R1 - Rusalka (42 page)

Danger, he thought vaguely.

His thought took shape again.

Eveshka had color this evening. The leshy had fed her enough for days-She was stronger than she had ever been tonight. Much stronger, brighter, more solid in the world…

"Pyetr," he began to say. But Pyetr was already at the stream-side, Eveshka was already turning her head to look at him… a lifelike gesture that itself said how substantial she had become. He wished… and the effort cost him, so that his heart raced and he was aware of the rush of blood in his veins and the rush of wind in the leaves—like the sound of water…

The fire actually cast light on her tonight, picking up subtle color in her gown, and the trees along the brook touched her with shadow, making her real—a girl, no more than that, vulnerable and uncertain as she cast a glance over her shoulder.

"Pyetr," she said, turning to him with arms outstretched.

He stopped. He took a step backward when she came toward him, and she came no further, looking at him with wide, hurt eyes.

"What did you take from Sasha?" he asked harshly, which was what he had come to ask. "What was the leshy talking about?"

"I love you," she said.

He backed up another step, because somehow she had taken one he did not notice; he was aware of her eyes and aware of how the shadow bent around her cheek. "That's fine," he said, sweating, struggling to keep his thoughts together. "I'm flattered. Try answering me."

"Don't hate me." She reached toward him. He knew his danger, he knew he ought to back up and for one heartbeat he wanted to fail—wanted her to touch him and prove she was, after all, harmless, and not to be responsible for that failure—

"Stop it!" Sasha said, from somewhere behind him. A shadow crossed between them and the light. "Pyetr!"

He really regretted his rescue. What he was feeling was more powerful than wanting to live. But Eveshka drew back her hands and clenched them under her chin, her eyes full of pain.

"Get away from her," Sasha said, as if he were the boy, the absolute, heart-shaken fool, and grabbed him by the arm so hard it hurt. Probably Sasha meant it to. Not even that seemed enough. Probably Sasha was wishing him to use his wits; and that was not enough either.

"Stop it!" Sasha said harshly, not to him.

Tears brimmed in Eveshka's eyes. "I won't hurt him. I didn't.—Sasha, don't do that…"

"I've no pity for you," Sasha said. "You should know that."

"I know," Eveshka whispered. "But I do. And I won't let anything happen to him."

"Then don't talk to him! Let him alone!"

"I came to
her
," Pyetr said, Sasha having gotten that part wrong, at least. "I want to know what's going on."

"Her looking to have her own way is what's going on," Sasha said. "There's nothing else, there's never anything else in her thinking.—Leave him alone!"

Tears spilled. Eveshka looked at Sasha a long moment, and then turned her shoulder and walked away to the side of the little stream.

"Eveshka," Pyetr said, but she did not look back. Her tears
affected
him: he felt himself all but shaking, even while he knew Sasha was trying to do the right thing. He wanted her not to be in pain, wanted her not to be wrongfully accused—

Sasha turned and the firelight touched clenched muscle in his jaw, anger that Pyetr resented from the gut.

"Let her alone," he told Sasha. "She didn't do anything."

"She
wants
you to feel sorry for her. I've told her let you alone."

"You've no damn—"
Business
, was on his lips, but, dammit, that was the fool talking, even a fifteen-year-old knew that much. A fool would go after the girl, go against everything Sasha was doing to keep them apart, get himself killed so she could go after Sasha next.

Of course he would.

He felt
her trying her spell on him, trying to draw him back.

But Sasha was in the way. She seemed suddenly too real to touch his imagination: the glamor faded and she could only use what she was—which was a sixteen-year-old girl with the notion—probably it had worked even with Uulamets , pretty child that she was—that a few tears could inevitably get her what she wanted.

But he knew
that
song, line and verse: he had learned it in Vojvoda, on one notable occasion, and he was too old to play some bored girl's games. Ask anything, he thought, of a shallow girl wanting someone else to make her happy—except to give her your heart and expect good care of it.

The glamor tried to come back. Something pushed it away. Maybe it was his own intention, maybe Sasha's. He looked in Eveshka's direction and his hand hurt when he clenched it… it had, he remembered, since sometime during supper, when he had started fighting with Sasha, and that bothered him.

Maybe Sasha meant it to remind him, he thought, and then suffered a chill feeling of something going increasingly wrong.

"Stop it!" he said aloud, sharply; but:

"It's not me," Eveshka said, and turned, her face distraught. "Not me doing it.—Can you feel it?"

Sasha seized his arm and pulled him urgently toward the fire, while—Pyetr cast a look over his shoulder—Eveshka stood by the little stream, looking down its course into the dark.

"What's going on?" he demanded, ready to resist this sudden craziness, but not sure where the craziness lay. "What's happening?"

"Something's out there," Sasha said as they walked.

Eveshka was standing there unprotected. The feeling in his hand told him what that something likely was, which he did not immediately say because everyone in the world knew better than he did: he only thought that somebody should look to Eveshka, who was, damn it all, in particular, immediate danger.

"Get our things together," Sasha said as they reached the fire. "We're getting out of here."

"In the dark? With that? It's after
her
, is what it's after!"

"We know that. That's why we're going. Hurry."

"
Where?"
Pyetr snarled. It was too much. Nobody was making sense, people stopped in the middle of arguments to run off into the dark with a River-thing waiting out there to make supper of all of them.

But Sasha paid him no attention. So he joined Sasha, angrily snatching up their belongings, stuffing them into the baskets, in a despair beyond any fear of what might be out there. He wanted them out of this woods, he wanted, dammit!—to give up and go somewhere with Eveshka and lose himself to whatever she did, if that was what it would take to get Sasha clear of her and maybe set her free once for all of whatever power the vodyanoi had over her—

Go on
, he recalled Uulamets saying, cursing their stupidity,
go running off alone. One of you will feed her. The other will be extremely sorry
…

The leshy, damn its rotten heart, had sent them off with help, but no protection, no knowledge what to do or where the old man was, and now…

Things stalking them in the dark. Eveshka playing tricks, the god only knew if this whole alarm was not one—

"Where's Babi?" he asked, suddenly missing the Thing he had last seen bolting down fish and mushroom stew by the fireside.

"I don't know," Sasha said, tying up their bedrolls.

"Babi?"

"I thought you didn't like him."

He glared at Sasha's back. "He has reasons for his disposition. I'm coming to appreciate them." He jerked the tie on his basket tight, picked it up and slung it onto his shoulders, with a glance back—

To the vacant waterside where Eveshka had just been standing.

"She's gone!" he said, looking at Sasha—whose face, turned toward him in the firelight, was beaded with sweat.

"We won't lose her," Sasha said. "I know where she is."

"Where's she gone?" A man could grow suspicious in the doings of wizards and leshys and such, and of a sudden, seeing Sasha's face, seeing the evidence of exertion, he had the feeling that there was far more violence going on around him than an unmagical man could feel. "Sasha, dammit, what's going on? What are you doing?"

"Helping her."

He was bewildered. A host of possibilities came tumbling in, not least of them collusion between Sasha and Eveshka.

"Come on," Sasha said, shouldering his own gear.

"Where? Where's she going?"

"To find her father. As quickly as she can. She
knows
where he is, by the
Thing
knowing where we are—and it's not far from here. She doesn't need us slowing her down."

"Doesn't need us—" Everything that had happened since supper, even his anger and hurt, were suddenly in doubt where it came to wizards, both of whom had a piece of him,
both
of whom were surely wishing things at him. "God! What have you been doing to me?"

"Anything I can," Sasha said hoarsely, and stood up and looked him square in the face, looking older than his years in the underlighting of the fire, looking haggard, fire trails in the sweat on his temples. "I rescued
her
from you, if you have to know. You disturbed her concentration."

"What did you do?
What did you wish for, dammit
?"

"For you not to like her too much," Sasha said. "So does she. She's scared. I told her go, while she
could
go, and we're following her: I think she's finally stopped lying to us. And herself. She knows what her choices are."

They were on their way, on what track he could—god!—feel, like two lines strung between him and elsewhere, one downstream, deadly, that had to do with the pain in his hand, one moving upstream, sweetly dangerous, that had to do with the pain in his heart…

"How could you do something like that?" Pyetr exclaimed in outrage, dodging branches Sasha passed him, stumbling over roots and brush—remembering what mistakes of his youth Sasha's spell had raked up, nothing a man wanted a fifteen-year-old boy and a sixteen-year-old girl knowing about him…
especially
Sasha and Eveshka. "You don't know what I'm thinking! You can't pull things like that out of what I remember!"

"I don't have to," Sasha said. "I don't have to know what you're thinking. I just wish. That's all. Things change the way they
can
change."

"Dammit!"

"I know. I know you're mad at me. But I don't care, as long as it saves you from being stupid; I'm
sorry
, Pyetr."

"With
what
?" he said to Sasha's back, and shoved at a branch that raked him—lost in this maze of wizardry, a grown man tossed about by two children as if his own innermost feelings were nothing. "What are you sorry
with
!"

But the boy was only trying to keep him alive. The boy evidently knew what he was doing, was
allied
with Eveshka in whatever was going on—which had to revise all opinions of her.

"God," he exclaimed, "tell me who's not lying!"

"I'm not," Sasha said over his shoulder, out of the tangled dark. "You know
I'm
not, Pyetr Illitch."