C. Cherryh - Rusalka

Uulamets shrugged and took down his coat from the peg by the door.

Pyetr got up from the table, and walked over to pick up his sword and the old man’s staff.

The old man held out his hand. Pyetr thrust the staff into it.

“It’s boring work,” Uulamets said, “—digging herbs.” He lifted the latch. “Young people. They never like the working part. Just the results. My daughter was like that.”

This withered old man had had a daughter? Pyetr thought to himself. Incredible. Probably with the look and disposition of a shrike.

Uulamets went out into the dark and pulled the door to. The latch fell.

Pyetr let his breath go.

“We’re getting out of here,” he said. “Tonight.”

Sasha gave him a frightened look but he said nothing. Pyetr went over to the pegs by the door and took down the shirt that was hanging there and pulled it over his head. Sasha was still standing there as if he had no notion what to do or what to say.

“Get the quilts and some rope,” Pyetr said, and when Sasha hesitated: “Do I have to do it myself? Take down a string of turnips. The smoked fish there. It’s a long way to Kiev.”

“Pyetr, he’s not just any old man. And he helped us!”

Pyetr glared at him.

“—At least,” Sasha said faintly, “at least we don’t have to take a lot. One quilt. One string of turnips. We can get by.”

The boy’s disapproval stung, foolhardy as it was. Pyetr stalked over to the hearth and gathered up both quilts, cursed under his breath and threw one down, pulled down a coil of light rope from one rafter, while Sasha took down a string of withered turnips from the other.

“Can you walk that far?” Sasha said, jumping down off the bench, looking his direction with concern. “Pyetr, there’ll be other chances. Let’s not do this. We don’t know what the old man may do…”

“There’s nothing the matter with me. There never was. The old faker puts on a good show. He drugged me. You drank the tea. God knows what he put in it. He could make you see anything.” He took the turnips and rolled them up in the quilt on the table, doubled the ends toward the center. “Take a knife. We could always use a knife.”

“I won’t steal!”

“It’s not stealing. It’s fair pay for the work you’ve put in. Take the knife over there. And take the fish, while you’re at it. He gets them for free.”

“No,” Sasha said.

“Fool,” Pyetr muttered, and tied the quilt at either end, with the rope for a handle. He slung it over his shoulder, took his sword from beside the table and picked up the knife himself, and took his belt and Sasha’s coat from the peg. “Listen, boy, if you want to stay with him, you just do that. But if you have any sense—”

“I’m coming,” Sasha said breathlessly, and Pyetr tossed the coat at him, tied his belt, lifted the latch and opened the door.

Something doglike the other side growled and snapped at them.

“God!” he cried, as it lunged.

He slammed the door so fast it hit it with a thump, barking and snarling and spitting, shoving it inward as he shoved out. Sasha threw himself against the door and both of them pushed, while it scrabbled and snarled and hissed.

“What is that thing?” Pyetr yelled, fighting to get the bar thrown, while it jolted them and scrabbled at the wood. “What in hell is it?”

The bar went down. They leaned there panting, and heard the click of nails as it walked the porch.

It hit the window next, and scratched at the shutter. The shutter bar jumped and rattled under a sudden assault.

“My god,” Pyetr said. His knees were shaking. He tried not to make that evident. He stood away from the door, drew his sword and listened while the thing abandoned its attack on that window and padded, click, click, snuffle, whuffle, back along the porch.

It tried the door again, scratching like a dog at the corner and growling.

“It’s the Little Old Man,” Sasha whispered.

“Man, hell! It’s a damned black dog!”

“It isn’t a dog. It isn’t a dog, Pyetr, it knows we’re stealing—”

He heard the scratching, the click of claws. Perhaps it was only a trick of haste and bad light, the way it had looked, all black hair and teeth. He tried to make a dog’s shape out of his memory of those jaws, or to reconcile it with that spitting sound it made.

It did it again, and hit the door hard, so it rattled the bar.

Then more pacing. His hand sweated on the sword grip.

Something else moved, underneath the flooring.

“We should put things back,” Sasha whispered.

“It’s just a dog, for the god’s sake!”

“It’s not a dog—” Sasha unfastened his coat and hung it back on the peg by the door. He held out his hand. “Please.”

A man felt like a fool. If he were not recovering from a wound—if he were not still weak, he should fling the door open and behead the ill-tempered creature.

If there was only one.

It hissed at the door crack. And gave a cat’s ear-piercing shriek.

He winced.

“Pyetr!”

He shed the bedroll and Sasha moved quickly to untie it and to put everything back in its place, rope, turnips, quilt and all.

Another battering and scratching at the door.

“It hasn’t improved its disposition,” Pyetr said. “Dammit, boy, it doesn’t listen to your granny-tales.”

“Don’t make fun, Pyetr, please! It’s not to make fun of—”

“I swear to you I liked the Old Man at The Cockerel better. Pleasant cat. Scratch its ears and it behaves. This one— God !”

It hit the door with a force that brought him around on his guard, shaking in the knees. Its claws had to be ripping wood from the door-frame.

And something thumped under the boards beneath his feet.

He stood there with his breath coming hard and this terrible feeling that he was locked in a nightmare, that things had not made sense since they came to this house and that they might not make sense ever again.

He had no wish to be killed by a bogle in which he resolutely did not believe.

“How’s your luck tonight?” he asked Sasha. “Wish that one away. It’s rather well your line of work, isn’t it?”

“Put the sword up,” Sasha cried. “It doesn’t like it. Put it up. Please put it up.”

The boy was serious. So was the thing on the porch. And Pyetr had a most dreadful suspicion that tonight, this moment, nothing he knew for certain was certain at all.

“Put it up!” Sasha said.

He sheathed the sword. He walked back to the center of the room with a shrug, a swagger, and a misgiving glance at the door.

There was quiet outside.

He liked the conclusions that offered almost as little as he liked the slithering under the floor.

Sasha took the jug of vodka from the table and uncorked it, which Pyetr thought an excellent impulse.

But Sasha poured a little onto the floor, where it ran down between the cracks.

“Don’t make it drunk,” Pyetr said. “Haven’t we got enough trouble?”

Sasha glared at him. Sasha took all this appeasing of spirits with disturbing seriousness, and the stableboy was for a moment the one of them with no doubt what he was doing.

Pyetr lifted his hands. “I apologize,” he said. “I most earnestly beg its pardon.”

There was quiet then, just a little creaking of the boards.

He and Sasha looked at each other a long, quiet moment.

There was no sound but the wind.

“I’ll make tea,” Sasha said. “I think we can use some tea right now.”

Pyetr wanted the vodka. But he was ashamed to say that, so he sat down at the table, telling himself the wobble in his knees was only his recent injury and the tremor in his arms was surely natural after all the days they had gone cold and hungry.