Rusalka by C. J. Cherryh
“I’ll crawl out there,” Sasha offered, and scrambled up astride the mast, hitched himself far out over the water to cut the first rotten rope free, then worked his way back again to take the sound one, sweating and panting all the while Uulamets sat on his baskets and told them do this and do that and how they should tie the knots.
Pyetr thought about knots around Uulamets’ neck, mostly, and made the knots tight, biting his lip until it bled and suspecting very strongly why the hand was aching worse and worse and what the load was on Sasha besides the weight of the rope.
He wished he could wish—wish Uulamets right into the river, he would, wish the venom into Uulamets’ veins. Don’t ill-wish, Sasha kept saying, but that never stopped Uulamets, he was sure of that the way he was sure it would get worse, and that it would i go on getting worse until Uulamets got what he wanted from Sasha.
It was rig the sail then; more knots; and then haul the mast up and settle it—
“Are you all right?” Sasha asked when it thumped down and settled.
“I ‘m fine,” Pyetr said between his teeth, while Uulamets was ordering them to take the ropes aft and to either side.
It was hitch the spar to the trailing ropes after that; haul it aloft, heave by painful heave, and secure it.
“Cast us off!” Uulamets called out to them, then, for the first time on his feet, as he headed back for the tiller.
Sasha jumped ashore to throw the ties aboard, jumped back again as the boat began sluggishly to drift free in the current. Uulamets stood at the tiller and swung it hard as far as the rail, after which the bow of the boat came slowly about until it was broadside to the current.
Then the wind which had been fitful and indecisive billowed the sail out, tilted the aged boat alarmingly, so that Pyetr grabbed Sasha and lurched for the nearest rope, with certain visions of drowning and becoming prey to the River-thing and all its relatives.
But the boat kept turning, the sail cracked and snapped and filled again, so strongly it threatened the aged canvas.
The boat drove steadily after that, boiling up froth away from the bow, froth that went away into white bubbles on murky water. On either hand forest passed, leafless trees, gray bark peeling here and there to white bare wood, and never a touch of life.
Sasha sat on the bow beside Pyetr with his feet tucked up—| he was afraid to dangle them over, however tempting it was,’ because he did not trust the river in any sense. Pyetr leaned against the bow rail and stared ahead of them, with now and again a glance aft, where Uulamets and his daughter stood—but one could not see their faces from here, with the sail in the way.
Maybe that was why Pyetr chose to sit here. Pyetr had this bruised, utterly weary look—Sasha was sure his hand was hurting, but Pyetr would not admit to it. He only kept that hand tucked beneath his arm, sitting with his shoulder against the rail, staring out at the passing forest. Sasha tried to wish his pain away, tried until he quite lost track of where they were, or that it was daylight on dark water he was seeing, and not mud, roots, and shadows—
But he became aware of the water of a sudden, of a dark shape gliding just under the bow where they were sitting, a shadow beneath the surface—water scattered with yellow willow leaves.
He sprang up and away from the rail, grabbing Pyetr by the shirt—and Pyetr moved without a question, caught a rope with his left hand to steady them both.
But there were only the golden leaves, sunlit on the dark water, swirling away from their passage; and on the shore the source of those fading leaves, a willow leafed out bright gold and dying, against a haze of gray branches.
Eveshka’s tree. Hwiuur’s den.
No need to call out to master Uulamets to see: he could hardly fail to see. Sasha stood and watched until the v/ind carried them past; and when thac bank was out of sight behind the sail the precarious feeling of the deck urged they sit down—but not, Sasha thought, so close to the rail or in reach of the water. He pulled at Pyetr’s sleeve and drew him to sit at the foot of the mast.
Pyetr said nothing to this: he only looked back from that vantage, knees drawn up and his hand tacked against him; but when Sasha looked back there was nothing left to see but Eveshka standing by Uulamets at the tiller, the wind streaming their hair about their faces and fluttering at their clothes—as if they were gazing at something far away.
While the boat surged along with a steady, unhurried force, its sail full, no matter that the river had just bent.
Sasha settled forward again and locked his hands between his knees. The image of the tree haunted him, gold in a world of gray, the leaves on the river… He did not know why that should hang in his mind more than Uulamets at the tiller or the presence of the Thing in the river—he did not know why the sight of falling leaves could be that sinister.
Gold on gray. Dying amid the dead, a last vivid color against the lifeless forest, against the dark water.
Perhaps it was Eveshka’s freedom its dying signified.
He had no hesitation to accept magic and he had only small astonishment at winds that obeyed no set direction, only the understanding that it must take many wishes, one shifting to the next, to drive this boat.
But for some reason he kept seeing the gold leaves swirling in the current, and thinking that he should be wiser than he had been, because he should understand these things and he was failing, in some elementary way.
They were going farther and farther from Kiev, further from Pyetr’s dreams. That was one thing. He felt guilty for that.
And afraid.
Pyetr did not like boats; he had decided that from the first time the deck tilted under him and the boat gathered speed. When the bow began to pitch and the deck tilted markedly his heart sped, and when the sail would swing and the deck would pitch over in the other direction he clung to the rail he had been leaning on and wondered at what point the boat was going to turn over.
That Uulamets stood back there with his ghostly daughter, that the wind never increased or decreased, that Eveshka’s tree was shedding its leaves into the river—and that the vodyanoi swam beside or beneath the boat—what else did one expect? Wizards did what they wanted in this woods, wizards had taken him into their affairs, his hand hurt him miserably and for the first time in his life Pyetr Kochevikov felt completely helpless.
Not that drowning must be the worst that could happen, not that the vodyanoi was not waiting down there to lay its little black hands on him. None of these things was so terrible as that feeling in his stomach: he could not get the rhythm of the boat, to the extent he was likely to lean the wrong way at the wrong time and tumble right off the deck—
Naturally wizards could walk about with perfect balance and easy stomachs. They could wish not to fall off.
But he knew Uulamets wanted to drown him; and he was not going to stand up, no more than he was going to lean his head over that rail where the River-thing could grab it.
“Do you want something to eat?” Sasha asked him toward dark.
No. Definitely he did not.
Sasha got up and wobbled his way aft, holding on to the ropes and staggering the last distance while Pyetr watched anxiously and held on to the rail. Sasha made it all the way past the deckhouse to talk to Uulamets—about supper, one supposed.
Or about stopping. He earnestly hoped so.
Uulamets seemed to be talking to Sasha: he could not precisely see from where he was, even by ducking down. Then Sasha staggered back to the low deckhouse where they had stowed their supplies, and made the precarious trip back to Uulamets and his daughter, bringing them food and drink. Finally he came forward again, with a jug and a fistful of food, and staggered and reeled his way precariously to the bow.
Pyetr snatched at him and set him down hard on the boards.
“We’ll stop before dark,” Sasha said.
Thank the god, Pyetr thought.
Sasha pushed dried fruit and the jug at him.
Not even that.
No. Please god.
<
And had the temerity to grin at him. Pyetr scowled, jaw clamped, and took a tight hold on the rail. The wind had picked up, humming in the ropes, setting the very timbers of the aged boat creaking. Spray kicked up, a fine mist that slicked the rail and cooled the side of his face.
It went like that for a time, while the sun went down and the spray flew gold—until with a terrible ripping sound the sail parted, the deck pitched, and a rope snapped like twine and sang past their heads.
Pyetr grabbed Sasha, Sasha grabbed in vain at the jug, which went sliding halfway across the deck as the broken rope went on whipping about like a dying snake and the ripped sail fluttered and cracked overhead.
The boat righted itself and tossed like a drunken thing, but it still moved under its rag of a sail, gliding with fair speed toward a dark and tangled shore.
“I don’t like this,” Pyetr muttered under his breath, as the boat ran in. Trees were coming at them, dark and huge, shoreline branches rushing into their faces.
He flung himself down onto Sasha, knocking him flat and holding the rail with one arm as the boat shuddered over sand and branches came right over the bow, splintering and poking them with twigs.
The boat swung sideways to the shore then, floated free, and more branches splintered over their heads and all along the right side.
Then it was still, except the wild bobbing in the current, and Uulamets, astern, was shouting: “Fools! Get the ropes! Take down the sail! Hurry!”
Pyetr stumbled up to his feet, staggering in the pitch, and started untying the rope, cursing the while Sasha pulled to give him slack to get the knot free. The two of them let down the spar. Torn canvas billowed down around them while the boat scraped its whole side against the overhanging branches.
“Fine place,” Pyetr said, as Uulamets shouted at them to make the boat fast to the trees. Pyetr still felt the wobble in his knees when he crossed the uneasy deck; his firm hold on a small branch of a tree solidly wed to earth came as a profound relief in one sense. He flung the mooring rope over a larger branch and tied a solid knot.
But the deep night between the trees made him glad to look toward the twilight still sheening the water, and toward human voices aft—Uulamets sharply instructing Sasha how to tie a knot, Uulamets bidding Eveshka open the stores and make supper—
Certainly, Pyetr thought, they would get no farther in the dark tonight, and with the sail lying in rags, maybe not tomorrow. He dreaded the thought of going on, he felt uneasy to be spending the night against this wooded farther shore—and he felt especially uneasy that the sail had torn and the rope had parted all at once. A handful of wizards ought to manage better than that. Or at least—
“Have we gotten there?” he asked Uulamets as he came aft, with no more idea than he had ever had exactly where they were going. The last light was fast leaving, the river reflected a dim sky, and the constant lap of water and the scrape of branches against their hull made a dismally lonely sound.
“We’ve gotten where we are,” Uulamets muttered, and brushed past, leaving Sasha to whisper, ever so quietly,
“I think he was holding the boat together. I think he just gave out.”
“/think we’re in trouble,” Pyetr said.
Eveshka set up their little stove on the stern and lit a fire in its pan with wood they had brought, though the god knew they had twigs enough lying on the deck and accessible just off it. Soon enough there were cakes baking and Eveshka even brought out a little honey to go on them—while master Uulamets lit the lamp, set it on the ledge of the deckhouse, which was really too tiny for anything but the stores they had brought and stowed there, then sat down with his book and his inkpot to write down the things he had done—
And to think, Sasha supposed: certainly Uulamets would not want to be disturbed with questions this evening.
“How far have we come?” Pyetr asked Eveshka, as they sat with her around the little stove. “Do you have any idea where we’re going?”
Eveshka looked up. Her hair was plaited in two huge braids that made her face look very small and her eyes very large-eyes pale and softened, as it happened, by the little light that came up from the stove and down from the lamp. She had said hardly two words to anyone since breakfast. She had stood by Uulamets’ side the day long, helping her father and suffering his anger; and now she looked very worried.
“To find Kavi,” she said. Her voice left a hush like a spell on the air; any voice would seem coarse after that; and the water lapped and the branches scraped and the fire crackled and snapped.
“Where?” Pyetr insisted finally.
“My father knows where he is.”
A page turned, behind them.
The silence went on a moment or two while Eveshka turned the cakes, a scrape of the spatula on the stove top. She said, “I was foolish to trust him. My father was right. I know that now.”
“What are we going to do about this Kavi Chernevog?” Pyetr asked. “What’s this about hearts? What did the Thing mean, this morning?”
Eveshka stopped, then turned a last cake, her eyes set on her work. She said placidly, “I was foolish. My father was absolutely right.”
Sasha felt a little chill. Perhaps Pyetr did: he cradled his hand in his lap and looked at Eveshka as if he suspected what Sasha had begun to feel, that there was indeed something hollow about her.
Pyetr looked at him. Sasha said nothing, only sent him a warning look back, fearing that too many questions now might upset the peace—if there were more answers in Eveshka at all, or if she were free to speak them. The god knew what kind of hold Chernevog still had on her.
Eveshka served the cakes. They sat together in the flickering light from master Uulamets’ oil lamp, ate their supper, and had a little of the vodka—the first of their jars having fetched up against the deck house unbroken: Sasha had done that much. But Uulamets took his supper over in the light, sitting cross-legged on the deck, poring over his book and paying no attention to them.
Pyetr said, “I suppose we’ve got to fix that sail. Did we bring any cord?”
“I don’t know,” Sasha said. “Eveshka?”
“Yes,” Eveshka said softly, and got up and went around to the deckhouse.
“What’s this about hearts?” Pyetr whispered urgently when she was out of earshot. “What was he talking about? What’s wrong with her?”
“I don’t know,” Sasha whispered back. “I never did understand.”
Pyetr looked disappointed in him—as if Pyetr expected wizardry answers from him. He could not so much as keep Pyetr’s hand from hurting—he knew that it was, even at the moment—and still Pyetr trusted him in life and death ways and expected him to come up with miracles.
That scared him more than the River-thing did—but maybe it was part of being a man, not to ask for help. Maybe it was part of being a man to try to do what people expected.
There was master Uulamets, for one thing, with his book that recollected everything he had ever done—while Sasha had never thought that he ought to do the same: at least he had never even imagined that he could write, until master Uulamets saw fit to teach him. But he thought now that he had not been very responsible throughout his dealings with Uulamets and the vody-anoi, wishing this and wishing that at random, simply because master Uulamets had told him he had the gift—exactly the kind of mistake master Uulamets had said most people made: but a wizard had to remember, that was all, had to figure out the connections before he made a wish, the very way he himself had used to sit and think in the quiet of the stable, sometimes for hours before he decided what he wanted about a thing.
Then Pyetr had come along, half again his age and wiser about the world than he was; and for the first time in his life having a friend, what could he do but want what Pyetr desperately needed?
But he had never until now understood how much he had lulled himself into thinking it
Because if he should meet Mischa now, and Mischa shoved him off a walk, he would not be afraid; he—
He could kill Mischa: he pulled back from that idea with a chill close to panic, and wished hard, not wanting Mischa to die, no, please, not wishing anything harmful, no matter how far away in the world, because he had been a fool. He thought-even aunt Ilenka had kept a tally with a charcoal stick, just of turnips and cabbages.
But so many things had tumbled on him one after the other he had somewhere stopped thinking how they fit together; and it was not The Cockerel’s stable any more, where days were one after the other the same and where he knew everything and everyone and nobody wanted more than his supper on time.
“What’s the matter?” Pyetr asked him, nudging his arm.
Sasha wiped sweat from his lip, hearing Eveshka’s quiet returning step on the boards, and shook his head.
Eveshka set a basket by him. There was cord and there was an awl.
“Too dark now to do anything about it,” Pyetr said, and gulped the last of his cup as Eveshka bent to pick up the little stove with its ashes. He motioned toward the bow of the boat. “Grandfather’s got his book. Let’s get some sleep.”
It was a good idea, Sasha thought. He felt guilty: he thought he should oifer to help Eveshka clean up, but he knew he should not leave Pyetr alone either, and he thought with longing of blankets and a soft spot in the canvas piled on the deck up there.
But once he had it, and once his eyes were shut, with the river lapping at the hull and the branches raking back and forth against their side, he kept thinking of things he had wanted and about aunt Ilenka and the tally board, and wondering what his added up to by now.