C. Cherryh - Chernevog

Babi turned up at his knee, tugging at his trouser leg, upset, one could reckon, at finding no supper waiting.

“Go find her, Babi. Get her back here if you want your dinner. Or you’ll have to put up with my cooking.”

Babi dropped to all fours and walked the circuit of the room in a decided sulk, all shoulders.

“I really don’t like this,” Sasha repeated to himself, shed his cap and coat onto the kitchen bench and started sorting the books and clutter on the side of the kitchen table, the survivors of the broken shelf.

“Well, hell, I don’t like it either! But we haven’t any choice, have we?” Pyetr went to the fireplace, poked up the ashes and thrust a little kindling into the banked coals. Flame shot up quite readily, yellow light. He lit a straw, stood up and lit the oil lamp, which threw giant shadows about the walls and made Sasha’s worried frown disturbingly grim.

“She didn’t leave any note?” Sasha asked him. “Nothing on her desk, no paper or—”

“No.” It frustrated him, this leaving of vitally important messages on arcane little bits of paper. He jammed his hands into his coat pockets and set his jaw, thinking about the silence in the woods, the shapeshifter that had taken Uulamets’ likeness. “I don’t know why she would bother. Does she ever leave one when it’s important? —Damn it, Sasha, you know exactly what it is, she’s mad and she’s off to talk to the trees or whatever she does out there, I don’t see we should worry.”

Sasha ran a hand through his hair, left his books, went and pulled up the trap to the cellar.

“She’s not hiding down there, for the god’s sake,” Pyetr said, at the end of his temper, embarrassed, even though Sasha was their closest and only friend, at having a constant witness to their private difficulties. He knew he would end up, he always did, defending Eveshka to a boy who had more sense man Eveshka in his little finger. Then Sasha would end up, inevitably, telling him the same old things, that he just had to understand Eveshka, Eveshka had to have time, Eveshka had to be alone with her thoughts—

“It’s not safe out there,” was what Sasha said, on the first step of the cellar stairs.

Pyetr gave a twitch of his shoulders, uneasy at this urgent searching and poking about in dark places, as if something truly grim could have happened. “I know it’s not safe out there, we both know it’s not safe out there, but she’s a wizard, isn’t she? -What in hell do you want in the cellar?” Pyetr had a sudden, most terrible imagination that Sasha knew beyond a doubt that something was amiss—with a girl who could stop a man’s heart with a wish.

Certainly there was no chance any intruder could get past the front door—

Except a shapeshifter, except someone that she knew… or thought she knew.

Sasha said to him, casting a glance over his shoulder, “Is there bread?”

Pyetr glanced at the counter, where loaves of bread wrapped in towels—Eveshka had left that much for them, in the usual place, evidence she had planned for them coming home. She had at least done her usual baking…

But damn her, he had searched the woods for her on earliest disappearances, spent sleepless nights and called himself hoarse, all to no profit. She came back when she wanted to come back. There was no reason to think it was more than that, no matter the scare they had had.

He brought a loaf to Sasha, on the steps, waist-deep in the dark. He guessed by now what Sasha was thinking of: the domovoi, down in the cellar. The House-thing favored homey gifts like fresh bread: it had gotten fatter and fatter on Eveshka’s baking in the years they had lived here; but whatever wisdom it had, it sat on. It never offered them a thing but to stir when quarrels disturbed the peace, and to make the house timbers creak on winter nights like some old man’s joints. “What can it tell us?” he asked sullenly. “It’s only Eveshka it talks to.”

Sasha ignored his opinions and ducked down the stairs into the dark. What floated up to him was,

“Just stay there, don’t block the light and don’t say anything!”

Meaning that a magic-deaf fool was apt to open his mouth at the wrong moment and offend the creature. He was outstandingly good at that. If he had ever made sense to Eveshka she would not be off in the woods right now, and they would not be worrying and wondering if she was just off on a sulk or a soul-searching or whatever she did to keep herself, Eveshka would say, from her damnably dangerous tempers.

He paced. That was all he could do.

Then of a sudden Babi growled, leapt up and vanished right through the shut door to the outside.

“Babi!” Pyetr crossed the room hardly slower than Babi, jerked the door open, hand on his sword—

And saw Volkhi head across the neat rows of vegetables with Babi in pursuit, wreaking equal havoc in Eveshka’s rain-soaked garden as they went.

“Damn!” Pyetr whistled, loud and sharp. “Volkhi! —Dammit, Babi, get him out of mere!” Volkhi swung off toward the side of the house, with a kick in his gait. Babi followed. Pyetr set his arm against the doorframe and leaned his head against it, thinking, god, Eveshka had worked so hard on that garden, Eveshka had weeded it, watered and taken pride in that garden, and if she saw it before he smoothed that rain-soaked ground he would have to go and live with the leshys, that was all there was to it.

Nothing was wrong. She would come back, please the god Eveshka was only angry at him. He deserved it for his fecklessness and his stupidity: no one in Vojvoda had ever counted him a responsible type, the god knew ’Veshka had had a great deal to put up with. He only wanted her back safe, that was all he asked.

The domovoi did not like the light. It hated disturbances, it wanted peace, and if one ever wanted to see it, one might search the shadows at the end of the shelves, among the bins and barrels of the cellar. It stayed as far as it could get from the stairs and noisy comings and goings. So at the very limit of the dim light that came from the kitchen above, Sasha unwrapped his offering, squatted down and broke the bread for the domovoi, setting the pieces on the floor.

Timbers creaked at the end of the cellar. A shadow moved there. It was hard to see its real shape. Sometimes it was a bear. Sometimes it was a black pig. Sometimes it was a very shaggy, very puzzled old grandfather, which was what Sasha had seen when they had summoned it to feed it and explain their plans for the house and the changes they proposed to make. It had simply wanted to know the roof would be sound, Eveshka had said: that was all it cared about, besides a loaf of bread now and again.

One hoped it forgave them for the corner-posts.

“Domovoi, little father—” Sasha bowed very respectfully from where he was kneeling, and edged backward to give it room. “Pyetr and I are back, but now Eveshka’s gone off somewhere and we’re worried. Do you know where she’s gone? Do you remember her leaving?”

It moved, the shifting of a large, heavy body; it came out of the shadows and sat on the dirt floor looking at him, which was more attention than it usually paid.

It was a very old domovoi, by any account, and very odd.

It blinked at him. It remembered things, Uulamets’ knowledge told him: it knew very little about today, less about tomorrow, mostly dreamed about the way things had been, glossing the bad and exaggerating the good—at least a healthy one did, in a healthy house. The god only knew about one a wizard owned.

It hunched closer. It looked a lot at the moment like an old bear, the oldest bear anyone had ever seen, and the fattest. It swiped a half a loaf up in its paws and sat up to eat it like a man… completely unconcerned, it seemed, at Eveshka’s disappearance, which might be a good sign.