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 was only himself and Pyetr and Uulamets involved in his wishes. It never had been. There was the River-thing and Eveshka and now somebody named Kavi Chernevog, and he had made so many desperate wishes lately he was on the edge of not remembering all the things he had wished earlier in his life and he was far past understanding how things fitted together. He could not even clearly remember the stableboy at The Cockerel, because that boy felt like someone else, someone he did not know how to be, now—
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.
Pyetr for his part had no trouble getting to sleep, no matter that the dark behind his eyelids was alive with the vodyanoi’s coils and murky water, and that he still felt the deck tilting under him: he knew where he was now—tied to a forest he did not want to think about, but as far as safety it looked to be the most he was going to have—and the hand hurt, but it had hurt ever since carrying the loads down to the boat, so he reckoned finally he had simply bruised it.
He was reasoning more clearly now that the boat was at rest and his stomach was less queasy. Uulamets certainly had other, more subtle ways to do away with him than pitching him off the boat, which Sasha would never believe an accident; and the boat, if they could get it to move at all, was surely not going to roll over tomorrow any more than it had today—not with three wizards preventing it…
The old man got tired and the boat broke a rope and tore a sail, but it got to shore…
Upon which thought Pyetr burrowed into the nest of canvas and blankets and just let go—not without knowing where his sword was, in the blankets with him; or knowing Sasha was an arm’s reach away. And that there was that little bit of salt in a bit of cloth, that Sasha had given him this morning.
Keep it in your pocket, Sasha had said.—It could never hurt.
He agreed with that.
And agreed that a bed well back on the deck was better than near the rail, be it the river side or the forest side of the boat.
He slept. He woke with the sun warming the blankets uncomfortably and the impression that there had been a sound a moment ago—
Sasha was getting up. Pyetr thought about that a heartbeat or two and realized it was very late for Uulamets to be still abed, and it was very unlike the old man to let them rest.
At which point he pushed the blanket off and picked up his sword on his way to his feet.
“Master Uulamets?” Sasha said aloud, a small and lonely voice against the sound of the river and the trees.
No one answered.
“Damn,” Pyetr said, with an increasingly upset stomach. He pulled his sword out of its sheath, stepped over the spar and its mass of canvas, and walked quietly toward the stern, hearing Sasha walking behind him. He worried about tangling with Sasha on the retreat: he reached back and touched Sasha’s arm, warned him back as he edged around the riverward side of the deckhouse.
There was nobody aft. That left the forestward side, and he beckoned Sasha to catch up and took the wide path around to a view of the rest of the deck.
No one there either.
“There’s the storage,” Sasha whispered, coming up beside him.
Pyetr took a deep breath and said, “I doubt it—”
But he had no good feeling about walking around the deck house to make that search. He took a good grip on his sword, lifted the latch and pulled the door open-But there was nothing inside but their stores—from which the basket of Uulamets’ belongings, including the book, was missing.
“That damned old fool’s gone for a walk!” Pyetr exclaimed, and Sasha came to look for himself.
“Unless the vodyanoi got him,” Sasha said.
“Don’t you think we’d have heard that?” Pyetr asked.
“He had to have made some noise,” Sasha said, walking to the forest side, a proximity to the trees that made Pyetr nervous. “We slept through it. I don’t sleep like that…”
“We were tired,” Pyetr said. “We wouldn’t have heard thunder.” He walked up beside Sasha and looked into the depths of the woods—seeing past the dead brush along the bank the green of vines and leaves. That evidence of life should have comforted him. It only looked thick and tangled through there, the kind of place an old man however crazy ought to have second thoughts about going, afoot, loaded down with, the god witness, the basket with that damned book and whatever pots he had taken.
More conjurings? he wondered.
“Old grandfather probably went off to sing at something,” he muttered. “He was reading last night. He probably figured out something and decided he’d go hunt up some roots or something, what can you expect? He’ll be back.”
They had their breakfast on the forward deck, and Sasha kept hoping for master Uulamets to come back, he did not know why—master Uulamets not having been particularly kind to anyone; but Uulamets having gotten them here, he had no confidence anyone but Uulamets could get them back again.
But Pyetr said that they ought to see about the sail, thinking, Sasha was sure, that they should be going back downriver soon.
So they got the cord and the awl and started sewing the rip up, himself doing the pulling and the holding and Pyetr doing the punching and threading of the cord through the canvas—his hand was purpling around the wound, but he swore it was no worse than yesterday.
“I’ll make a poultice for it,” Sasha said. Since they had no choice but to sit and wait, it was at least a chance to help Pyetr; and Pyetr did not shrug off the offer.
They had the sail stitched by noon. “I’ve no idea whether it’ll hold,” Pyetr said; and for the first time talking about the chance of Uulamets and Eveshka not coming back: “But I think, going back, we should just go with the current, if we can. The boat ought to work with that, a lot slower, maybe, but I don’t mind that.”