C. Cherryh - Rusalka

Danger, he thought vaguely.

His thought took shape again.

Eveshka had color this evening. The leshy had fed her enough for days-She was stronger than she had ever been tonight. Much stronger, brighter, more solid in the world…

“Pyetr,” he began to say. But Pyetr was already at the stream-side, Eveshka was already turning her head to look at him… a lifelike gesture that itself said how substantial she had become. He wished… and the effort cost him, so that his heart raced and he was aware of the rush of blood in his veins and the rush of wind in the leaves—like the sound of water…

The fire actually cast light on her tonight, picking up subtle color in her gown, and the trees along the brook touched her with shadow, making her real—a girl, no more than that, vulnerable and uncertain as she cast a glance over her shoulder.

“Pyetr,” she said, turning to him with arms outstretched.

He stopped. He took a step backward when she came toward him, and she came no further, looking at him with wide, hurt eyes.

“What did you take from Sasha?” he asked harshly, which was what he had come to ask. “What was the leshy talking about?”

“I love you,” she said.

He backed up another step, because somehow she had taken one he did not notice; he was aware of her eyes and aware of how the shadow bent around her cheek. “That’s fine,” he said, sweating, struggling to keep his thoughts together. “I’m flattered. Try answering me.”

“Don’t hate me.” She reached toward him. He knew his danger, he knew he ought to back up and for one heartbeat he wanted to fail—wanted her to touch him and prove she was, after all, harmless, and not to be responsible for that failure—

“Stop it!” Sasha said, from somewhere behind him. A shadow crossed between them and the light. “Pyetr!”

He really regretted his rescue. What he was feeling was more powerful than wanting to live. But Eveshka drew back her hands and clenched them under her chin, her eyes full of pain.

“Get away from her,” Sasha said, as if he were the boy, the absolute, heart-shaken fool, and grabbed him by the arm so hard it hurt. Probably Sasha meant it to. Not even that seemed enough. Probably Sasha was wishing him to use his wits; and that was not enough either.

“Stop it!” Sasha said harshly, not to him.

Tears brimmed in Eveshka’s eyes. “I won’t hurt him. I didn’t.—Sasha, don’t do that…”

“I’ve no pity for you,” Sasha said. “You should know that.”

“I know,” Eveshka whispered. “But I do. And I won’t let anything happen to him.”

“Then don’t talk to him! Let him alone!”

“I came to her ,” Pyetr said, Sasha having gotten that part wrong, at least. “I want to know what’s going on.”

“Her looking to have her own way is what’s going on,” Sasha said. “There’s nothing else, there’s never anything else in her thinking.—Leave him alone!”

Tears spilled. Eveshka looked at Sasha a long moment, and then turned her shoulder and walked away to the side of the little stream.

“Eveshka,” Pyetr said, but she did not look back. Her tears affected him: he felt himself all but shaking, even while he knew Sasha was trying to do the right thing. He wanted her not to be in pain, wanted her not to be wrongfully accused—

Sasha turned and the firelight touched clenched muscle in his jaw, anger that Pyetr resented from the gut.

“Let her alone,” he told Sasha. “She didn’t do anything.”

“She wants you to feel sorry for her. I’ve told her let you alone.”

“You’ve no damn—” Business , was on his lips, but, dammit, that was the fool talking, even a fifteen-year-old knew that much. A fool would go after the girl, go against everything Sasha was doing to keep them apart, get himself killed so she could go after Sasha next.

Of course he would.

He felt her trying her spell on him, trying to draw him back.

But Sasha was in the way. She seemed suddenly too real to touch his imagination: the glamor faded and she could only use what she was—which was a sixteen-year-old girl with the notion—probably it had worked even with Uulamets, pretty child that she was—that a few tears could inevitably get her what she wanted.

But he knew that song, line and verse: he had learned it in Vojvoda, on one notable occasion, and he was too old to play some bored girl’s games. Ask anything, he thought, of a shallow girl wanting someone else to make her happy—except to give her your heart and expect good care of it.

The glamor tried to come back. Something pushed it away. Maybe it was his own intention, maybe Sasha’s. He looked in Eveshka’s direction and his hand hurt when he clenched it… it had, he remembered, since sometime during supper, when he had started fighting with Sasha, and that bothered him.

Maybe Sasha meant it to remind him, he thought, and then suffered a chill feeling of something going increasingly wrong.

“Stop it!” he said aloud, sharply; but:

“It’s not me,” Eveshka said, and turned, her face distraught. “Not me doing it.—Can you feel it?”

Sasha seized his arm and pulled him urgently toward the fire, while—Pyetr cast a look over his shoulder—Eveshka stood by the little stream, looking down its course into the dark.

“What’s going on?” he demanded, ready to resist this sudden craziness, but not sure where the craziness lay. “What’s happening?”

“Something’s out there,” Sasha said as they walked.

Eveshka was standing there unprotected. The feeling in his hand told him what that something likely was, which he did not immediately say because everyone in the world knew better than he did: he only thought that somebody should look to Eveshka, who was, damn it all, in particular, immediate danger.

“Get our things together,” Sasha said as they reached the fire. “We’re getting out of here.”

“In the dark? With that? It’s after her , is what it’s after!”

“We know that. That’s why we’re going. Hurry.”

“ Where?” Pyetr snarled. It was too much. Nobody was making sense, people stopped in the middle of arguments to run off into the dark with a River-thing waiting out there to make supper of all of them.

But Sasha paid him no attention. So he joined Sasha, angrily snatching up their belongings, stuffing them into the baskets, in a despair beyond any fear of what might be out there. He wanted them out of this woods, he wanted, dammit!—to give up and go somewhere with Eveshka and lose himself to whatever she did, if that was what it would take to get Sasha clear of her and maybe set her free once for all of whatever power the vodyanoi had over her—

Go on , he recalled Uulamets saying, cursing their stupidity, go running off alone. One of you will feed her. The other will be extremely sorry …

The leshy, damn its rotten heart, had sent them off with help, but no protection, no knowledge what to do or where the old man was, and now…

Things stalking them in the dark. Eveshka playing tricks, the god only knew if this whole alarm was not one—

“Where’s Babi?” he asked, suddenly missing the Thing he had last seen bolting down fish and mushroom stew by the fireside.

“I don’t know,” Sasha said, tying up their bedrolls.

“Babi?”

“I thought you didn’t like him.”

He glared at Sasha’s back. “He has reasons for his disposition. I’m coming to appreciate them.” He jerked the tie on his basket tight, picked it up and slung it onto his shoulders, with a glance back—

To the vacant waterside where Eveshka had just been standing.

“She’s gone!” he said, looking at Sasha—whose face, turned toward him in the firelight, was beaded with sweat.