C. Cherryh - Chernevog

“The vodyanoi’s not here,” Sasha said. “Eveshka’s not. We can’t do anything tonight and I can’t keep us going at this pace if we have to go all the way—all the way north…”

“Let’s say it.”

“Let’s not. — I can steal a little.” Even that promise sent a shiver through his bones. “I can keep us going faster than we might. But I can’t take and take and take, Pyetr.”

Pyetr rubbed the back of his neck, looked up. “All right. All right. But if you could steal enough, just once—once, to make ’Veshka hear you—”

He thought about that. It scared him. He said, still thinking about it, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“The leshys?”

“I’m not sure of that either.”

Pyetr shook his head in despair, rubbed his neck again and looked at him with tired, desperate eyes, saying, “No one’s ever sure. No one’s ever damn well sure.”

“I have to be.”

“Then nothing’s damn well going to get done, is it? My wife’s evidently sure.”

“Pyetr, I’m scared. I’m scared it’s all coming undone up there. I don’t know magic. I understand wishes. They only work natural ways. You can’t wish something against nature.”

“Things change that can change,” Pyetr said. A muscle worked in his jaw. “I’ve seen ’Veshka come back to life, I’ve seen shapeshifters run like puddles… Babi, over there. Is that nature!”

“Magic’s different. Like that jug we can’t break. Things don’t always turn out what you’d expect. It’s hard enough to think about consequences with wizardry. Magic just doesn’t make any sense to me. If there are rules I can’t figure them out—Chernevog didn’t find any. Uulamets just said that why you do something has something to do with it, but it doesn’t make any difference, if something like the vodyanoi gets a hold on you, because he’s older and he’s smarter and he is magical. Your body can wear out when I use it the way I was using it. Trees can die. Magic can’t. Magic’s a whole other thing, magic’s that place Babi goes to when he wants to get out of the rain, but it’s where the vodyanoi comes from, too. And if he’s wishing on there and not here when he changes shape, if that’s the way it works—”

“You’re not making sense.”

“Would you bet against Dmitri Venedikov’s dice?”

“No!”

“Well, I won’t use magic on the River-thing, either.”

Pyetr fell silent then, rested his elbow on his knee and a hand on the back of his neck.

Sasha said, desperately, “I’m doing all I can, Pyetr.”

Pyetr nodded, jaw tight. And did not look at him. Eventually Pyetr said, in response to nothing Sasha remembered, “She never plans on anybody else doing anything right. —Maybe when you’re a ghost that long you stop believing in people, do you think?”

“Eveshka loves you.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Pyetr said after a moment, and sighed and bent his head and poured Babi a drink from the jug, Babi leaning expectantly on his knee. The liquid went down Babi’s throat. “I truly don’t know.”

“You don’t know what what means?”

“Her loving me.”

“She does. Of course she does!”

“I had a lousy father. I had lousy friends. Women all over town said they loved me, while they were cheating on their husbands. I don’t know what the hell it means, loving somebody.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“Because ’Veshka’s doing something we don’t understand?” This turn of Pyetr’s thoughts frightened him—it was a pain he had never dealt with, this whole mystery of wives, that turned a light-hearted man to hurt and constant worry. He resented Veshka’s hurting Pyetr. He tried not to make judgments. He said, “What’s that to do with anything? We’ve been wrong before. She might be right, do you think of that?”

“I never can make sense of her, you know. She never thinks I understand anything. Maybe she dunks ordinary folk are stupid.”

“She knew we were going to follow her. She knew you would.”

“Is that love—because she knows I’m a damned fool?”

“Pyetr, I swear I don’t know if she’s right or wrong; but I do know that whatever she’s doing, she’s got a reason. She thought she was doing the right thing—”

“What reason? What reason, for going off where she’s got the least excuse in the world to be going? The ghosts, the vodyanoi—she’s no business dealing with anything to do with him, for the god’s sake! Let alone Chernevog! Why in hell doesn’t she turn the boat around and come back and find us if she’s so damn sure I’m following her?”

“She doesn’t want us in trouble. I don’t think she’s being smart in going alone—but I don’t know how she’d get me to go and argue you into staying at the house. You know how that would work.” That came out saying ’Veshka would think him helpless. He tried to patch it. “She’s not in love with me.”

Pyetr drew a long breath and let it go slowly. He said, staring out at the river, “Keeping her heart wasn’t really a good idea, was it?”

Pyetr always managed to get past him—far past him, to ideas he did not himself want to deal with. “It may not have been,” he said. “But you’ve given her a lot, a lot, Pyetr, you don’t guess how much. Wizards are lonely. You make her think of someone besides herself. Uulamets always said—that was what she needed most.”

“Uulamets.” Pyetr said the word like a bad taste in his mouth, and his jaw clenched, making shadow. Pyetr refrained from speaking about the old man, for his sake, Sasha supposed-hated him passionately; blamed him for Eveshka’s faults, but I never brought the matter up of his own accord. The god only knew what it took Pyetr to keep his calm tonight. He had already blundered into sensitive spots, but something had to be said now, while there was a chance to say it so Pyetr would understand it:

“Pyetr, don’t think she’s weak. She doesn’t like to use what she’s got: I think what she’s been through makes it hard for her, maybe in ways nobody understands. But she’s so very strong she was terribly hard to teach. Even her own father was afraid of her.”

“Well, then, we don’t have to worry about her, do we? She’d handle everything. No need of help. We shouldn’t have left the house. We can go back home and sit and wait.”

“Pyetr, you know what the truth is: she’s scared to death for you. Yes, she’s got her heart, and she knows anything that want! her or me is going to go straight for you, that’s why she didn’t just ask me to go, she wants us looking out for each other. She can’t work with people. She can’t even work with me. She gets scared. Sometimes I think—” He had never brought it up. He took a breath and took the chance with Pyetr. “I think maybe she’s scared of slipping back again.”

Pyetr looked straight at him this time, with all his attention. “To being a ghost?”

“To wanting things. To wanting things so much she can’t…”

“She could stop. She did stop. She could have killed me, and she did stop.”

“With you she did, because you were the first person in all the world who made her think of somebody else. But if she weren’t alive, if she hadn’t come back all the way to life and she were with you every day—I’m honestly not sure she could have been that good, this long. I’m not sure anybody’s that strong, not to have a selfish thought sometime, even if you know it’s going to hurt someone—and sometimes if you have hurt someone—if you’ve done something really, terribly awful—your wishes won’t work very well.” He was thinking of his own house, seeing the fire in the windows and hearing the voices. “I can put out fires a lot better than I can wish them to start. And if she’s thinking of using her magic—I don’t think she wants anyone she loves near her.”