C. Cherryh - Rusalka

He was glad to have the boy fussing about something as ordinary as making tea, which let him think about that instead of what might be on the other side of that door. The tea gave him, finally, something to do with his hands and something warm to hold.

“I think it’s settled down,” Sasha said, sitting down opposite him at the table.

“What ‘it’?” he retorted. “I don’t know what kind of livestock the old man keeps, but as cats go—”

Sasha looked at him from under his brows and bit his lip unhappily.

Like an accusation for a fool, Pyetr thought, denying the foolishness his eyes had seen, while he was shaking from having seen it—or not having seen it clearly enough or quickly enough to see it for what it was.

If things came out of granny-tales and attacked a man going out a door, then other things could be true, which he had no wish to think about.

He dropped his head against his hands and wished they had gone some other road but this.

There was the boat. He had no idea how to manage a boat, large or small, but he supposed that if one cut the ropes and set it loose even a big boat would drift; and the river had to be a safer route to Kiev than any shore with creatures like that roaming the woods. It might come to shipwreck…

He could not swim. Probably the boy could not.

So it was back to wandering the shore, and, he told himself, if they had made it here without accident, they could just as well go south with as great a confidence.

“We’ll try again,” he said; and Sasha whispered, anxiously:

“The old man’s a wizard, I tell you. He’s terribly dangerous.”

“Well, so are you,” he retorted. “Isn’t that what I heard all the way from Vojvoda?”

“Not like him.” Sasha raked a hand through his hair. “He can bring back the dead!”

“I wasn’t dead, dammit!”

“You were cold, Pyetr, cold as ice, your color was gone—”

“I was cold from walking three days with no food.” He reached after the vodka jug, poured a half a cup and sipped it. He did not want to think about that. Not tonight.

“It happened,” Sasha said. “Why can’t you see the truth?”

“Because it’s not sensible!” he said.

Which was all he could say at this point.

So he drank down the vodka and poured himself another cup.

Pyetr was angry at him, Sasha thought unhappily, while Pyetr drank his way to bed.

His relatives were like that. They said they placed no belief in his curse. But they still looked at him and frowned when things went wrong. Sometimes when she was angry, aunt Ilenka would say, Things happen with you around. I don’t know why I put up with you.

Pyetr did not believe in the Thing in the yard, even when it nearly bit him; and he did not believe in wizards, but he looked Sasha’s way with a certain frown that said to Sasha that he was certainly under consideration for fault in this—if Pyetr could find one.

And it might be his fault. There was always the chance that it was. In the face of someone as powerful as Uulamets, his I-will and his I-would were a whisper against a gale; but they were there: he knew that they were, with a conviction he had never had until this place—not a happy conclusion to reach.

But worst of all was the fear that Uulamets knew what he was.

That invitation tonight to join him—an invitation to him, but not to Pyetr…

Pyetr’s head sank onto his hand. He looked so thoroughly disheartened.

It was a long time before old Uulamets came back. Pyetr had taken to the quilts by the hearth, with his sword tucked in with him, with more than enough vodka in him to account fora sound sleep.

But Sasha waited, drowsing a little, listening for the old man’s step on the boards outside; and when at last it came, human footsteps and the tap of Uulamets’ staff, and finally the lifting of the latch, he was there to take the old man’s cloak.

“Still awake,” Uulamets said, a half-whisper as he set his staff against the wall. “I trust nothing disturbed you.”

One could not lie to a man like Uulamets. Sasha had made his mind up to that. He went and poured Uulamets a half-cup of vodka.

“My friend wanted to leave. Something objected.”

Uulamets took the cup and, with a frown, leaned against the table and sipped it. “I’m not surprised.”

“My friend and I—” Sasha made a bow. “We want to go to Kiev, master Uulamets. We want your leave to go.”

“After trying to rob the house—”

“Only a quilt and a string of turnips. Of nothing else.”

“—without a shred of conscience.”

“We understand we’re indebted to you, sir. We’re not thieves. Only we don’t understand what you want from us. We want you to tell us.”

“Huh.” Uulamets took a drink, wiped his scraggly white mustaches with the back of his hand. “Tell you.”

Sasha took a deep breath and ticked off the points on his fingers as he would to a merchant in the market. “We want a string of turnips, we want a quilt, and a string offish, and if you can sail the boat, we’d like very much for you to take us to Kiev, if you would, sir.”

Uulamets stared at him with those wolfs eyes and finally grinned, as pleasantly, Sasha thought, as the Thing in the yard.

“To Kiev.”

“Yes, sir, if you can. If not…”

“I won’t.”

“Then the quilt and the turnips and the fish. And a clean shirt and a proper coat for Pyetr. He’s a gentleman. He shouldn’t go ragged.”

“I’m sure. A gentleman with a certain difficulty: light fingers and lighter morals.”

“He’s not a thief. Neither of us is a thief, sir.” His voice began to tremble, and he was afraid it was going to get worse. “We’re willing to pay for what we take, but you won’t take money. I offered to work and I’ve done that. It seems as if we should be even. What else do you want?” His voice completely broke and worse, his chin trembled. “If you’ll make it clear what will square accounts we’re quite ready to do anything reasonable.”

Uulamets persisted in that slight wolf-grin. He drank another sip of the cup, set it down and stood up straight. “A bargain, is it?”

“For all the things I said, sir. And that you be fair with us and don’t play any tricks.”

“A wary young man.”

“And don’t arrange anything to happen to us.”

Uulamets turned his back and walked a few steps toward the hearth where Pyetr slept. He scratched the back of his head as if he was thinking, disarranging thin white hair, and slowly turned and looked back.

“A very clever young man,” Uulamets said, half-whispering. “Suppose that I did have a task for you.”

“What?” Sasha asked.

“I have a need for a clever lad. Tomorrow night, as it happens.”

“Doing what ?”

“Digging roots.” Uulamets mouth quirked into a toothy smile. “And other things. For several nights, perhaps. Until I find what I’m looking for.”

He thought that perhaps he was being a fool. He wished he had dared ask Pyetr, but he knew what Pyetr would say to any such thing. He wished he knew whether it was his luck at work again that had made him think of bargaining with Uulamets.

Stronger, much—whatever luck or sorcery Uulamets had.

“That is what I want from you,” Uulamets said. “And when I have what I want you can take your turnips and your fish and two blankets. I’m in a mood to be generous.”

IN THE MORNING it was firewood the old man wanted, another damnable day of sitting about while the poor lad chopped and stacked and sweated.

Pyetr watched, having no wish to admit that he might, perhaps, take his turn. He was healing, with a speed he found alarming—in view of the boy’s claims for this place. Yesterday the wound had been scabbed, this morning that scab was peeling to pink new skin, still tender, but he thought he might well be able to run if he had to.