C. Cherryh - Rusalka

“No,” he said. “Absolutely not.”

“He was trying to make you mad.”

“I am mad.”

“Please be careful.”

Decent advice, he thought. He said, “Know how to use a sword?”

“No,” Sasha said.

“Take it anyway.” He drew the whole sword belt off and passed it to Sasha as they reached the bottom of the hill, on the green, grassy margin of the river. “Point or edge, it doesn’t matter. Aim for the eyes. Nothing likes that. Take it! I don’t want it banging about my ribs. I’ve got one hand full.”

Sasha took it from him and hung it over his shoulder. “Be careful of—”

“I’m being careful, for the god’s sake.” The edge of the river was a clean one here, except where a young willow stood, and that—judging where the knoll was situated on the other side of the ridge and where the hole had been on that other side, in the pit—was the likeliest place for a den unless it was entirely underwater.

It was also the likeliest place for the snaky thing to be hiding, and when he came closer and saw there was indeed a dark space among the willow-roots, he had a very queasy feeling in his stomach.

“Well,” he said, “if I toss grandfather’s potion into the wrong hole, he’s not going to be happy. But I don’t know how I’m to tell.” He set his foot on a willow root and grasped a trailing bunch of willow strands. They were lithe and strong, leafless but budding.

“It’s alive,” Sasha said in the same instant he realized it. “The tree—”

He looked around into a pale face not Sasha’s, and yelled and scrambled back for another foothold as something whipped around his ankle.

He yelled as it jerked: he went down under the water and the yell became bubbles. Muscular flesh wrapped him about. He shoved at it and it threw more coils about him as he suddenly found himself in air again, in the dark, traveling backwards and upwards in the wet soft embrace of a Thing the shape of which seemed to be changing by the instant. He choked, spat, swore at it and kicked it in its soft body with all his might, and when it disliked that enough it spun rapidly about, carrying him upright with it. Breath cold and foul as a swamp’s bottom gusted down on his face.

“Damn you!” he cried, terrified, and struggled and kicked for all he was worth. He lost the pot he had in his hand, he hit the soft muddy floor and he skidded down the slick bank into the water.

Huge coils slipped past him like a river in spate and battered him left and right.

He came up choking and spitting, scrambling as far from touching anything as he could—heaved himself up onto the bank and put his hand on something sharp and hard, among a great number of small, sharp objects that rattled with a bony sound—at which he stopped very still, caught a mouthful of air and listened.

He moved from his awkwardly braced position. A bone rattled softly. He braced again, hearing no sound at all but his own breathing, and began to shiver, a slow quiver of one leg and an arm.

It was making no noise. It might be in the water waiting for him. It might have coiled up on the other bank of the cave. The place was full of dark, cold water, and bones; and the longer he delayed the more terrible it seemed to die there. He could see least lightening of the water in the direction he took for the river, and with a great gulp of air he let go, slipped into the water and ducked under the surface, clawing his way toward the light for all he was worth.

His fingers found something soft and oozing at that threshold—only mud, he told himself; and then something hard and odd—more bones on the bottom. The eyeholes of a skull. He shoved it away with a shudder, fighting to escape the hole and the roots.

Then something grappled with him, and he kicked and fought his way to the surface, blind and struggling against what he suddenly realized was a wet and equally frightened boy.

“God!” he yelled, grabbing a willow root and trying to hold on to Sasha at the same time, Sasha gasping and thrashing and trying to hold on to him, flailing with the sword in his other hand.

“I thought you were dead!” Sasha cried.

“Then what were you doing?” he yelled, and choked and dragged the boy as high as he could hold him, so that Sasha could get a grip on the willow.

Sasha climbed, flung the sword onto the bank and hauled himself up where he could be of some help himself, hauling at Pyetr’s coat, pulling him up where Pyetr could climb, shivering and coughing, onto the roots and the bank and as far from the water as he could pull both of them.

“Fool!” he shouted at the boy, shaking him, still himself trembling with fright.

Then it dawned on him by the boy’s white face and his lack of a coat and his having the sword that Sasha might not have fallen in. That so shocked him he sat there with his fist knotted in the boy’s wet shirt and the boy staring at him as if he expected to be murdered, and could not move, except he had to cough, and let Sasha go.

“Don’t ever do a thing like that!” he said when he could get his breath. “God, boy.”

Sasha just stared at him with his teeth chattering and his lips turning blue. Pyetr gathered his shaking limbs under him and gave Sasha a shove toward the coat that was lying on the bank. “Wrap up,” he said, shivering. “Get moving. You’ll take your death…”

He picked up his sword. He found the sheath. His coat was running a steady stream of water, water cold as the wizard’s daughter favored—

He looked back at the willow, the only living tree in all the woods, and recollected the bones down in the cave.

Sasha pulled at his arm, said, with his teeth chattering, “Come on,” and he gathered his wits back and made what speed he could up the hill.

Uulamets still had the fire going. He looked up with a certain surprise—maybe to see two of them, Pyetr thought, with thoughts of wringing Uulamets’ neck—which perhaps the black fur-ball quite well understood, because it ran forward and growled and hissed as they came stumbling down the hill soaking wet and shivering.

“Get out of my way!” Pyetr snarled at it, and gave it a swipe with his sword. “Get!”

It spat and hissed and kept its distance as they came up to Uulamets.

“I delivered your damn bottle,” Pyetr said. “I think we found your tree. It’s the other side of the hill. I don’t think you’ll like the company it keeps.”

Uulamets looked alarmed, and got up and went running off up the ridge, abandoning his pots, his bag, everything but his staff. The Thing went running after him. Sasha looked as if he was thinking about it, but Pyetr grabbed him by the arm and shoved him toward the fire. “Keep it going,” he ordered the boy, tossed him the sword and went over to the edge of the pit, lay down and dragged the dead limb up the slide.

What he could break off it kept the fire going, at least, built a fair good fire, at least enough to take the chill off, enough warmth for him to work his coat and his shirt off and to wring out at least the bulk of the water and heat up the shirt before he put it back on. He was doing the same for Sasha’s shirt when the old man came back over the ridge, furiously angry, striking at the grass with his staff, the Thing dogging his track down the slope.

Pyetr scowled at Uulamets when he arrived at the fire, ready to give the old man word for word anything he was ready for; but Uulamets said not a word to either of them, only squatted down with a thunderous frown and began to pack up his little jars.

“So what do we do now?” Pyetr asked.

“Stay here and do nothing]” Uulamets snarled under his breath, took his bag of pots and left, with the Thing scurrying behind him.

“Good riddance,” Pyetr said, gave Sasha’s shirt a furious twist and stuck it on a long branch, toasting it over the fire while Sasha stayed bundled up in his coat. “Get the breeches off. And the boots. Hold this.”