C. Cherryh: Yvgenie

Eveshka feared—feared the good god only knew what, precisely: that Ilyana, who had wizard blood from her and from two grandparents, might turn uncontrollable, might attract magic to her that no child could handle.

Possibly. Ilyana’s ability was considerable and he had no real understanding himself how to govern her, except love and a great deal of listening—reasoning that if anyone had cared or asked him what his thoughts were when he had been her age, if anyone had ever offered seriously to listen to him before Pyetr had, and to advise him before master Uulamets had, then perhaps a great many things might have been different. Listening before advising the child seemed to him to be the best course. And wishing tranquility in these woods: that too—they wished very little change, here on their river shore, far from the demands of ordinary folk or the possibility of visitors. They shared the land, they shared suppers, they shared their lives, when wizards as a rule gave up their hearts and lived with loneliness. Certainly that had been the case with master Uulamets, Eveshka’s father, and certainly it would have been the case with them, except for Pyetr—who was at all points the peace in the household, the center of all the friendship and the love they shared, husband, father, and friend—

Somehow he could never make Pyetr understand that, or make him realize how desolate their lives might have been without him. Thanks to Pyetr he had more than his books and his house, he had a place to go in the evenings where one could sit by the fire and talk. He had friends and a child to watch grow up, as good as one of his own—he had made Ilyana toys when she was small, he had whittled dolls out of wood and painted them with dyes; and carved a quite remarkable horse, with straw for a mane and yarn for a tail. But she had suddenly grown too old for toy horses, too old for toys, that was precisely the trouble he saw coming: there seemed so much difference between this year and last. The toys languished, though loved, in Ilyana’s room, the dyes grew faint—the dolls had had the life hugged out of them years ago and the horse’s mane was a disgrace he had offered to mend, but Ilyana would have none of that, thank you, Patches was her horse and no one would change him.

Now Patches was a real horse. Soon enough Ilyana might ride the woods with a freedom a wizard-child could enjoy, with no fear of bandits, with the not inconsiderable blessing of the leshys, whose names she knew, one of whom had held her in his vast, twiggy arms when she was an infant—old Misighi had, on his first visit after she was born, smelled her over, regarded her with a vast, moss-green eye, and declared she looked to him like a baby mouse. So mouseling she had become; and their mouseling would go where she would in the world, ultimately—to whatever woodland fastness the leshys held now, or to the edge of fields where ordinary folk lived, or within sight of Kiev—the god knew. Since they could not be with her every step to guide her actions, it was the quality of her choices they had to assure.

Certainly a young wizard would make a few mistakes along the way. The vodka jug was one of his. So were the wishes that had brought Volkhi to them, and Missy; and the god only knew what calamity their flight might have caused in Vojvoda. He still did not know, nor wish to know, exactly what had set them free.

And generally, as tonight as he opened his book and began to write, in a house that had neither domovoi nor dvorovoi, nor any feeling of home—

Generally he did not think at all about Vojvoda, or his family. He, most of all of them, did not want his life to change—and he had to be careful of that, appended as he was to Pyetr’s household.

Odd uncle Sasha. Sasha the maker of toys, for the last child he might ever see. He thought, If I’d stayed in Vojvoda, if I’d married, if it had really ever been a choice to be ordinary—

He wondered what had become of the aunt and uncle who had brought him up. He wondered—

But he sternly forbade himself such thoughts. The god only knew what disasters they could lead to, and as for what had become of his relatives in Vojvoda, who his cousin Mikhail had married, or whether he had a horde of younger cousins by now—it was as good as in the moon, that life, and never that close, any hope of an ordinary family, not for Sasha Misurov. He had the finest any man could dream of, and that should certainly be enough—

Even if the house was dark and lonely at night, and even if it made sounds that had nothing to do with a domovoi, and everything to do with emptiness.

It was so hard not to think—but one dared not, dared not dream or think at all under this roof, with her mother on the other side of the wall. Ilyana lay abed under coverlets her mother had sewn, furiously concentrated on the patterns of the lamplight on the wooden ceiling. God, the nights she had counted the joints, the pegs, the knotholes, and discovered the animal shapes in the wood of this room—while she tried not to listen to the words that strayed out of her parents’ bedroom or to wonder what they were arguing about or why her name figured in it.

Most of all she dared not think of the pattern that reminded her of Owl—nor recall her friend waiting on the moonlit river shore.

But it seemed—it seemed something very like his presence brushed the edges of her mind tonight, so vivid a touch she could imagine him standing at her bedside.

—But that can’t happen. He can’t come into the house. He daren’t come here. It’s only my imagination.

A ghost would have to belong here, to get inside, isn’t that the rule? And surely he doesn’t; and surely the domovoi would never let him in without so much as a sound— Rusalki can kill you just by wanting to. So he doesn’t need to get into my bedroom if he did mean any harm, and it’s stupid to be afraid of him. If he’s a ghost he’s been one since I first knew him, he’s no different than he ever was, and if I don’t stop thinking about him right now, mother’s going to hear me.

Something still seemed to lurk in the shadows by the wardrobe, and of a sudden—

Babi turned up as a weight on her feet, eyes slitted, chin on manlike paws. When her heart settled, then she dared sleep.

When her heart settled, then she dared sleep.

“Get her out of the house,” Sasha said to Pyetr as they were riding through the woods, while birds sang like lunatics in the cool dawn. “That’s my opinion, whatever Eveshka says. Take her downriver with you. You don’t spend enough time with her.”

Pyetr thought instantly of crises developing on that trip, weather, meetings with people ashore, some of them ill-mannered or merely fools. “God, Eveshka would never have that.”

“Eveshka’s far too strict with the girl. Yesterday evening every truant from here to Kiev must have run home to his mother—instantly. Thieves and burglars in all the Russias must have mended their ways. Our mouse had reason to be upset.”

An ordinary man could not hear such storms. But he could certainly see and feel their effects in people he loved.

“I’ve talked with ’Veshka.”

“And she said?”

“Owls.”

“Owls.”

“She dreamed about one. She said an ordinary man—no, that’s not fair—” The plain truth was that he did not remember exactly what he had said to ’Veshka or she had said to him last night: when they argued, he tended to forget exactly what he had said and what he had thought to himself; but when a man was arguing with a wizard, saying and thinking were very little different anyway. “It’s that season, that’s all. One can’t help but remember—”

Sasha said: “She’s certainly on edge. I can feel it in her.”