C. Cherryh - Yvgenie

Felt exposed to a presence at his back, something—

—familiarly dangerous. Babi had bristled up into his most fearsome shape, the horses clearly smelled something disturbing, and of a sudden he knew what it was.

Snake. Vodyanoi.

He spun about to face the river and said aloud, “Hwiuur, you damnable sneak, go back to sleep! There’s nothing here for you. Go away!”

The feeling immediately slid away like a serpent into water.

But another presence slipped up behind him. Ilyana’s magic came around him. He had felt her tantrums, he had stilled her wild panics, but this was not anger, or fear, or with him—it encompassed him, it aimed his wishes at the linger—

It scared him more than the presence in the river did: he wanted her to know that on no uncertain terms.

She stopped at once, thank the god. He turned, saw her face and felt as if he had slapped her—

“No, mouse,” he called out loudly enough for her to hear across the yard. “You’re no more mouse—not when you wish like that. But be careful! You don’t know everything yet!”

“ I know more than I wanted to know!” she shouted, with tears in her voice, and that strength was there again, like a wall excluding him. “My mother was in love with him! Whose daughter am I, anyway?”

God. “You’re Pyetr’s!” he shouted back. “You’re most undeniably Pyetr’s, I swear to you that’s so! Chernevog was in no condition to father a child when you began, and there was never any doubt whose you are.”

“Could there have been? Why should I believe you? Everyone’s lied to me!”

“Not so!” He walked as far as the stableyard gate and set his arms on the topmost rail, at comfortable speaking distance. “Ilyana, love, maybe we didn’t tell you everything, but no one lied to you. We just kept the truth back too long.”

“What truth?”

Wary young fish—suspecting a hook in what he offered. He had taught her that caution. They all had. So he used no words. He handed her his heart without warning, prepared for pain.

There was. She seemed confused, and let go the filly’s name and looked him in the eyes, something that was his looking right back at him, defensive and waiting.

She surely realized then what he had done. She had no notion yet what she could do with it, but she knew the moment he thought of it, that she could do him terrible harm, and he wanted her to know, with that, how implicitly he trusted her.

“That’s what you should do,” he told her, quietly, “before you ever contemplate certain kinds of magic: put your heart somewhere absolutely safe before you make any sudden decision, mousekin. I have very little feeling now, except my own interest. You have all of that. All I have left is a heartless, self-interested reason for standing here; I want you well for my own sake. The part that can think of others— you have at the moment. You know me now, don’t you? You know I wouldn’t lie to you.”

She did. And she wanted his heart back in him, because she was afraid of it—which was enough: it came back with pain, with anger, with a dread of grown-up hearts holding grown-up secrets. And very much of loneliness. That one chord rang through them both, that the loneliness was too long, and too much.

“Oh, mouse,” he said, ducked through the rails and caught her in his arms, fever-warm and soggy as the much smaller girl who had cried on his shoulder for far smaller tragedies.

No truth for a while, not until she wanted it. Right now she only wanted both of them not to hurt, which was as kind and as dangerous a wish as a wizard had ever made for him. “Hush, stop,” he said against her ear. “You know you shouldn’t wish changes on us. Not hurting can equally well mean dead.” “I wish—”

“Hush! I wish you good things, and life, mousekin, and, yes, it’s very hard. I know.”

“It’s not fair!”

“Maybe it isn’t. But the stronger you are, and you’re very strong, mousekin, the more it’s true. You can hurt someone so easily, with the best and kindest intentions. I’ve never been as lucky as your mother is, to have found someone like your father is for her—I don’t know if there is anyone else in the world like him. There can’t be many ordinary folk who could put up with us.”

“It hurts, uncle.”

“I know it does. Which is why, mousekin, other wizards give up their hearts—bestow them somewhere they can’t be hurt, because caring and power together eventually will hurt you: and most of all corrupt your judgment. You see someone suffering and you want so much to do something about it that you might forget your good sense, and do something awful to innocent people you simply forgot to include in your idea. It’s the rule about rainstorms. There’s only so much rain to go around.”

“So maybe they’re drowning, elsewhere! Maybe watering our garden would help them— You don’t know! You can’t ever know! So we should never wish anything? Is that it?”

“You don’t know the what of things unless you use your head, mouseling, and you don’t know the true why of things unless you also use your heart. Try to keep both, even if it hurts right now, even if things seem too hard for you.”

“They are!”

“No. No, you’re stronger than that. And you’d better be strong today, mouse. It’s time for me to tell you some things.”

“What, that I’m going to be alone all my life?”

“The way I am? Yes. Possibly you will be. But you don’t know what will happen next month, certainly not next year. No one I know can foretell that, and I come as close to doing it us anyone. We’re deeply sorry we scared you. We’re sorry we didn’t warn you—but we never foresaw this, we absolutely didn’t foresee it—though maybe we should have. Our wizardry failed us. If it’s not our fault, certainly it’s not yours.”

A series of little breaths, a quiet sob, and she leaned her haul against him. “Uncle, I think I love him. I don’t even know.”

“I know, I know. I wouldn’t doubt—he was an extraordinary man.”

“ Man?” She pushed back against his chest. Tear-wet eyes looked up at him, wide and shocked.

“He’s well over a hundred. So’s your mother, mousekin. Your father’s less than half that. And I’m the youngest, except for you. Your mother died when she was sixteen—”

“My mother’s not my mother?”

“Oh, ’Veshka’s very much your mother, mouse. But did die. And Chernevog had something to do with that, killed her.”

The mouse opened her mouth and looked suddenly as she might pass out. Quick as thinking, he grabbed her and made her sit down on the bottom rail of the gate, right where she was, and he knelt in the stableyard dust, pressing her chilled hands in his.

“It might be romantic to say what you’re feeling right now is shock, mousekin, but the fact is, it’s also what comes dealing with rusalki. He’s very dangerous. Very attractive. The way Babi guards stableyards and vodyaniye live in water—attraction is a rusalka’s nature. And they feel very good. —Are you going to faint?”

She made a little gasp, getting her breath, and shook her head bravely.

“That’s my girl. You’ll be all right.” His heart said stop now, stop telling the child what had to hurt her. But cold good sense said keep going as long as he had her whole attention: it might not come again, not in her whole life, or his. “Your mother drowned on that shore. A vodyanoi carried her body to a cave north of here—yes, that vodyanoi, the one I chastised a moment ago—stay with me, now, mousekin! Chernevog murdered her and her bones lay in that cave under an old willow’s roots a hundred years before your father found them. Do you know why the trees in the yard are the oldest trees about? Why all this woods is, as forests go, quite young? Your mother killed this woods, your mother damned near killed your father—not mentioning a number of innocent people she did kill, men, women, and children she drew the life right out of them. Ask your mother about rusalki, little mouse. No one knows more than she does about that kind of ghost. She was one.”