C. Cherryh: Yvgenie

She backed further away—it seemed safest, under the circumstances.

He held out his hands.

“I don’t think we should,” she whispered. She honestly had no idea what the next step could be except the one that she knew her mother would disapprove. “Why don’t we go for a walk? Come up by the stable. Patches has grown so—”

He went on smiling at her and held out one hand, indicating the river shore with the other—no, he did not want to go up near the house; and he might be right: it was a good way to get caught. So she walked with him into the deeper shade, where it was easier to see each other.

Oh, so many details of his face were changed: she stood there only staring at him a breath or two before she felt un-easy and looked away to the water, which was far less an attraction. “Patches has grown, of course,” she said, in a voice higher than she intended, and went on to tick off on her fingers the things that had happened since last year. “The fox kit went wild. We had a nest of mice this spring, and mother said if I let them loose near the house she’d wish me lost in the woods.”

A chill touch came on her shoulder. She let it rest there, because if she turned around now, they would be facing each other much too closely. She said, “Don’t do that. You make me nervous.”

He took his hand away. So she did glance back at him, finding him still closer than she thought safe, holding his hand just a little way from touching her, as if to say he wanted to, but he would not if she forbade it.

His face was so much more grown-up—except the eyes, which regarded her with the familiar anxiousness to be understood: he shook his head at her, meaning, she hoped, that he was sorry he had scared her; and he signed to her that he wanted her to walk with him further along the shore.

That seemed far safer than looking into his eyes at this range. So she walked with him, while Owl glided along ahead of them, sometimes so milky white she could see the barring on his wings, sometimes nothing but gossamer in a shaft of evening sun.

They discovered curious branches the river had washed up, they found shells, they found dens of this and that creature that lived on this shore—all these things had used to occupy their walks. But such diversions seemed trivial now. She picked up a water-smoothed shell to show him, but it was an excuse for distraction, a chance to discover whether her hands were shaking.

She said, “You’re not wishing me, are you?”

He put a hand on his heart, sank down on his heels and reached out to stir the foam at the water edge with his fingers. Froth moved: that was all the strength he had in the living world. Perhaps that was what he was trying to tell her—that he could not really touch her.

He could never really touch her.

And she did want him—not now, but someday, perhaps this year, perhaps the next or the next, at some time her thoughts and her heart agreed.

She caught some faint impression from him then. Listening to his thoughts was like seeing him by sunlight: the eyes saw and the ears heard so many substantial things it was hard to concentrate on one’s imagination. His thoughts were like that: she had heard his as rarely as she had seen him by bright day, and beneath the murmur of the river and the sighing of the reeds and the leaves it seemed she could even hear his voice, saying something about the dark and waiting.

“I can almost hear you,” she whispered.

He stood up, face to face with her. His lips moved—she thrust the river sound to the back of her mind and listened for him. She said, ever so quietly herself, “I’m afraid to ask you questions. I might ask a wrong one. If I asked the wrong one mightn’t I send you away?”

He shook his head.

“No question can hurt you?”

He touched his heart. He gestured toward her, inviting her to go on.

A thousand questions leaped up. She said, breathlessly, “Is it safe to ask what you are?”

That made him laugh. She thought, Foolish question. Of course. He’s a ghost.

She asked, “Is it safe to ask why you come here?”

Another gesture from heart to her, to his eyes.

Flattering, but her father gave answers like that to her mother when he wanted his own way. She made herself coldly sensible like her mother, and asked, “But why here? Why here instead of the woods lately? Do you have anything special to do with this place?”

He reached and touched beneath her chin, said words too faint to hear.

He laid a finger on her lips, then, and a chill came on them and on her heart. She whispered, “So you can’t answer everything.”

The way he gazed into her eyes made her think about the kiss he had given her, and sent a shiver through her knees. She wished please not, not yet, she was hardly sure about the last one. She thought it had been nice. She just wanted to think a while about the next one.

He went on looking at her. She said, “I don’t even know your name.”

His lips moved. She heard “…your friend, Ilyana,”—which was what she wanted to hear, and all she wanted to hear, until she could get her feelings and her thinking straightened out. She was shaky—not scared, just—shaky all over.

While birds courted like crazy things through the branches of the trees.

He gestured upward. “Look at them,” she heard.

She did look, and on the way down from looking up found herself looking straight into his eyes. She thought, But what comes of that is baby birds. And with a ghost?

She thought, or he said—she was not sure—

“—I’d never do you harm, Ilyana. I’d die first.”

She said, aloud, before she thought, “You are dead.”

That might have banished him then and there, if it were mere ignorance holding him to the earth. He had made her that reckless, that inconsiderate of her actions. But he said, ever so faintly to her ears: “You’re why I come here, so long as I have the strength. I swear to you, I’ve never broken the rules.”

“ What rules?”

She thought, for no reason, of leshys, tall as trees and very like them. She thought of a ring of thorns, a stone, and golden leaves.

He said, “Don’t betray me, Ilyana. Don’t tell anyone. And never ask for my heart. I’d so quickly give it to you. Owl’s such a hardhearted bird.”

“You’re a wizard!”

“Oh, yes.” His voice came much more strongly now. And she had never been sure of the color of his eyes or his hair, but they seemed dusky now, and a faint flush colored his face against the shadow of the brush. “I was. And you are. Maybe it was your wish all along that brought me. Or mine. I fear I’m no more than a wish—my own, for life; and yours— perhaps for company. And mine again now—for you. Do you understand rusalki? Do you know now?—Please don’t run.”

It had crossed her mind. So did staying for questions, since it was still her friend gazing so closely into her eyes. “Rusalki are drowned girls—”

“And I’m not.” Gentle laughter, a downward glance of still-boyish eyes, a look up again, under her lashes. “Neither drowned nor a girl. Not particularly angry at my fate. So it can’t be sailors that I court, nor travelers in the woods; it’s only you, Ilyana. And forgive me—I’ve borrowed a little of your strength; but only enough to speak to you with my own voice. I won’t take more than that, I swear to you.”

“Oh, god.”

“Please.” He caught at her hand to stay her and from that chill touch a tingling ran through her bones. “I’m the one in danger now. I’m the one your thought can banish. I beg you don’t. I beg you listen to me.”

“God.” Everything was tottering, her one friendship in all her life gone first confusing and threatening, and imminently fatal, if a rusalka was truly what he was.