Rusalka (book)

Rusalka

Del Rey hardcover first edition, 1989
Author	C. J. Cherryh
Cover artist	Keith Parkinson
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Fantasy novel
Published	1989 (Del Rey Books)
Media type	Print (hardback, paperback, e-book)
Pages	374 pp (hardcover edition)
ISBN
Followed by	Chernevog

Rusalka is a fantasy novel by American science fiction and fantasy author C. J. Cherryh. It was first published in October 1989 in the United States in a hardcover edition by Ballantine Books under its Del Rey Books imprint. Rusalka is book one of Cherryh's three-book Russian Stories trilogy set in medieval Russia in forests along the Dnieper river near Kiev in modern-day Ukraine. The novel draws on Slavic folklore and concerns the fate of a girl who has drowned and become a rusalka. It is also an exploration of magic and the development of a young wizard.

Rusalka was nominated for the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel in 1990 and was a third-place runner-up.

Cherryh self-published a revised edition of Rusalka in e-book format in October 2010 at Closed Circle Publications.

Sasha is a 15-year-old downtrodden stable boy living with his aunt and uncle at an inn they run in the town of Vojvoda. Sasha's parents had been killed in a house fire that he was accused of starting through wizardry. Pyetr is one of the town's audacious young men, and one day he is attacked and wounded by old Yurishev for having a liaison with his young wife. Pyetr escapes, but later learns that Yurishev is dead, and that he has been accused of murdering him by sorcery. Pyetr hides in the stables at the inn, and Sasha helps him leave the town. With no future for himself in Vojvoda, Sasha accompanies the wounded Pyetr.

Pyetr and Sasha walk for days through fields and into a dead forest. Sasha does not believe he is a wizard, but finds he sometimes has the ability to successfully wish for things. Pyetr does not believe in wizards at all, and laughs at Sasha's wishing. Exhausted and without food, the pair find a cottage by a river. Its occupant, a wizard named Uulamets, heals Pyetr and agrees to let them stay on condition that they help him find his daughter, Eveshka, who had drowned when she was 16 and is now a rusalka. Pyetr is suspicious of Uulamets and does not believe in rusalkas. Later, while the three of them are searching for Eveshka, she makes herself visible to Pyetr, overpowers him, and leads him into the forest. Rusalkas are renowned for drowning men they have chosen, but Eveshka abandons Pyetr and disappears again. Uulamets and Sasha find Pyetr unharmed, but are attacked by Hwiuur, a shapeshifting vodyanoi, known to drown people who go too close to the water.