C. Cherryh - Yvgenie

She looked about them, seeing in the peeling trunks the likeness of empty eyes and the whiteness of bone. She wanted Babi with her, please. She wanted anything alive, besides herself and Yvgenie and the horses, because nothing else here was. She wanted anything magical and wholesome— because magic had gone from this place, magic had died here—not well, or peacefully.

Kavi sank down on the stone as if the strength had gone out of him, too—and she felt alarm, thinking: A rusalka’s magical, isn’t he? as Owl flew up to perch by him on the stone. He took Owl on his hand and said, faintly, “They wanted me to bring you here. But it’s too late now.”

“Bring me here? Why? Misighi’s my uncle’s friend. Misighi could come to the house—they don’t need anyone to bring me to them. If they wanted me to come here, they could just have asked, couldn’t they?”

He only shook his head in dismay, and for a moment, a very small moment, there seemed hazy edges about him, Kavi’s shape and Yvgenie’s.

“He’s afraid,” Yvgenie said. “He—” Yvgenie’s blurred shape got up from the stone and looked into the woods, shaking his head slowly, once and twice. She tried to eavesdrop, and caught only images of Kiev, and Yvgenie’s father, und a hallway at night where men gathered and talked of murders. He recalled a stairway, and towers and walls, and leading Bielitsa out into the dark, out the gates of Kiev—

Yvgenie said, looking around at the sky, the dead leshys. “The falling suns. The moons and the thorns. This is the place. He had to bring you here—to them. They wanted him to. He slept for years here. But he forgot and it was too long, it was much too long. He was only a boy—and leshys don’t understand little boys. —God it’s all full of dark spots—”

“Don’t say that—” Oh, god, a stupid wish, when he was desperately trying to warn her. She wanted out of this place, she felt the life going away from him and Owl as if he was bleeding it into the stone and the ground, the longer he stayed here. “ Come away.”

He shook his head, with the most dreadful memory of fear, and thorns, and a confusion of suns in the sky. OwI dying, struck by her father’s sword.

She came and took his hand, wanting Patches and Bielitsa to stay with them: his fingers were cold as winter. “Don’t argue with me, please, Kavi, it’s not good here. It’s not safe, Kavi, please listen. Something terrible happened in this place, and it’s dead, and you can’t be near it any longer, Kavi please, let’s get out of here, let’s go on!”

He stood still, resisting her pulling, and gazed out amour the trees. “It’s there,” he said faintly, and she looked, and saw nothing but dead leshys and dead brush.

“What’s there!”

“Where I was buried. Where I died. Across the river…”

The cold was spreading from his hand to hers. She held on, she wanted him to leave this place, with all her mind she wanted it, and pulled at him, made him walk, that direction, any direction, if that was all he could want—as long as it was out of this place. Please the god it was out of this deadly grove.

She wished Bielitsa and Patches to follow them. They left the stone behind, they re-entered the maze of thorns. She was colder and colder—her fingers could not even feel his, now.

“Please, a little further, a little further—”

Thorns scratched her arms, caught at her skirts and at him and at the horses. Then something cold brushed against her, Something flitted through the brush ahead, and following it with her eye she saw it take a path she had not realized was there. She fought through the thorns and saw the way through, if only she could reach it. “There,” she said. “There! There’s a path, do you see?”

Babi turned up, at Missy’s feet as they went, and Sasha was only half glad of that. “The dvorovoi,” Nadya said, the instant he appeared, trotting beside them as they rode, and he said:

“I’d rather hoped he was with Pyetr.”

Nadya held sometimes to his belt, sometimes to his waist— at the moment it was the former, but a fox darted from cover and Missy made a little toss of her head, and immediately it was the latter, tightly.

“Only a fox,” he said. “Missy’s never trusted them since—”

Since he had thought shapeshifters or the like might use that form, and most unfortunately told Missy.

Nadya’s arms stayed where they were. She had never ridden a horse, she was thinking, she had never even left the walls of her house and her garden—

Nor seen a fox, nor a bear nor any wild creature. Considering that, she was very brave.

And reconciled to Pyetr, at least she knew certain things that made her understand him—Sasha most earnestly tried not to eavesdrop, and all the same caught embarrassed and embarrassing thoughts about him while they were riding, which, god! were no help at all to a wizard trying to think. One could hardly tell her not to have thoughts like that: the limit was the eavesdropper’s, or his concentration: she was all unaware and innocent. She was thinking—how he felt so strong, although he was hardly taller than she was; how he must ride horses and do things other than magic; how just thinking about him—

—made her feel—so entirely different than poor Yvgenie, who was handsome and kind and brave and everything any reasonable girl could ever want—but no one had ever looked at her and made her shiver all the way to her toes the way he did when she had looked him in the eyes. She had no idea even when she had begun to feel that way, except last night she had finally believed her father was telling the truth, and therefore that her father’s friend must be everything he seemed to be—

It was not her idea, the god help her, he had done it with his stupid, selfish wishes that had nothing to do with this girl—Pyetr’s daughter, for the god’s sake—had wanted for herself. He had done one damnably wrong after the other since they had left home, he had completely lost the train of his thoughts last night, blotted an entire page he could not recall in entirety, spilled all but a few pages worth of ink, and now with Nadya’s arms about him he could not even remember the straight and the whole of what he had been thinking when he wished himself asleep. Something to do with the mouse—something to do with Nadya, that simply would not come clear to him, or that had not even been that urgent, only leading up to some brink he dared not cross.

Dammit, he knew now how to do real magic, he had discovered the truth old Uulamets had hid and he could let fly a wish that would surely make the mouse hear him—or bring rains clear to Kiev.

But he could not believe in his own wisdom any longer, he knew the scope of his mistakes already, and how did one wish belief back, when belief was central to the wish?

The great magics were always easy—to someone in the right moment, at the exact moment of need—and always impossible, to someone who did not expect the result.

Make up your mind, Pyetr would shout at him. God, he wanted to. But what was fair to wish, with Pyetr’s daughter involved? Leave me alone?

Go love Yvgenie Pavlovitch?

He had no idea where that might lead her either—to harm, in this woods; to heartbreak and disaster, if Yvgenie was dead; to disaster for all of them, if she provoked the mouse to jealousy and foolishness. Everything wrong seemed possible, and the only wish that made sense—was not fair, dammit, simply was not fair to her. What in the god’s name could he do with a girl who had no idea of wizards or magic and no idea what she could expect of him?

The ground dipped and rose again. Nadya caught hold of his shirt, and of him, thinking of bears and wolves, of bandit and dreadful walking houses, and thinking over all it was better than the four walls of a garden in Vojvoda, if she was eaten by a bear out here it was better than that—she would never go back, never, never, never live like that. She feared for Pyetr, she wished she had been worth enough to go with him, she was glad enough they were going, and if she was any help she was willing to try—