C. Cherryh - Chernevog

But of a sudden a memory came very strongly—a young man stood like a ghost on the wooden steps, very like the figure in the bannik’s vision—no feature visible, light felling on dark hair, white-shirted shoulders…

It might be himself. It was so real Sasha turned his head to see if it was there, or perhaps a recollection of his recent presence on those steps.

But there was nothing. He looked back at the domovoi, hands sweating. He imagined the room upstairs the way it had been He imagined violent anger in the house, Uulamets shouting till the rafters rang, Young fool! And Eveshka sobbing, Listen to me, papa—you never listen to me!

He was trembling. He took hold of the post beside the step looked up into the twilight of the room above, hearing Eveshka say, plaintively—

I don’t believe you, papa. You’re wrong! Doesn’t it ever occur to you that you might be wrong about someone?

Years and years ago—when Kavi Chernevog had come and gone on these steps, gotten herbs from this same cellar, slept by the hearth upstairs, while Uulamets and his daughter had had their beds at the end of the kitchen… and Chernevog had had his bed close to where he slept now.

God, why is it showing me this? What’s Chernevog to do with anything now? He can’t be awake, please the god it doesn’t mean Chernevog has anything to do with this.

“Little father,” he whispered to the domovoi, “what are you telling me?”

The house rang with ghostly voices:

Fool, love’s got nothing to do with him! He’s got no heart, he hasn’t had one for years! Good riddance to him!

Eveshka, furiously: You never give me a chance, papa, you never credit me with any judgment! Why should I ever be honest with you? You never trust me to know anything!

And Uulamets, then: Trust you? The plain question, girl, is whether you can trust yourself! The plainer question is whether you’re my daughter or your mother’s! Answer that one! Can you?

His heart was racing. He recalled a scratching at the shutters in the night, the raven that had held Uulamets’ heart prying with beak and claw to get inside… while Uulamets sat alone at the table by lamplight—reading and plotting and writing, night after night, wanting his daughter back…

Lonely nights, silent days, the scratching at the window—and Uulamets never listened to it. Uulamets had reason enough to want his daughter alive again, and a heart had very little to do with it. Eveshka was absolutely right about that.

Leaves on the river…

Spray flying from the bow…

Sasha broke out in sudden, sweating terror, scrambled up and ran up the steps, shouting at Pyetr: “The boat—”

The dock was empty, Pyetr saw that well enough from the top of the path: the boat was gone, and he went running down to the weathered boards, to stand there like a fool and look helplessly up the river—up, because he knew it was no trip down to Kiev that Eveshka had undertaken without him.

“She’s gone,” he said as Sasha came running up beside him. “It’s a bad dream. It’s a damn bad dream! What in hell does she think she’s doing with the boat? Where does she think she’s going?”

“I don’t know,” Sasha said.

“I thought she was worried I wasn’t back, I thought she had this notion something just damn well could have happened to me out there! I don’t mind if she’s mad, I can understand if she’s mad, but taking the boat—”

“She could have heard from the leshys.”

“Oh, god, fine, she could have heard from the leshys! Then she could damn well have had the leshys talk to us, couldn’t she?”

Sasha caught his arm, pulled at him to bring him up the hill again to a house Eveshka had deserted, along with everything else she had a responsibility to think of. “She cares,” Sasha said, “Pyetr, I know she does. I’m sure whatever she’s doing, she can take care of herself, she’s thought it through—”

“The hell!” he cried, and tore from Sasha’s grip. He climbed to the top of the hill, he stood there catching his breath under the old dead trees looking out at the house and the yard in the gathering dark, with a lump in his throat and a cold fear in his stomach.

He heard Sasha climbing the trail behind him. He was in no mood to talk about Eveshka, or to wonder aloud what kind of danger she might be in—he could think of all too many right now without a wizard’s help. So he shoved his way through the gap in the hedge, stalked up to the porch and inside, into the kitchen, where he snatched a basket down off the rafters and started searching for flour and oil.

He was aware when Sasha walked in the door, was aware Sasha standing behind him, upset and wanting to help.

“I’m taking Volkhi,” Pyetr said, “I’m going after her, I’ll find her, don’t worry about it. If she’s on the river, I’m not going to get lost following that.”

“Pyetr, I know you’re in no mood to listen to me—”

“It’s not your fault. —Where’s the damn flour? Did she have to take all of it?”

“It’s under the counter. It should be. —Pyetr, please, just think this through with me: she’s on the boat, she’s not out in the woods—so at least we know something; and I didn’t know exactly where you were, either, so long as I was any distance from you. It’s this quiet out there…”

He turned and glared at Sasha, expecting him to use good sense and shut up. But Sasha set his jaw and said, without flinching:

“We’ll find her. I promise we’ll both find her, let’s just not do anything rash, Pyetr.”

“Rash! God, let’s not do anything rash while she’s out there on the river, shall we? Let’s not take any chances while she’s out there alone on the water in the dark with the god knows what! There’s a shapeshifter loose! Who knows what shape it’s got right now? Who knows what she’s sailing with?”

“Pyetr, I don’t want you going without me, you understand me? I know you’re mad and I’m sorry, but I don’t want you running off out there!”

“The hell! Don’t wish at me, dammit! I know you mean well, Sasha, but just stop it! Stay out of my way! Stay the hell out of my way!”

“Pyetr, —”

He found the flour. “You give me advice, boy, when you’ve got a wife. I’m not sitting here while she’s out there begging for trouble and you can’t tell me what’s going on.”

“Pyetr, listen to me!”

He felt the wish hit him: he felt his thoughts scatter, his hands shake with an intention he suddenly had trouble recollecting, even when he knew what was happening to him. He slammed his hand down on the counter, leaned on it, because sleeplessness and cold and the rest of it were suddenly making his knees weak. “Don’t do that to me, dammit!”

“Pyetr, we’re going, I absolutely agree with you, we’re going after her as fast as we can, but we can go off with what we need or we can go without it—I don’t just throw things in a sack, Pyetr, and magic doesn’t win by luck and it doesn’t work by generalities!”

“Tonight it seems it’s not working at all!”

“I can wish her well—but that’s no good at all if somebody else wishes something a lot more specific, does it?”

“Somebody else. Somebody else— Is that what we’re talking about? Is that why we’re not naming names right now?”

“Pyetr, don’t doubt her, don’t doubt us ! Doubt undoes magic, and that’s the absolute worst mistake we could make.”

“Doubt’s when you start to know you’re off the mark, boy, doubt’s when you start to figure out you’d better do something— and the stupidest thing we can do is sit here and let her sail off on the god knows what hare-brained notion while we believe things are going to be all right! North, Sasha, north is where she’s going right now, and if there’s something wrong down here, then it’s a good guess there’s something going on up there with the leshys, and if the leshys can’t stop it then I doubt my wife is the one of us who has any business up there!”