C. Cherryh - Rusalka

Whereupon Babi simply stopped weighing anything.

But he kept a tight-fisted grip on a lock of Sasha’s hair, until they had worked their way down the misty slope to the soft ground around the pool.

Then Babi bounded down, growled and hissed and splashed across the pool where the mist began to swirl and move with the passage of a ghostly body: Babi followed that movement, skipping and frolicking like a puppy.

It certainly seemed to answer one question.

The mist diminished as they climbed and that clue to Eveshka’s whereabouts they no longer had, but Babi told them, Babi went by his mistress through the fog and by her over the hill, when her step was too light to disturb the leaves.

But Pyetr knew by other means that Eveshka was there—knew in his heart where she was, knew in his memory how she would move, a swirl of skirts, a sheet of pale hair-That was what he kept thinking, knowing he was a fool, knowing that his memory was making a goddess of a wisp of white, a hazy recollection of a face—

A sweet and gentle face, and a touch at his heart that made him totally—

Stupid, he told himself. He had outgrown that mooncalf silliness at thirteen.

But he had felt like that when he had found her by the pool, he had dreamed of her last night, he kept remembering the night the imposter had come to the house, how he had known from the moment she had looked past him—that his Eveshka would never have done that.

He knew it the way he had known that about a girl when he was thirteen; and another and another till he learned that a pretty face was no guarantee of good character.

But this one—

This one—

“Pyetr,” Sasha said, catching his arm as they went, “Pyetr, remember.”

A fifteen-year-old knew better: he certainly should—but he knew things about Eveshka, he had no idea how: he knew the thoughts she had, he knew the anger she felt toward her father and the longing she had that Uulamets be better than he was and wiser than he was; he knew that the loneliness her father had imposed on her had made her do unwise things—

He knew that she was determined now to rescue a father who had never been anything but grief to her.

And that he understood all too well, knew it so well it might have been years ago, and himself searching the streets of Vojvoda for a father he knew was in serious trouble—

Often. Only to fight with him when he had found him. But it never diminished the fear of losing him.

Now that fear was back—over Uulamets, for the god’s sake, not even his own fear: he understood that; but it was still real, and he knew the dance so well—

Rotten old man. Ill-tempered ingrate. Unprincipled scoundrel.

Babi was more personable.

They stopped at a stream to drink. Sasha cupped his hands and paused, seeing Pyetr sitting on his heels only gazing into the water.

Don’t, Sasha wished Eveshka.

And to Pyetr he said: “Do you see her?”

Pyetr reached out to the face of the stream and disturbed whatever he saw. “Not now,” he said, doing passably well, Sasha decided, under the circumstances.

But the farther they went in the woods the more worried Sasha became. It was no longer a question of finding master Uulamets in the first few hours; or the first day; or now, in much of the second; and with the weather continuing to threaten and with Pyetr looking paler and more distracted than yesterday, Sasha asked himself seriously how much longer they could afford this search and for that matter, how much help Uulamets was likely to be to them at the end of it—counting that master Uulamets was himself the victim of a serious and willful mistake.

In fact Sasha began to lay fantastical plots for rescuing Pyetr: the wild notion of drugging his tea, for one, and while Pyetr was in that state seeing if he could break the rusalka’s hold on him.

But he might lose that fight disastrously, and leave Pyetr with no resistance at all to Eveshka’s demands; or he might misjudge the dosage; or by overcoming Eveshka leave them vulnerable to Hwiuur, or, or, or…

Reason was not working outstandingly well, either. “Let’s give this up,” Sasha had said several times, and each time Pyetr had simply said no.

“Let’s go to Kiev,” he had said; and Pyetr maintained there was no hope of that.

“You don’t even like master Uulamets,” he had objected, and Pyetr had said, It’s not for him I’m doing this…

“Let’s go back to the boat,” Sasha suggested finally. “Pyetr, we’re walking and walking and you’re getting sick , Pyetr, you’re not thinking right any longer, please listen to me.”

Babi growled at him.

Pyetr only shook his head, slowly looked toward him and said, “She’s promised me it’s not far. I don’t think it is. Wish harder. I’m not crazy. She doesn’t want to lean on me, but she has to.”

“She’s doing too much of it!” Sasha cried. He knew he was not resolved in his own opinion—too much yea and nay, go back and go forward, need of Uulamets and his desire to be free of him—

In fact today he was the one who most wanted to be safe in Kiev, following the life he imagined with Pyetr for a partner, living a bit by their wits and a lot by Pyetr’s extraordinary luck—which looked now to be at ebb; and seeing such things as snake-handed elephants and gold roofs—which they looked now never to see.

Sasha sat down on a fallen log and plunged his head into his hands, hurling out a fierce and angry wish that Eveshka leave Pyetr alone a while and lean on him instead.

A curious thought came to him then, nothing that he could unravel into words, rather an approach of suspicious friendliness, there was no other way to explain it. He felt warmer for the moment; and a little dizzy and a little dazed; and, sure that it was Eveshka, thought: You know what you’re doing to him. You don’t want to hurt him. Can’t you take what you need from the forest?

No, he felt; impossible.

He objected she had done that at home. He greatly doubted that she was doing anything other than give way to her own selfish wants—and suddenly doubted all her assurances, equally with the purpose of this approach…

But she insisted to come closer. She wanted to come closer, and it was an angry presence: he was doing everything wrong; he was wasting his strength, he was endangering Pyetr himself. She wanted to show him better-He felt the danger in his own self-doubt. He tried to open his mouth to warn Pyetr—and felt the temper of someone as young as he was, who ached as much as he did to be loved and was sure that everything and everyone in her whole life had conspired against her, to rob her of everything—

He understood her: for a single heartbeat he felt people had robbed him, too, and that was the mistake, that quick, that devastating a slip—because she needed more than he even knew what he wanted. He shoved her back and saw Pyetr suddenly slump over, putting his head in his hand—

He was doing that by fighting her, she told him. He was making her do it; and all she wanted was the means to stop, if he would only let go…

For Pyetr’s sake, she said.—A heart’s only in a wizard’s way, Sasha. You’re not strong enough to stop me—He doubted he could. He could not help it.—Except, she said, your heart would never let me hurt him. It’s your weakness, but in me it could save us, it could save him , Sasha. Don’t be a fool. Let it go-He was not sure…

And felt something slip away from him, a painless loss, a little sense of something missing.

The gap where it had been closed very quickly, so that he could not much miss it—nor want back what lie was not sure he even understood. Nasty trick, he thought with a certain remoteness; but on this side of matters, Eveshka’s reasoning seemed sound, Pyetr was sitting up wiping the sweat from his face and doubtless wondering what had come over him, so certainly Ev eshka had backed away. It even occurred to him that Eveshka had made a mistake if she hoped to get past him, because he was no less determined to protect what was his, and all she had gotten off with was worry and pain, that was what it felt like.