So Pyetr delayed the questions that were churning in him this misty morning. He made the requested tea, and set a cup by Sasha’s foot and a lump of honeyed grain on Sasha’s knee.
Without a glance, Sasha reached after the grain-and-honey, stuffed the whole into his mouth and drank with the left hand-alternate with holding the inkpot, god hope he did not confound the two. An elbow braced the pages open, the quill-tip waggled more furiously than it had on the goose. Clearly Sasha was hurrying as fast as he could and an ordinary man could only hope he was coming to useful conclusions.
Pyetr washed his own breakfast down—asked, eventually, in case spells required it, “Are you going to need the fire?” and Sasha answering with what he thought was no, Pyetr drowned the embers with river-water and packed as far as he could, except Sasha’s book and the ink-pot.
He thought, while he was doing all of this: ’Veshka’s not a fool, either. Sasha’s right: she at least thinks she knows what she’s doing. If she only bothered to tell a body what she’s up to—
Or why in hell that tree’s alive again—
It had upset him last night. It worried him this morning and occasioned glances down the bank to where it stood, lithe limbs blowing in the wind. He did not understand why it should matter that an apparently dead tree had returned to life, or what obscure connection there should be to that tree and Eveshka’s disappearance—except he most emphatically recalled it dying, shedding its leaves out onto the water while Eveshka became alive again. And certainly it had looked dead for all the three years he had sailed back and forth past this place replanting the forest upriver.
Eveshka cared about the woods. She bespelled her seedlings with fervent wishes for their growth. She talked about this tree and that tree as if it was a person. This willow had held her soul once, whatever that meant; and it had survived the whole forest dying, died at the moment she lived, and come back to life suddenly after all this time, and she had never, ever, with her magic, noticed that curious fact?
Or noticing it—happened to mention that trivial matter?
God, he had never even imagined she might come here in her flights into the woods.
Surely not.
Sasha closed the book.
“Are we going now?” Pyetr asked.
“We’re going.” Sasha put book and ink-pot into his bag. “You ride. Your turn.”
“What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to go up there,” Sasha said, “and find out.”
“Good. Finally something makes sense. —Move, Babi.” swung up onto Volkhi’s back as Babi, perched there, vanished out of his way. He set his cap on as Volkhi ambled over to Sasha in a very unnatural attraction for a horse, and he reached down to take Sasha’s pack up. “Do we know anything? Have we learned anything in all this reading and writing?”
One hoped. One did hope.
Sasha dashed that notion with a worried shake of his head. “I only think somebody wants us here. Don’t ask me who.”
“I am asking. Or is it that name we’re not saying?”
“I don’t know,” Sasha said, and shook his head again, starting Volkhi walking without laying a hand on him.
“Well, what?”
“I don’t know what.”
“Sasha—”
“I’m afraid he’s waking. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, I don’t know if it’s something he wished a long time ago or it’s just one of those accidents that happens with wishes. Maybe something made the leshys’ attention slip. It doesn’t matter why. I don’t think it matters, at least.”
“Don’t say Don’t know. God, I’m tired of Don’t know, Not sure, Don’t know why. Just for the god’s sake let’s make up our minds how we want things and dig our heels in, isn’t that the way it works?”
“It works best,” Sasha said, “if what you wish is of no possible use to your enemy.”
They traded off from time to time, from time to time let Volkhi carry the baggage alone to rest from both of them—in a pathless region, Sasha thanked the god, both higher and drier than the boggy ground south of the den, and further from the river now, but not often out of hearing of it. Sasha slogged along during his turns afoot as fast as he could, catching a stitch in his side he wished away, stealing only so much as kept them moving and wishing the while for some wisp of a thought from Eveshka, some break in the silence that went around them—most of all for some sign that the leshys were even aware of their difficulty. But there was no answer from any source, except that fore-boding which had been with him in his nightmare, that they were running out of time and running out of luck, that Eveshka when she had taken the boat had effectively stranded them so far behind there was no hope of catching her on the way, not so long as the wind blew from the south—and blow it did, against all his wishes.
Pyetr in his own turns afoot spared little breath for conversation, made no demands, offered no recriminations for his shortcomings or his bluntness of last night.
Only once: “Damn mess,” Pyetr said, when they lost time wading a substantial stream, and once again, when, immediately after, Pyetr slipped and took a ducking—”I know you’ve got other worries just now,” Pyetr said, standing up dripping wet, “but could we have a little attention here?”
“I’m sorry,” Sasha said in all contrition. It was his fault. But Pyetr frowned up at him on the horse, put his hand on his knee and shook at him. “Sense of humor, boy. Sense of humor. Remember?”
That was the way Pyetr got through things, no matter hr. friend was a fool. He realized then Pyetr was trying to cheer him up and make him quit a very dangerous brooding and wool gathering.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and only by Pyetr’s face realized it was still another damnable Sorry. He tried to joke too, and winced. “Sorry.”
“Lend me a canvas.”
“Why don’t you ride?” Sasha said, though he had only just gotten up, because Volkhi’s bare back afforded some warmth to a man in wet clothing. But Pyetr refused and only asked for the canvas, saying walking kept him warm, and that Volkhi had no need for another soaking.
Within the hour it thundered.
They kept traveling in rain and dusk, lightning flashing while above the trees—a miserable night, Pyetr said to himself, but they had their shelter canvases to wrap about them as they walked—soaked as he had been when it started, it still kept him warm; and at least since that ducking they had better ground underfoot—wide spaces between dead trees and new saplings, more new fern than thorn brakes, which let them keep traveling well past sundown.
But for some reason about sunset Sasha had taken to looking over his shoulder as they went—and once Pyetr realized it, he began to have a prickly feeling at his nape, and began to his own anxious glances at their back trail.
“What are we looking for?” he asked. “That spook of a bannik?”
“I don’t know,” Sasha said. “I just have this feeling.”
Came a sudden crash over the woods, white glare lighting up the puddles, glancing off wet branches and leaves and bracken. Sasha looked white as a ghost himself: it might perhaps be the chill.
But the light was failing them fast by then; and they put up their canvas in the near-dark with ropes between two trees, got a fire going at the edge of their shelter in spite of the rain, and had a fair supper, themselves and Volkhi and Babi.