He had no idea how to answer. It said, as if he had,
“Foolish. All young. All young.” It reached past him with another of its limbs and grasped Sasha’s shoulder. “Wanting me to let you go. Using my woods to feed him, against me. Death fighting death.—What shall I do with you?”
“Help us,” Sasha said, as a droplet of sweat trickled a clear path down his face. “Help us get out of your woods. Help us find her father. Help us get him free.”
The Forest-thing released them both and drew back with a rustling of twigs and leaves. “My name is Wiun,” it said.
“Pyetr,” Pyetr said.
“Sasha,” Sasha said. “—And Eveshka and Babi, if you please.”
It quivered, a little rustling of its branches as they lowered. “I don’t please,” it said. “A dvorovoi has no place here. A rusalka has no place among living things.—But I have no choice.”
The pool of mist spun upward like a milky whirlwind and spread itself wider and thinner, like tattered robes, like fine hair flying on a gale, like ghostly arms and hands and Eveshka’s pale, frightened face.
“Rusalka!” the leshy said. “Take, take once, and not again in my woods, on peril of what life you have. Do you hear me?”
Eveshka’s eyes widened; her hair and robes swirled about her, leaves flew in a whirlwind, and she blushed, not alone with faint rose on her face, but pale gold in her hair, pale blue in her tattered gown—
“Oh!” she cried, wide-eyed, and Babi yelped and sprang from somewhere to her arms, burying its face against her.
“I will not ask your promise,” Wiun said to her in that bone-deep voice, “for the welfare of my woods or your companions: you would do anything to live. You already have. I only advise you what you already know: a wizard who lies to others is one thing; one who lies to himself is quite another. Do you know why?”
Eveshka did not answer. She held Babi closer.
Wiun shifted back into the brush, or was part of it.
“—Because then all wishes go wrong,” Sasha murmured faintly, in the last whisper of the leshy’s going.
Eveshka looked at Sasha, looked at Pyetr, with the mist gathering like beads on her hair, with her eyes gone a soft blue and a little rosy blush on her lips. “Pyetr,” she said in a tremulous voice.
He trembled himself, while Sasha pulled sharply at his arm. He knew better. God, he knew better; she was afraid, he only hoped he knew why; but all he could do was stare at her until all she could do was stare back.
“Pyetr!” Sasha said, jerking at his arm.
He blinked and looked away, trying«to break the spell and get his breath back. He saw his sword lying in the brush and went and picked it up, shaking—
Because he wanted her so much, and he knew better, and Sasha was depending on him.
“We’ll find your father,” he said to Eveshka, making himself see the trees, the woods around them, and Sasha frowning at him. “He says he can bring you back. Well—dammit, he will!”
God, he thought, gone cold inside, he was talking about Ilya Uulamets.
CHAPTER 21
TWILIGHT CAME EARLY in the depth of the woods, under a clouded sky, but they kept walking so long as there was the least light to see by. “How far yet?” was what Sasha had wanted to know of Eveshka when they had first set out from the leshy’s grove; and Eveshka had said she was not sure of that.
“Is your father even alive?” Sasha had asked next. “ Can you tell?”
Eveshka had not been sure of that either: she had confessed as much, evading his eyes, then quickly slipped away to take the lead—moving not as she had, as a wraith which had no need of paths, but with a sure woodcraft which still kept her out of their reach.
She clearly had no wish to sit at their fireside when they had stopped for the night, either; nor did she seem to need their food. No, she answered distantly when Sasha offered, after which she rose and walked away to the little spring-fed rill that gave them water.
Again, Sasha noted uneasily—water.
They had a stew of fish and the early mushrooms and fern-heads that Eveshka had found and assured them were wholesome to eat. Sasha looked with new misgivings at the supper he was cooking, and again with misgivings at Pyetr gazing after Eveshka.
“I’m not so sure about these mushrooms,” Sasha said.
Pyetr said, distantly, “Does she need to poison us?”
One supposed not. Sasha shrugged and dished up the stew, which thanks to Eveshka had more than dried fish and water in it, and thanks to Eveshka’s lack of appetite, afforded a good helping apiece for them.
“You know she’s not answering questions,” Sasha said.
Pyetr took his dish, took up a spoonful and blew on it—which evidently made it reasonable for him to ignore questions, too.
Sasha set out a little for Babi. Babi sniffed his and growled at it, but that was, one hoped, the heat, or a distaste for mushrooms.
Sasha took a gingerly, carefully cooled sip of his own dish and found it more than palatable, looked up again at Pyetr, who was staring off into the trees at Eveshka—wishing something on his own, Sasha feared, in a very different direction than he was wishing himself.
Maybe he should have sympathy for that—but he was vexed, more than vexed, seeing Eveshka use those soft-eyed looks on Pyetr, with what might not be, considering she had a heart to confuse her, in any sense reasoned or reasonable. In fact Sasha tried to put a stop to that, exerting himself not on her, which he suspected could demand much more strength than he wanted to spare—but on Pyetr… which still took more strength than he wanted to spend, fighting a natural urge that could affect even someone altogether heartless.
But considering that Eveshka could not, after all, sustain herself on the food they used—
“She’s not eating,” Sasha said, hoping Pyetr would think further down that line.
“Mmnn,” Pyetr replied.
“She’s not alive, Pyetr, she can’t eat, she’s got to get it from somewhere and it can’t be the forest—”
“We’ll find her father,” Pyetr said, and dug into his stew.
That was the help he got from Pyetr. Sasha ate his supper, he fed the fire, glad at least that the rain had stopped.
Finally he said to Pyetr, “If we don’t find her father soon, and if he can’t do anything—she’s not going to stay the way she is, Pyetr. You heard what the leshy said. She can’t help herself.”
“Shut up,” Pyetr said.
Even that curt reply failed to make him angry. Perhaps it should have, but his thinking was too clear and Pyetr’s was too muddy at the moment, even to deserve it.
“She’ll turn on us,” Sasha reminded him, “or on her father r if we do manage to find him, just as fast. I’ve been noticing the way she’s acting—”
“There’s nothing wrong with the way she’s acting. She just doesn’t want to be here right now.”
“Don’t make excuses for her. She can’t help it, that’s what the leshy was telling us…”
“I know it. You don’t have to tell me that.”