Unless one could think like Pyetr—just throw down the walls of what was scary and what was dangerous and ask questions like that.
Why? Why not? And, Why won’t it?
Actually, Sasha thought, trying to answer Pyetr’s questions for himself—I don’t know why we can’t wish ourselves out of this.
Why not?
Why not all try it?
Master Uulamets thinks it’s dangerous. Why? Because he’s never tried it? Because none of us really can agree what we want? Why did he answer that by talking about nature?
If you wish a fire not to burn, some other force of nature has to move in a rainstorm. If you wish a stone to fly, some force of nature has to move in and lift it.
If you want a bone to live and move—nature doesn’t want to do that. At least in Vojvoda it wouldn’t, Pyetr’s absolutely right.
But there are things that don’t come to Vojvoda.
Why not?
Because ordinary people are hard to magic?
Because working with all those people that can’t be magicked is like lifting a lot of rocks, all the time?
He wished Eveshka would not be angry at Pyetr, and that she would tell him what she knew about magic.
Maybe, he thought, his thinking was Eveshka answering him.
What did we bury? he wondered suddenly, and went, ignoring Pyetr’s startled, “Where are you going?” to see the place where they had buried the skull.
Pyetr caught up to him as he reached the spot. And there was no mound, just a hole.
“God,” Pyetr said, and hastily looked around them.
“I don’t know what it was,” Sasha said, “but it wasn’t dead. Size doesn’t mean a thing to a vodyanoi. Shape doesn’t either. We’ve seen that.”
“Why didn’t it kill us?” Pyetr asked. “It had a hundred chances.”
“Something wants us here,” Sasha said uncomfortably. “I think you’re absolutely right about that.”
“Eveshka knew what this thing was,” Pyetr said angrily. “She killed it—”
“Not killed.”
“Whatever she did to it—she’s a wizard, isn’t she? She has to know more than we do, doesn’t she? She could have said, ‘Pyetr and Sasha, don’t touch that thing, it’s not dead!’ She might have said, I’m just not sure about that,’ she might have said, ‘Don’t waste your time burying it, it’ll just leave when you’re not looking.’”
A cold thought came to him. “Why didn’t Babi growl at it? Babi’s your friend.”
“Babi’s her dog,” Pyetr said in a subdued voice. “Or whatever. Babi didn’t go close to it. And grandfather, for that matter—didn’t open his mouth. He’s the chief wizard around here, isn’t he? So why didn’t he tell us?”
“Master Uulamets isn’t doing very well,” Sasha said, feeling his stomach increasingly upset. “And I don’t know why she didn’t tell us. I don’t know why she disappeared for a moment on the trail, or why the vodyanoi kept coming and going. I don’t know why she’s acting the way she is, but she’s upset at her father and she’s not—”
He lost whatever he had been going to say. It just dropped out of his mind.
And again something dropped out.
That scared him, and he wished he could remember what it was.
“I’m being absent-minded,” he said, and lost touch with the forest around him for a moment. He wished not to, and made himself look around. “We’re in trouble.”
“God,” Pyetr muttered, and shook at his shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know. I don’t like what’s going on.” He looked up at the ridge, and into the trees around them, and he took Pyetr’s arm and drew him back into the clearing where Uulamets and Eveshka were.
“Eveshka,” he said, quietly, so as not to disturb her father. “We want to talk to you.”
She slipped away into the woods, pale and silent, not quite out of sight, but not talking to them about what was not in that small grave either.
CHAPTER 24
NOBODY TALKED about doing anything. “Are we going back to the boat?” Pyetr asked Sasha, who at least was talking to him; and: “I don’t think so,” Sasha said.
The next reasonable question: “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Sasha said, managing not to look him quite in the eye.
The third: “Is everybody waiting on grandfather to make up his mind? Or is it perchance the vodyanoi we’re waiting for?”
“Grandfather’s thinking,” Sasha said.
Pyetr muttered his succinct opinion, got into their supplies and had himself a drink, had himself two, for good measure, after which he came at least to the temporary philosophical conclusion that he was doomed, everyone was bent on a course that was assuredly going to kill them all, and if no one else wanted to take the trouble to hike back to the boat, damned if he wanted to make a pointless, exhausting trek.
At least, in a more practical vein, they could rest, eat, bandage blisters and mend rips and such against such time as it might please grandfather to think about going back to the boat and back to the house to reconsider this whole mad venture.
So Eveshka drifted in and out amongst the trees, grandfather read his book and the god knew what stalked them in the brush while the sun passed noon, afternoon, and it got on toward dark.
By then he had patched the knee of his breeches, cut a binding for a split in the side of his left boot, and had another sullen dispute with Sasha over nothing more substantial than how much water ought to be in the stew; after which he felt disgusted with himself, so he had another drink after supper. Then he sat down with his sword braced between his shoulder and his boot, using a whetstone to renew the much-abused edge, a small, steely sound—at least the hope occurred to him—to remind any Thing out there in the brushy dark beyond their fire that here was both steel and salt, and a man in no good temper.
Grandfather read even while he ate; Eveshka stayed to the edges of the firelight, evading questions; Sasha let the supper dishes lie and took to making notches in a stick he had peeled, which Pyetr took at first to be some sort of rustic pothook, if they had had a pot: certainly Sasha seemed quite purposeful about where he bored little holes and cut little lines.
“Bear?” Pyetr asked, after a while, thinking he saw a face developing. “No,” Sasha said without looking at him.
A man could feel unwelcome at this rate.
He looked glumly out at Eveshka, wondering was it only him or whether the whole world was out of joint this evening—not that he wanted Eveshka’s attention, the god knew, although…
Eveshka did at least seem to care about him.
The whetstone slipped. He nicked his finger and quickly carried it to his mouth, wincing, while he watched that shimmer of mist, and saw her watching him.
“Deep?” Sasha asked him, meaning his cut finger. He looked at it. It was in a painful spot, on the inside of his thumb—on the hand the vodyanoi had gotten, the same one the damned raven had scratched.
“No,” he said, sullenly, shaking it. “What’s one more?”
“Here, let me see it.”
“No.” He put the wound to his mouth, shook it again after, and applied a little vodka to the cut, applied a swallow to his stomach, and then a second one, casting a foul look at Uulamets.
“Old man,” he began at last.
“Hush,” Uulamets snapped.
“Grandfather—” Pyetr persisted, doggedly, grimly polite, but Sasha signaled him no, not to bother Uulamets.