C. Cherryh - Yvgenie

An ordinary man also had to accept that his best friend knew more about his wife than he did, and constantly heard things from her that went past him. “So what can I do about it?”

“Warn her. Advise her. She listens to you.”

“What do I know? At least ’Veshka had a father to look to. Mine was no good example. And your uncle Fedya was certainly no substitute.”

“Master Uulamets was a lot of things; but he wasn’t wise with his daughter—or with his wife.”

“How can I advise her? How can I reason with her? I’m just an ordinary man. I don’t understand. I can’t hear, I can’t see.”

“Tell me, what would you have done if your father had decided you shouldn’t be on the streets, and locked you in The Doe’s basement?”

Appalling thought. “I’d have—”

“Of course you would.”

First chance he got, up the chimney, or out the door. He would never have abided captivity. Never.

Sasha said, “If Eveshka’s worried about her own nature in the girl, think about your own.”

What gives you the right? he had asked his father, every time Ilya Kochevikov had made a desultory attempt at reining him in. Where were you when I needed you?

“I really think you ought to take her with you this next trip south,” Sasha said. “Maybe to Anatoly’s place. There might even be some young lad to think about.”

Some young lad. His heart went thump. “God, give her something else to worry about while we’re about it! She’s got enough to deal with!”

“She’s fifteen, Pyetr. She’s never seen ordinary folk.”

“What for the god’s sake do you think I am?”

“You’re everything she knows of the world outside this woods, but you’re not as ordinary as you think. She needs some sense of other people, a whole variety of people. When she wishes, she needs to have some vision of what and who she might be touching.”

“Her mother’s never been out of this woods. Her grandfather never—”

“Yes, and it never helped them. It would be very hard for Eveshka to go, this late. She wouldn’t know how to see things. She wouldn’t have any patience with the Fedyas and the ‘Mitris of the world.”

“They’d be cinders.”

“Not as readily as you might think. But Eveshka certainly does have a way of finding the dark in the world. And your daughter doesn’t, yet. Your daughter just might look past people like ‘Mitri and see, for instance, old Ivan Ivanovitch, or some nice young farmer lad.”

“She’d have no idea how to deal with boys.”

“So tell her.”

“Tell her what?”

“Whatever fathers tell their daughters. Tell her what you’d have told yourself when you were that age. Tell her what you needed to know.”

“God, I wouldn’t say that to her!”

“Forgive me.” Sasha was distinctly blushing. “But someone should.”

“She’s still a child!”

“Not in all points. What were you thinking about when you were fifteen?”

“A drunken father. Money. Staying alive.”

“And?”

A succession of female faces came to him, some of them nameless so far as he was concerned, one of them three times his age. Riotous living. Being drunk, on the rooftree of The Doe.

“She’s a girl!” he said aloud, and then thought that it was all the more reason for worry.

“She’s still your daughter.”

Sasha knew Ilyana better than he did, too, Pyetr was sure. It was love for him that had made Sasha and Eveshka pack him off to far places whenever Ilyana had had some problem, for his safety, Eveshka had always said, and so had Sasha, whose parents had both burned to death the day his father had beaten a very frightened young wizard once too often. Lightnings might gather (literally) over the cottage. But bolts had never hit the house, and it had been a long time since Ilyana’s last real tantrum. Perhaps their magic had won the day, or perhaps Ilyana had just grown old enough to think before she wished.

“My daughter, yes, but, god, Sasha, I can’t talk to her about young men—”

“Should ’Veshka?”

“Sasha, I don’t know my daughter that well. I’ve missed so much of her life—sometimes it seems it’s all the important parts. You’re more her father than I am. You talk to her.”

“God, no!”

“Sasha, I’d botch it. I’d scare her half to death.”

“Don’t ever say that. Absolutely she’d listen to you. She tells me how very special her father is.”

“Has she got the right fellow?”

“Don’t joke. Not about that. You’re the sun and the moon to her. She loves you more than anyone alive.”

“She has no idea who I am. Or what I was. Or what I did or might have done.”

“I think she knows very well what you are. And you should remember one other important thing.”

“What, for the god’s sake?”

“That I was about her age when I took up with you. That’s what fifteen is.”

It was true, god, it was true, he had let the years creep up on him with no understanding how they added up: he had hardly figured his wife out yet.

But Sasha had indeed set out into the world at about that age—carrying a half-dead fool through the woods, sustaining his life on wishes and a handful of berries; a fifteen-year-old had fought ghosts and wizards for his sake before all was done—not to mention that Eveshka had eluded her father and gotten herself killed, hardly a year older than fifteen: that disaster, they had certainly been thinking of—and denying with every wish of their hearts.

“She’s growing up,” Sasha said. “Whatever we’ve done hitherto, she’s arrived quite naturally now at making choices of her own, choices that we won’t always know about—nor should we. The child’s due her day. She’s smothered her magic so far—we’ve all encouraged that. But Eveshka smothers hers for more reasons than mothering: she refuses to let it out any longer. She thinks if she says nothing but no, a child is going to choose the same course and renounce magic. Maybe. But I certainly wouldn’t bet on it; besides which, in doing that, she’s not showing the child how to be responsible for her wishes—and Ilyana hasn’t had the experience I’d had, nor the experience her mother had had by her age, either. Let me tell you, you may have missed a few scary moments, Pyetr, but for the next few years, you may be the most important influence in her life. She worships you.”

“God.”

“Don’t put on a face like that. I’m very serious. Your wishes—if you can think of it that way—have as much power now with the mouseling as mine or Eveshka’s will hereafter. She’s had our teaching. She’s had every piece of advice from us she can stand or understand. She’s had two very different teachers, in magic. But more and more now our mouse is going to choose her own way, test her own ideas, put her fingers into the fire to see if it’s hot. Didn’t we both?”

That rang true. But he had never stopped at burned fingers.

“She’s your daughter,” Sasha said. “In that much you already know the things she might do.”

“God, no wonder Eveshka’s worried.”

Her friend had not been there in the morning, when it had been easy to slip away. She had waited and she had waited by the river shore, and finally given up and walked the long way around, up the bank and into the woods the long circuit behind uncle’s cottage, all so her mother would not see her coming from the riverside.

In the afternoon she wrote in her book, in which every wizard, her mother swore, had to keep faithfully all his wishes, all his reasons, and all the possible things those — wishes could touch.

Never lie to the book, her mother had told her: I’ll never read it without your leave. That’s a promise, Ilyana.