C. Cherryh - Rusalka

“I’ve never been beyond this woods,” Eveshka said in that silken soft voice. “My mother used to say I could imagine better than was really true. So I imagine hundreds of houses, all with carved gables and painted shutters. Is Vojvoda like that?”

“There are houses like that.”

“And people coming and going all the time…”

“Farms and shops,” he said, trying to make it all ordinary and uninteresting. “Like any town.”

“Traders used to come here,” she said. “In my mother’s time. My mother—”

A shadow fell on Eveshka suddenly. Pyetr started and looked over his shoulder in the conviction there, was something suddenly behind him, and Sasha turned in the same breath.

But nothing was between them and the fire.

“I’m sorry,” he began to say, turning about again, his heart still beating hard. But Uulamets was holding Eveshka’s hand, and that shadow persisted, deeper than the ones he and Sasha cast on them both, deeper than the one in which Uulamets’ hand existed, holding hers.

“Papa—” she said, her voice trembling. “Papa, hold on to me…”

Pyetr held his breath, with the thought that he ought somehow to do something—lay hands on her, get from between her and the fire—and he did not know what to do—or dare to do anything. But the shadow seemed less after a moment or two.

“Papa,” Eveshka whispered, staring nowhere at all, “I don’t want to be dead. Please don’t let me go.”

“I’m not letting go,” Uulamets said. And sharply: “Eveshka!”

She drew a breath and the shadow passed entirely. Her free hand fluttered toward Uulamets’ sleeve. She touched it as a blind girl might, and said, “Papa? He wants me back.”

“Who?”

Eveshka’s breath caught. She shook her head violently and looked toward the corner.

Toward the river.

Pyetr very carefully eased his leg around the edge of the bench and began to get up, reaching for his sword.

“Don’t go out there,” Uulamets said.

Pyetr stood up and looked at them and at Sasha, who was getting quietly to his feet too.

“We drove him off once,” Pyetr said. He wanted to believe it would work twice, that the vodyanoi truly disliked swords; and that the Thing had no power over the girl who was sitting in their midst. “You said day or night makes no difference.”

“Tb most things!” Uulamets said. “Don’t open that door.”

“Master Uulamets,” Sasha said very quietly, “—where’s Babi?”

Uulamets did not answer for a moment. Then he said, “Good question.” He carefully got up from the bench, holding Eveshka by the shoulders. “But let’s think of what we don’t want here, shall we? Let’s all think about that—very hard.”

Pyetr did, most earnestly. He thought about the River-thing going back down its hole with Babi the furball in close pursuit. He wished the sun would find the vodyanoi in the morning and shrivel it. He hated it with all his might. And felt Sasha’s hand close hard on his arm.

“Wish us safe” Sasha said.

Then he remembered Sasha had warned him about wishes going further than one wanted, especially a wish for harm.

But in the same moment the fear just fell apart, leaving him wondering what had just happened to him, and inclined to think nothing had happened at all—

Except there was still Eveshka with them, a pale and frightened Eveshka, still holding to her father’s hand.

“It’s all right,” Uulamets said finally. “It’s all right. It’s given up.”

Pyetr truly wanted someone to explain matters to him. He stood there with the sword hilt like something foreign and somewhat foolish in his hand and with the constant feeling that any moment now the world would shake itself back into recognizable rules.

But he had been living that way for days.

“What are we going to do about it?” he asked.

No one paid any attention to him. Uulamets patted Eveshka on the shoulder and said to her, “Don’t worry. It won’t get in here.” Sasha for his part looked less than reassured.

So was Pyetr. Trusting to vulnerable windows and a none-so-stout door did not seem a reasonable plan of action.

So he asked, more loudly, “What are we going to do about it?”

Evidently no one knew.

“God,” he said in disgust, and slung his sword belt on, intending not to be parted from it even a step across the room hereafter—two wizards and a ghost being evidently incapable of any better defense. He took a cup from the shelf, the jug from under the table, and poured himself a modest drink—he had no intention of sleeping soundly tonight, either, or hereafter, for that matter—having no wish to wake with some nightmare laying hands on him, or coils, or whatever the case might be.

The old man had gone soft-headed over his daughter, or his entire attention was taken up with keeping his daughter from going back to bones, the god only knew. Pyetr took his cup and went over to the fireside where it was warm, sitting on Eveshka’s cot while Sasha took to clearing away the dishes and the old man sat and talked to his daughter.

Snatches of their low voices came to him—Eveshka’s fear of the vodyanoi, Uulamets’ assurances they could deal with it—

They, Pyetr thought disgustedly— they . They, with his sword and his going down into dark places, which he had no intention whatsoever of doing twice.

Then Eveshka said something that made him strain his ears and stop in mid-sip. She said, “Papa, I lied: I was running away. The vodyanoi—I think he made everything go wrong. Mama, and Kavi, and everything—I think he made her hate me…”

“A lie. It was the woods your mother hated. She came from the east. She stayed a season. Her folk came back and she went away, that’s all. She wanted nothing of mine and nothing of this place.” Here, in Pyetr’s troubled glance, Uulamets hugged his daughter’s head against his shoulder, pale gold against snowy white.

How old was he? Pyetr wondered.

Uulamets said to his daughter:

“Don’t mourn might-have-beens. Magic can’t work backwards, only forward. I taught you better than that.”

“I remember.” Eveshka’s faint voice tugged at Pyetr’s heart, made him regret doubting her and made him wish he could in fact do something—something quite practical, like proposing they all go down to the boat in the morning and set out to Kiev, where things were surely much more reasonable.

But maybe in a place where things were much more reasonable Eveshka would not even be alive.

“Pyetr,” Uulamets said suddenly, and Pyetr looked up, but Uulamets only wanted him to give Eveshka her cot back. He got up, and gave a little bow and said, confidently, because she looked so frightened, “We dealt with it once. It won’t get in.”

Eveshka gave him a sidelong anxious glance, as if she was not certain he was not a threat himself, then sat down on her cot by the fire, turned her back and began to unfasten her belt and her boots—which Pyetr watched in somber fascination until Uulamets took him by the sleeve and drew him and Sasha over into the corner.

“We have to catch the creature,” Uulamets said in a low voice. “We have to constrain it.”

“How?” Pyetr asked, and drew a breath. “If you have any notion of me going back in that damned cave, old man—”

“Be still!” Uulamets gripped his arm and shook it. “Listen to me. I’ve no strength tonight to suffer fools.”

“Listen yourself, grandfather…”

“Collect your alcohol-soaked wits. That creature has a hold on her.”

Pyetr had his mouth open to argue; he slid a glance toward Eveshka, whose slender shape showed, firelit through cloth—

“I want you to go outside just before dawn,” Uulamets said. “Walk down to the river—taking something of hers with you. That’s all you have to do.”