C. Cherryh: Yvgenie

More tears, which a wish stopped. She did not want to upset her father. Nothing was his fault, and he had argued with her mother last night as much as he could. Her mother ran everyone’s lives, except uncle Sasha’s. Uncle Sasha had had the good sense to move out and build a house up on the hill while she was still a baby.

And when her mother had had enough of her she had used to march her up the hill. Stay with your uncle, her mother would say. See if he puts up with you.

Her mother might make her sweets and show her cooking and teach her the names of flowers: those were the good things. But her mother did not like her off by herself, her mother did not want her doing anything exciting like clambering around on the boat down at the old ferry landing, or imagining she was sailing to Kiev, or doing anything, it seemed, but kitchen work and cleaning and writing in her book.

Which she was sure her mother read.

Her father said, “I really think you should have gone with us today. Baby mouse, your mother’s not a bad woman. But she’s a very serious woman. She takes responsibility for so very much—”

“I wish she’d just have fun sometimes.”

“So do I, baby mouse. So do I.”

“It’s not fair.”

“A lot of things happened to your mother, things she wouldn’t want for you—things that have made her afraid all her life, and she tries too hard to make sure you’re safe from them. You know that Sasha’s not really your uncle…”

She nodded. They had told her that. Maybe it was supposed to matter to her, but it never did, it never would. She had no uncle but Sasha, nor wanted any, and it made no difference she wanted to think about. Sasha had been a friend of her father’s in Vojvoda. That was where her father and Sasha had both come from. But that was all they ever told her.

So what did it matter at all—if her mother never let her out of the house? Certainly she was not going to Vojvoda, ever, no long as her mother had anything to do with it.

Her father put his arm around her shoulders and walked with her along the garden fence, past the old tree that dwarfed the house. “Sasha and I met when he was about your age. He wasn’t even sure he was a wizard then—he only suspected he might be, but he’d had no one to teach him, and he spent everything he had being careful. Which he was doing quite well at, for a boy who didn’t have a mother or a father to teach him.”

That was a lonely thought. “Was he all by himself?”

“Better if he had been. His uncle and aunt were scoundrels, both of them. And your uncle was a very good lad, not to turn them into toads—”

“You can’t turn anybody into a toad. You might make them think like a toad.”

“Well, he didn’t do that either. —And I wouldn’t put toads beyond your reach, mouse. You’re stronger than you know you are. That’s one reason your mother is so set on you holding your temper. She knows if you made a really bad choice she might not be able to stop you. You see what I’m saying? You’d hate to make me a toad by accident, wouldn’t you? You’d much rather intend it.”

“That’s not funny, father.”

“—Or remember the night the filly came and you wanted to hurry things?”

She did remember. She still could not comprehend why it would have hurt, but she did know now her wish had been too general and too risky, and her mother had rebuffed it so hard it hurt—haste, she understood: her mother had hugged her fiercely after, and said she was sorry, but she should never wish into situations she did not completely understand.

Which seemed to be the whole world, in her mother’s considered opinion.

Nobody was happy with her. She was not happy with herself. She walked with her father’s arm about her, kicking at last year’s weed stalks, that tugged spitefully at her hem.

Her father said: “I think you should talk to your uncle; Sasha. Mind, I don’t know a thing about wizardry—but he says, and your grandfather used to say, that there’s nothing in the world stronger than a wizard-child’s wishes—thank the god, your uncle would say, babies just want to be fed and held. A toy or two. It’s not till you start to grow up that your; wishes get to involve other people, really to involve them, in ways that mean one of two people getting his own way in things that can break your heart. Then things truly get complicated. Don’t they?”

“I just don’t know why she won’t listen to me.”

“Maybe because she’s not that much older than you are. Your wants are a lot like hers, and it’s harder and harder to argue with you.”

Not much more grown than her. That made no sense! “She’s a lot older than I am. At least fifteen years!”

“Oh, but the difference between where you are and where she is grows less and less every year—a lot of difference when you were a baby, fifteen years ago. But the years a young child up faster than they grow any of us old, does that make sense? It doesn’t seem yesterday that your uncle was your age. And hardly yesterday again since I was fifteen, doing things I assure you nobody’s mother would approve! But I, mouse, I was just an ordinary boy, not a wizard who can leave just a little smoking spot where our house was. Your mother can do that, first thunderstorm that comes along. So can you, if you ever wanted to—you could do it without ever realizing you’d done it, so naturally your mother’s a little anxious about tantrums.”

The idea was strange. But her father always made her feel safer and wiser, just by being by her—for one thing because lie never wished at her, would not, could not, it made no difference: the fact was he did not, and all the world else did. Her father always made sense to her, in ways even uncle Sasha did not, and her mother almost never.

“I can see that,” she conceded.

He gave her a hug and a kiss, and they walked as far as the edge of the trees, where the old road had used to go through the woods. He stopped there, set his hands on her shoulders, looked at her very seriously and said,

“ Your mother did something very terrible once. She didn’t mean to. She never intended what happened. And don’t let her know I even told you that much: someday you will know, but for now just take my word for it—it was as bad and it went worse and worse before anyone could help her. It’s because she’s so very strong that she got in trouble. And she loves you very much and she can’t explain to you.”

“ Why can’t she explain?” What her father was saying offered for the first time in her whole life to make sense of her mother—but he shook his head and said, maddeningly:

“Some mistakes you have to be grown-up to make, or to understand; and you’re getting there fast, mouse, but you’re not there yet. Just, when you think your mother’s holding you or watching you far too closely for your peace of mind, remember that she sees you as so much like her—she was sixteen when this thing happened, understand? And you’re sixteen and your mother’s dreadfully scared.”

It traded mysteries for another mystery. And maybe she should want her father to tell her everything he knew and even make him do it, but it was more than wrong. There were secrets grown-ups kept: that was the rule she had learned, and if a nosy girl got into them she could look to have everyone she loved unhappy with her, maybe forever and ever.

Though some things were awfully hard not to want, when they were almost in her hands.

“Are you wishing me?” her father asked her.

She shook her head, shook it harder, and tried, in the way her uncle had taught her when she was troubled, to think about running water—

But that made her think about the river; and about Owl.