C. Cherryh - Rusalka

But he could not at all account for the baskets, and here he was safe with Pyetr, and here was Eveshka, peaceful and real and alive—their clothes, the twigs, Eveshka’s very self all evidence of a place so separate from this it tried, dreamlike, to fade out of memory.

But if he remembered the truth, Uulamets would be dead, Eveshka would be alive, which she clearly was, and Chernevog—

He remembered leshys. He remembered rescue, finally. He lay there in the sun reassuring himself of his friends’ safety and pulling back the pieces of what was, this morning, very dim and very far, as if there had come a veil between him and that place deep in the woods—and relief from the responsibility that had been his for—it seemed—so very long—

Replant, he remembered the leshys saying. Regrow, reseed—

He had something to do, then, and something very much to wish for, since, memory persuaded him, there was a promise he had made the leshys, and there were promises they had made him in return, not in so many words, because words were not of value to them…

Intentions were.

Pyetr opened his eyes, looking quite as confused as he had been. Pyetr gazed at him a moment as if deciding much the same course of things, and then, rising on his arm, looked down at Eveshka, touching her face with such an expression as made Sasha feel he should look away, get up and make breakfast, do anything but intervene for a few moments.

So he got up and turned his curiosity to the baskets and the sacks, poking about in those to find all sorts of goods, the plunder, it seemed, of Chernevog’s whole house loading down their deck; and most importantly, more precious than any jeweled cup, were their own packs—and Uulamets’ book.

That was what brought the memories back, tumbling one over the other, but gently, as if years separated him from Uulamets and dimmed the unimportant details. It seemed sad to him now that no one had ever really known Uulamets, that not even he had, until the man was gone: saddest of all that no one acutely missed him—nor had Uulamets expected it: that was the essence of things, his own daughter as bewildered by him as his apprentices had been…

But Uulamets had done as well as a wizard could, Sasha thought, and better than most: of the succession of wizards who had occupied this borderland, one teaching the next—Uulamets had been the wisest; or at least, Sasha thought, with one of those memories surfacing like flotsam—he might have made more mistakes, but never the unforgivable one; and redeemed his greatest misjudgement.

Chernevog’s book turned up in a basket full of apples: Sasha’s first thought was that the leshys had made a grievous, naive mistake, that he should, without a moment’s pause, pitch it overboard: but then he thought that it would surely be protected, and the god knew where it might drift, let loose in the world—down to Kiev, perhaps, among ordinary folk, or into some other wizard’s hands. He wished the leshys had kept it, walled in and safe; he was thinking that when Pyetr started poking into the baskets himself and wondering if there was breakfast.

There was. There were cakes and sweets, more than their starved stomachs could deal with, so they made a fire in the stove, and sat in the noon sun and drank hot tea, the three of them, with a little breakfast… after which Eveshka walked about the deck, looked at their situation on the forest side and the side with the sand bar, then said they should put up the bit of a sail they had and wish the wind up strong from the east.

It made perfectly good sense, once Sasha thought about it.

Pyetr still maintained his opinion of boats—though it seemed in some situations they were very good things, and that the girl he loved knew them very well—well enough to wish them out of their predicament and to bring the tipping, tilting boat about with its bow in the right direction.

In fact, after a while of what seemed, after Uulamets’ handling of the boat, quite a sedate and sensible progress, Pyetr decided he could stand up, and even walk casually to the side and hold onto the ropes that braced the mast—to look, of course, for Eveshka’s benefit, as if he had only been sitting down because he wanted to.

He glanced back at Sasha, who was still seated amid their baggage, which Eveshka had insisted to shift to the center and rear—for balance, she had said, and both of them were entirely willing to oblige in that case. Sasha looked back at him with—he thought, a little concern for his position at the rail, which satisfied him: he might look careless of falling in, as careless and casual about the hazard as Eveshka did, which was precisely the attitude he studied—not to be outdone by a girl so sure and so cheerfully competent.

He could do that.

He could sail a boat like this quite handily, pick up the tricks of it by watching (she would think him quite clever) and sail it down to Kiev and back, certainly he could, except the little flutters in his stomach.

He thought he would patch the seams a bit first, to be sure; and mend the sail—he made his own luck, and that meant seeing to such things and trusting as little as possible to chance.

In fact he thought he would sail them all down to Kiev—not to go into the city: the god knew what kind of trouble two young wizards could find—but just to see the gold and the elephants, from a quite safe distance.

Then sail them safely back again, to a cottage furnished like a tsar’s palace, with gold cups and fine rugs, with a flourishing garden, and a woods with all summer ahead to seed with acorns and such—he had found a bird’s nest full of seeds amid the gold, and knew precisely what he was supposed to do with such a gift.

Then they would settle down for a golden fall and a white winter, and green springs and summers after that… having adopted the domovoi which would shift about and make the house creak quite familiarly and cozily of nights; and Babi—

That was the thing that disturbed him this afternoon—whether it was worry over the fur-ball or over the fact that he was worried. God, he thought, Pyetr Illitch, after all this—the old man dying, Eveshka alive again, Sasha in his right mind this morning—to spend your worry over the little wretch—

—who can quite well take care of himself.

But Uulamets had died and the raven was dead: and it seemed to him that Babi might possibly have gone the way the bird had, not, he was quite sure, struck by the lightning, but simply because he was also Uulamets’ creature.

I expect him to turn up at the house, Sasha had said at breakfast, when he had asked about Babi.

Wish him back, he had asked, why don’t you?—With a look at Eveshka, who, he was sure, had at least some sort of special advantage with Babi.

I’ve tried, Eveshka had said, which was no comfort at all.

So wipe Babi from the image of the cottage. Maybe he would turn up.

Or maybe he could get a dog. A black one.

He let his hand slack on the rope, testing his balance.

Not bad at all, he thought, and looked back to see if Eveshka was watching.

He walked across the deck, past Sasha, past the deckhouse, to the stern, to stand there quite confidently—till a swell rocked the boat and he had to grab the rail.

She smiled at him, quite kindly, considering; and went on smiling at him in a way that could make a man forget all about keeping his balance.

The Cockerel’s boy was not naive and certainly Uulamets’ heir was not: the looks Pyetr and Eveshka kept giving each other meant two people quite, quite lost to reason.

It worried him; it made him wish—dangerously—for Eveshka to keep thinking sensibly, for Eveshka to know-She did not want him wishing at her, she let him know that, quite angrily, hearing echoes of her father; and he: