Yvgenie by C. J. Cherryh
High time, certainly, to trust the girl a bit—perhaps even to take her down as far as Anatoly’s, maybe even Zmievka, where there were young folk near her own age. Time to risk, even, the chance of young romance: not likely that any lad in Zmievka could catch Ilyana’s eye, or pass her father’s scrutiny, let alone Eveshka’s. But he had to talk to Pyetr about that, too, tomorrow, if he—
“So what have you been up to all day?” Pyetr asked him.
“Oh, reading.” Perhaps he had dropped a stitch or two. He thought Pyetr might have asked him something before that.
“So do you want to go out tomorrow?”
He most wanted a little more time to his books right now. He had been following a particularly knotty thought the last several days; but he also saw himself getting as stodgy and housebound as master Uulamets had been, and decided that his sudden perception of the mouseling this evening just might be his wizardry forestalling the very problems he had been working on for fifteen years. Perhaps it was really, imminently, absolutely tomorrow, time to say something to Pyetr, and see whether Pyetr could reason with Eveshka about the child.
“Yes,” he said, blinking present company into his thoughts. “Yes, that might be a very good idea.”
Silly thing to say. Pyetr looked at him curiously across the table and said, “All right.”
Eveshka’s hair-brushing sent crackles through the air. It was wonderful hair, pale gold, so long she had to catch it up in handfuls to deal with it. Eveshka wished the tangles out of it, Pyetr was sure: he had never seen anyone go so hard at so much hair with so little breakage; but all the same he took the brush from her, picked up a heavy weight of it and applied gentler strokes to the task, at which Eveshka sighed and shut her eyes. She habitually smelled of violets and lavender and herbs from the kitchen. Tonight rosemary and wood smoke figured in, too, which, with the smell of her hair and the face the bronze mirror cast back to him, could make even a sensible long-wedded man forget that he had begun this evening tired and out of sorts. He bent and kissed her on the top of her head, kissed her on the temple, too.
At which she suddenly leapt up and hugged him fiercely, protesting she was sorry she had been so short today, the bread had gone wrong—
“The bread was fine,” he said.
“I wanted it to be,” she said. He understood how she loathed doing that. She used her magic as little as she could— and seldom on trifles. She was far too magical to throw her wishes around on petty problems, even if those were precisely the safest kind of wishes to make: that kind of solution to failures, they were all agreed, set a bad example for their daughter, teaching her too much wizardry and too little ordinary resourcefulness.
Eveshka said, resting her head against him: “When are you going down to Anatoly’s?”
“Oh, I don’t know, the weather’s holding. Maybe—maybe three, four days, why not? Are we ready?”
In other years, she had been quick with an account of things she wanted, a few special things she would hope (but never wished) he might bargain for. In other springtimes the kitchen had been cluttered with little pots of salve and herbs she had put away during the winter, the trading goods they had to offer. But the season had crept up on her, perhaps: there was no sign of the packing baskets and herb-pots yet, und somehow, perhaps for that reason, he had not gotten around to thinking about going downriver either: everything seemed to be running late this year.
“I’ll sail whenever you want me to,” he said, to please her. “We can hold out on the flour another month, can’t we? There’s grain left—if you’re not ready. Or do you want to come along this year, pack up Ilyana and sail with me? Sasha wouldn’t mind. He’s been suggesting it for years.”
“I’ll think about it,” she murmured against his shoulder.
“You’re not sick or anything?” Wizards never got sick, so far as he knew, never showed their age, never suffered a good many things ordinary folk did; but there were other ailments. There was worry, for one; there was solitude and seriousness and responsibility of a kind ordinary folk seldom thought about—a constant reckoning of consequences which he understood somewhat how to do from the outside of magic, but not—
Not from the inner cautions his wife had constantly to observe, or the fact that she had been dead for a hundred years—and then married a ne’er-do-well scoundrel, who could never quite understand her fears or truly advise her in wizardry crises.
Perhaps he was missing something now. He was not sure. He was not even sure her mood was not something entirely simple, having nothing to do with wizards. He had believed he understood women tolerably well in Vojvoda, at least the sort of women he had had most to do with—bored, rich wives and bored tavern-keepers’ daughters who yearned alike after some risk in their lives, some sense of notice from someone. Neither, of course, could possibly explain his wife—whose temper could raise storms and whose good sense could fill a boat’s sail with wind or turn a tsar’s attention from a very foolish husband.
But whatever else Eveshka was, she was also a wife, and her husband might have been no wiser than certain other foolish husbands whose mistakes had, in his greener days, been all to his advantage.
“No,” she sighed. “Not sick. I’m just worried about the weather.”
“It’s been fine.”
“It might turn.”
Sometimes with Eveshka one had the most distinct feeling one was not talking about the words one was using.
“Is there something in particular?” he asked her.
“You should go,” she said. “You should, yes. Maybe even take that trip you’ve been talking about.”
“Back to Kiev? Are you tired of me, perhaps?”
Silence for a few moments. “Never tired of you, don’t be foolish.”
“Is something the matter with Ilyana?”
“No.”
“You know, none of you are making sense today.”
“What, “none of us?” “
“I asked her to go riding, thought we’d give young Patches a little time on the trail. I’ve heard nothing else for a month. And now she has to help you in the kitchen tomorrow. Are you two having a fight?”
Eveshka stood back and looked at him, hands on hips. “I didn’t say a thing about the kitchen. Did she say that?”
“She didn’t.”
“Did she say anything about my scolding her?”
“Not a thing. Just that she ought to help you more. What’s this about trips to Kiev?”
Eveshka frowned and walked away from him, arms folded. The lamplight hazed her in gold, head bowed, back turned, thinking about things he did not understand and she never explained. Ever.
“Well, I’m not going to Kiev,” he told her. “I’ve been there. The tsarevitch is a greedy lout with no sense of humor. Why should I improve him? As good pay a visit to Vojvoda, where I know they have a rope ready.”
No answer. He waited. He sighed. He went over to the laundry basket in the corner, took off his shirt and tossed it in.
Eveshka turned to him and said, “I don’t know that anything is the matter. It’s just—”
“It’s just that every time there’s a difficulty with my daughter, I’m packed off to the god knows where. She’s fifteen, ‘Veshka, she’d never harm a hair of my head, and it’s not as if she throws tantrums these days. If there’s something going on I don’t know about, tell me.”
“I dreamed of an owl last night.”
Silly thing to say. But not so silly, if one remembered. “It’s that time of year,” he said. “I think of him, too. That’s not so—”
She laid her fingers on her lips, made a little wave of her hand, and an ordinary man knew to stop there, with a wizard on the brink of thoughts she did not want to sleep with.
“Come to bed,” he urged her. “There’s no damned owl. If it were a swan you’d dreamed of, then I’d worry.”
He won a laugh from her. “God,” she said. “That dreadful creature.”
“A narrow es
“There could be worse places for hearts, all the same.”
“The world’s full of them. Every town’s full of them. But she’s in no danger of them riding in the woods, ‘Veshka, and she’s doing very well. Let her be a child this summer. Winter’s time enough for lessons. Don’t scold her. And don’t make her stay in the house tomorrow.”
Eveshka’s brows drew together. “Don’t scold her! Pyetr, I never scolded her.”
“You do ask a lot of her.”
“With reason!”
“She’s a child, ‘Veshka. She doesn’t think of things in advance. Children don’t. Even I remember that. She should enjoy herself, not be thinking of work all the time. Encourage her to go.”
“A wizard-child can’t grow up like a weed. She can’t go through life doing whatever pleases her and only what pleases her. There’s discipline, Pyetr. That’s life and death to her and everyone in her reach. If she’s feeling guilty about worrying me today, good! Let her have thoughts like that!”
“The swan lived.”
“Not thanks to her doing the first thing that jumps into her head. Ask Sasha how dangerous she can be. Ask him what became of his parents.”
“Not fair, ‘Veshka.”
“You’re never here when—”
“Not by my choice!”
“I don’t enjoy being always the one to tell her no, Pyetr. I know you can’t do it—but what I don’t like is you always being the one to give her the sweets after we’ve had a discussion. You’re always the one with the presents, you’re always the one who’ll give her what she wants, and make me look like a—”
“That’s not true, ‘Veshka!”
Eveshka walked away from him, arms folded, collecting her composure. He knew to wait in such instances, dammit, no matter his own temper was touched. He said, unable to hold it: “I’m never here when she needs me, either. I didn’t choose that. You never gave me a choice in it; and maybe it had to be, once, but there’s no longer a reason for my sailing off down the river in crises, ‘Veshka. She’s outgrown any girl, wizard or not.”
She looked at him and retorted, “I wish—” And stopped herself, turned away with the back of her hand across her mouth. Restraining herself from what, he had no idea. Nor dared ask right now. And maybe not tomorrow. That was always the problem.
It was a very fine cottage they had built on the hill, snug in snowfalls and springtime melt, safe and solid and at least as straight as the bathhouse roof—none of them were carpenters.
But it could be a very lonely house, at night, Sasha thought, taking the candle to his desk to save lighting another— parsimony his aunt would have approved, but Pyetr would not. Why break your neck in the dark? Pyetr would chide him, Pyetr’s approach to most things being both extravagant and eminently practical.
And for all he could figure, he had no idea now whether the advice he meant to give Pyetr was on the mark or not; or whether tomorrow might not be the best day for it. Eveshka was clearly not in the best of moods tonight, for her to have sent out the call she had when the girl was late to supper.
Eveshka feared—feared the good god only knew what, precisely: that Ilyana, who had wizard blood from her and from two grandparents, might turn uncontrollable, might attract magic to her that no child could handle.
Possibly. Ilyana’s ability was considerable and he had no real understanding himself how to govern her, except love and a great deal of listening—reasoning that if anyone had cared or asked him what his thoughts were when he had been her age, if anyone had ever offered seriously to listen to him before Pyetr had, and to advise him before master Uulamets had, then perhaps a great many things might have been different. Listening before advising the child seemed to him to be the best course. And wishing tranquility in these woods: that too—they wished very little change, here on their river shore, far from the demands of ordinary folk or the possibility of visitors. They shared the land, they shared suppers, they shared their lives, when wizards as a rule gave up their hearts and lived with loneliness. Certainly that had been the case with master Uulamets, Eveshka’s father, and certainly it would have been the case with them, except for Pyetr—who was at all points the peace in the household, the center of all the friendship and the love they shared, husband, father, and friend—
Somehow he could never make Pyetr understand that, or make him realize how desolate their lives might have been without him. Thanks to Pyetr he had more than his books and his house, he had a place to go in the evenings where one could sit by the fire and talk. He had friends and a child to watch grow up, as good as one of his own—he had made Ilyana toys when she was small, he had whittled dolls out of wood and painted them with dyes; and carved a quite remarkable horse, with straw for a mane and yarn for a tail. But she had suddenly grown too old for toy horses, too old for toys, that was precisely the trouble he saw coming: there seemed so much difference between this year and last. The toys languished, though loved, in Ilyana’s room, the dyes grew faint—the dolls had had the life hugged out of them years ago and the horse’s mane was a disgrace he had offered to mend, but Ilyana would have none of that, thank you, Patches was her horse and no one would change him.
Now Patches was a real horse. Soon enough Ilyana might ride the woods with a freedom a wizard-child could enjoy, with no fear of bandits, with the not inconsiderable blessing of the leshys, whose names she knew, one of whom had held her in his vast, twiggy arms when she was an infant—old Misighi had, on his first visit after she was born, smelled her over, regarded her with a vast, moss-green eye, and declared she looked to him like a baby mouse. So mouseling she had become; and their mouseling would go where she would in the world, ultimately—to whatever woodland fastness the leshys held now, or to the edge of fields where ordinary folk lived, or within sight of Kiev—the god knew. Since they could not be with her every step to guide her actions, it was the quality of her choices they had to assure.
Certainly a young wizard would make a few mistakes along the way. The vodka jug was one of his. So were the wishes that had brought Volkhi to them, and Missy; and the god only knew what calamity their flight might have caused in Vojvoda. He still did not know, nor wish to know, exactly what had set them free.
And generally, as tonight as he opened his book and began to write, in a house that had neither domovoi nor dvorovoi, nor any feeling of home—
Generally he did not think at all about Vojvoda, or his family. He, most of all of them, did not want his life to change—and he had to be careful of that, appended as he was to Pyetr’s household.
Odd uncle Sasha. Sasha the maker of toys, for the last child he might ever see. He thought, If I’d stayed in Vojvoda, if I’d married, if it had really ever been a choice to be ordinary—
He wondered what had become of the aunt and uncle who had brought him up. He wondered—
But he sternly forbade himself such thoughts. The god only knew what disasters they could lead to, and as for what had become of his relatives in Vojvoda, who his cousin Mikhail had married, or whether he had a horde of younger cousins by now—it was as good as in the moon, that life, and never that close, any hope of an ordinary family, not for Sasha Misurov. He had the finest any man could dream of, and that should certainly be enough—
Even if the house was dark and lonely at night, and even if it made sounds that had nothing to do with a domovoi, and everything to do with emptiness.
It was so hard not to think—but one dared not, dared not dream or think at all under this roof, with her mother on the other side of the wall. Ilyana lay abed under coverlets her mother had sewn, furiously concentrated on the patterns of the lamplight on the wooden ceiling. God, the nights she had counted the joints, the pegs, the knotholes, and discovered the animal shapes in the wood of this room—while she tried not to listen to the words that strayed out of her parents’ bedroom or to wonder what they were a
Most of all she dared not think of the pattern that reminded her of Owl—nor recall her friend waiting on the moonlit river shore.
But it seemed—it seemed something very like his presence brushed the edges of her mind tonight, so vivid a touch she could imagine him standing at her bedside.
—But that can’t happen. He can’t come into the house. He daren’t come here. It’s only my imagination.
A ghost would have to belong here, to get inside, isn’t that the rule? And surely he doesn’t; and surely the domovoi would never let him in without so much as a sound— Rusalki can kill you just by wanting to. So he doesn’t need to get into my bedroom if he did mean any harm, and it’s stupid to be afraid of him. If he’s a ghost he’s been one since I first knew him, he’s no different than he ever was, and if I don’t stop thinking about him right now, mother’s going to hear me.
Something still seemed to lurk in the shadows by the wardrobe, and of a sudden—
Babi turned up as a weight on her feet, eyes slitted, chin on manlike paws. When her heart settled, then she dared sleep.
When her heart settled, then she dared sleep.
2
“Get her out of the house,” Sasha said to Pyetr as they were riding through the woods, while birds sang like lunatics in the cool dawn. “That’s my opinion, whatever Eveshka says. Take her downriver with you. You don’t spend enough time with her.”
Pyetr thought instantly of crises developing on that trip, weather, meetings with people ashore, some of them ill-mannered or merely fools. “God, Eveshka would never have that.”
“Eveshka’s far too strict with the girl. Yesterday evening every truant from here to Kiev must have run home to his mother—instantly. Thieves and burglars in all the Russias must have mended their ways. Our mouse had reason to be upset.”
An ordinary man could not hear such storms. But he could certainly see and feel their effects in people he loved.