C. Cherryh - Rusalka

For whatever purpose.

“You think we should go out there?” he asked Pyetr. “Be out there in the dark? That doesn’t bother you?”

Pyetr sucked at the wound on his hand and after a moment shook his head. “Not as much as staying here. That’s just what I think. I don’t insist. I don’t trust my judgment.”

“I think—” Sasha said after a breath to think twice about it, “I think there’s a reason the sail tore. I think there’s a reason we’re stuck here.—Can you talk to her? Can you get her to come here now?”

Pyetr made a face, took hold of the rope with both hands and stared into the woods a long, long moment. Then he flinched and shook his head. “Just that feeling. It’s worse.”

They set foot on shore—splintered limbs and gnarled roots were their bridge and their ladder to the sheer bank, likely the way Uulamets and Eveshka had left the boat, in Pyetr’s reckoning, if they had left of their own free will at all.

One fear left him the moment he found secure footing off the deck; but in the moment he reached back to steady Sasha in clambering down with his belongings, he found room for another, more sensible apprehension: that Sasha might have listened to him not because he was right, but because he was older, armed, and, admittedly, experienced in things about which Sasha was naive.

Perhaps, he thought, all his premonitions regarding the boat were nothing but fear of the water and the voyage home-perhaps he had tilted some delicate balance he should never have touched in Sasha.

He said, pulling the words out, “I’m still not sure of this. I don’t know I’m right. What if whatever got Uulamets is just stronger?”

Sasha hitched the ropes of the blanket toll and the basket up on his shoulders. “Then I think we’d better find it,” Sasha said. “Remember what you said about swords and magic? If it’s not going to let us leave, we’ve got to get close to it to do anything, don’t we? And the longer we wait—”

“I think I said something about fools and swords,” Pyetr said under his breath, and cast a look back at the boat, thinking he might be pushing them both into a fatal, foolish mistake. “What if whatever-it-is wants us to do this? Have you thought of that?”

“Yes,” Sasha said solemnly. “I have. But how else do we get at it?”

“God,” Pyetr muttered.

But he worked his way along the crumbling rim and past the brush.

Much better feeling, then, when they were clear of the boat. Much better, when he had gotten through the first curtain of brush and in among the trees—like coming from winter’s end into spring. He drew a slow breath, looked around him as Sasha was doing, at a woods where live moss was greening and springy underfoot, leaves were breaking pale from branches all around—the like of which he himself had never seen—certainly not in Vojvoda’s tame little garden plots, and certainly not in the dead woods the other side.

“Where?” Sasha asked him.

He wished he could say he had no idea. But when he thought about it he did. He lifted his hand and pointed nowhere, really, that looked any different from any other way through the trees, but it was absolutely certain in his mind—

A fool following a dead girl, his old friends would shake their heads and say: Pyetr’s gone quite mad.

Which was probably true, he thought—though not one of them would blink at the idea she was a ghost; and Sasha Misurov took it quite matter-of-factly, simply took a good grip on the ropes of his bedroll and his basket of what he called necessities, and motioned him to lead off—

Sasha having his salt pots and his herbs and fishing line and hooks and their cooking pan and such; while his own basket-pack had most of the food—and the bandages they had both thought of, Sasha because it was the kind of thing Sasha would think of, and himself because he had the glum opinion one of them was likely to need them; likewise a jug of vodka, medicinal, he and Sasha had quite solemnly agreed.

A bird started up from a limb, scolding them. A bush was in white bloom. The very sound was different, a constant whisper of wind in leaves and living branches.

“Certainly a more cheerful sort of place,” Pyetr said, watching the sun dapple the bracken and the limbs as they walked—no great difficulty to find a way through, the trees generously spaced and tall, the ground rising and falling in little hillocks, the rare saplings vastly overtopped by old, wide-limbed trees. The worst going was the bracken, the old growth crunching and breaking under the new as they waded knee-deep through this pathless place; but it was over all a quick progress. “Better than the woods near the house,” he looked back at Sasha to say, about to add that, over all, he had no bad feeling at all about this place.

But then cold fingers touched his neck. He spun back forward and felt a little breath of cold air hit his face.

“Pyetr?” he heard Sasha ask—Sasha was puzzled; but he had another demand on his attention at that instant, an urgent and impatient presence, carrying with it a fear he could not immediately understand. It only seemed that the contact was fading and that if he turned his head and lost touch with it now, that would be the last of it.

“It’s here,” he said. “Keep with me…”

He had no doubt now which direction to take. He started off as quickly as he could over the rough ground, dodging around thickets and up over the shoulder of the hill. He heard Sasha behind him, trusting that Sasha would keep up, and battered through increasing brush and foliage with his arms, a course virtually in a straight line, disregarding of obstacles.

“Pyetr!” he heard, and waited a breath or two, but, he felt that breath of cold again, felt a gentle touch of icy fingers, smelled a taint of river weed.

“Pyetr!” Quite close now. Sasha was all right. They both were. He started to move again, less and less liking the feeling he had of something behind them, and feeling equally strongly that safety was in front—

Himself, Pyetr Kochevikov, who only recently believed in ghosts and vodyaniye and such, found himself fighting his way uphill in blind terror of what might be stalking them and blind trust of what was guiding them—

Knowing, absolutely, that the situation might be completely backwards of what he felt—

Sasha saying, That could have been your heart, Pyetr…

He heard thunder behind him, a crack that shocked the forest, felt the increasing chill in the air and the shadowing in the sky. Sasha overtook him, held him by the arm and protested they should stop, it was coming up a rain…

No, he said, brushing off Sasha’s grip.

No. Not yet. She said not; and his feeling of where safety lay remained constant. “It’s all right,” he said to Sasha without looking at anything in its distracting detail, not Sasha, not the woods around them. “It’s Eveshka. She’s still in front of us. She’s moving…”

“She’ll come back,” Sasha said.

“I’m not sure she can,” he said, and walked while a fine mist drifted down through the branches…

They had left the bracken. It was leaf mold underfoot now, a thick carpet glistening with rain, easier going, except the brush and the thorns. He walked, followed the wisp of a notion where he was going until his side ached and his legs were shaking with every step, jogged when the presence grew fainter, caught his breath and walked again while it was-strong—until finally on the bare side of a ridge he slipped, lost his balance and skidded feet first down the slope into a rain-pocked spring.

He gasped a breath and hit the muddy ground in disgust, having landed up to the knees in water. But when he collected himself to get up he could see her reflected in the roiled surface, standing behind him.