Eveshka, her hair plaited with rose and blue ribbons, ladled out their supper into the waiting bowls, sat down at a tableful of waiting men and took up her spoon with a grace that made a man only hope not to spill anything on his shirt.
Every move she made was like that, every glance of her eyes, every soft, cheerful word. She prattled about the cleaning and the state of the stores and sweetly chided her father for his housekeeping—
Pyetr bit the inside of his lip, hard, and thought about getting up, getting the jug, creating a little noisy levity in the evening, but the hush around the table was too deep, and Eveshka’s gracious hospitality too genteel to offend.
He wanted something to break the spell. He avoided Eveshka’s eyes and tried to find fault with her gentle voice and her laughter, which went straight for the soft spots in a man. He even reminded himself where his sword was, beside him and against the wall; and reminded himself Sasha and Uulamets both had said once, on a saner day, that they should never let her get into the house.
He wanted the boards to creak and the domovoi to manifest itself in the cellar, even for the black ill-tempered ball of fur to show up—Pyetr Ilitch Kochevikov sat there wishing as hard as he had ever wished in his life, in the hope that Sasha was doing the same thing, and in the remote, slightly foolish reckoning that a gambler’s luck might be worth something—Sasha swearing that he had none of his own.
But there was no groaning of the house timbers, there was no scratching at the door.
Maybe, he thought of a sudden, it was all due to the fever Sasha swore he had had. Maybe he had never gone into a cave with a vodyanoi. Maybe the girl across the table had never died, and all the rest of it had never happened, and he had only come back to his senses this evening, still a little muddled after fever from his wound. Thoughts like that kept troubling him, complete turnabouts of reason, utterly persuasive if a man did not keep careful hold of what he had seen and had done—improbable as it was.
And two or three times during supper, when he was most tempted to distrust his memory, he took deliberate hold of his sanity and recollected that watery cave in some detail, remembered the skull and the bones and tried to keep from falling under Eveshka’s spell—for spell it surely was, if there were spells at all. He told himself that. Or he clung to the belief that he believed it, which might of course mean that he was mad.
“Tell me,” Eveshka said to him softly, leaning toward him, “how many people are there in Vojvoda?”
He had never counted. He reckoned, distractedly—perhaps five thousand. Ten.
Then with a sudden clutch of fear he thought about the forest, with only one tree left alive.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not sure.”
Eveshka was looking at him. Everything seemed to have stopped. The silence was unbearable and unbreakable.
“I’ve never been beyond this woods,” Eveshka said in that silken soft voice. “My mother used to say I could imagine better than was really true. So I imagine hundreds of houses, all with carved gables and painted shutters. Is Vojvoda like that?”
“There are houses like that.”
“And people coming and going all the time…”
“Farms and shops,” he said, trying to make it all ordinary and uninteresting. “Like any town.”
“Traders used to come here,” she said. “In my mother’s time. My mother—”
A shadow fell on Eveshka suddenly. Pyetr started and looked over his shoulder in the conviction there, was something suddenly behind him, and Sasha turned in the same breath.
But nothing was between them and the fire.
“I’m sorry,” he began to say, turning about again, his heart still beating hard. But Uulamets was holding Eveshka’s hand, and that shadow persisted, deeper than the ones he and Sasha cast on them both, deeper than the one in which Uulamets’ hand existed, holding hers.
“Papa—” she said, her voice trembling. “Papa, hold on to me…”
Pyetr held his breath, with the thought that he ought somehow to do something—lay hands on her, get from between her and the fire—and he did not know what to do—or dare to do anything. But the shadow seemed less after a moment or two.
“Papa,” Eveshka whispered, staring nowhere at all, “I don’t want to be dead. Please don’t let me go.”
“I’m not letting go,” Uulamets said. And sharply: “Eveshka!”
She drew a breath and the shadow passed entirely. Her free hand fluttered toward Uulamets’ sleeve. She touched it as a blind girl might, and said, “Papa? He wants me back.”
“Who?”
Eveshka’s breath caught. She shook her head violently and looked toward the corner.
Toward the river.
Pyetr very carefully eased his leg around the edge of the bench and began to get up, reaching for his sword.
“Don’t go out there,” Uulamets said.
Pyetr stood up and looked at them and at Sasha, who was getting quietly to his feet too.
“We drove him off once,” Pyetr said. He wanted to believe it would work twice, that the vodyanoi truly disliked swords; and that the Thing had no power over the girl who was sitting in their midst. “You said day or night makes no difference.”
“Tb most things!” Uulamets said. “Don’t open that door.”
“Master Uulamets,” Sasha said very quietly, “—where’s Babi?”
Uulamets did not answer for a moment. Then he said, “Good question.” He carefully got up from the bench, holding Eveshka by the shoulders. “But let’s think of what we don’t want here, shall we? Let’s all think about that—very hard.”
Pyetr did, most earnestly. He thought about the River-thing going back down its hole with Babi the furball in close pursuit. He wished the sun would find the vodyanoi in the morning and shrivel it. He hated it with all his might. And felt Sasha’s hand close hard on his arm.
“Wish us safe” Sasha said.
Then he remembered Sasha had warned him about wishes going further than one wanted, especially a wish for harm.
But in the same moment the fear just fell apart, leaving him wondering what had just happened to him, and inclined to think nothing had happened at all—
Except there was still Eveshka with them, a pale and frightened Eveshka, still holding to her father’s hand.
“It’s all right,” Uulamets said finally. “It’s all right. It’s given up.”
Pyetr truly wanted someone to explain matters to him. He stood there with the sword hilt like something foreign and somewhat foolish in his hand and with the constant feeling that any moment now the world would shake itself back into recognizable rules.
But he had been living that way for days.
“What are we going to do about it?” he asked.
No one paid any attention to him. Uulamets patted Eveshka on the shoulder and said to her, “Don’t worry. It won’t get in here.” Sasha for his part looked less than reassured.
So was Pyetr. Trusting to vulnerable windows and a none-so-stout door did not seem a reasonable plan of action.
So he asked, more loudly, “What are we going to do about it?”
Evidently no one knew.
“God,” he said in disgust, and slung his sword belt on, intending not to be parted from it even a step across the room hereafter—two wizards and a ghost being evidently incapable of any better defense. He took a cup from the shelf, the jug from under the table, and poured himself a modest drink—he had no intention of sleeping soundly tonight, either, or hereafter, for that matter—having no wish to wake with some nightmare laying hands on him, or coils, or whatever the case might be.