C. Cherryh - Rusalka

He wished, for a start, to see her, to know what she was doing; and immediately, effortlessly, saw her standing there looking worried, while Babi, a sometimes-one-thing some-times-another that constantly shadowed her, looked up at her as much like a dog as not.

He saw Pyetr, too—how pale he was, even yet, how desperate and drained of strength.

He had none he dared spare; certainly Eveshka had very little but what held her to life; and Babi was entirely beyond his understanding—but life was all around them. Eveshka swore she could not draw from the forest, but he found nothing in his way when he reached for it and gave it to Pyetr—no matter that some of it passed through him to Eveshka: there was certainly sufficient.

More than sufficient—but it seemed dangerous to pour too much into a man who lacked a way out for it—excepting Eveshka. On the one hand he feared for Pyetr’s state of mind and on the other he did not intend to let Eveshka grow stronger than she was.

That , he thought, would be the easiest and most natural mistake to make; but he had no pity to lead him into it, merely the shape where pity used to fit in his thoughts—and if she tried anything sudden with him or with Pyetr, he intended no hesitation at all.

It was Eveshka who seemed afraid. Eveshka who looked at him with anxiousness and at Pyetr with concern, enmeshed in the trap a heart could be to her.

Good, he thought, and realized—it was a dizzying thought-thai for the first time in his Me he was truly master of the situation.

It was as if the very air had become healthier, or more plentiful—not so Pyetr realized it immediately: it only seemed to him, after a moment’s profound and unreasonable weakness, that he could breathe freely again, that the exhaustion was less, that he could get up and not feel his knees wobbling. He did that, apprehensive of what might be going on with Sasha and Eveshka that could affect him that way—

But, looking at Eveshka, he met her glance and stopped—Because there was in her eyes a kindness and a fondness for him he could not at first believe, except in the girl he had first imagined her to be. It persisted while she looked straight at him, and he felt—

God!

A moment like that had to pass. He got his breath back and looked past her, he said to Sasha matter-of-factly that he felt better, he thought that they might get moving again—

In fact he stored that stunned feeling away in his heart and took it out again once they started walking, when he had a chance to look at Eveshka, and saw her glance sidelong back at him in that same gentle way—which he tried to persuade himself was his own imagination.

God, it could throw a man off his balance. He told himself she was absolutely dangerous when she affected him that way, he told himself he owed Sasha, at least, better sense.

He kept looking at Eveshka again and again to persuade himself there was nothing different in her than there had ever been; but it was more than just the glance she gave him, it was a well-being in his bones and the change in the way she felt to him—so distressed for what she was and so concerned for him he found himself trying to reassure her .

I feel fine, he told her in his heart. I’m doing all right…

“Nice day,” he said cheerfully to Sasha, hoping to get his balance back. “God, I think I’m getting used to this.”

Sasha said grimly, “Don’t trust her too much.”

Together, Pyetr thought, Sasha and Eveshka came closer to understanding him than anyone in his life; and they instinctively hated each other. He thought that—if somehow they could get everything straightened out and master Uulamets could get his daughter back-He was not used to pinning his hopes on the impossible—but he could not at the moment believe in their fallibility; he felt too safe. Even when they stopped and rested, when he saw Sasha looking completely down in the mouth, he nudged him with his foot and said, “Cheer up.”

Then, with the least nagging worry about Sasha’s continued glumness: “— Are you all right?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Sasha said.

That was entirely enough to throw a pall on things. He had a sudden apprehension of trouble Sasha was holding back from him; and he felt Eveshka’s growing anxiety at his back.

He asked her, if thinking was asking, and with Eveshka it seemed to be—How far? When? and What can we do, if Uulamets can’t rescue himself?

But he got no answer from her.

He said to Sasha, “I’m for a little to eat, do you want any?”

Sasha agreed and took a bit of dried fish—ate it with a spiritless grimness that left Pyetr increasingly cold at heart.

Babi tugged at Pyetr’s breeches leg. Pyetr passed him a bite, hardly noticing the creature, and put the back of his hand to his mouth, realizing only then that it had started to hurt again—

He ought, he thought, to tell Sasha that fact.

If Sasha were listening. Which Sasha hardly seemed to be. Probably, he thought, Sasha was trying to do something wiz-ardly, and probably it had to do—now that his thinking was straighter—with his sudden well-being this day; and probably with his hand hurting him: he felt bruises he did not remember getting, and it seemed to him that he had been altogether foolishly cheerful all afternoon, almost as if he were drunk.

Whatever Sasha was doing seemed to tire him; and that was decidedly a reason to worry.

He reached out and touched Sasha on the knee. “You’re not propping me up, are you?”

Sasha just stared at him. Sasha said, after seeming to think about it, “I’ve found a way to get it from somewhere else.”

“From where?” Pyetr asked, afraid for that answer.

Sasha lifted a hand toward the sky, toward the trees, all about them.

Eveshka sent him warning: he felt the direction of it as clearly as he would have known the direction of her voice. He said, leaning forward and touching Sasha’s knee a second time, “She’s upset with that.”

“I know she is. But she won’t let you go and I’ll kill her if she kills you, so that’s the way it is. I can do that. The way I am right now I could do it. But that doesn’t get either of us what we want, does it?”

Pyetr felt more and more uneasy. It was not the boy he knew, talking about killing and being killed so calmly as that: it was colder than threat. He drew his hand away, afraid to look too directly into Sasha’s eyes, afraid to ask more questions—

As if Sasha was more danger to him at the moment than Eveshka was.

Then he remembered Uulamets saying:

If the day comes, boy, that you have your way, believe this for a truth—he’ll be far more at risk from you than he is now from me…

THE MIST BEGAN to fall again by afternoon, slow, sifting rain, only enough to moisten the leaves and drip down one’s neck when a tree let fall a drop. Eveshka was a sparkle of such droplets, which fell and hesitated and fell again in continuous motion.

The touch of her hand left a chill moisture on Pyetr’s fingers as she came close to tug at him and make him hurry—as if, he desperately hoped, they might be close now, although he had never ceased to feel anxiety from her. He had never thought in all his life he would want to see Uulamets, but now he did, Uulamets being in his own reckoning the only help for this disaster—Eveshka and Sasha locked in silent battle and himself in the middle of it. His wits were clear enough now to know what a muddled mess they had been most of the day and to know—at least when he worked at knowing it—that they were only clear because Sasha was helping him.

Which they might not be if he shook Sasha back to good sense and rescued Sasha from the wizardry effort that was turning him short-tempered and strange to him. He had Eveshka’s presence constantly flitting through his attention, recollecting to him the feeling he could have, he could still have, if only he would let go and give way to her.