“Babi?” he called, but the forest was so quiet except for Volkhi’s snorting and breathing that it seemed hard to speak at all. “Babi, dammit, where are you?”
“Down the road and back,” Eveshka muttered, pacing up and down, wiping the sweat from her face. Her hand was shaking, Sasha could see it. Eveshka paced another course, said, looking toward the north wall of the bathhouse, “He should at least be turning around now, don’t you think?”
“Probably.” He knelt, adding wood to the fire. His nose was running from the herbs, his eyes stung. “But he’s on a horse for the first time in years. Don’t worry. He’s probably just taking a turn or two—”
“Oh, god, Sasha!”
“Don’t worry about him. Babi’s with him.”
“We don’t know he is,” Eveshka said shortly. “We don’t know anything.” She paced half the circuit of the bathhouse, stopped, hand over her eyes, wanting simply to know what was going on in the woods, Sasha could feel it up and down his spine, wanting till it echoed around the walls— But there was no answer at all.
“Don’t,” he said, “don’t doubt, ’Veshka, just think about the bannik.”
“Banniks don’t know what’s going on now, it’s tomorrow they live in, and wizards keep changing that—it’s likely we’ve changed it even walking in here. We ought to be down that road, Sasha, that’s where we ought to be! We ought to be seeing where he is and what’s going on out there, because we’re not going to get anything here!”
Sasha wiped his nose again, and passed his arm across his forehead. “We could equally well bring trouble right to him. We don’t know what we’re doing.” Eveshka shook her head violently, fireglow making her pale hair and her underlit face all one color in his swimming vision. “He’s not going to give us anything: if it was going to, it would have by now!”
“Maybe we haven’t asked a right question, yet,” Sasha said, and shut his eyes and tried to find that question, but all he kept getting for vision was Uulamets’ memories turning over and over in his head, images of the river shore, a foggy morning, Eveshka walking into that mist, ghost among ghostly trees-Memory or prophecy? God, did Uulamets foresee ’Veshka’s drowning—and not even know he’d seen it? Or is it some morning still to come?
“It’s a trap,” Eveshka said, “papa always said, prophecy’s a trap.”
“Don’t offend it, ’Veshka!”
She hugged her arms about her ribs, looked up at the rafters with a shake of her head. “I’ve bad feelings. I don’t trust this place. I don’t like what I’m feeling—I don’t like what I’m feeling from the woods—”
Wind skirled through the open door, hit the fire, flung ash and embers, whipped at them.
The door banged shut and open again, once, twice.
Sasha stood up, looking about him. His shadow and Eveshka’s trembled in the rafters and against the wooden walls.
“Bannik!” he shouted. “Answer us!”
Everything seemed fraught with possibilities, yea and nay equally balanced. He felt a sudden sense of suffocation, all the wishes successive wizards had ever made in this place hovering and circling—other, older wishes, mostly impotent, unless they should brush up against a strong new one, and that touch should set some old wish spinning, bring it into new motions, bring it into the current of things—
Leaves in the current, leaf brushing leaf-Motions more and more violent — the whole pattern swirling and changing as the current changed—the leaves madly whirling among the bubbles, a small whirlpool and a greater and greater one —
“Bannik!” he whispered, wishing with all his might for true answers this time, feeling the currents move around him till they bid fair to disturb everything in the world that was fixed.
“Bannik, answer me! You’ve come here for a reason. What question are you waiting for me to ask, bannik?”
A shadow jumped from one bench to the other, and to the rim of the firepit. A stone rattled.
The ferry on the river, by daylight, headed north under all its sail.
“Is this the future?” he asked. “Bannik? Is this what will be or is this what we ought to do?”
Pyetr’s face, ghostly pale, lit by lightning…
“Is this now? Is this someday? —What are you telling bannik?”
A stone rattled. Of a sudden it sprang at him, grabbed his arm with long-nailed fingers, drew him close to its face, growing more and more visible.
Thorn-branches. An overwhelming sense of danger… Eveshka gazing at him out of shadows, with a face cold and unforgiving as death. “Bannik! Will Pyetr need our help?” Spray flying under the bow, canvas cracking— A young man walking toward him, out of shadow. It might be the bannik itself, it had that feeling of danger and omen, light touched dark hair, white shirt —
The bannik hissed into his face, and sprang back into shadows, a figure all elbows and angles as it scuttled under a bench. “Bannik!” Sasha shouted at it.
Again that sense of smothering in this dark, of a presence surrounded by chaos, might-be, could-be, must-be constantly changing position with every wish that brushed it.
He wanted its name. He wanted power over it. He wanted to stop this future from being. He stood still and shivering tried to stop wanting anything in its presence.
Leaves moved more and more slowly in the current, bubbles on dark water, that seemed now to stand still, everything seen to stand still, waiting for a single wish to steer it— The door banged open again, admitting stark, gray daylight. Raindrops pocked the dust outside.
Pyetr looked about him, reining Volkhi around. It was as if some veil had come down between himself and the road home again—the way magical things could look quite otherwise than the truth, tricking an ordinary man’s eyes and lying to his senses.
“Babi?” he shouted to the woods around him, and it seemed to him that the very daylight was grayer and colder, that the trees were shifting at every glance away and back again to look less familiar. Volkhi moved under him, tossed his head and snorted like he did not like the breeze that was blowing to him, rustling the young leaves and rattling dry, old branches.
“Babi?”
A prickling touched between his shoulders, a sensation of something watching him from behind. He looked back, looked up into the branches, hoping still for Babi. Nothing was there.
He was increasingly tempted to call out Misighi’s name. If one was in trouble in the woods, leshys were a very good idea; but they were odd creatures too, especially Misighi, who was very old, impatient with fools, and apt to ask embarrassing questions, such as precisely what had he seen to be afraid of?
Nothing, precisely. He had, like a fool, ridden without watch-Ing the shapes of the trees, and just as soon as he did see some familiar shape, some oddity he had observed riding past it on the way out, then he would know precisely where the road was.
In the meanwhile the sun gave him a general direction toward home, the lay of the land gave him an indication where the road ought to be—so he started riding again, paying close attention to the trees this time, looking deep into the woods on either hand for the sight of the peeled limb or odd trunk that might give him a clue: he was sure he could not be far off the track.