Sasha just stared at him with his teeth chattering and his lips turning blue. Pyetr gathered his shaking limbs under him and gave Sasha a shove toward the coat that was lying on the bank. “Wrap up,” he said, shivering. “Get moving. You’ll take your death…”
He picked up his sword. He found the sheath. His coat was running a steady stream of water, water cold as the wizard’s daughter favored—
He looked back at the willow, the only living tree in all the woods, and recollected the bones down in the cave.
Sasha pulled at his arm, said, with his teeth chattering, “Come on,” and he gathered his wits back and made what speed he could up the hill.
Uulamets still had the fire going. He looked up with a certain surprise—maybe to see two of them, Pyetr thought, with thoughts of wringing Uulamets’ neck—which perhaps the black fur-ball quite well understood, because it ran forward and growled and hissed as they came stumbling down the hill soaking wet and shivering.
“Get out of my way!” Pyetr snarled at it, and gave it a swipe with his sword. “Get!”
It spat and hissed and kept its distance as they came up to Uulamets.
“I delivered your damn bottle,” Pyetr said. “I think we found your tree. It’s the other side of the hill. I don’t think you’ll like the company it keeps.”
Uulamets looked alarmed, and got up and went running off up the ridge, abandoning his pots, his bag, everything but his staff. The Thing went running after him. Sasha looked as if he was thinking about it, but Pyetr grabbed him by the arm and shoved him toward the fire. “Keep it going,” he ordered the boy, tossed him the sword and went over to the edge of the pit, lay down and dragged the dead limb up the slide.
What he could break off it kept the fire going, at least, built a fair good fire, at least enough to take the chill off, enough warmth for him to work his coat and his shirt off and to wring out at least the bulk of the water and heat up the shirt before he put it back on. He was doing the same for Sasha’s shirt when the old man came back over the ridge, furiously angry, striking at the grass with his staff, the Thing dogging his track down the slope.
Pyetr scowled at Uulamets when he arrived at the fire, ready to give the old man word for word anything he was ready for; but Uulamets said not a word to either of them, only squatted down with a thunderous frown and began to pack up his little jars.
“So what do we do now?” Pyetr asked.
“Stay here and do nothing]” Uulamets snarled under his breath, took his bag of pots and left, with the Thing scurrying behind him.
“Good riddance,” Pyetr said, gave Sasha’s shirt a furious twist and stuck it on a long branch, toasting it over the fire while Sasha stayed bundled up in his coat. “Get the breeches off. And the boots. Hold this.”
He went after more wood, squishing as he walked, warming himself with temper and with work. He gathered a good armload up on the ridge, keeping an eye on the boy at the fire, and came back to build the fire three times its size.
“Could you see master Uulamets?” Sasha said, worried. “If it came back—”
“Let it choke on him.” Pyetr sat down, pulled his wet boots off, pulled off his own breeches and wrung them out, making a puddle in the grass. He sneezed violently, wiped his nose, and put the breeches back on, wet as they were.
“I don’t think I even know where the house is,” Sasha said.
It was a grim thought, for a moment. Then Pyetr jutted his chin toward the river. “Good as any road. I know where we are. Use your wits, boy. You don’t get everything by wishing.”
Sasha’s face reddened past its pallor, and Pyetr remembered then calling him a fool and half drowning him.
“You did all right,” he said, and pulled his coat off and laid it on the grass, figuring the shirt was the only thing that was going to dry in any reasonable time. He wrung it out a second time, found himself a couple of sticks and spread it on them, to hold over the fire. “Just for the god’s sake what did you think you were going to do?”
“Bring you your sword,” Sasha said. “Then it came out of the hole. I knew it was out. Before I went in the water.” He started shivering again, having trouble with his tongue. “What was in there?”
Pyetr stared at the fire, keeping his shirt out of it, concentratedly keeping it from scorching, keeping his eyes on the bright warmth. “Bones. Lot of bones. I think I know what happened to his daughter.”
“You think he knew?”
Pyetr shrugged, recollecting a pretty face. A girl Sasha’s age. Not a ghost, a memory of a ghost. “Maybe,” he said. “He knew about the Thing in the river. He wasn’t surprised, was he?”
“He says he can bring her back.”
“Bones are damn hard to bring back. Aren’t they?” He remembered Sasha saying, the morning after his own illness—Pyetr, you were dying and he brought you back-He did not want to remember that. He did not want to guess what the old man was doing over the ridge. He did not want to remember the inside of the cave, or the feel of the vodyanoi’s body or that mud in the entrance, with the bones in it.
He said, in Sasha’s long silence, “About time we got out of here. We’ll get grandfather home, get him settled. He owes us, this time. He can’t say we didn’t try.”
Somehow the prospect of trekking down the riverside was both more and less frightening than it had been. At least, if there was such a thing as a vodyanoi, it could be cut, it—whatever master Uulamets said—hated the sun, it preferred the water, it skulked around in underwater caves and there was a way to avoid it on those terms, simply keeping to the general line of the river for a guide through the forest and never spending the night without fire, which they could get the same way master Uulamets got it, with a clay firepot.
“We walked in,” he said to Sasha, “we can certainly walk out again, in a direction we want to go.”
“We still need his help,” Sasha whispered, as if anything they said could carry across the ridge. “Just please, please don’t fight with him, don’t make him angry.”
He had seen Sasha’s face when the wizard was talking. Sasha’s deference to the old man infuriated him. But he had thought the Thing was a dog; and sometimes it still looked that way; and he had thought a vodyanoi was a bad dream; and it still felt that way; and he would have said Sasha’s wishes were no likelier to come true than anyone’s—but he saw at least the chance that an old man twice as stubborn and set on his way could scare a youngster like Sasha, who was convinced his least ill-wish could work terrible, far-reaching harm.
“The old man’s damned me often enough,” Pyetr said. “If there was anything to that, do you think that Thing down there would have gone running?”
“He wanted it to.”
“Oh. god,” Pyetr said in disgust, and rescued his shirt from scorching. It was hot, and burned his hands. “Damn!”
“Please don’t. Not here. Not now.” Sasha was shivering again, hands clasped between his knees, hardly fit to get the words out.
“Good luck to him, then,” Pyetr said, to have peace. “He needs it.” And on a more charitable impulse: “He needs somebody to talk him out of this woods, is what he needs. He needs to go downriver, get among sane people. Maybe he is a wizard.—Maybe all this is because he’s a wizard, maybe that’s all it is, did you ever think of that? Maybe he makes people think they see things.”
“You’re hopeless!” Sasha cried, as angry as ever Pyetr had seen him. “Do you think all this is for your benefit? It’s none of it a joke, Pyetr! His daughter died! Don’t make fun of him!”
With which Sasha got up and pulled his coat around him and headed off toward the river, three steps before Pyetr flung his sticks and his shirt down and caught him.