C. Cherryh - Rusalka

“Damn,” he said, and shut his eyes again, not wanting to move, not believing any longer in anything. Kiev was a dream. Like dreams, it was for people more fortunate. What Pyetr Kochevikov got was a cold bed on cold ground in an endless forest and both he and the boy he was with starving to death in a very stupid series of mistakes.

Mistake to have come this way. Mistake to have hoped, mistake to have expected, mistake to have left the fields at all. Hanging was better than this. Surely it was better than this.

A raindrop hit him in the face. Another did.

“Father Sky,” Sasha said, on his knees, desperate. “Don’t do this.”

“Father Sky isn’t listening,” Pyetr said in a voice more ragged than he had thought. “Father Sky was drinking late last night and he’s in a rotten mood.”

“Please don’t do that!”

The boy was scared as he was. The boy believed in banniks and Forest-things and they had proved as treacherous as the thunder-rolling heavens.

The boy came and helped him to his feet and found his sword for his hand while the chill rain came spatting down through the branches and pattering against the leaves.

The boy found a berrybush while they were walking in the drizzle and the thorns raked him cruelly while he gathered the winter-old black fruit. Blood ran in the rain spatters on the backs of his hands.

“Breakfast,” Sasha said, and Pyetr took a handful and tried to eat, but his throat hurt when the tart flavor ran down, and he had no appetite for it. He felt warm this morning despite the drizzle that slicked the branches and turned the leaf mold treacherous. “Take the coat a while,” he said. “I’m warm from walking.”

But the boy would not. “So am I,” he said; but Pyetr knew he was lying.

He slipped once. It should have hurt. He caught himself, pain-free, giddy with relief. He made a flourish of his hand past Sasha’s white, frightened face, laughed at the heavens and said,

“Let it rain. Father Sky missed us with his lightnings. He’s having a tantrum. Rich men are like that.”

“Be careful,” Sasha begged him; and tried to take his arm, but he flung off Sasha’s hand and walked down the slope, slid to a stop in a clear space and looked up into the rain, blinking stupidly at the drops.

“Pyetr!”

“Old Father,” Pyetr called out, holding up his hand. “One more chance! Best shot!”

“Pyetr!” Sasha came running down and slipped, himself, to one knee.

Pyetr shrugged and spread his arms. “No thunder, even. The old fellow’s shot his bolts. He’s an old householder. He’s thrown all his pots and his brickbats. Now he’s just down to complaining.” He shook his head and watched Sasha get to his feet again, then turned and walked on the way the forest gave them, perhaps the road, or not the road, one could lose it now and never know. It was a ghost, a dream, like distant Kiev.

False, like the promise of gold.

Dangerous, like the warmth that protected him against the rain, that made him think he had no need of the coat. He walked with white daylight coming through the branches and once found himself on his knees, with the boy shaking his wrist and telling him he had to get up, he had to walk. The day passed in memories of branches, of leaf-strewn slopes, of bleak dead trees and the boy, always the boy with him, saying, “Pyetr, Pyetr, come on, you’ve got to keep going—”

And himself saying finally, in the hoarse voice remaining to him, “I’m too tired. I’m too tired, boy,” because suddenly he was, and his head was hurting, and the whole world seemed one never-ending muddle of branches. All the places in this forest had become cruelly the same, one tree and another, one leafy bank and another, one dimly lit stream and another, and the pain was threatening again, less from his side than from his skull. That was what the fall had jolted, and he found himself near blinded.

“Listen,” he said, “this is foolish. It’s near dark.”

“Get up,” Sasha said. “Please, Pyetr Illitch—it’s smoke, don’t you smell it?”

He could smell nothing, with his nose running and his throat so raw. The boy was lying: he was sure that Sasha was lying, only to make him walk.

But he walked, with Sasha holding him up on one side, guiding his wandering steps. They were on clear road again, more leaf-strewn ground among dead trees the bark of which was peeling as if they had died years ago.

And so desperate he was that he could imagine the smell of smoke, and that he could imagine among the dry trees a clear, wind-swept road ahead, and then a gray board shed, a fence, and a gray, ramshackle house, spotted with lichen and bearded with moss like the trees that concealed it.

He stopped, winced with the boy pulling at him, and gripped Sasha’s shoulder. “Speak of bandits—”

“What else can we do? Where else can we go for help?”

Pyetr leaned on his sword and tried to take his arm from Sasha’s shoulder—truth to tell, he had no idea why he was a fool. It only seemed sensible which of them should walk up to that door. But he wobbled badly, and Sasha held on to him and half-carried him down the road, the two of them weaving in their steps. The gray boards and the gray trees blurred together in the twilight as if the barren limbs had grown to the house or the house had grown and died and weathered with the trees.

The closed shutters showed no light. The porch posts leaned, mere gray wood spotted with lichen; the yard was grown up in weeds, slanting down toward more of the forest.

But beyond those trees, they could see from the front gate, was the river, a landing, a bell post, and a boat as decrepit as the house.

“God,” Pyetr said in a painful whisper, “it’s a ferryman’s house. It’s an old ferry. We’ve come back to the road again.”

Pyetr thought about bandits as they passed the gate and walked a bare dirt path that showed usage, headed for the long wooden walk-up to the porch. He thought of the chance of them being murdered, he thought of the terrible things that could happen to both of them, while he leaned against the wall by the door and listened to the boy batter away with his knocking.

“No one’s home,” Sasha said in a voice which had begun to be as hoarse and as desperate as his own.

Pyetr passed a glance up where the latchstring came down. “Evidently they don’t mind visitors,” he said, “and it’s no time for niceties. Probably the ferryman’s in back somewhere. Just pull the string. We’ll invite ourselves. Country manners.”

Sasha pulled the string. The bar came up inside, and the door swung in when he pushed it.

“Hello?” Sasha called out, for fear of startling someone sleeping and perhaps a little deaf. He stood there in the doorway, looking about him at the firelit shelves and the bed and the table and the general clutter of small pots and herb bunches and bits of rope and tackle, all casting shadows from the small fire in the hearth. Warmth and the smell of food gusted out at them. “Hello, anyone? We’re looking for hospitality.”

“Or whatever we can get,” Pyetr muttered at his shoulder, and pushed him across the threshold, himself in no good way to stand. Sasha flung an arm about his left and helped him across to the warmest place in the cottage, the hearthside, where someone’s supper simmered in an iron pot.

It smelled like fish stew. It smelled wonderful. Pyetr was intent only on sitting down there on the warm stones, but Sasha swung the pothook out a little to put his finger in and taste a little. It was indeed fish stew, with turnips.

Pyetr rested back against the fireside with a groan and leaned his head back, saying, “All I own for a drink, boy. Do you find any?”

Sasha felt a pang of doubt about that—kitchen-nipping being a sin of one magnitude and searching the house like a burglar being quite another.