C. Cherryh - Rusalka

There was long silence.

“I don’t think we’ll get there,” Pyetr said. “I don’t think we’ve a chance.”

So they were face about in their arguments. “We can try!” Sasha insisted.

And Pyetr slowly shook his head.

“What does that mean?” Sasha asked.

Pyetr did not answer.

“Pyetr, why not?”

“We won’t get there.”

Sasha stared at him, helpless, being far from him physically to make Pyetr do anything—and he did not want to wish him into it; which was immediate failure in itself.

“Feels better here,” Pyetr said. “A lot better than the boat, crazy as it sounds.”

“It’s not crazy,” Sasha said. “It is better.—But do you know—like you knew leaving me was stupid—that it’s stupid to believe her?”

After a moment Pyetr nodded, then said, “But I just have this feeling—I think it’s her, talking to me: telling me grandfather’s alive—that he’s in some kind of trouble; that if we don’t get him back something dreadful’s going to happen—something I don’t understand, but I don’t understand any of it anyway. Nothing new for me.” He reached down for the jug and started to unstop it.

And yelled and grabbed for his sword, nearly taking the shelter down as he leapt up—

—because something was skittering along the bushes near them.

Sasha tried to get out of Pyetr’s way and miss the fire at the same time; but whatever it was circled to the side behind the fire and vanished into a bush.

With a hiss.

“Babi!” Sasha exclaimed, and caught Pyetr’s arm. “Don’t scare him.”

“Don’t scare him!” Pyetr retorted; but a round black head had poked out of the brush and blinked at them.

It showed shiny white teeth, a huge row of them.

“Babi?” Sasha said.

It crept out into the firelight and the drizzle, a very abject and flat-to-the-ground Yard-thing.

“It can stay out there!” Pyetr said. “Throw it something to eat. We don’t need it in here with us.”

It crept closer, chin on ground, and folded its little manlike hands in front of its face, staring up at them.

A very diminished, very sad-looking Babi.

“Where’s Uulamets?” Sasha asked of it, and it growled.

“Pleasant as always,” Pyetr muttered, not about to put his sword away.

“But it is Babi,” Sasha said. “I’m sure it is.”

“One Thing probably looks a lot like another,” Pyetr said. “It can keep its distance!”

It crept a little closer, flat to the ground.

“That’s enough,” Pyetr said; but—

“Don’t hit it!” Sasha said, and grabbed up the food basket, found a turnip and tossed it.

Small black hands seized the offering, turned it. Babi sat up and gnawed at it with delicate, busy bites, darting little glances at them. Then it gulped the turnip in one gape of its mouth, scuttled into their shelter and grabbed Sasha around the ankle.

“Damn!” Pyetr exclaimed. Sasha yelped with the instant thought of those teeth and his leg. But it simply held on; and Sasha gingerly bent down and patted its head.

It grabbed his wrist, then, and held on as he stood up.

“Be careful!” Pyetr said.

“It’s all right,” Sasha said, trying to hold the creature in his hands. But it jumped for his chest and scrambled for his neck and ducked around behind him as Pyetr grabbed for it—after which it was still, arms locked around his neck, Pyetr in front of him with his sword lifted, and Sasha thought it a very good idea not to alarm either of them. “It’s behaving itself,” he said, calmly trying, pulling at one wiry arm, to persuade it to let go of his neck. “Come on, Babi. Let go.”

It rose up against his ear and hissed at Pyetr.

“God,” Pyetr muttered.

“It’s all right,” Sasha said, sat down on the log inside their shelter and carefully pulled Babi’s hands loose.

Babi hissed again, bounded down onto the log and down to shelter under his knees.

Pyetr stood with his sword in hand and finally, with a scowl, ran it into its sheath and rescued the jug, which fortunately had landed unbroken.

He muttered, “I suppose it’s a good sign, over all,” put the sword down and sat down inside the shelter again, his hair glistening with rain and a scowl still on his face when he looked down at the creature.

Babi took tiny fistfuls of Sasha’s breeches and climbed up into his lap.

“He’s scared,” Sasha said.

“He’s scared.” Pyetr made a face, unstopped the jug and drank. “What’s with grandfather? That’s what I’d like to know. If Ugly here ran off from it—”

Babi growled.

“Your pardon.” Pyetr hoisted the jug. “Have some?”

It scampered down and snatched up Pyetr’s cup, holding it up with both hands.

Pyetr poured. It drank, gulp after gulp, and held it up for more.

“I’d be careful,” Sasha said.

He poured; it drank, and held up the cup again.

“Bottomless little devil,” Pyetr said, and filled it again. “What’s grandfather into? Do you know?”

It gulped the third cup, exhaled, and fell down in a heap where it stood.

Pyetr gave Sasha a puzzled look.

“I don’t know,” Sasha said.

SASHA SLEPT lightly by intent, rousing himself throughout the night to keep the fire going, while Pyetr stirred only the first and second times he laid a log on and Sasha said, “It’s all right, go back to sleep.”

Pyetr seemed to give up caution for himself then, and tucked down and simply rested, like Babi the dvorovoi, who or which curled itself into a ball where it or he had fallen, and snored.

Babi had disappeared when the imposter showed up at the house; Babi had come back to them last night, and as signs went, that was the most heartening thing that had happened to them lately, Sasha was sure of it.

But when the rain had stopped and the morning came cold and misty, when he had stirred his aching bones to get the fire going for morning tea, he kept an anxious eye toward the pool that lay invisible in the mist.

Not, again, that he did not trust Eveshka’s intentions. It was her resolve he doubted.

He started the tea, he nudged Pyetr awake, and Pyetr put a rumpled head out of his coat and his blankets and took his tea with a murmur of thank you.

Babi came and held out his hands. Sasha gave him his own cup and had his tea in their mixing bowl: if one had a well-disposed dvorovoi in a situation like this he was by no means going to offend it—Yard-things being by reputation uncouth, not so home-loving and dependable as House-things nor so wise and so dangerous as the banniks: and fierce and uncouth seemed very fine company in their situation.

So it might have his cup if it made it happy.

So he was thinking when he saw Pyetr gazing off downslope.

He looked that way with apprehension and saw the mist moving, swirling as if a slow disturbance were passing through it.

“Pyetr,” he said.

“I’m all right,” Pyetr said, and lifted his cup to the valley and the swirling mist. “Patience!” he called out with something of his old spirit. “It’s cold this morning; I’d like my tea.”

But Pyetr’s face looked still quite pale this morning; he had his coat on, and when it came time to put the fire out and pack up, he worked with his jaw clenched and a pained, worried look on his face.

Babi dropped his cup into the basket. That was his form of helping. And when they had taken up their packs to leave, and Pyetr said matter-of-factly, with a lift of his hand, “I think it’s this way,” then Babi quite readily clambered up Sasha’s leg and up his arm to sit on his pack.

“You’re heavy!” Sasha complained. “Babi, stop it.”