He slumped back against the wall of the deckhouse, set his jaw and glared at Sasha in a moment that felt as though they were both irretrievably mad—and searched back to his first days in Sasha’s company, trying to recover his balance.
But one never knew about those moments, either…
Except that Sasha had attacked the vodyanoi for his sake, with a salt pot and a stick—which he could not forget.
“You want me to remember that?”
“What?” Sasha asked, looking up, looking bewildered.
Innocent, then. But then, he did not in any sense doubt he could trust Sasha; what frightened him was the degree of trust he began to understand it took—to live with a wizard.
“Let me tell you,” Pyetr said, “I don’t know how far Uulamets ever pushed us—he could, I don’t doubt it, and maybe he’s so good neither one of us could catch him at it, but I don’t think so.” He soaked the rag again and squeezed it, so he had somewhere else to look besides Sasha’s pale face. “Do me a favor. Don’t do that again. It’s not the way to get along with people.”
“I don’t want to do it… I don’t want you to get killed, either!”
“Fine. Neither do I. You think there’s some kind of spell on the boat. I think there’s a Thing somewhere around here that got breakfast and it’s coming up suppertime. What do you say to that?”
“I know how to stop it.”
“Good. I’m very glad of that. Why don’t we leave tonight?”
“Because it could turn us over.”
“With you wishing not.”
“I don’t know how strong it is.” Sasha bit his lip and said, “I’m not sure that’s not what tore the sail.”
“Are you sure about anything?”
Sasha took a little longer about that answer. “No. I’m not. But I’m afraid if we go out there—that’s deep water. And we could be in it. And I can’t swim.”
“Neither can I,” Pyetr said. “But we won’t know how by tomorrow morning, either. Are we going to stay here for the rest of our lives?”
“Master Uulamets might come back.”
“I’m not really looking forward to that,” Pyetr said. Across the river the sun was closer to the trees, but he had lost his certainty and his enthusiasm for facing the river in the dark. “Tomorrow, then.—You’re not pushing that on me, are you?”
“No.” Sasha shook his head emphatically. “No, I swear I’m not.”
“See how hard it is to know anything when somebody does that to you? You’re liable to make me do something backward to what I’d do in good sense. Make me break my neck. Who knows? I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t do that again.”
Sasha looked entirely upset. “What if you’re wrong? What if I know you’re wrong?”
“What if you’re wrong about me being wrong? You’d better be right, hadn’t you, and you’d better not do it often—had you?”
“It’s so easy to do.” Sasha said, “and it’s so hard not to—”
“I wish you had a choice,” Pyetr said, sure enough of Sasha’s honesty this time not to doubt himself: he felt sorry for the boy, more, he was suddenly afraid for the boy’s sanity as much as his own. He reached out in a rough halfway hug, a pull at Sasha’s neck. “You might be right this time. Just mind your manners.”
“I’m sorry.” Sasha took a swipe at his eyes, his head ducked. “I’m just scared.”
“Time to be,” Pyetr said, and dipped the rag in the pot again, and attended to his hand to give the boy time to dry his face. “You think you can keep whatever-it-is off tonight. Uulamets couldn’t.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Grandfather’s a pretty competent wizard, by what I see. And he didn’t do all that well, by what I see, either. What do we do, sprinkle salt, light a fire and hope?”
“Don’t make fun, Pyetr. It’s not funny.”
“No, this time it certainly isn’t.” He wound the rag around his hand and flexed his fingers, dripping water that hissed onto the stove. “But I don’t say taking the boat out in the dark is that much better, I give you that, too.”
“What you have to understand—” Sasha said. “Pyetr, I honestly don’t know what to do. And I can’t swear to you I know it’s my idea. I just have this feeling—I have this terrible feeling we won’t make it home—”
“Home,” Pyetr scoffed, and saw how upset the boy was, and shook his head. “I’ll allow you this—I’ve no fondness for that old man, but I’m getting a real understanding—” Why he’s crazy, was what he thought, but he said: “—that he’s not as bad as he could be.” Uulamets might, Pyetr thought, have done what Sasha had done. “I can forgive him.”
God, he thought… what am I going to do with this boy?
What if he weren’t as good-hearted as he is?
Or if he weren’t sane as he is—or if someone crossed him, seriously?
“If you want to go back to the house for a while,” Pyetr said calmly, “before Kiev—we can do that. Grandfather might even turn up. He’s probably wishing he was home anyway, by now. Or wishing himself back at the boat. We’ll have supper, we’ll sprinkle salt all over the deck, just in case. We probably should have done that last night. And we’ll get some sleep and in the morning we’ll untie and get out into the river.”
“We hit ground on the way in. I think there’s this long ridge—”
“We put the sail up just part way—it ought to blow us back a little. Maybe turn us around.”
Sasha looked a little more cheerful then.
“Wish up a wind for the morning, if you want something to do.”
“I’ll try,” Sasha said, and rubbed his face with his hands.
“But you’re right about the salt. He left us most of it. Maybe he was thinking about that.”
“Considerate of him,” Pyetr said.
They cooked a comfortable supper on the little stove—fresh grilled fish, right out of the river, Sasha having thought to bring fishhooks—and they cleaned up and flung the ashes overside, by which time the sky across the river was dimming from its last colors and the stars were coming out.
Sasha scattered salt and sulphur all across the deck then, one end of the boat to the other, and Pyetr forbore to suggest he try a few incantations and some smoke as welclass="underline" Sasha would surely take it amiss, but, sincerely, if salt worked he saw no reason to stint on the rest of Uulamets’ rituals, rattles and singing and the rest of it: it all seemed alike to him.
Sasha did take a cup of vodka and draw a circle on the deck, which Pyetr watched, hands on hips, with some curiosity.
“So the wind won’t blow a gap in it,” Sasha said, “and I don’t think water’s a good idea.”
After which he scattered salt and sulphur right along that wet line, so it stuck.
Smart lad, Pyetr thought. “As a wizard,” he said, “you don’t do a bad job.”
“I hope,” Sasha said. “You’ve got that little bit I gave you.”
Pyetr patted his pocket. “Absolutely.”
Sasha looked at him as if to decide whether he was being laughed at, dusted his hands off and set the cup of salt and sulphur on the deck inside the circle. He handed Pyetr the cup with the vodka in it. “Nothing wrong with it,” he said. “It’s leftover.”
Pyetr grinned, took the cup and sipped it at his leisure.
He took a second, full one, but that was all, since he had no inclination to sleep too deeply this night. They lay looking at the stars and listening to the sounds of the boat, and planning how they would get off the shore and how they had to be sure to come to the house and the landing by daylight or risk missing it—discussing too—he could not figure out how an enterprising scoundrel had gotten to this pass—how they could get through the winter there, and how the garden could be better than it was and what they could do with the bathhouse to repair the roof.