Rusalka by C. J. Cherryh
“Wake him,” Uulamets bade him.
“Go out there in the dark?” Sasha objected.
“I’ve told you. Dark or light makes no difference. The danger is the same.”
“Then maybe we should wait till daylight,” Sasha said, “if nothing else, so we won’t fall in the river.”
“But there is danger in meeting her on our own ground,” Uulamets said harshly. “Never let her in. Never let her into this house. Do what I tell you. Wake him. We have no choice. Are you numb to the danger we’re in? Or are you a fool?”
“What about Pyetr’s danger?”
Uulamets picked up a metal pan and banged it on the table. The black thing hissed and jumped for the rafters, leaping from one to the other, and Pyetr started awake, his sword in his hands, before he fell back hard against the stone fireside and rested there, the sword half-drawn.
“Pardon,” Uulamets said. “Time you should wake, Pyetr Ilitch. We’re ready.”
“Ready for what?” Pyetr asked, between breaths.
“She’s here,” Uulamets said. Sasha thought that he should do something, say something—but he had no idea whether he was under Uulamets’ spell himself or whether the prickling feeling that said Uulamets was right was from his own senses.”We have to move quickly,” Uulamets said, and crossed the room and took his breeches off the bedpost, while in the rafters something thumped, and a mouldering basket fell and bounced.
Pyetr looked up at that, with the sword no further sheathed than it had been. Afraid, Sasha thought, but whether Pyetr sensed anything such as he did or whether it was only the startlement of the movement in the rafters he could not guess.
Uulamets pulled his trousers on under his robe and pulled on his boots. Sasha stood still, dressed in everything he owned except his coat, and Pyetr moved only to rake his hair out of his eyes.
“Up,” Uulamets said fiercely. “Get up.”
“And go where?” Pyetr said. The sword clicked home in the sheath. He gathered himself to his feet. His hair was standing up at angles. He looked to Sasha, and ember light and shadow made his face desperate and strange, asking questions Sasha had no idea how to answer.
“He says,” Sasha said, “she shouldn’t get in here. That we have to go to where she is, or we’re in worse trouble. That the worst thing is for her to get into the house.”
Pyetr ran his hand through his hair a second time. It achieved no better result. He seemed harried and bewildered, as a man might, roused out of a sound sleep, or out of bad dreams. “Find her tree,” he muttered to himself, shaking his head. “God. Of course. Fine. In the middle of the night, looking for a ghost and a tree.”
He looked toward the door suddenly, with that same harried look, with the sword clutched in his hand.
“Pyetr?” Sasha asked, alarmed, and came and stood by him.
“She’s here. Outside.—She’s saying—” Pyetr shook his head suddenly and looked at Uulamets.
“What does she say?” Uulamets asked.
“Not to trust you,” Pyetr retorted sharply, and Sasha tensed, expecting Uulamets’ anger. But Uulamets said only,
“Trust her instead? I wouldn’t.” Uulamets took his cloak from the peg and slung it about his shoulders. “That would be fatal, for her, ultimately, as well as for us.” He began to thread the latchstring through the hole in the door, muttering something singsong as he did so. Then: “Bring my bag, lad. And be extremely careful with it.”
Sasha had a last wild thought of refusing, of siding with Pyetr against the old man, but courage or foolishness failed him, even yet he had no notion which. He gathered up the bag Uulamets had packed, while Uulamets took his staff from against the wall and lifted the latch.
There was no wind. There was nothing threatening outside. “Come along,” Uulamets said, and they took their coats from the pegs and followed him.
No ghost, no wind, no breath of trouble—until the Thing from the yard scuttled out the door between Pyetr’s feet and he stifled an outcry.
“What was that?” Pyetr exclaimed, hand on his sword hilt as the Thing disappeared into the hedge.
“Nothing,” Uulamets said, motioned Pyetr to pull the door to, and led the way down the walk-up. He stopped at the bottom and asked, “Do you see anything? Do you feel anything?”
Pyetr slung his sword belt over his coat and pointed ahead into the woods. “I’d say that way,” he said. His teeth were chattering, but he started off foremost through the yard, kicked the gate open, muttering something about the cold and the dark and fools. He led them toward the riverside.
Sasha turned his head to bring the side of his eye to bear, and saw nothing of the ghost in any direction. He overtook Pyetr with a sudden downhill rush as they reached the river and the dockside, caught Pyetr’s arm and whispered, “Did she really say that? About Uulamets? Pyetr? Do you see her?”
“The old man wants a walk,” Pyetr said in a half-voice, “that’s what he’ll get.” He seemed still to be shivering, although of nights they had had, this was one of the warmest. “This is a stupid thing to do, boy.”
“Did she say that? About not trusting him?”
Uulamets was almost down the hill, chiding them for breakneck speed. There was no time for any long answer.
“What do you think?” Pyetr said. “Do you trust him?” His teeth were chattering still. “Damn, the wind’s cold.”
“There’s no wind here,” Sasha said. He felt Pyetr’s hand and it was cold and clammy. He clenched it tighter as Uulamets came up by them. He had the strongest feeling that he ought to have doubted Uulamets more, and that he ought not to have encouraged Pyetr to have come out here—that Pyetr had been on the side of common sense all along and that all his caution had done was to bring Pyetr out here tonight.
But Pyetr pulled away and started up the river, the same direction they had gone to find the ghost that first night.
“Does he know where she is?” Uulamets asked, catching Sasha’s arm.
“He says so,” Sasha said on a breath, not quite a lie, and broke away after Pyetr, quickly, because Pyetr was going faster than was safe in the thicket, along the river edge, through reeds and through a low place that they had to wade. Sasha struggled to overtake him, and Uulamets came close behind him, warning him mind his step, wait, listen to someone who knew the ground.
Pyetr climbed to dry ground and suddenly vanished into the trees and the dark over the ridge.
“Pyetr!” Sasha cried, shoved the sack at master Uulamets and ran after Pyetr in acute fear that with every moment wasted, they risked losing him. He heard master Uulamets far behind him shouting at him to wait, come back, and he paid no attention. He could see the pale gray of Pyetr’s coat at the bottom of the wooded hill, and he simply locked his arms in front of his face and charged downhill through the thicket heedless of the thorn branches. “Pyetr, wait, I’m coming!”
Pyetr seemed not to hear him. Pyetr appeared to move with woodcraft he had never had, evading thickets, never choosing a false way. By that alone Sasha guessed Pyetr had a guide who did know the ground all too well, and he tried only to stay close enough to see which way Pyetr chose. Wherever that failed, he simply took the short way, breaking through brush, scoring his hands and face, snagging his coat and tearing through by sheer force.
He wished Pyetr to slow down and use good sense. He wished the rusalka to leave Pyetr in peace. He wished himself to keep Pyetr in sight and he wished that Uulamets would find his track and so find Pyetr’s. Common sense said that was too many wishes at once, and that half of them might wish away the others, or do something terrible, but he was too frightened to think things through with any clarity. In a doubtful case, master Uulamets had counseled him, wish only good, and he did that with all the force he could muster, while he was tearing his way through the thickets. He saw Pyetr at the top of a ridge, and dived breakneck down a ravine, clawing his way up the other side in the dark, climbing with the help of roots and branches and coming muddy-handed to the crest
“Pyetr!” he cried. “I’m with you! For the god’s sake, wait for me!”
Pyetr was already going down the other side, toward the river again—in the gray dim light that Sasha realized was the breaking of the day. Sasha held his aching side and kept going, down the hill of mouldering leaves and down again, by a rill-cut path which ran down to the river.
Something was amiss here. Sasha felt it before he was aware what was so strange in that place to which Pyetr was going: the trees gave way to open ground, a knoll grown over with grass and living moss—or it seemed that way, in what little light they had, in the way the grass gave underfoot: it was some sort of demarcation Pyetr approached, following what sort of illusion Sasha did not know. He only reasoned that if this was the boundary between life and death in this woods things were surely backwards, and that whatever threat there was, was strong here. He ran, vaulted over an upthrust rock and with Pyetr in reach made no attempt at reason: he flung himself at Pyetr’s back and knocked him sprawling, caught Pyetr’s arm across his forehead as Pyetr rolled and was, the next he knew, flat on his back with Pyetr’s hands on his shoulders, both of them gasping for air.
“She’ll kill you!” Sasha gasped.
Pyetr leaned on him, catching his breath, looking about him as if he had no least idea where he had gotten to; and said then, between gasps, “Where’s the old man?”
“I don’t know! You ran off. I followed you.”
Pyetr looked the more bewildered. “You were the one who ran off,” he said, as if there was no sense in anything. He rolled aside and sat down, leaning on one hand, looking about, while Sasha sat up holding his side, feeling the discomfort of damp ground soaking cold through his breeches. He dared not move. The whole forest seemed too still, no whisper of leaves: those all were dead; no dawn sounds: those were dead, too. There was only the river rushing by the bank.
Then the slow, heavy movement of something dragged by stages over the leafy ground.
“Father Sky, what’s that?” Sasha breathed, edging closer to Pyetr, scanning all the wooded ridges that encircled this smooth-sided knoll.
Pyetr got up to one knee and began to draw his sword as quietly as possible, but at the first whisper of steel the sound stopped, and Pyetr stopped, in a hush so still not even the wind seemed to breathe.
Sasha clenched his hands and shut his eyes a moment, wishing their safety so hard it made him dizzy; and opened his eyes to a woods that looked no different. Pyetr was getting to his feet, sword still a quarter drawn. He pulled it rasping from its sheath and walked a few investigatory steps up to the summit of the knoll
—and vanished with a yell, straight into the earth.
“Pyetr!” Sasha scrambled forward and flung himself flat as he would on pond ice, crawled to the edge and looked over into the deep, shadowed pit with what might be Pyetr’s sprawled body half-buried at the bottom. He could in no wise be certain in the dim light. “Pyetr!” he called.
The gray shape moved, developed an arm and a leg as Pyetr shook himself free of the dirt and the rock, and a flickering length of metal appeared, the sword in Pyetr’s other hand, as Pyetr attempted to gain his feet.
“Can you climb up?” Sasha asked.
Pyetr sheathed his sword and tried, climbing up the rocks and the dirt of the slide, only to have more of the pit cave in.
“Look out!” Sasha cried as the ground underneath him dissolved. He yelled and scrambled backward as his hands went out from under him and he slid into a choking flood of dirt and rock.
The next he knew it had stopped, he was head downward, spitting dirt and fighting to get clear, and Pyetr was hauling him to his knees in the spongy earth.
“Sorry,” Pyetr said. “Are you all right?”
He blinked dirt from his eyes, stood up and looked despairingly at the circle of sky above the pit, with the irrepressible thought that if he had used half his wit he would not have stood on the edge. He might have found a dead limb or something to put over the rim for a ladder. He might have let down his belt for a rope. He thought of a dozen ways to have done better with the situation, now it was too late.
“Uulamets is following us,” he said, the best hope he could think of under the circumstances, and he earnestly wished for Uulamets to find them.
“Small hope in him,” Pyetr said glumly, dusted himself off and looked around the pit they were in. Something seemed then to take his interest. Sasha looked, where a darkness marked one face of the pit.
And seeing that darkness he had a very bad feeling, the more so as Pyetr walked over to it, into the shadow of the rim.
“Smells odd,” Pyetr said.
“It might cave in,” Sasha said. “Master Uulamets will find us. Just be patient.—Please don’t go in there! What if it caved in again?”
“It looks solid,” Pyetr said, and ducked down. His voice echoed out of closed spaces, like a well. “It might go all the way to the river. Probably floods here in the rains.”
“Don’t go in!” Sasha cried, with an oppressive feeling like smothering or like drowning. “The whole hill might cave in. Pyetr! Don’t!”
“I’m not going in. Just trying to see. Maybe when the sun gets higher—”
There was that sound of movement again, the sound of a weight moving slowly over the earth. A few clods rolled to the bottom of the pit beside them, but the sound came from somewhere behind the earthen wall of the slide.
“Pyetr,” Sasha whispered. “Pyetr, please, get back here. Don’t touch anything.”
More clods fell. Pyetr backed away from that wall and carefully drew his sword.
“I really don’t like this place,” Sasha said.
Neither of them moved for a moment. The dragging sound started up again and dislodged an earthfall directly over the cave.
“Is it her?” Sasha whispered, taking a grip on Pyetr’s sleeve, for fear of him starting forward, into a trap the rusalka had deliberately lured them to—and he fervently wished for the old man to hurry and find them.
Something hissed within the dark.
Something hissed atop the rim, too, and something small and black rolled down the slope, scattering clods as it came. It darted between them and into the dark hole, snarling and spitting, and darted out again, like a small dog away from a larger.
“God!” Pyetr cried, as an undulating black mass came out chasing it.
“Look out!” Sasha yelled and jumped for the sloping dirt as the black mass came after his legs. Pyetr was climbing too, beating it about the head with his sword as he climbed. It tried to follow them, while the small black ball that looked for all the world like the Yard-thing hissed and circled and nipped at its coils below.
“Fools!” Uulamets suddenly called from above them. “Get it, get it, go, you have it!”
“Have if?” Pyetr cried, beating at its head. “Get us out of here!”
But it was wilting under the blows, trying to hide its nose with small black forelimbs, writhing aside and dislodging more and more dirt on the slide. Sasha yelled in alarm as a slippage carried him down within reach of the thing. Immediately Pyetr was there, trampling him in the slide, but driving the monstrous thing aside and up and up the bank, where it had no apparent wish to go.
It collapsed on the slope as it reached the light, a black serpent, part scaled, part furred, with helpless naked limbs and a flat head which it attempted to cover. It seemed to shrink, then, sliding down into shadow, into wrinkled skin and fur, into a shape inexplicably like a little old man, while the Yard-thing kept hissing and growling in the shadow of the hole from which the creature had come, keeping it from refuge.
“Ask its name!” Uulamets shouted from above. Sasha looked up and saw Uulamets standing on the rim, then looked toward the cowering creature Pyetr held at sword’s point and said, “He wants to know its name.”
Pyetr jabbed it. Hwiuur, it said. Hwiuur, like some strange kind of bird. It edged closer to the hole, but the Thing was there and would
“Ask it where my daughter is,” Uulamets called down. “Tell it answer or you’ll keep it here till the sun rises.”
“It’s a damned snake!” Pyetr cried. “How is it to know where your daughter is?”
But it was not a snake. It seemed more to be a hairy old man, who crouched in the shadow of the earth and shivered, saying, “The sun, the sun!”
“You’ll see the sun,” Uulamets shouted, “if you don’t answer. I want my daughter back.”
The creature covered its face, snuffling softly. “I’d do it,” Pyetr advised it. “He’s a terrible old man.”
“Is that all he wants?” the creature whispered between long-nailed fingers. “One thin-boned girl? I can. I can do that. Take the iron away.” It peered between the fingers, one pale snake’s eye, so it seemed to be. Or at least it was not human. “I know where she sleeps. I can bring her. Bone and all, I can bring her. Tell the wizard let me go.”
“Tell me where she is!” Uulamets shouted.
But of a sudden it was a snake again, whipping about at ankle height, bound straight for the cave, as the Yard-thing attempted to head it off.
Dirt poured down. The Yard-thing came backing out spitting and snarling, as the whole bank came down and the hole closed.
“Fools!” Uulamets cried. “You let it get away!”
“Fool, yourself!” Pyetr shouted, turning about, but Sasha quickly caught his arm and perhaps Pyetr thought again, that here were the two of them in this crumbling pit, three, if one counted the ill-tempered Yard-thing, four, if one counted the snake that had just disappeared into the bank, and one had rather not.
“It promised,” Sasha said to Uulamets. “It did promise. Master Uulamets, get us out of here.”
For a long few moments Uulamets stood there staring down at them, in what had become the first pale light of day. Then he flung down his staff.