C. Cherryh - Rusalka

“Something’s out there,” Sasha whispered, and Uulamets looked sharply toward him. “On the porch.”

Uulamets walked over to the table and seemed to listen a moment. “This isn’t good,” Uulamets said. “This isn’t at all good.” He gathered up a bag and began to stuff it with something dry and brown. Moss, Sasha thought: he recalled a ball of it between the uprights by the table. “Twice in one night. She’s getting much too insistent. Or something is.”

The Thing skittered across the floor suddenly. “That—” Sasha said, and took in his breath as it reached master Uulamets’ feet and climbed up the table-leg.

It reached the table-top and perched there, dark little eyes glittering in the ember light as it watched. It had a flat face, a cat’s black nose, its jaw and mouth were very like a man’s, and it looked overall, tucked down, like a black ball of dust and tangled hair, the sort of thing a broom might dislodge from under furniture.

Uulamets gave it hardly a look. He was tucking little pots into the bag, and adding more stuffing, while shutters rattled and the Thing turned about on scarcely seen limbs to hiss at it.

Uulamets looked at that window, too. The ember light showed anguish on his face. Or fear. Sasha could not be certain. He got to his feet while Pyetr slept like the dead.

And Uulamets went on with his packing.

“What are we going to do?” Sasha asked.

“We,” said Uulamets, “are going to find her.”

“Find her…—She’s outside .”

Uulamets threw him a scowling glance. “She won’t face me.”

Sasha had the most uncomfortable feeling then, the same that he had had any number of times, that there were secrets more than the ones Uulamets wrote in his book, and troubles in this place more than a drowning. Uulamets’ using them for—as Pyetr called it—ghost bait, he suspected was not entirely the desperation of a grieving father—unfair, perhaps: he had no idea personally how desperate a man could become, but in his own way of thinking, a man who would callously trick his guests into favors of the kind he asked… was a man very much like his uncle.

“Wake him,” Uulamets bade him.

“Go out there in the dark?” Sasha objected.

“I’ve told you. Dark or light makes no difference. The danger is the same.”

“Then maybe we should wait till daylight,” Sasha said, “if nothing else, so we won’t fall in the river.”

“But there is danger in meeting her on our own ground,” Uulamets said harshly. “Never let her in. Never let her into this house. Do what I tell you. Wake him. We have no choice. Are you numb to the danger we’re in? Or are you a fool?”

“What about Pyetr’s danger?”

Uulamets picked up a metal pan and banged it on the table. The black thing hissed and jumped for the rafters, leaping from one to the other, and Pyetr started awake, his sword in his hands, before he fell back hard against the stone fireside and rested there, the sword half-drawn.

“Pardon,” Uulamets said. “Time you should wake, Pyetr Ilitch. We’re ready.”

“Ready for what?” Pyetr asked, between breaths.

“She’s here,” Uulamets said. Sasha thought that he should do something, say something—but he had no idea whether he was under Uulamets’ spell himself or whether the prickling feeling that said Uulamets was right was from his own senses.”We have to move quickly,” Uulamets said, and crossed the room and took his breeches off the bedpost, while in the rafters something thumped, and a mouldering basket fell and bounced.

Pyetr looked up at that, with the sword no further sheathed than it had been. Afraid, Sasha thought, but whether Pyetr sensed anything such as he did or whether it was only the startlement of the movement in the rafters he could not guess.

Uulamets pulled his trousers on under his robe and pulled on his boots. Sasha stood still, dressed in everything he owned except his coat, and Pyetr moved only to rake his hair out of his eyes.

“Up,” Uulamets said fiercely. “Get up.”

“And go where?” Pyetr said. The sword clicked home in the sheath. He gathered himself to his feet. His hair was standing up at angles. He looked to Sasha, and ember light and shadow made his face desperate and strange, asking questions Sasha had no idea how to answer.

“He says,” Sasha said, “she shouldn’t get in here. That we have to go to where she is, or we’re in worse trouble. That the worst thing is for her to get into the house.”

Pyetr ran his hand through his hair a second time. It achieved no better result. He seemed harried and bewildered, as a man might, roused out of a sound sleep, or out of bad dreams. “Find her tree,” he muttered to himself, shaking his head. “God. Of course. Fine. In the middle of the night, looking for a ghost and a tree.”

He looked toward the door suddenly, with that same harried look, with the sword clutched in his hand.

“Pyetr?” Sasha asked, alarmed, and came and stood by him.

“She’s here. Outside.—She’s saying—” Pyetr shook his head suddenly and looked at Uulamets.

“What does she say?” Uulamets asked.

“Not to trust you,” Pyetr retorted sharply, and Sasha tensed, expecting Uulamets’ anger. But Uulamets said only,

“Trust her instead? I wouldn’t.” Uulamets took his cloak from the peg and slung it about his shoulders. “That would be fatal, for her, ultimately, as well as for us.” He began to thread the latchstring through the hole in the door, muttering something singsong as he did so. Then: “Bring my bag, lad. And be extremely careful with it.”

Sasha had a last wild thought of refusing, of siding with Pyetr against the old man, but courage or foolishness failed him, even yet he had no notion which. He gathered up the bag Uulamets had packed, while Uulamets took his staff from against the wall and lifted the latch.

There was no wind. There was nothing threatening outside. “Come along,” Uulamets said, and they took their coats from the pegs and followed him.

No ghost, no wind, no breath of trouble—until the Thing from the yard scuttled out the door between Pyetr’s feet and he stifled an outcry.

“What was that?” Pyetr exclaimed, hand on his sword hilt as the Thing disappeared into the hedge.

“Nothing,” Uulamets said, motioned Pyetr to pull the door to, and led the way down the walk-up. He stopped at the bottom and asked, “Do you see anything? Do you feel anything?”

Pyetr slung his sword belt over his coat and pointed ahead into the woods. “I’d say that way,” he said. His teeth were chattering, but he started off foremost through the yard, kicked the gate open, muttering something about the cold and the dark and fools. He led them toward the riverside.

Sasha turned his head to bring the side of his eye to bear, and saw nothing of the ghost in any direction. He overtook Pyetr with a sudden downhill rush as they reached the river and the dockside, caught Pyetr’s arm and whispered, “Did she really say that? About Uulamets? Pyetr? Do you see her?”

“The old man wants a walk,” Pyetr said in a half-voice, “that’s what he’ll get.” He seemed still to be shivering, although of nights they had had, this was one of the warmest. “This is a stupid thing to do, boy.”

“Did she say that? About not trusting him?”

Uulamets was almost down the hill, chiding them for breakneck speed. There was no time for any long answer.

“What do you think?” Pyetr said. “Do you trust him?” His teeth were chattering still. “Damn, the wind’s cold.”

“There’s no wind here,” Sasha said. He felt Pyetr’s hand and it was cold and clammy. He clenched it tighter as Uulamets came up by them. He had the strongest feeling that he ought to have doubted Uulamets more, and that he ought not to have encouraged Pyetr to have come out here—that Pyetr had been on the side of common sense all along and that all his caution had done was to bring Pyetr out here tonight.