C. Cherryh - Rusalka

“Poor Sasha. There aren’t any House-things. There’s nothing in the bathhouse. The bannik won’t get you, and it can’t tell you any more than the fake wizards on Market Street.”

Sasha got up, walked off and squatted down on the other side of the road, where he did not have to be near Pyetr Kochevikov.

The man was wicked. He had no fear. Aunt Ilenka had said it, and he had not believed it; and now he had Pyetr Kochevikov for a guide, if Pyetr was not going to bleed to death on the road before morning and leave him alone with everything that had gone wrong.

No wizards.

He only wished—

But that was the trouble. He could do too much by wishing, and he dragged himself back from that terrible wish he had, that something should bring Pyetr Illitch to his senses.

“There aren’t any wizards,” Pyetr said from across the road. “The bogeys won’t get you.”

“Stop it!”

“If the bogles are anything, they’d have come after me long since. It’s not stealing to take what people are setting out for the cat—unless you count the cat.”

Sasha stood up and faced him. “We’re in enough trouble, Pyetr Illitch. Making jokes isn’t going to help it.”

“It does help it. It helps not to be fools.” Pyetr staggered to his feet. “It helps us that the thieftakers are probably suspecting the haystack or the horses, and the gate guards who let us out aren’t going to admit they were tricked off their post, they’re going to say they were ‘witched, and they aren’t going to come out here in the dark looking for wizards and shape-changers who walked right through a locked parley-gate. So be grateful that they’re fools.”

“Where are you going?” Sasha asked, for Pyetr was leaving the roadside, heading off through the meadow, eastward.

“To blazes,” Pyetr said. “Come with me or go back and explain to the thieftakers how you were ‘witched, too.”

“I can’t!” Sasha cried.

But Pyetr kept walking, slowly, and there was nothing to do but run after him.

They came on a road in the dark, or at least a memory of one, so overgrown and weedy it was almost more trouble than the open field, but better, Pyetr thought, to be on it, since a road, however old, promised a sure way through. The god knew he was in no way for climbing or rough ground, and from time to time he would come back to himself with the feeling that he might have been wandering—except for the road, which at least kept them on a course for somewhere, at least guided them away from Vojvoda, and steered them clear of dead ends and drops over banks—one hoped.

“Talk,” he said to the boy finally, because he knew that his wits were drifting.

“About what?” Sasha asked.

“Anything. I don’t care.”

“I don’t know anything to talk about.”

“God.—What do you want to do, where do you want to go in the world, what have you always wanted to see?”

“I don’t know. I never thought.—I thought we were just going to hide a while, till your friends—”

“Don’t be naive.—Did you plan to work for old Fedya for the rest of your life?”

Silence.

“Did he pay you?”

“No,” Sasha said in a small voice.

“That old skinflint.—Mischa spends him blind and you’re jack-of-all-work, is that it?”

“Mischa’s his own son.”

“And you call me a thief.” He had no wish to argue, he had not the strength, but the boy’s docile gullibility infuriated him. “He took you for a fool, boy, he worked you like a tinker’s donkey, so his son could squander his money in every inn in Vojvoda, and you make excuses for him.”

“He didn’t have to take me in.”

“Oh, he took you in , boy.” He felt the pain come back, riding every step, and he wanted to drop the whole conversation, but the argument called up old, disturbing resentments, and he wondered if he had ever understood the boy. “You should have beaten Mischa’s head in—years ago. It might have done both of you some good.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Mischa’s soft—soft, and you aren’t, if you ever added it up. You let people push you, they get used to it and they don’t even think about it. Same with Mischa, same with your uncle, not mentioning your aunt. You want a witch, boy—”

“That’s the trouble!” Sasha said. “That’s the trouble. You don’t believe in witches. But I might be one.”

“You might—bee—one.”

Perhaps Sasha comprehended that that was sarcasm. Several moments went by in silence.

“Boy, everybody makes-believe. Everybody has terrible hidden powers, everybody is going to get back at the fools around him. And then you grow up , boy!”

“Everybody says I’m just unlucky,” Sasha cried. “But I wanted Mischa to fall in a puddle, you understand? I wanted us to get through the gates and them not to follow and the bar fell down—”

“So did I want it, boy, luck’s got nothing to do with it.”

“It does with me! My parents’ house burned , Pyetr Illitch. Mischa fell in a puddle and we got through the gates and they haven’t found us. Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad, but you can’t always tell whether a thing’s going to be good or bad when you wish for it, you can say I don’t want my father to hit me anymore and your house can burn down—”

The boy was crying.

“That’s nonsense,” Pyetr said.

Sasha sniffed, turned his face away and rubbed his eyes as they walked.

“Did your uncle tell you that?”

“Our neighbor did. Our house burned down. People say I’m a jinx, uncle Fedya wouldn’t let me come near the customers, he said if things ever did go wrong, people would believe it was my fault.”

“Kind of him.”

“But it’s not just bad luck! Things happen that I want .”

“So why don’t you want to be tsar?”

Sasha sniffed again, and said nothing to that.

“So don’t say things happen that you want,” Pyetr said.

“You can’t say how it could happen. If you wish for things like that, the tsar might die, there might be a war. I don’t wish for things like that. I don’t even want to think about things like that!”

“Large thoughts. What do you wish for, boy?”

“I don’t.”

“Don’t make wishes? Wish we were out of this, if you believe it’ll work.”

“You don’t understand. You can’t wish for things like that. If we were dead we’d be out of this. It can come true that way. You have to think of something that hasn’t got any harm in it, and even then you don’t know if you’ve thought of everything—”

“So you try not to wish for anything, you try not to want anything. That’s really hell, Sasha Vasilyevitch. That’s hell you live in.”

Sasha wiped his nose.

Pyetr was amazed at his own stupidity, to be betrayed by everyone he knew, and find himself doing it all over again, believing the boy with a conviction and a trust he had never placed in anyone so much as now—seeing he had lately had his own delusions, chased his own moonbeams—which had, whatever else, at least been pleasant while they lasted.

Not Sasha’s.

Poor crazed lad, he thought. The boy’s not altogether sane. At least they’ve not encouraged him to be.

“You don’t go at things the right way, boy. You’ve been wishing for things likely to happen. What you do, you wish for the tsar himself to ride along and recognize us both for the honest, upstanding sort we are, and make us rich and happy. Wish for us both to marry tsarevnas and die at a hundred and twenty, rich as lords and surrounded by great-grandchildren—”