Rusalka

CHAPTER 21

TWILIGHT CAME EARLY in the depth of the woods, under a clouded sky, but they kept walking so long as there was the least light to see by. “How far yet?” was what Sasha had wanted to know of Eveshka when they had first set out from the leshy’s grove; and Eveshka had said she was not sure of that.

“Is your father even alive?” Sasha had asked next. “ Can you tell?”

Eveshka had not been sure of that either: she had confessed as much, evading his eyes, then quickly slipped away to take the lead—moving not as she had, as a wraith which had no need of paths, but with a sure woodcraft which still kept her out of their reach.

She clearly had no wish to sit at their fireside when they had stopped for the night, either; nor did she seem to need their food. No, she answered distantly when Sasha offered, after which she rose and walked away to the little spring-fed rill that gave them water.

Again, Sasha noted uneasily—water.

They had a stew of fish and the early mushrooms and fern-heads that Eveshka had found and assured them were wholesome to eat. Sasha looked with new misgivings at the supper he was cooking, and again with misgivings at Pyetr gazing after Eveshka.

“I’m not so sure about these mushrooms,” Sasha said.

Pyetr said, distantly, “Does she need to poison us?”

One supposed not. Sasha shrugged and dished up the stew, which thanks to Eveshka had more than dried fish and water in it, and thanks to Eveshka’s lack of appetite, afforded a good helping apiece for them.

“You know she’s not answering questions,” Sasha said.

Pyetr took his dish, took up a spoonful and blew on it—which evidently made it reasonable for him to ignore questions, too.

Sasha set out a little for Babi. Babi sniffed his and growled at it, but that was, one hoped, the heat, or a distaste for mushrooms.

Sasha took a gingerly, carefully cooled sip of his own dish and found it more than palatable, looked up again at Pyetr, who was staring off into the trees at Eveshka—wishing something on his own, Sasha feared, in a very different direction than he was wishing himself.

Maybe he should have sympathy for that—but he was vexed, more than vexed, seeing Eveshka use those soft-eyed looks on Pyetr, with what might not be, considering she had a heart to confuse her, in any sense reasoned or reasonable. In fact Sasha tried to put a stop to that, exerting himself not on her, which he suspected could demand much more strength than he wanted to spare—but on Pyetr… which still took more strength than he wanted to spend, fighting a natural urge that could affect even someone altogether heartless.

But considering that Eveshka could not, after all, sustain herself on the food they used—

“She’s not eating,” Sasha said, hoping Pyetr would think further down that line.

“Mmnn,” Pyetr replied.

“She’s not alive, Pyetr, she can’t eat, she’s got to get it from somewhere and it can’t be the forest—”

“We’ll find her father,” Pyetr said, and dug into his stew.

That was the help he got from Pyetr. Sasha ate his supper, he fed the fire, glad at least that the rain had stopped.

Finally he said to Pyetr, “If we don’t find her father soon, and if he can’t do anything—she’s not going to stay the way she is, Pyetr. You heard what the leshy said. She can’t help herself.”

“Shut up,” Pyetr said.

Even that curt reply failed to make him angry. Perhaps it should have, but his thinking was too clear and Pyetr’s was too muddy at the moment, even to deserve it.

“She’ll turn on us,” Sasha reminded him, “or on her father r if we do manage to find him, just as fast. I’ve been noticing the way she’s acting—”

“There’s nothing wrong with the way she’s acting. She just doesn’t want to be here right now.”

“Don’t make excuses for her. She can’t help it, that’s what the leshy was telling us…”

“I know it. You don’t have to tell me that.”

“I do. You’re not listening.”

Pyetr gave him an angry look, and asked, “What’s this about hearts? What’s all this about hearts the leshy was saying?”

Sasha shrugged. He had no wish to go deeply into that with Pyetr tonight, or to try to explain it—knowing well enough Eveshka would seize the chance to confuse things: to confuse Pyetr, more to the point. A boy with a girl on his mind might be close to his understanding, but Sasha had no notion what to do with a man whose intentions were muddled up with a girl who was not only dead but dangerous, with feelings he had a deep fear might not be the rusalka’s own idea in the first place.

How did one explain that possibility to Pyetr—reasonably?

“That Thing,” Pyetr insisted, “said, ‘She hasn’t any heart, she’s taken your friend’s.’ What was he talking about?”

“I don’t know.”

“How can somebody take somebody else’s heart, for the god’s sake?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know everything. Your supper’s getting cold.”

“I want to know what you did, Sasha, don’t give me that! I want to know what’s going on.”

“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.”