C. Cherryh - Rusalka

Again, Sasha noted uneasily—water.

They had a stew of fish and the early mushrooms and fern-heads that Eveshka had found and assured them were wholesome to eat. Sasha looked with new misgivings at the supper he was cooking, and again with misgivings at Pyetr gazing after Eveshka.

“I’m not so sure about these mushrooms,” Sasha said.

Pyetr said, distantly, “Does she need to poison us?”

One supposed not. Sasha shrugged and dished up the stew, which thanks to Eveshka had more than dried fish and water in it, and thanks to Eveshka’s lack of appetite, afforded a good helping apiece for them.

“You know she’s not answering questions,” Sasha said.

Pyetr took his dish, took up a spoonful and blew on it—which evidently made it reasonable for him to ignore questions, too.

Sasha set out a little for Babi. Babi sniffed his and growled at it, but that was, one hoped, the heat, or a distaste for mushrooms.

Sasha took a gingerly, carefully cooled sip of his own dish and found it more than palatable, looked up again at Pyetr, who was staring off into the trees at Eveshka—wishing something on his own, Sasha feared, in a very different direction than he was wishing himself.

Maybe he should have sympathy for that—but he was vexed, more than vexed, seeing Eveshka use those soft-eyed looks on Pyetr, with what might not be, considering she had a heart to confuse her, in any sense reasoned or reasonable. In fact Sasha tried to put a stop to that, exerting himself not on her, which he suspected could demand much more strength than he wanted to spare—but on Pyetr… which still took more strength than he wanted to spend, fighting a natural urge that could affect even someone altogether heartless.

But considering that Eveshka could not, after all, sustain herself on the food they used—

“She’s not eating,” Sasha said, hoping Pyetr would think further down that line.

“Mmnn,” Pyetr replied.

“She’s not alive , Pyetr, she can’t eat, she’s got to get it from somewhere and it can’t be the forest—”

“We’ll find her father,” Pyetr said, and dug into his stew.

That was the help he got from Pyetr. Sasha ate his supper, he fed the fire, glad at least that the rain had stopped.

Finally he said to Pyetr, “If we don’t find her father soon, and if he can’t do anything—she’s not going to stay the way she is, Pyetr. You heard what the leshy said. She can’t help herself.”

“Shut up,” Pyetr said.

Even that curt reply failed to make him angry. Perhaps it should have, but his thinking was too clear and Pyetr’s was too muddy at the moment, even to deserve it.

“She’ll turn on us,” Sasha reminded him, “or on her father r if we do manage to find him, just as fast. I’ve been noticing the way she’s acting—”

“There’s nothing wrong with the way she’s acting. She just doesn’t want to be here right now.”

“Don’t make excuses for her. She can’t help it , that’s what the leshy was telling us…”

“I know it. You don’t have to tell me that.”

“I do. You’re not listening.”

Pyetr gave him an angry look, and asked, “What’s this about hearts? What’s all this about hearts the leshy was saying?”

Sasha shrugged. He had no wish to go deeply into that with Pyetr tonight, or to try to explain it—knowing well enough Eveshka would seize the chance to confuse things: to confuse Pyetr, more to the point. A boy with a girl on his mind might be close to his understanding, but Sasha had no notion what to do with a man whose intentions were muddled up with a girl who was not only dead but dangerous, with feelings he had a deep fear might not be the rusalka’s own idea in the first place.

How did one explain that possibility to Pyetr—reasonably?

“That Thing ,” Pyetr insisted, “said, ‘She hasn’t any heart, she’s taken your friend’s.’ What was he talking about?”

“I don’t know.”

“How can somebody take somebody else’s heart, for the god’s sake?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know everything. Your supper’s getting cold.”

“I want to know what you did, Sasha, don’t give me that! I want to know what’s going on.”

“I don’t know, I’m telling you! I don’t know everything in the world, I wasn’t born knowing. I don’t know what the leshy’s talking about—”

A wizard who lies is one thing; a wizard who lies to himself—is another…

“You’re not missing anything,” Pyetr asked, “are you?”

“I’m fine! I’m doing quite fine. Better than I was, as happens. I kept you going, didn’t I? That’s real magi ?, Pyetr, not just wishing…”

“So what have hearts got to do with anything? What was that creature talking about? What was the River-thing meaning, that morning, about Eveshka losing hers?—Has she taken anything from you?”

“No!” That part came through to him’ and joggled things like pots on a shelf, so he was afraid they would fall and break if Pyetr kept nattering at him—nattering was what aunt Ilenka would call it, aunt Ilenka would say: Shut up, Pyetr Illitch! you’re giving me a headache!

He was.

“What did you mean about getting things from the forest?” Pyetr asked. “What were you doing, that made the leshy mad? And why did it let us go? Why did it say it had no choice?”

Sasha swallowed a tasteless lump of stew and looked at Pyetr with a feeling that might have been fear if he could have reasoned it out. It came down to a sense of things dangerously out of order, with his thoughts racing in various directions trying to find an answer, whether he had made a mistake beyond what had angered the leshy, a wish that might have flown much too far…

“I don’t know why,” he said.

“So what are you doing?”

“As little as I can! I’ve made mistakes by worrying about things, that’s one thing I’ve learned, I’ve been worrying about stupid little might-happens, till I can’t see what I’m doing just by hoping things don’t happen, do you see what I mean?”

“You mean you’re not worrying about things. We’re in the middle of this forest and we can’t find Uulamets and you’re not worrying!”

“That’s not what I mean!”

“I think you’re going crazy. Stop it.”

“I’m all right!”

Pyetr finished his stew with a last bite, flung the spoon into the dish and wiped a hand across his mouth, staring at him anxiously in the firelight. “That doesn’t make me feel better.—If Uulamets is in this woods, wouldn’t a leshy know it? If he’s here, why couldn’t it just save us a lot of bother and tell us?”

Sasha tried to remember, but even that much of his thinking about the leshy kept going sideways, just out of his reach.

That told him that worry might indeed be in order, if he could hold on to his misgivings long enough, but holding on to that particular memory and trying to compare it to Hwiuur was like gathering sand in a net.

“Sasha. What’s going on?”

He lost it again, the thing he had just gotten the shape of in the back of his mind—

Pyetr set his plate down. The spoon clattered. That seemed equally important with everything Pyetr was asking. That was the trouble. In a situation so full of chance everything was equally important and there was no way to balance things without understanding. He was losing the threads of things he had tied together—

Pyetr got up and stepped around the little fire to grab him by the shoulder and shake him hard. “Sasha, dammit!”

He felt that. Like everything. Pyetr walked off, and he watched where Pyetr was going.

Not where he wanted. He thought he ought to stop him if he could sort it out of all the other things that were happening, from the snap of the fire to the rustle of the leaves.