C. Cherryh - Rusalka

“We won’t be any safer out in the middle of the river. We’re a long way from the house—”

“To the black god with the house. We’re bound for Kiev. Forget the old man. You don’t need him.”

“I do need him,” Sasha said. “And if he doesn’t come back, I still have to go back there.”

“For what? God, you’re quit of him! You don’t believe his nonsense. He wants you to believe you have to rely on him. Trust me instead, why don’t you?”

Sasha said in a muted voice, “Pyetr, I’m not sure what I’m doing. I’m not even sure what I’ve done. I’m scared of that…”

“Because you’re listening to him. Forget it! Let’s get this boat out onto the river, let’s put this place behind us, that’s all.”

He was halfway to his feet when Sasha caught his arm.

“No!” Sasha said, and all of a sudden Pyetr doubted he was right, all of a sudden he was sitting down again, a little shaken, and Sasha was saying. “Please. Till tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning we’ll go.”

Pyetr looked at him suspiciously, a little angry, but Sasha refused to flinch. He had his jaw set and looked him in the eye as straight as straight.

“You’re ‘witching me,” Pyetr said. “I don’t like that. I ought to take this boat—”

But he felt extremely uneasy about doing that. He thought how Sasha had been right, sometimes.

“Stop it,” he said.

“No,” Sasha said, “I won’t.”

Sasha was upset, he was upset. He thought that he could get up, cast off the ropes and take them out anyway.

“Damn it,” he said; and got up and walked over to the forest-side rail to prove the point.

But he could not even stay mad. It was enough to drive a man crazy. He looked into the forest and thought that this was a better place to be than out on the river tonight, and he knew, damn it all! where that notion was coming from.

He bowed his head, he stood there with his arms folded. He felt Sasha wishing him not to be upset, and insisted on being furious. He turned around, on Sasha’s grace, he suspected, and said, “Boy, that’s not polite.”

“I’m sorry,” Sasha said earnestly.

“Being sorry doesn’t patch it! Don’t interfere with my judgment! Don’t do that to your friends!”

“I haven’t got a choice,” Sasha said.

“Why? Because Uulamets wanted us here? Because something else does? What if you’re wrong and it’s not your wish, can you even tell?”

“If it’s that much stronger than I am,” Sasha said after a moment, “then you wouldn’t be arguing to do what it doesn’t want, either, would you?”

Sasha made a kind of sense. Pyetr hoped so. Otherwise nothing in the world was reliable.

And Sasha wanting him not to be mad was infuriatingly hard to resist.

Pyetr walked over to where he had been sitting, and slammed his hand into the side of the deckhouse, so it hurt.

That was a feeling he could rely on, at least.

Sasha came and sat down near him, contrite, Pyetr imagined: he squeezed out the water from the reheated compress and wrapped the cloth about his hand without so much as looking up.

“Pyetr, please.”

“Don’t talk to me,” he said, because he had decided he was going to say that before he felt sorry for the boy. But he did glance up, and the boy looked so shaken it went through him the way the pain of his hand did.

At least he supposed it was his own feeling.

“Tomorrow morning,” Sasha said, his voice trembling. “I don’t care how mad you get, I won’t let us have an accident.”

“Who won’t let us?” Pyetr retorted. “Didn’t you say once, wizards are easier to affect? Maybe you don’t know better. Does that thought occur to you?”

“It does,” Sasha said. “And I don’t want you mad at me, Pyetr, I’m sorry, I can’t help that, but what do I do?” Sasha looked to be at the end of his wits, and bowed his head, his hands tangled in his hair. “Don’t want to go. Be patient. Don’t do things like that—”

The pain in Pyetr’s hand diminished, markedly. And the boy sat there with his head in his hands, throwing everything he had into that relief, Pyetr reckoned. He felt his anger ebb and could not even make up his mind whether it was himself or Sasha deciding it.

He slumped back against the wall of the deckhouse, set his jaw and glared at Sasha in a moment that felt as though they were both irretrievably mad—and searched back to his first days in Sasha’s company, trying to recover his balance.

But one never knew about those moments, either…

Except that Sasha had attacked the vodyanoi for his sake, with a salt pot and a stick—which he could not forget.

“You want me to remember that?”

“What?” Sasha asked, looking up, looking bewildered.

Innocent, then. But then, he did not in any sense doubt he could trust Sasha; what frightened him was the degree of trust he began to understand it took—to live with a wizard.

“Let me tell you,” Pyetr said, “I don’t know how far Uulamets ever pushed us—he could, I don’t doubt it, and maybe he’s so good neither one of us could catch him at it, but I don’t think so.” He soaked the rag again and squeezed it, so he had somewhere else to look besides Sasha’s pale face. “Do me a favor. Don’t do that again. It’s not the way to get along with people.”

“I don’t want to do it… I don’t want you to get killed, either!”

“Fine. Neither do I. You think there’s some kind of spell on the boat. I think there’s a Thing somewhere around here that got breakfast and it’s coming up suppertime. What do you say to that?”

“I know how to stop it.”

“Good. I’m very glad of that. Why don’t we leave tonight?”

“Because it could turn us over.”

“With you wishing not.”

“I don’t know how strong it is.” Sasha bit his lip and said, “I’m not sure that’s not what tore the sail.”

“Are you sure about anything?”

Sasha took a little longer about that answer. “No. I’m not. But I’m afraid if we go out there—that’s deep water. And we could be in it. And I can’t swim.”

“Neither can I,” Pyetr said. “But we won’t know how by tomorrow morning, either. Are we going to stay here for the rest of our lives?”

“Master Uulamets might come back.”

“I’m not really looking forward to that,” Pyetr said. Across the river the sun was closer to the trees, but he had lost his certainty and his enthusiasm for facing the river in the dark. “Tomorrow, then.—You’re not pushing that on me, are you?”

“No.” Sasha shook his head emphatically. “No, I swear I’m not.”

“See how hard it is to know anything when somebody does that to you? You’re liable to make me do something backward to what I’d do in good sense. Make me break my neck. Who knows? I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t do that again.”

Sasha looked entirely upset. “What if you’re wrong? What if I know you’re wrong?”

“What if you’re wrong about me being wrong? You’d better be right, hadn’t you, and you’d better not do it often—had you?”

“It’s so easy to do.” Sasha said, “and it’s so hard not to—”

“I wish you had a choice,” Pyetr said, sure enough of Sasha’s honesty this time not to doubt himself: he felt sorry for the boy, more, he was suddenly afraid for the boy’s sanity as much as his own. He reached out in a rough halfway hug, a pull at Sasha’s neck. “You might be right this time. Just mind your manners.”

“I’m sorry.” Sasha took a swipe at his eyes, his head ducked. “I’m just scared.”

“Time to be,” Pyetr said, and dipped the rag in the pot again, and attended to his hand to give the boy time to dry his face. “You think you can keep whatever-it-is off tonight. Uulamets couldn’t.”