“Certainly a more cheerful sort of place,” Pyetr said, watching the sun dapple the bracken and the limbs as they walked—no great difficulty to find a way through, the trees generously spaced and tall, the ground rising and falling in little hillocks, the rare saplings vastly overtopped by old, wide-limbed trees. The worst going was the bracken, the old growth crunching and breaking under the new as they waded knee-deep through this pathless place; but it was over all a quick progress. “Better than the woods near the house,” he looked back at Sasha to say, about to add that, over all, he had no bad feeling at all about this place.
But then cold fingers touched his neck. He spun back forward and felt a little breath of cold air hit his face.
“Pyetr?” he heard Sasha ask—Sasha was puzzled; but he had another demand on his attention at that instant, an urgent and impatient presence, carrying with it a fear he could not immediately understand. It only seemed that the contact was fading and that if he turned his head and lost touch with it now, that would be the last of it.
“It’s here,” he said. “Keep with me…”
He had no doubt now which direction to take. He started off as quickly as he could over the rough ground, dodging around thickets and up over the shoulder of the hill. He heard Sasha behind him, trusting that Sasha would keep up, and battered through increasing brush and foliage with his arms, a course virtually in a straight line, disregarding of obstacles.
“Pyetr!” he heard, and waited a breath or two, but, he felt that breath of cold again, felt a gentle touch of icy fingers, smelled a taint of river weed.
“Pyetr!” Quite close now. Sasha was all right. They both were. He started to move again, less and less liking the feeling he had of something behind them, and feeling equally strongly that safety was in front—
Himself, Pyetr Kochevikov, who only recently believed in ghosts and vodyaniye and such, found himself fighting his way uphill in blind terror of what might be stalking them and blind trust of what was guiding them—
Knowing, absolutely, that the situation might be completely backwards of what he felt—
Sasha saying, That could have been your heart, Pyetr…
He heard thunder behind him, a crack that shocked the forest, felt the increasing chill in the air and the shadowing in the sky. Sasha overtook him, held him by the arm and protested they should stop, it was coming up a rain…
No, he said, brushing off Sasha’s grip.
No. Not yet. She said not; and his feeling of where safety lay remained constant. “It’s all right,” he said to Sasha without looking at anything in its distracting detail, not Sasha, not the woods around them. “It’s Eveshka. She’s still in front of us. She’s moving…”
“She’ll come back,” Sasha said.
“I’m not sure she can,” he said, and walked while a fine mist drifted down through the branches…
They had left the bracken. It was leaf mold underfoot now, a thick carpet glistening with rain, easier going, except the brush and the thorns. He walked, followed the wisp of a notion where he was going until his side ached and his legs were shaking with every step, jogged when the presence grew fainter, caught his breath and walked again while it was-strong—until finally on the bare side of a ridge he slipped, lost his balance and skidded feet first down the slope into a rain-pocked spring.
He gasped a breath and hit the muddy ground in disgust, having landed up to the knees in water. But when he collected himself to get up he could see her reflected in the roiled surface, standing behind him.
He whirled to look, grabbing at his sword—and saw nothing but the wet leaves, the forest around him… and a very distraught Sasha Misurov coming sideways down the slippery face of the ridge to reach him.
Fool, he chided himself, heart pounding, and did not want to look back at that pool of water, because he had a cold, nape-prickling certainty that her reflection would still be there.
“Pyetr!” he heard Sasha calling him.
And saw her instead in his water-filled handprints in the leaf-mold, reflection after reflection, whole and part, repeated in every puddle and every water drop around him.
“God,” he breathed, and slowly, unwanted and irresistible impulse, looked back at the pool.
Pyetr was sitting staring at the surface of a spring, finally, when Sasha arrived, drenched and panting, at the bottom of the slope—Pyetr was just sitting, staring as if that were far more important than the fact he had nearly lost himself in the woods—or lost him, more to the point.
It was certainly not Pyetr in his right mind—Pyetr scratched and soaked, flecked with bits of dead leaves with and his hands and his breeches all muddy.
“Pyetr?” he asked.
Pyetr asked, without looking at him, “Do you see her?”
“No,” Sasha said, desperately regretting they had ever left the boat. He was trembling in the arms and the knees from the chase Pyetr had led him, and he wanted nothing so much now, if he did not carefully smother that thought, as to be back on the boat with Pyetr locked in the deckhouse, if that was what it took to keep him out of the rusalka’s reach.
“She’s the way she was,” Pyetr murmured, “not—not like at the house…”
“What do you mean, not like at the house?” A cold doubt bobbed to the surface with that: but Uulamets had always put it down, Uulamets had been so sure, Uulamets had always insisted—
He felt a wish touch him, a very strong one: befell whatever
Pyetr could see was well-disposed to them, and terrified of this place—
“That’s enough!” he said, and picked up a branch and flung it at the surface, scattering ripples. “Pyetr!”
Pyetr dropped his face into his hands, drew a breath, and did not take offense when Sasha grabbed him by the packs he was carrying and tried to haul him away from the pool. He was not strong enough; but Pyetr made his own effort to get up, leaning on his arm-Stopped then, looked away, distracted—
“Don’t,” Sasha said, hauling at him, wishing him not to look, because suddenly there was a wisp of white drifting in the tail of his eye. He looked fearfully toward it, saw a haziness in the misting rain, as if the water was settling there a moment before it fell.
He felt reassured against his will. He saw it retreat, saw the surface of the pond ripple as a veil of droplets slowly sank into it and vanished.
Pyetr walked a few steps away and sat down as if his knees had simply gone out from under him.
“What’s with Uulamets isn’t her,” Pyetr said, and rested his head in his hands. “Damn, it’s not her, it never was, it never acted right. I should have said—”
“Is that what she told you?”
“She can’t. I can’t hear her.—I just know the difference.”
Sasha sank down on his heels in front of him. He suddenly felt exhausted, cold, set about with too many questions.
“I’m not crazy,” Pyetr insisted, starting to shiver.
“I know you’re not.” He reached out and grasped Pyetr’s hand. It was like ice, white, flecked with bits of leaves and dirt. “Look, it’s raining, it’s late, we don’t know where we’re going. Let’s stop here—put up the shelter, get a fire going, have supper.”
“What were we sharing the house with?” Pyetr asked.
“I don’t know,” Sasha said, with a queasiness in his own stomach; he had never imagined he would feel safer spending the night with a rusalka than on their own—but in this place he did.
Keep away from Pyetr, he wished her; and felt she assented to that—
She wanted them safe.
Especially, and for special reasons—Pyetr.