C. Cherryh - Yvgenie

She looked at him as if she were sleepwalking, eyes wide tear-tracks drying on her cheeks. Her hands were like ice unresponsive to his.

“She’s not dead,” she said, hardly a sound at all. “My mother’s not dead—”

“Your grandfather is. That was what it cost to get her back.”

Eyes blinked. Like a wince. Be felt that: it had not been her mother she had been thinking of when she had whispered an instant ago, Not dead… And that: What it cost… had killed her last hope. Dead. Dead beyond recovery.

“Yes, he is, mouse. Don’t even imagine that kind of exchange. Wizards are hard to kill. We’re very hard to kill and by what I’ve seen, we’re very hard to convince we’re dead. But I saw him die. There’s no doubt of it.”

“Can’t you let him have Owl back?”

“Mouse, he’s dead. Owl’s dead. They have no place in this world. Where they’re buried, if they’re buried, shouldn’t matter to them. Owl held his heart once. That kind of creature’s as tenacious as any wizard. Like your grandfather and his one-eyed raven. They’re gone. Wherever they are, they don’t belong here, and if you are in love with Kavi Chernevog then believe this: what he has right now is not life, it’s a hell I saw your mother go through. She loved your father—and in spite of her absolute best intentions, she would have killed him, she would have killed him just as surely as rain falls and fire burns. If you do love Chernevog and if, god help you both, he loves you—there’s only one hope for him, and that’s for you yourself to banish him from this earth.”

“No!”

“Mouseling, that’s not kind to him. That’s the most selfish thing you can do. And if he kills you, you understand, you won’t be the last he’ll get. You listen to me: listen! Your grandfather and your grandmother and your mother were all wizards. That never should have happened. Your mother is, so to say, twice-born: her mother and her father both were wizards; and you’re thank the god Pyetr’s daughter and not mine and not Chernevog’s, or I don’t know what you’d have been, do you understand me? Wizard-blood is far, far better diluted: you already have it in too large a measure to handle easily, and we’ve done everything we could to see you grow up without killing your father or calling up something no young wizard would know how to deal with. That’s still a danger. You have a very good heart, and hurt as you surely are, if I’ve taught you anything, you’ll hold back what you can do about what’s happened and think instead about what you ought to do. If we haven’t taught you that—then we’re all of us in trouble.”

Her hands gave a little twitch in his, but that was all. They remained limp and cold. Finally she looked into his eyes, really looked at him, as if she were searching for something, and said, ever so faintly, “Do you really love me, uncle? Do any of you really love me?”

“With all our hearts, mouseling. No wizard has to have a child. No wizard can have one against her will. You were the most terrible risk your mother could take. And we had to get your father away from you, both of us, when your temper made you dangerous. He’d have held you, god, yes, Pyetr’s held you while your mother and I just held our breaths. People do love you. You don’t have to want us to. And I doubt you had to want Kavi Chernevog to, either. Someday when it hurts less I’ll tell you about him.”

“Tell me now.”

“No, mousekin. There’s too much that’s dark in that story, that you don’t need to hear today. But there’s a lot that’s not dark at all, and I’ll tell you both parts when I do.”

“I can’t wish him away until I know, can I? —Because you’re telling me to do something I’m not sure of; and magic won’t work when I doubt. Will it?”

She had him on that one, fair and hard. But there was too much of that story to tell here, perched on a rail in the stableyard, and with Eveshka as upset as she was.

“First we’d better make sure your mother’s all right.”

“She didn’t have to be so cruel. I don’t feel the least bit sorry for her.”

“You don’t know what she felt, either—finding him with you, in that particular place? Part of that was pain, child. Part of that was remembering; and part of that was the shock of learning he wasn’t as peacefully dead as she thought he was. Chernevog went through hell in his life. I assure you, he’s going through it now. And your mother more than saw it—she felt it. It wasn’t just her child she wanted to save. It was him.”

She was listening, she was listening very hard now. The color was back in her face. Her hands were no longer lifeless. They were clenched in his.

“Your mother,” Sasha told her, “is one of the bravest people I know, and she has a kinder heart than you could imagine. But she would never give you her heart the way I just did—not to a child. And that’s true in several senses. She doesn’t want you to know her. She specifically wants you not to know her until you’re grown. And even then—she may doubt it’s good for you.”

“Why?” There was indignation in that question. And pain.

He said, “Because she’s afraid you’ll think too much about her mistakes, and maybe, by thinking about them, fall into them.”

“How can I avoid them if no one tells me what they are? Kavi Chernevog was her big mistake, wasn’t he? And she never told me, no one ever told me except my father, the other day—and he didn’t tell me what that mistake was! How am I to know anything?”

He laid a finger on her forehead. “With that, mouseling. With your own intelligence. There aren’t any right answers lo certain questions. There are best answers. But if you’ve left anything unconsidered in what you do, that’s the thing that will most surely haunt your sleep at night. Do you understand me?”

Very softly, after a moment of looking into his eyes: “Yes, uncle.”

“Good,” he said, and stood up and pulled her to her feet. “Good for all of us.”

The whole house felt charged with lightnings, which called to mind what her father had said about mother and thunderstorms. Ilyana made herself very quiet, coming through the door with uncle Sasha, and found her mother sitting on the bench in front of the hearth, her father sitting on the floor next to her. Her father’s worried glance tried to warn her; but she knew. She knew. She kept all but the most shallow, immediate thoughts out of J her head, and carefully bent and kissed her mother on the side of the face.

Her mother suddenly reached and caught her skirt. She panicked, then remembered uncle Sasha was there to protect her and made no effort to escape, while her mother hugged her so hard it hurt.

She knew she ought to feel sorry for her mother. She knew she should think about her mother’s unhappiness, but she could not, right now. She found only pity enough to do the dutiful thing and put her arms about her mother’s shoulders. Her mother’s hair still had tiny twigs caught in it, the braids were coming undone; she had lost the kerchief somewhere, and torn her sleeve, and scratched her cheek on some branch, us it looked: she had run down to the bank, her mother actually must have run, when she could hardly remember her mother running in her life—

Which was one of the problems with her mother, dammit, and it did not make her feel any sorrier for her, it made her feel nothing but angrier, if she let herself think about it, and she did not want to do that. She sat, quietly, smoothing her mother’s hair, wishing her thoughts to herself.