C. Cherryh: Yvgenie

I don’t help mother enough?

Damn!

Sasha came through the front gate and walked up to him. Sasha peered off in the direction he had been staring, off toward the woods and nowhere, and said, “What were you staring at?”

“Nothing.”

“With the bucket?”

He had forgotten he was holding it. He changed hands— the rope was cutting into his fingers—and said, seriously: “Sasha, something’s going on with my daughter.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Well, god, if I knew that, then I’d know, wouldn’t I?”

Sometimes Pyetr made outstanding sense. Sometimes he did not. On this occasion, it surely meant that Eveshka’s distress had gotten to him—with an upset daughter who was certainly the finish on matters. Pyetr might have known better what to do with a son, Sasha thought, climbing up to the porch at Pyetr’s heels: Pyetr had had experience enough in the streets of Vojvoda to keep himself well ahead of any single fifteen-year-old boy, possibly even two of them; and he might have been very solemn and very strict and persuaded Eveshka to give way to his opinions more often with a son; while a daughter seemed the god’s own judgment on Pyetr the gambler’s son, who had been familiar with more of Vojvoda’s bedrooms than (Sasha was sure) Pyetr had ever, ever confessed to him, let alone his wife; and god forbid Pyetr should explain such escapades to his daughter.

Pyetr had a wizard wife, Pyetr had a daughter fifteen-going-on-forever, it still seemed so few years; but those years had set their mark on Pyetr: made him content, true; happier, Pyetr swore, than ever in his misspent life. So where had Pyetr gotten those lines along his brow, that in the right angle of the sunlight, one could just this year begin to notice?

But one did not wish things to be different. A wizard got his wishes, that was exactly the trouble: his wishes came true, many of them not quite in the way the wizard in question intended; and if a young wizard learned nothing else as he grew older, it was that he was lucky to have gotten older—past all those youthful years when wishes seemed safer and more possible than they ever would seem again, when a youngster had no second thoughts nor deeper thoughts than I need and I want and I will.

They had brought the girl safely this far. She had done no harm, nor would want harm to any living creature, so far as they could see: if anyone threatened Pyetr, perhaps—indeed, perhaps. But Pyetr’s safety with a wizard child was what had most worried them; and child she was ceasing to be, most clearly so of late.

“About time,” Eveshka said as they came trailing in to a supper already on the table. “There, dear, in the corner.”—This to Pyetr, with the bucket. “God, your boots.”

“I’ll take them off,” Pyetr said, leaned on the wall by the door and began to do that.

“No, no, your soup’s getting cold, you’ll get your hands dirty, god, sit down—”

Sasha sat. It seemed only prudent. Eveshka was constantly moving in the kitchen, busy about things he did not think quite needed urgent attention with supper at hand, although he would confess that the quality of housekeeping in his small cottage could bear a little of that zeal. He had admittedly grown careless, lost in his books: Eveshka accused him frequently on that account. Pyetr said they should go riding and Eveshka said he should tidy up the shelves—but somehow the shelves never did get dusted and Missy grew fat on apples and too much honeyed grain—which, to be sure, Missy deserved: she had seen things quite terrible for a horse, and Missy should have apples and Volkhi’s company and the filly’s forever and laze in the sun and get fat, for his opinion of priorities in the world—

Get out of those damned books, Pyetr would say. Smell the wind, for the god’s sake! And Pyetr would take Volkhi over some jump that made his heart stop, and made him wish—

Wish warmheartedly and with tears in his eyes today for all the world to be right, with Pyetr, with Eveshka, with the daughter who, thank the god, was only half-wizard. He could not tell why such melancholy had afflicted him this afternoon. It came of having a heart, perhaps—which his teacher and late master had said could never be.

He loved them all: they were family to him, who had had not a single relative worth revisiting. Eveshka absolutely insisted he come down from the hill for supper every evening—swearing he would starve, else. The truth, he was well sure, was that she could not bear looking at his kitchen, or eating his cooking, and truth was, too, he had half-forgotten how to cook in the last near score of years, when once he had been quite good at it. His hearth was always out, he absolutely could not hold a fire—

And this house was always warm with light and voices.

“Wonderful,” he said, smelling the soup.

Eveshka was pleased. “Wonderful,” Pyetr echoed dutifully, and sat down at the table, seeming lost in thinking.

Daughters did that to a man, too, Sasha decided: it was probably a very good thing for him to live as isolated and as peacefully as he did, devoted to his studies and well away from women’s business and household work. He had his work with the leshys, which was important, and which took him sometimes afield—less so, lately, true; but he had his books and his studies, which were extremely important, and he had Pyetr and his family right down the hill for the evenings, which, with Eveshka’s preoccupation with tidiness battling the chaos a child made in the household, turned out to be just about the right distance.

He settled comfortably at the table, he had his supper set in front of him as the vodka jug rose from the corner and walked across the floor—a sight that would have surely created consternation in The Cockerel’s taproom back in Vojvoda—where honest citizens would have sworn the jug was bewitched. It happened that it was. But that was not the cause that moved it: the cause lay in two small manlike paws and two bowed legs, and a Yard-thing who believed he had a perfect right to the kitchen and the vodka. Babi waddled over with the jug, expecting his drink and his supper, in that order, and Sasha obligingly took it, unstopped it and poured for the waiting mouth.

Generously. The evening felt chancy, the day had, the whole month had, come to think of it, and a well-disposed Babi was a potent protection.

It was the season for rains and storms. Maybe that was the feeling in the air lately. Maybe that was why Eveshka felt so constantly on edge, and why Ilyana had seemed that way to him this evening.

But no one mentioned problems at the table, thank the god: it was Pass the bowl, have some bread, don’t mind if I do, until Pyetr said: “I think Sasha and I might go for a ride tomorrow.”

“It might rain,” Eveshka said.

“Have you asked it to?”

“Rains do happen without us.”

“Well, then, wish it not. The horses need the stretch.”

“People elsewhere might—”

“Want the rain,” Pyetr sighed. Pyetr knew that well enough. But something happened, someone very close at hand wished, one could feel a sudden small change in Things As They Were. Of wizards at this table there were three— not counting Babi, who was tugging at his trouser-leg, hoping for more vodka.

Pyetr filled his own cup and spilled some for Babi and some for the domovoi who lived in the cellar. There was immediately a happier feeling in the house.

Perhaps after all it had been the domovoi putting in his bid for attention, seldom as the bearish old creature woke. Certainly the timbers creaked and snapped in the way of a House-thing settling back to sleep, and there was none of that groaning that betokened a serious disturbance.