C. Cherryh: Yvgenie

“Nothing spiteful,” he answered her thoughts, “nothing selfish—well, perhaps a little. I promise you, I’d never harm you. I’ll do anything you want.”

“Then tell me what I ask you.”

“I have no choice.”

“What do you want from me?”

“The things that only you can give.”

“Riddles!” It was a danger with magical things, who might be bound to answer in riddles—on all the places where a trap might lurk.

He said, “There was a vodyanoi once, who lived along this stream.”

“I know about him. His name is Hwiuur. My parents and my uncle warned me.” Worse and worse thoughts: the old snake had never been in his den so long as she had lived. “What’s he to do with you?”

“A threat to you. That’s one thing. He’s come back.” His voice grew fainter. “I daren’t borrow more from you. I can’t stay longer. Believe me, Ilyana—”

“Don’t wish at me! I won’t believe you if you do things like that!”

“You’re growing up, Ilyana. If I’ve any magic left, I wish it to come in this season, while I’m with you. I don’t want you to be alone, Ilyana, and without me, you would be— alone—”

“Alone for what? I’m always alone! I’ve no friend but you!”

His voice was fading. He said, hardly audible, “I can’t explain now. Don’t fail me… tomorrow…”

“Ilyana!” faintly came from beyond the trees. Her mother was calling her. The twilight even out on the river was deeper than she had thought—god, it was nearly dark. And her Mend mimed that she should go, now.

“Back in the morning!” she said, and ran.

“Ilyana!”

Her mother wanted her home, now, immediately, and when one’s mother was a wizard, there could be no question of it—not wise to delay, not now, no thought of why, only obedience: I’m coming, she wanted her mother to know. Yes, mother, quick as I can, mother—

Unfair, unfair to wait all year for these few days—

—and have always to come home at dark, when he’s most here—

She reached the safe ground of the ferry landing, beside the boat and cast a look back down the shore. She saw him lift his hand, then, slim figure made of mist, and saw Owl glide to a perch on his fist.

Then they both were gone.

She turned and ran up the path to the hedge, and struggled through the gap into the sunset yard where her house stood, rustic and weathered, across from her uncle Sasha’s house on the hill. She pounded up the slanted wooden walk-up to the wide porch, opened the door—carefully: she had learned that lesson most distressfully—and slipped inside.

Her mother had her pale blond braids up under a kerchief, her sleeves rolled up, a stirring-spoon in hand, and a look on her face that said dinner was well toward done and a certain daughter was going to do all the dishes tonight by herself.

“Sorry,” Ilyana said in a small voice. “Shall I bring up the dishwater?”

“Bring your father in while you’re about it! God! “Just out to the horses, dear…” As good invite the horses in for dinner!” A wave of the spoon. “Out, out, nobody cares when dinner’s ready, as well throw everything together in a pot and boil it to mush, no one notices.”

“Yes, mother.”

“And ring the bell while you’re about it! Your uncle’s probably given up on dinner by now.”

“Yes, mother!” She snatched up the bucket on her way out the door, rang the bell on the porch and ran down the walk-up and around the corner of the house to the rain barrel, within sight of the garden and the bathhouse, and the stable fence. Black Volkhi and spotted Missy and her filly Patches were having their supper, while Babi sat on the gate post, looking like a fat black cat at the moment (though he was not) while her father seemed to be fixing the gate latch.

“Mother wants us,” she called out, and her father called back, “She wants her radishes, too, mouseling. Your filly’s figured out the gate.”

She wished Patches not to think about the gate and her mother’s green garden, all too close to the stable. Last week it had been the laundry, drying on the line. And she had had to do it all over again, by herself.

“I’ve wished her not to,” she said in her own defense.

“Wishes don’t seem to get between horses and gardens,” her father said, and hammered a peg in. “There. That might work a fortnight.”

She dipped the bucket into the rain barrel and poured for the washbasin on its stand next the barrel. Her father came and washed his face and arms, and, watching him, she thought (her mind was full of thoughts this evening, tumbling one over the other like foxes) how her friend’s hands were slender like that.

“I’ll carry it,” he said, when he had thrown out the dirty water onto the ground and she had filled the pail to the top again. “Watch out, you’ll get mud on your feet. Your mother’s floors—”

It was always mother’s floors. Even if it was their house. She swept her skirts out of the way to watch her boots and the puddles, and matched strides with his long legs as far as the front of the house, panting as she went.

“Where have you been running from?” he asked her, and her heart fairly turned inside out with guilt.

“Oh,” she said, hating that feeling, ashamed because he could not really tell if she lied—and yet she chose the lies she told him more carefully than any of the truths she told her mother: “I was walking. My eyes got used to the dark. I had no idea it was so late.”

“You weren’t down by the river, were you?”

Oh, god, she hated lying to him. “No.”

“Your mother worries, you know.”

“Mother always worries.”

“It’s going to be clear tomorrow, weather’s holding—why don’t we gather up your uncle and go riding tomorrow?”

Babi skipped along at her feet, enthusiastic about riding or about supper, difficult to tell. And she had wanted to go, oh, she would have died to go a handful of days ago, but her father had had the garden to do and the stable roof to mend and uncle Sasha had been at his books and then it had rained for three days—so now her father asked.

She said, miserably, “No. I can’t.”

“Can’t, is it? What appointment have you got that’s so pressing?”

“I don’t help mother enough.” It was lame. It was the only thing she could think of on the spur of the moment. She said, all in a rush, face burning. “I’d better set the table,” and rushed ahead of him and around the corner and up to the porch.

Pyetr Kochevikov considered his daughter’s departing flurry of pale blue skirts and flying blond braids with a certain impression of having misheard something, somewhere, several days gone: Father, please may I take Patches out, please may I go riding, nothing will happen to us, please, father—

Likely nothing would have happened if he had let her go out alone, but the thought of a young rider, even wizardry gifted, on a very scarcely ridden young horse, made him a little anxious about turning her loose on her own, the rider in question being his own flesh and blood—

Himself, Pyetr Ditch Kochevikov, who had not been reputed for sanity or sense in his youth: he knew the things she might do, he had them listed one and each. Eveshka’s heritage had not been at fault when they had found Ilyana standing on the bathhouse roof (”So I can see the clouds!”) or the time she had ridden Volkhi off into the woods (”I wasn’t lost! He was!”) or the year she had wanted a horse of her own so much that two grown-up wizards’ spells had gone awry and old Missy the carter’s horse had turned up in foal to high-spirited Volkhi. They had heard nothing else but “When can I ride her?” from the time the filly’s feet had hit the ground; and, this being the long-awaited season for that—