? he wondered—distracted then by a slight rustle as Pyetr delved into his pack and pulled out a little packet of dried fish. Pyetr offered some to him, and he ate and passed the packet to Uulamets.

  Uulamets glowered, took a piece and passed the packet back.

  Of a sudden the raven swooped and landed, and looked with its one eye at the fish. Sasha surrendered the I; it piece in that packet and it flapped back up into the dark with its prize.

  Pyetr frowned at him about that. Or about everything in general. Sasha wanted Pyetr not to be angry at him—

  And remembered he had promised not to do that.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, at which Pyetr looked confused as well as mad at him. “Pyetr, I don’t mean to—”

  Pyetr still frowned at him, maybe thinking—Pyetr had surely been close to magic long enough to understand—that that fact was more dangerous to them than the ghosts were.

  “It’s all right,” Pyetr whispered back, then, with a gentler expression. “It’s all right, boy. Just get some sleep if you can.”

  He shook his head. “You,” he said, at which Pyetr looked further put off. Sasha had not wanted that, not wanted above all to treat Pyetr the way Uulamets did. “I can’t,” he whispered, wishing Pyetr would understand him and not feel the way he so evidently did.

  Which, unintended, broke his promise again with a dangerously wide magic.

  “God,” he said—swearing began to seem scarcely adequate for what was welling up in him, and he could not even remember aunt Ilenka’s face any longer, let alone hear her admonishments. He rested his eyes a moment against his arm. “Pyetr—don’t be mad. Please don’t be mad at me. I’m so tired.”

  “Shut up!” Uulamets snapped at them both.

  Pyetr reached out and gently squeezed Sasha’s shoulder, after which Pyetr’s hand suddenly fell away from him and he put the other to his forehead as if he had grown faint.

  Sasha looked at master Uulamets, who scowled at him and said, “For all our good.”

  When he looked back Pyetr had collapsed sidelong, in sound sleep.

  CHAPTER 28

  TOWARD DAWN master Uulamets began to let his head sink, drowsing by little moments. Sasha, so tired he thought he would never sleep again, reasoned placidly for a moment that it was only natural, old men did that, and Uulamets had pushed himself hard for a man of any age.

  But then in his muddled thoughts he began to worry.

  “Master Uulamets,” he said, afraid, still.

  “Let me sleep,” Uulamets mumbled, so Sasha hugged himself about the ribs and tried to collect what strength and wit he had left, wondering whether he was right to think of arguing with an old man who needed rest, or whether Uulamets knew what he was doing.

  The light grew, diminishing the light of the fire, and Eveshka was standing as she had stood tirelessly all night—but she was so, so faint this morning, hardly more visible than spiderweb as the light filtered through the leaves.

  He thought fearfully: We’ve got to do something soon. We’ve got to help her. She’s holding on, but she must be getting weaker. And crazier.

  He thought that maybe he could give a little of his own strength to her, not drawing from the forest, not letting her in any wise touch Pyetr: he was not sure then that she could stop; he was not sure that even thinking about it was safe, and he wanted master Uulamets to wake, but he was afraid of bad decisions, and nothing happened.

  Suddenly then he felt a little weak, felt his heart give a little ^kip as if it had missed a few beats. He glanced toward Eveshka in panic, forbidding her with all the strength he had. “Master Uulamets,” he exclaimed; and quickly shook Pyetr awake, his head spinning, with only the thought that Pyetr was helpless asleep, and that if there was reason left in her at all she would listen to Pyetr—

  “She’s in trouble,” he said to Pyetr, and Pyetr, dazed from sudden waking, rubbed his eyes and looked out across the dying fire.

  “I don’t see her,” Pyetr said; Sasha looked.

  She was gone.

  Pyetr scrambled over to Uulamets and shook him violently. “Old man, wake up! Your daughter’s taken off!”

  Uulamets stirred, opened his eyes muzzily.

  “Eveshka’s missing!” Sasha repeated. “She touched me and she getaway—”

  Uulamets swore and started trying to get up, but Pyetr was already gaining his feet.

  “She’s leaving,” Pyetr said, and forced his way through the brush, rapidly no more than a gray ness in the dawn.

  “Pyetr!” Sasha called after him and, throwing promises to the winds, wished him back with all his might.

  Maybe it was dread of Pyetr’s anger that made him falter. He felt it happen, and knowing that, felt his confidence ebb away. “I can’t hold on to him,” he said to Uulamets, intending to follow Pyetr, but Uulamets seized him by the arm, using him for a support getting up.

  “Let’s not all be fools,” Uulamets said.

  “Bring him back!”

  Uulamets was still holding his arm, and jerked him violently as he turned to go. “I said, don’t be a fool, boy, use what you have.”

  “It’s not working!”

  “Then you’ve less hope rushing off after them, don’t you? And less than that if we go chasing off one at a time. Get the packs and come on. He’ll find her, surer than I can.”

  “I know he will!” Sasha intended to break free of Uulamets, but Uulamets opposed him, he felt it going on, and trembled with the yea and nay running through him. “Stop him!”

  “I need the book, young fool! You’ve lost track of everything you’ve done, you don’t know where you are, and you want to go running off without supplies and alone. That’s a fine help you are to anyone. Pick these things up, or do you plan to stand here till we lose him?”

  “Bring him back!” he shouted at the old man, but Uulamets was busy holding him, he could not break free and the longer they argued the further Pyetr could get, so he bent and grabbed his pack and Pyetr’s by the ropes wh
ile Uulamets picked up his and his staff.

  Uulamets led off, as quickly as Uulamets could move, ghostlike himself in the faint dawning, while he struggled with two packs, trying to remember what was in which, and trying to decide if he dared leave Pyetr’s behind, because he could not get both of them through the heavy undergrowth. “Don’t wait for me,” he called out to Uulamets, using his shoulder to shove the limbs aside, all the while feeling cold spots thick in the air about him. “I’ll catch up.”

  “Wish to find a way, fool!” Uulamets said to him, and left him to divide his attention between the packs, the branches raking at his face and the cold spots that chilled him to the bone.

  Stop, he wished Pyetr. Wait. For the god’s sake call for help or something!

  His knees were weak from the theft Eveshka had already made from him and he was rapidly falling behind. He could not handle both baskets: he stopped, teeth chattering, ignoring the cold spots that drifted through him, and dug into Pyetr’s basket—took all the food he could stuff in his own pack, took both blankets, and the damned vodka jug that he was afraid to leave loose in the world. Then he slung his pack to his shoulders and pushed on as fast as he could, shielding his face with his arms and never minding the scratches.

  “Don’t trust,” ghostly whispers said; and it suddenly occurred to him Uulamets might not want Pyetr’s safety at all if Pyetr’s dying could keep Eveshka in the world.

  “Save yourself,” a voice whispered. “It’s too late for anybody else…”

  He caught sight of Uulamets for a moment and made his way past a thorn thicket, in among larger trees.

  The old man had stopped, in the deep shadow of the trees.

  “You’ll die,” the voices said. “Go back, don’t go any further.”

  Sasha struggled through the thicket to his side; and Uulamets abruptly thrust the staff out to stop him, as an earthen edge crumbled under his foot and splashed into water deeply shadowed by the arching trees.

  Water, Sasha thought, looking up that arch. Father Sky, she’s gone to the water.

  “Pyetr!” he shouted…

  A ghost said, faintly against his ear, “Don’t trust her…”