C. Cherryh - Rusalka

Pyetr cast an alarmed look at Eveshka, whose expression was quite, quite cold—and guessed by that what transaction might have passed: a bargain paid, or simply that Uulamets’ daughter might have found a heart entirely too fragile a possession after all.

Please the god, Pyetr thought, that Sasha was still sane. But the boy felt something, finally; the boy could beg his pardon for getting him deeper into this place, and swear that he had never wanted to be a wizard—

“Can’t help what you’re born,” Pyetr said, holding on to the boy, sword and all, knowing that Pyetr Kochevikov had never believed that, and that if he had, he might have died the way his father had, instead of the way he figured now he was likely to—take his pick, he could, a ghost without a heart or a Water-thing who wanted to make supper of him, neither one of which he could consistently believe in. Gambler’s luck, it seemed.

Someone had to bury the remains, even if Eveshka seemed to care nothing about the matter and Uulamets stayed by his fireside and gave no sign of interest in it either. So Pyetr used his sword to loosen the dirt, and by a cloudless dawn he and Sasha piled up wet dirt and leaves such as they could, for decency’s sake.

Sasha still was pale, his hands, flecked with bits of earth and wet leaf mold, were white. Wind burn was the only color in his face.

More than that, he did not look up oftener than he must, and then with some vague shame that gnawed at Pyetr’s peace of mind—such as Eveshka left him.

Pushing him and pulling him all at once, that was what it felt like to Pyetr: his would and would-not where she was concerned was so violent and muddled with anger this morning he felt half crazed himself, and he clung to the real world of mud and bone and Sasha’s pale face with all the desperate attention a man could pay to anything after a night of no sleep.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “Sasha?”

Sasha nodded without looking at him, and Pyetr gnawed his lip in distress.

“Let’s get the old man moving,” he said. “Look, whatever we decide later, let’s get everyone back to the boat, go back to the house, try this all again—”

Sasha shook his head, and did meet his eyes this time, with a bleak, exhausted look. “It won’t get us out of this. We can’t get there.”

“Do you know that?” Pyetr asked carefully. He felt cold himself, and sick and scared. “Sasha—can you tell, are you free of her?”

Sasha stared through him a moment, and said, “None of us are free…”

Pyetr shook at his arm. “Sasha, damn it, don’t talk like that.”

Sasha gave him a strange look then—blinked and looked at him, laid a chilled hand on his and clenched his fingers. “I’m all right,” he said, and Pyetr’s confusion went away from him, Eveshka’s presence suddenly so quiet he felt drawn to look and see if she was there.

Something stopped him from turning his head. Something held him looking into Sasha’s face. Something told him not to be afraid.

And by everything he had been through he knew better than that.

But Sasha said to him, quietly, “Whatever else—whatever else, it’s got to get me first, Pyetr. And that’s not easy any more.”

He felt his arm begin to shake in its awkward position. He felt the cold of the ground under his knee. “Listen,” he said, fighting it out word by word, “I’m grateful, understand. But don’t do that. Don’t wish me not to worry about you, boy! That’s damned foolish, isn’t it?”

Sasha blinked and his mouth made a desperate, thin grimace of a smile. His grip tightened. “Yes.—But she’s not fighting me. She knows it’s not good for her. It’s all right a while. I can keep her away. Don’t worry about it.”

“Try asking out loud, like a polite boy.”

The grimace broadened into something like a grin. Sasha patted Pyetr’s hand, drew a deep breath and sat back on his heels.

As if it was Sasha, a wise, bone-weary boy carrying far too much on his shoulders. Pyetr rubbed the back of his neck and looked at him a second time, refusing to ask himself what they had just buried, or whether Uulamets’ daughter had ever had a heart in her life—until she borrowed Sasha’s.

And threw it back again, maybe before Uulamets broke it altogether.

Or maybe because Sasha’s own unselfish kindness would not let her hold on to it… and that was the inevitable trap she had fallen into.

“So what are we going to do?” he asked Sasha. “Do we even know grandfather’s sane?”

“I think he’s sane,” Sasha said, and added, with a tremor in his voice: “If any wi/ard is. I think after a while—after a while—”

“You’re not crazy,” Pyetr said. “I’m not sure about him, but I do know you, boy, and you’re not going his way. If you want my ignorant advice—wish us out of here. Fast. Grandfather with us.”

“When you wish, things happen that can happen, and not always the way you want.”

“What was this thing we just buried, then? What was with Uulamets, fixing us breakfast and sleeping in his daughter’s bed? Was that something that can happen? Not in Vojvoda, it can’t!”

“I don’t know,” Sasha said in a subdued voice, and with an uncomfortable glance at the pile of dirt between them. “We know what it was—but I don’t know for sure what raised it.”

“There’s at least two choices,” Pyetr muttered.

“At least two,” Sasha said, and looked aside as Pyetr did, where Uulamets sat beyond a screen of branches, beside the ashes of last night’s fire. “Maybe wanting something so much—”

“He didn’t want herl He wanted a daughter who’d agree with him, say, ‘Yes, papa,’ and keep his house clean.”

“That’s certainly what he got,” Sasha said, “isn’t it?”

EVESHKA WAS SILENT, withdrawn: she had surely spent a great deal of her borrowed strength to dispel the Fetch or whatever had been, as Pyetr put it, making their meals and sleeping in their company. Now she drifted as a ghost, pale, apparently aimless, among the trees that curtained the grave and Uulamets’ fireside.

So it fell to him, Sasha supposed, since Pyetr and master Uulamets were not on the best of terms, to broach urgent matters with the old man.

He had washed his hands in the little spring that ran from this place, he had washed the leaves out of his hair and used Pyetr’s razor to scrape the little mustache off his lip, which made him, aunt Denka would have said, look as if his face was dirty. It seemed respectful, at least, not to approach master Uulamets looking like a vagabond—even if master Uulamets’ clothes were mud-stained and his hair and beard were stuck through with twigs and bits of leaves.

Master Uulamets had his book with him. But he was not reading it or writing in it, only holding it in his arms and staring off into the woods, as if the forest held all the answers he wanted.

Sasha bowed and cleared his throat when master Uulamets seemed not to notice him. “We’ve taken care of everything. Pyetr thinks we might go back to the boat and think things over. I don’t think we really can, but maybe you know—”

Uulamets did not so much as look at him.

“We had no idea where you’d gone,” Sasha said. “Eveshka led us. We ran into a leshy. He helped us.”

Not a flicker of interest.

“He lent her enough strength to get here,” Sasha said. “But he said she mustn’t take any more from his woods. He doesn’t like us being here.”

Going on and on without master Uulamets’ acknowledgement seemed impertinent as well as futile. He was sure that a wizard of Uulamets’ skill had to know most of what had happened without a boy telling him more than the details; and he found himself more afraid of the old man than he had ever been—a fear from what origin he suddenly suspected.