C. Cherryh - Rusalka

Pyetr did not say, Wish us well-fed. Sasha did it on his own, hoping for food and safety they could find without being found, but he was not sure where that wish might lead, here, in the wilderness. He was sure of nothing that The Cockerel’s walls did not contain, he had no experience else, and he kept thinking of bandits and trying most desperately not to wish for his own bed and aunt Ilenka’s kitchen, or anything else that might bring them more than they wanted.

But there was no food more than the heads of wild grain he could gather; and as they walked, the forest shadow that had been on their left since last night began to spread across the horizon, making clearer and clearer where the road was going.

He was sure there were bandits and worse things beyond: travelers who came to The Cockerel told of forest-devils and things that snatched and clutched, evil spirits which misled a man, and left him to ghosts and wild beasts. He mentioned these to Pyetr, but Pyetr said they were granny-tales, and scoffed, as Pyetr would.

Sasha kept his fears to himself thereafter. He had never seen a forest, but he knew the worst of it, and this one looked less and less savory, winter-barren across a winter-ravaged meadow.

There would be snow remaining in that shade, he was sure. There would be all too much of shade in a place like that, there would probably be drifts still standing, and there would be cold. Their thin clothes were scarcely enough to keep warmth in their bones while the sun was shining on their backs and the wind was still.

“I think we should stop,” he said to Pyetr, while there was still daylight, “and rest, and not go in there until morning. I can find us grain, still. I think we ought to go in with some in our pockets. And I can make us a bed of straw tonight.”

They were at the top of a brushy slope, where the road was completely overgrown, and below was the last of the meadow and the first of the forest. Pyetr stopped there, and gave a great sigh and leaned on the sword he had begun to use as a walking stick. “Good lad,” he said, hard-breathing. “Yes. I think that’s only prudent.”

There was a fair good stand of wild grain about the scattered thickets and rocks, there was the standing brush, and they might at least, Sasha thought, pulling heads of grain for their supper, sleep relatively secure tonight.

Except by twilight, as he was cutting straw with Pyetr’s sword, he heard a distant sound that might be horses coming, and he looked up in alarm.

It came again, with a flash of light on the northwestern horizon, above the rolling hills.

The straw was the best hope, Sasha had said, any they could gather, however wet and half-rotten, and Pyetr sat with Sasha’s coat around him, clenching his teeth against the cold, binding handfuls with straw twists to tie it around stalks of brushwood, the way Sasha had shown him—very much like thatch, Pyetr saw, once they laid the brushwood sticks down on a rough frame, into a roof, poor though it was and full of gaps, on a frame laid up against a boulder and a leafless clump of brush. The thunder muttered and they built, handful by handful, row by row, Sasha hacking handfuls of straw and bringing it back, building up a bed of brush and a layer of straw, in a nook he had hacked out between the large gray boulder and a berry thicket.

“You’re very resourceful,” Pyetr was moved to say, teeth chattering, when Sasha joined him in the roof-making. “Sasha my lad, I don’t know a gentleman in Vojvoda I’d have in your stead.”

“I should have brought the clothes,” Sasha said, and flinched as the thunder boomed. His hands were white while they tied knots of twisted grass. Came a second terrible crack, lightning throwing everything into unnatural clarity in the growing dark. “I’m sorry , Pyetr Illitch.”

“We were rather hurried at the time, both of us. And if we had them they’d only get wet tonight.”

Another peal of thunder.

“I’m a jinx!”

“Yesternight it was ‘wizard.’”

Sasha scowled and looked hurt at that gibe. “Maybe my wishes only work when it’s going to go wrong. Maybe that’s the curse on me. Maybe that’s why the wizards wouldn’t take me.”

“Wouldn’t take you.”

“My uncle brought me to them. After my parents died. There was talk. He asked them might I be a wizard, and they said no, I wasn’t. They didn’t find anything in me. But they said I was born on a bad day.”

“Garbage.”.

“I’d think they’d know.”

Crack and boom. Sasha flinched again.

“They’re fakes. Every one of them.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“I do. Jinxes and wizards are a hoodwink. You tell a wizard your troubles and ask him what to do, and he tells you; and he sells everything you tell him to the next customer—probably your rival.”

“Don’t you believe in anything?”

“I believe in myself. Tell me this. If those wizards are so powerful, why aren’t they richer than they are?”

That stopped the boy for a moment. He gathered up another bunch of straw. “There’s wizards,” he said. “There’s real ones.”

“Because you know there are.”

“I know there are.”

“And the cat gets the saucers. I believe in the cat, boy.”

“Don’t talk like that.” The boy made a sign, a fist and thumb. “The Field-thing left us grain, we shouldn’t talk like that.”

“Field-thing,” Pyetr said.

“There is . We should leave him something. We should be polite. We have enough troubles.”

“Because the straw-man will get us.” A man could begin to worry, listening to this sort of thing, in the dark, in the chill of the rising wind. “Hah.”

“Don’t.”

“Maybe you’re just afraid, boy.”

Sasha’s jaw set. He tied off his knot, while the thunder muttered threats.

“It’s only reasonable,” Pyetr said. “That’s a big cloud. We’re not so big. I don’t think you raised it. I don’t think you can send it back.—That’s the really terrible thought, isn’t it? That that cloud doesn’t care we’re already cold and we haven’t had a proper meal since yesterday and you really wish it would miss us. Go on and try.”

“Don’t joke! It has lightning!”

A man could believe in anything with the thunder rolling. A second shiver went down Pyetr’s neck.

Which often made him a fool, especially when there was someone watching him.

“So maybe we should wish the lightning away. Petition old Father Sky.”

“Don’t talk that way.”

“Well, hey, old graybeard,” Pyetr called out to the sky in general, squinting in the icy wind and the blowing bits of grass. “Hear that? Do your worst! Strike me dead! You might have better luck than old Yurishev! But do spare the boy! He’s very polite!”

“Pyetr—shut up!”

It was thin amusement, anyway. His side hurt too much, the wind had turned to ice, and his hands were shaking. But he said, “I’ll wager you breakfast lightning won’t strike us.”

Thunder cracked, right overhead. Sasha jumped.

So did he.

And when the rain was coming down and the thunder was racketing and cracking over them, the both of them tucked into a shelter rapidly leaking despite their efforts, Pyetr Kochevikov began to think that he might indeed die before morning, by slow freezing; and after an hour or so under a shared coat, thoroughly soaked from the dripping water, he began to wish that he could speed the matter, because he was so cold and because the shivering hurt his side, and he could not sleep, he could not straighten his legs or move his arms in the little shelter.

Sasha slept, at least, a still warm lump against his body—and a barrier which kept him from shifting his knees that small amount he was sure would relieve the pain in his side. He tried two and three times to wake the boy—and gave up, finally, figuring that there was no place for the boy to move in the shelter, and that there was a chance of the cold finally making the wound numb if he could just think about that hard enough and long enough.