C. Cherryh: Yvgenie

Sasha had another slice of bread—from grain not of their growing: Pyetr traded flour for it downriver, with simples and cures they made and be-wished. From that source they had butter likewise. Honey, the forest bees gave them. Fish they had from the river—Pyetr could not abide hunting, less so the longer they lived here, and he never could; but fish never left their young orphans by one’s fireside all winter, to spoil one’s appetite for hare or wildfowl—the god knew, they had even had a wounded swan one year, ungrateful creature, which had had a vicious habit of chasing people, even the one who fed it. It had knocked Ilyana down, Ilyana being all of seven, and they had flinched and worried for days about lightning bolts.

It comforted all of them that the swan had survived its indiscretion to fly free that autumn. They had even forgiven the swan—and praised Ilyana’s youthful self-restraint, telling her how marvelously wise she was… god, he had forgotten all of that.

They had spent so much worry on her, a wizard-child being the handful she could be, and he wondered (but did not, of course, want to know) whether Ilyana truly understood their concern. The little girl who had not killed the swan, the little girl who loved her father, truly loved him, would never do Pyetr harm. Perhaps they might have relied on that more than they had and confused the child less—but that was all hindsight.

Maybe it was time now to tell Ilyana more than they had— the rest of the story about her grandfather Uulamets and the raven, about—

But the time for that was not his to choose. He only set it in mind that he should speak to Eveshka and Pyetr about it very soon now. He thought, Pyetr and I understood about living with people, but Eveshka never learned, here in the woods, alone with a demanding, worried father, and a mother—god, best not even think about Draga, not after dark.

—So how can Eveshka help but make mistakes, never having seen a mother with a child? And how can she help but worry?

Not mentioning that Pyetr had had no father to speak of, no father worth speaking of, at least, no one to teach him how to bring up a child—and not speaking of his own parents. A wizard-child’s parents were very much in jeopardy. He was an orphan; and he had never told Ilyana that plain fact, either.

Terrible thoughts to share supper with—and surely unwarranted, where Ilyana was concerned. They had seen her refrain from the swan. The danger she posed was not as likely to Pyetr as to anyone who might threaten him—or who she might mistakenly believe threatened him. They were too hard on the girl, he decided that once and for all: the mouseling was coming to that age he remembered well, when all the books and the rules in the world (and he had certainly a good number of them) could not provide all the why-not’s to keep wizardry from being a very dangerous thing.

Time, he thought, while Pyetr and Eveshka discussed radishes and the thinning of birch trees, time perhaps that they give the child an idea of the world outside the woods, perhaps take her downriver and show her how farmer-folk lived. Perhaps that would be the appropriate beginning of explanations—showing her those things she could not at this age understand… how ordinary folk did not discuss weather-making over turnip soup, or whether the thinning of birches on the river shore should be theirs or the leshys’ choice.

He was not sure that he himself could understand ordinary folk, and he had grown up among them and even passed for ordinary in some degree. He knew the ways of the world outside, he knew the thoughts, he had seen most everything a boy could possibly see, working as The Cockerel’s stable-boy and as scullion in a tavern kitchen. The god only knew, what with Eveshka’s shielding the child from this and from that, how much the girl did understand of men and women and their doings.

Certainly more about consequences by now than she had when she had circumvented the wishes of two very canny wizards and given Missy and Volkhi a most unplanned-for offspring. I want a horse! had given way to carrying water and grain for three and not two, and a great deal of mucking-out, especially in winters.

Not mentioning sitting up with Missy one thundery, rainy night, with three grown-ups trying to explain delicately to an anxious twelve-year-old it was not good to wish things to go faster. If a girl had to learn about the world, he supposed that there were worse teachers than old Missy.

High time, certainly, to trust the girl a bit—perhaps even to take her down as far as Anatoly’s, maybe even Zmievka, where there were young folk near her own age. Time to risk, even, the chance of young romance: not likely that any lad in Zmievka could catch Ilyana’s eye, or pass her father’s scrutiny, let alone Eveshka’s. But he had to talk to Pyetr about that, too, tomorrow, if he—

“So what have you been up to all day?” Pyetr asked him.

“Oh, reading.” Perhaps he had dropped a stitch or two. He thought Pyetr might have asked him something before that.

“So do you want to go out tomorrow?”

He most wanted a little more time to his books right now. He had been following a particularly knotty thought the last several days; but he also saw himself getting as stodgy and housebound as master Uulamets had been, and decided that his sudden perception of the mouseling this evening just might be his wizardry forestalling the very problems he had been working on for fifteen years. Perhaps it was really, imminently, absolutely tomorrow, time to say something to Pyetr, and see whether Pyetr could reason with Eveshka about the child.

“Yes,” he said, blinking present company into his thoughts. “Yes, that might be a very good idea.”

Silly thing to say. Pyetr looked at him curiously across the table and said, “All right.”

Eveshka’s hair-brushing sent crackles through the air. It was wonderful hair, pale gold, so long she had to catch it up in handfuls to deal with it. Eveshka wished the tangles out of it, Pyetr was sure: he had never seen anyone go so hard at so much hair with so little breakage; but all the same he took the brush from her, picked up a heavy weight of it and applied gentler strokes to the task, at which Eveshka sighed and shut her eyes. She habitually smelled of violets and lavender and herbs from the kitchen. Tonight rosemary and wood smoke figured in, too, which, with the smell of her hair and the face the bronze mirror cast back to him, could make even a sensible long-wedded man forget that he had begun this evening tired and out of sorts. He bent and kissed her on the top of her head, kissed her on the temple, too.

At which she suddenly leapt up and hugged him fiercely, protesting she was sorry she had been so short today, the bread had gone wrong—

“The bread was fine,” he said.

“I wanted it to be,” she said. He understood how she loathed doing that. She used her magic as little as she could— and seldom on trifles. She was far too magical to throw her wishes around on petty problems, even if those were precisely the safest kind of wishes to make: that kind of solution to failures, they were all agreed, set a bad example for their daughter, teaching her too much wizardry and too little ordinary resourcefulness.

Eveshka said, resting her head against him: “When are you going down to Anatoly’s?”

“Oh, I don’t know, the weather’s holding. Maybe—maybe three, four days, why not? Are we ready?”

In other years, she had been quick with an account of things she wanted, a few special things she would hope (but never wished) he might bargain for. In other springtimes the kitchen had been cluttered with little pots of salve and herbs she had put away during the winter, the trading goods they had to offer. But the season had crept up on her, perhaps: there was no sign of the packing baskets and herb-pots yet, und somehow, perhaps for that reason, he had not gotten around to thinking about going downriver either: everything seemed to be running late this year.