C. Cherryh - Rusalka

Suddenly it flowed into the ground like ink.

“Stop it!” Uulamets cried, Babi vanished on the instant, and there ensued a frightful yowling, a disturbance running a curving line under the mouldering leaves and into the brush, where violence thrashed and spat and hissed.

Pyetr was bent over, sword and all, holding his right hand against his knees, and Sasha stumbled to reach him, dizzy as he was.

“Are you all right?”

“Of course, of course,” Pyetr gasped, looking out into the woods, one arm braced against his knee. “What’s one hand? I’ve two.”

Sasha tried to help him, but his thoughts kept scattering to Babi, far out from the clearing now, to Eveshka, a distant glimmering among the trees, and Uulamets screaming at her to come back. His head ached; he could not stop the harm to Pyetr, that was what he kept thinking, and he had to want it more than he doubted before he could even begin to make headway against the pain.

“Thanks,” Pyetr breathed, surely unaware what a terrible botch he had made of his help—or what it had felt like a moment ago, holding the creature while Uulamets tore it in shreds—until Uulamets himself had flinched, or he had, he could not even remember in the chaos of those moments which of them then had been hurting it most… for Eveshka’s pain, for Pyetr’s…

“Come back,” Uulamets was still shouting at his daughter, or maybe Babi; and Pyetr, collapsing onto the log beside the fire, looked anxiously toward the woods.

“Chernevog,” Pyetr said between breaths. “It was Chernevog the Thing meant, it had to be. Her lover killed her. ‘He said I could have the bones…’—God, what kind of man is that?”

“A wizard,” Sasha said from a dry throat, thinking, I couldn’t let it go. It made me sick but I couldn’t let it go. Even Eveshka flinched, even Uulamets, and I didn’t.

“EVESHKA!” Uulamets kept yelling into the dark, wizard at wizard-daughter, who still, it seemed, did not want to explain anything to them.

But at last she came drifting back from the woods, overpowered by her father’s wishes, perhaps: Pyetr had no notion. Stupid to feel sorry for her, he thought: let the vodyanoi have her and save all of us—

Because he was sore and shaken and short of sleep, and thoroughly out of sorts with shallow, silly girls who got themselves murdered by scoundrels.

But that was not the way he felt when he looked at her, and when she came trailing back looking as young as Sasha and as ill-suited to contest with scoundrels and murderers: his heart turned in him and he wanted that particular scoundrel in reach.

Still, figuring they had their hands full tonight, he was glad to see Babi come shambling after her through the brush, at least one hoped that large and shaggy thing she was not paying attention to was Babi, in his larger and less pleasant aspect. Whatever it was, it stopped at the edge of the woods—lay down there, all shoulders and jaws, gazing as watchfully as any hound in the direction the vodyanoi had gone.

“You’ve some questions to answer, young woman,” Uulamets said, stalking along by Eveshka as she drifted near to the fire. She looked terrified. Pieces of her were coming away, the way they had from the vodyanoi wherr Uulamets attacked it.

“Stop it!” Pyetr said to Uulamets, not certain Eveshka’s distress was Uulamets’ doing, but not liking it either, damned certainly not liking it. He said that, and got up to make his point, and Eveshka, who had started in that second to flee, hesitated and looked back at him with a light of hope in her eyes.

He held out his hand: it was like lifting a heavy weight, so he reckoned Sasha did not approve; but they were being too hard on the girl, even Sasha was, trying to protect him, doubtless, but she had not deserved it.

“Eveshka,” he said, walked over to her and beckoned her—one could hardly take her arm—over to the side of the clearing where he did not have Uulamets and Sasha immediately to contend with. “Your papa’s upset. We want to help you. That’s all. You know I do, don’t you?”

“You can’t!” Pieces of her began to come away again. “Let me go!”

“Where? Where can you go? To that Thing? Trust your father—” God, he could not believe he was saying it: “He’s not stupid. If you and he and Sasha could once get together on what you want, maybe—”

“I can’t!” she cried. “I can’t, you can’t trust me, Pyetr, you especially can’t trust me, and I don’t want to hurt you—”

“Well, so you do have a heart, don’t you?”

“Don’t say that! Don’t believe it!”

“Seems you’ve believed too many things. If you really want to have it back—can’t you just wish?”

“No, I can’t, I can’t!”

“Stop that!” he said, and pieces of her that had come away hesitated like drifting gossamer and immediately reassembled themselves around the edges, to his great relief. “That’s better. God, please don’t do that. What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m tired, Pyetr. I want to go, please make my father let me go—”

“ Where would you go?”

She shook her head slowly, distressedly.

“Back to that cave?” he asked.

“Just—gone. Just where people don’t want me to be anything! Pyetr, stop them—please stop them.”

He felt that anguish like a blow—aimed at him , he thought; he remembered the clay cup and might have panicked as his heart began to thump against his ribs, but he looked her steadily in the eyes and said, as calmly as he could, “Oh, come now, ’Veshka, you don’t really want to go away, you certainly don’t want to do me any harm—”

“You don’t know me! Shut up! Shut up!”

“I’m not a bad fellow, you know. I’d certainly put myself up against Kavi Chernevog.”

“Please!”

Odd feeling, to try his old beguilements with the lady’s father in view; and to know the lady’s safety was at stake. But he called up all his graces, smiled at her, while he earnestly wished on Kavi Chernevog all the harm he had done to her. “Nothing’s beyond you. You have to really believe, don’t you? Sasha tells me that’s the way it works. That fellow could trick you once, but you know better, now, you’re not as young as you were, you’re not a silly girl any more—and if you don’t want people wishing you things, ’Veshka, for the god’s sake don’t talk about running off where he can get his hands on you alone.”

“Let me go!”

“You’re not stupid, girl, don’t act it.—Eveshka!”

He had the strongest, most icy feeling there was something else looking out at him until he spoke sharply to her: she flinched and held up insubstantial hands, less than the sudden gust of smoke that stung his eyes. “Pyetr, I’m dangerous, I don’t think when I’m fading—I don’t think about anything—”

“Your father believes he can bring you back.”

“He can’t!”

“No choice, is there? Either your papa brings you back or he can’t—one way we get out of here and the other way we’re all dead, because when you start to fade, you’re right, you certainly won’t let us alone, not here, not back at the house. Seems to me you’d do better not arguing with us, damn sure seems you’d better not go running off on your own—”

“I’ll kill you!” she wailed. “I won’t want to, but I will—”

“Certainly you will if you go on like that. You’re a wizard. You’ve got the power to do and not do, don’t you? Certainly more than I do.”

She shut her eyes, clasped her hands before her lips and nodded, as pieces of her came back, like threads of spider silk, and filled out her edges.