Yvgenie

10

A wolf—it might be the same wolf—slipped in and out of view, threading a path through the brush, and one could easily feel more anxious not knowing where it was than knowing. It had come closer a moment ago—but Bielitsa had made no protest, not even a twitch of her ears, and Yvgenie rubbed his eyes with chilled fingers, wondering was the wolf a ghost itself, and whether the ghost inside him knew it.

He was convinced there was a place ahead of them where the wolf could not reach, a terrible place, but safe from that danger. He had no clear memory any longer where the boundaries were between himself and the ghost, it was all a struggle now, moment by moment, to keep awake. Perhaps it was bewitchment. Perhaps it was simple weariness. But his hold on the world was slipping, that was the only way he could think of it; and he did not want to alarm Ilyana— everything seemed so precarious and so fragile now, and he did not want to talk about ghosts, or dying.

They reached the bottom of the hill and Ilyana reined in a moment, where there was water. The horses drank, wading into the stream, heedless of danger.

They can’t see it, he thought. They can’t smell it. It’s sun a ghost, like Owl.

It was there again, the wolf was, trotting across the slope in front of them.

“Do you see it?” he asked desperately.

“The wolf?”

“There,” he said. But by the time she had looked where he pointed, it had gone.

She patted Patches’ neck while Patches drank. Bielitsa gave a little twitch of her shoulders and lifted her head. “Probably he’s a little crazy. Uncle says they’ll kill one that’s too different.”

“Like people,” he said, and found himself remembering, not knowing what he was going to say, “My father had other sons.”

There had been another wife. His mother was dead. His father had had something to do with that, but he could not remember what, he could not remember his father’s face, try as he would. He only recalled a silhouette against a window; remembered nothing of home, though it seemed to him a while ago he had known more than that. He saw a gray sky above stark walls. He did not know why that image should terrify him or why people shouting should be so ominous. A dreadful thump, then, shocked through his bones.

The ghost said, against his heart, The man deserved what he got. Can you possibly mourn him? He gave you nothing but pain.

He understood then that it had been his father’s death he had just witnessed, and he was sure he had not been there—it had not happened when he had left. He thought, cold and sick at heart: The tsar must have found him out. The tsar must have learned he was plotting against him—but surely it wasn’t my fault—please the god it wasn’t my fault he’s dead—

Fool, the ghost said. I give you justice and you’re sorry? How can you forgive so much evil?

Memory of a gray sky. A feeling of justice done, but he could take no joy in it. The ghost’s question seemed wistful and angry at once, as if it truly did not understand. His hands felt chill as he drew up on Bielitsa’s reins, going on in the lead, he had forgotten where for the moment, and why, except he felt the wolf’s presence closer now, and he wanted them quickly on their way.

How can you forgive him? the ghost insisted to know, determined to know, because he had tried very hard and very long to understand what justice was. He did harm to everyone around him. How can you forgive him? How dare you forgive evil like that?

But Ilyana said, riding beside him, “What did he get? Who are you talking about?”

Her question confused him. He knew too many things, knew he had been hours ahead of his father’s men when he had reached Vojvoda; and he had known then they would kill Ilyana, and all her house—for nothing that was her fault—

No. The ghost was adamant. No. There had been a river shore.

She had said once, behind the stairs, I don’t know the town. I’ve never been outside the walls. My window only looks out on the garden. —And he had remembered that. And drowned her, for fear of what she was, or might become.

“Yvgenie?” she said.

He said, desperately scanning the branches and the sky, “Owl’s gone.”

“He’ll be back. He comes and goes.—You’re not worried about the wolf, are you?”

“Owl’s gone. The black thing is.” His heart was pounding in his chest, as if he were drowning. He knew that sunlight was still around him, he could see it everywhere, every detail of the branches and the leaves around them, every detail of her face and the sunlight on her hair. He kept remembering that day on the river, that he had known he loved her, quite, quite helplessly, and far differently this year than the boy he had been, the lost boy the woods had sustained in innocence—

There was no more innocence, once awareness came, only a struggle to love, and not to kill—this moment, and the next and the next—

He shut his eyes and rubbed them, with fingers gone quid chill, thinking, I can’t remember what’s mine any longer, god, whoever you were, Kavi Chernevog, whatever you did, give my memories back to me—or remember your own. I’m losing things. I’m trying to hold on, but I’m so tired—

But he remembered the river too, ill-matching pieces coming together for a moment, and said, “He forgives too much, Ilyana. There is evil in the world. There truly is evil. And he’s been too close to it. —So have I. And the wicked ones never tell you the truth. Do you know that?”

“Are you one of the wicked ones?”

“No.” He said—and it was a great effort to say, against the need he had for her: “Ilyana, don’t wish. Don’t wish anymore. Don’t expect things. You’re stronger than you know. Let go and let me lead you.”

She looked at him in dismay. She said, in a voice scarcely louder than the wind, “Who are you? Is it Kavi?”

He could not shape the words. He fought them out, not even understanding what the ghost made him say, “Ilyana, that place of yours—You’re wishing for what doesn’t exist. You don’t imagine how dangerous that is. You don’t know enough, Ilyana. You’re getting yourself deeper and deeper into trouble.”

“But can’t it exist? What else is magic, but wishing what isn’t yet? It will exist if I want it to—”

He saw the rooftops of Kiev, suns and moons careering above the golden domes, above the banners of the Great Tsar—remembered leaves and thorns, ominous as the echo of axes off snowy walls. He thought, in utter despair: I don’t want to do what I’m doing; but he could not remember why he felt so afraid of the place he was going, or so apprehensive of what might befall her there. He looked to the reddening and began to think, It’s because it’s too late. We can’t go back from here. There’s only wanting—his wanting, now, I’m so damned tired I can’t keep them apart, even know-what it’s doing—god, I’m not even sure it’s right—

“Wizards can do this to themselves,” Pyetr said, while Sasha slept.

Nadya looked at Sasha distressedly, and darted a look at him as he fed a few twigs into the fire. “Why?”

“Hell if I know.” But he did know. It was a way out of bud thoughts, dangerous thoughts, which were the straight path to unwise wishes. It was the powerful wizards that did it, so far as he knew of how things worked: small need the village toad sellers had of such defenses—if they could do it at all. To his observation only Sasha and the mouse could do it; and Eveshka, he supposed—last resort before one burned down Kiev or something—

Bad thought. Very bad thought.

And do what now? Throw Sasha over Missy’s back and keep going blind, completely unable to feel what was going on ahead of them, or what they might run into? He had no idea what had made Sasha do what he had done—or even whether Sasha had done it. Neither could he know whether his hesitation now was wisdom, cowardice, or someone else’s or Sasha’s wishes. It was only sure that Sasha was in no good way to defend them or himself if they ran into the least hazard in the dark.

“Just sit still,” he said, started to settle himself, and saw a glint of metal among Nadya’s skirts as she moved her foot. He made an unthoughtful reach after it. “What is that?”

Nadya evaded his hand, tucked her skirts about her ankles and gave him an anxious stare, all offended modesty.

But that had been bright, hard metal, not gilt. And, having been a father for no few years, he looked her quite steadily in the eye, expecting an answer, until finally she ducked his gaze, moved her foot and the hem of her skirts and showed a knife-hilt in the side of a very costly and sadly out-at-the-seams boot.

“What in hell do you intend to do with that?”

She tucked the foot under her, clasped her arms about her ankles and scowled at him.

“Let’s see it.” He held out his hand with the same no- nonsense expectation. “—Come on. Let me see that thing. “

She reluctantly drew it and laid it in his palm, an old bone-hilted kitchen knife, honed down to a sliver. He turned it to the light and felt a razor edge with his thumb. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you? Who is this for? Bears? Bandits? Stray fathers?”

She set her jaw and looked embarrassed. He lifted an eye brow. “Well?”

“You think I’m a fool,” she said.

“I think I’ve seen better plans. I take it your young man had some idea in his head. He didn’t just pick any girl in Vojvoda and say, Let’s run away and drown ourselves in the woods.”

“No.”

“Did he give you this?”

A shake of the head.

“You always carry a knife in your boot.”

“For wizards,” she said, and clamped her jaw a breath and said, with a worried shift of her eyes toward Sasha and back again. “Not him.”

“Not him. Why not?”

“He’s not what they said.”

“I see. Just in case a whole band of wizards came down on you. In Vojvoda.”

“I never knew what might come. I never—” Tears started up, glittered in the firelight. “They told me people were trying to kill me. I wasn’t just going to stand there. Ever.”

God, he thought, and—held out an arm to her. But she sat where she was, with her hands clenched between her knees and ducked her head. He let his hand fall. “So you ran away with Yvgenie. Off into the woods with nothing to eat, no blankets, no shelter—”

“Because his family found out who my real father is, and his father was sending people to kill us!”

“Kill you, for the god’s sake. Why?“

She got a breath, wiped beneath her eye with the back of her hand. “If anybody who knew you had ever seen me, they’d have known who my father is. But no one ever did, except the servants. And Yvgenie. He came and he was going o marry me because I was rich.” Another pass of the finger beneath the lashes, in a face pale and angry. Justifiably angry, he thought, finding nothing to say for himself. “I was very rich. My uncles said I was going to marry someone close to the tsar and bring the whole family to Kiev. I thought I might have to marry Yvgenie’s father. But the Yurishevs weren’t noble enough. So he married somebody else and I ended up betrothed to his son.” Breath came easier for her now. Thank the god. He wanted to stop her but he wanted to know, too; and he listened, while she looked at the fire and not at him.

“Yvgenie came to the house. He wasn’t the oldest son. I wasn’t that important. But he was the nicest person I’d ever met.”

“Did you love him?”

A long, difficult pause. “I don’t know. I tried to. I was going to marry him. I didn’t think I was going to like him but I did. We slipped away and talked behind the stairs.” A rapid flutter of the eyes in the firelight, the spill of a tear that ran gold down her cheek. “Before they caught us. —I thought we were going to be happy. I really did. I thought I was going to leave the house and go to Kiev and not have to live shut in and scared of wizards. But somebody—maybe one of the servants, maybe just someone who’d heard rumors—waited all this time and came to Yvgenie’s father and told him I was a—”

She stopped and leaned her mouth on the heel of her hand.

The silence went on painfully long. He said, desperately, “So Yvgenie came to warn you?”

A nod. “His father was furious. He said I had to be one of the wizards who killed the Yurishevs. Most of all he did want any link with my family and he sent soldiers to kill us. But Yvgenie—Yvgenie rode ahead of them all the way from Kiev. He got through the gates at night—the guards knew who he was; they wouldn’t give him any trouble. And he warned my family and he took me on his horse and said he couldn’t go home again. He said he’d take me somewhere safe. My family—I don’t know where they are now.”

One could call the boy a fool. But not a scoundrel. He said, past a knot in his throat, “Where was he taking you”

“To the river. He said he’d rather be a f-fisherman than his father’s son.”

“God.” He looked at the little knife in his hands, turned it and flung it into the ground next the fire. “Damn!”

“So I have to find him.”

“I have to find him.” He thought of the mouse, and Chernevog, and a very desperate and maybe dying boy. “Hell and damnation! Sasha! Wake up!”

But Sasha did not stir.

We had to stop and rest. Bielitsa’s failing, and I know he’s borrowing from her and from Patches, but I can’t say no. He’s so pale now it scares me, and I try to wish him well, I try to wish both of us well, but it’s like pulling a weight uphill. I think I could do what he does and I don’t even want to think about that. I know now what uncle was saying about mother fighting on slanted ground. And Yvgenie’s getting more and more confused. He used to have just dark spots, but now there’s no dark, it’s things that can’t fit together, scary thing, about thorns, that I don’t know why they should be scary, but I feel it when I try to listen, and I don’t think he or Kavi either knows which is which anymore. In the dark, the same way the dark is when you can see ghosts Kavi can talk to me, but only for a moment or two because after that we don’t know what we’re doing. I know I’m being a fool. I think we both know it. I’m scared and I’m so tired I can hardly think right, and the awful thing, I think from time to time this could be what being in love is, but then I keep remembering what uncle said about rusalki. It feels so real, it feels so good, and I know we’re hurting ourselves, it hurts even when it’s so good. We’ve got to do something different soon but I’m scared of every wish that leads away from what we have and I’m scared even of wishing one of us well because if I do it with Yvgenie that’s one wish; and if I do it without, that’s another, and I don’t know what’s safe or what’s right—

He was cold now in a way no fire could warm. He sat in front of it, held out his hands to it, but it had no life to give him. The dark behind him grew far more than the light that danced in front of him. Ilyana dipped her quill in the inkpot beside her and wrote something with a fierce concentration, ignoring Bielitsa’s complaints—the horses, like him, had to stay. Her magic held them. Attraction did.

“Ilyana,” he began.

“Hush,” Ilyana said fiercely, without looking up: his next breath stopped in his throat, while the quill continued its furious course.

He had never thought he would long for Owl or the black Thing that had hissed at him—but no matter it had spat and hissed and bared its teeth every time it got close to him, so long as Babi had been there, they had been safe. And they were not, now. So long as Owl was with them, Chernevog loved—not Owl, precisely: Owl knew nothing about love, but Owl was saner than the wolf, he was sure of that.

Perhaps it was an answer to the wolf Ilyana sought—he saw how frightened she looked, how desperately she clutched the edge of the book and turned pages—looking for some spell, perhaps, some incantation to banish that drifting shadow from the brush, where it circled their fire.

He rested his elbows on his knees, his locked hands before his lips.

He saw it—passing at the very edge of the firelight, not so terrible as the wolf of his imaginings: thin, rather, lank and furtive—

“It’s out there,” he said. And Ilyana said nothing. He could hear the scratch of the quill above the wind in the leaves.

His father’s hounds had killed a servant boy once—torn him in pieces. That night the same dogs had sat at the great fireplace beside his father’s chair, great black beasts that feared his father, no less than the servants did—

Wolves in the woods—hunting him down an aisle of thorns.

Hate, and fear, and never help from anyone—until—

Trees moved like living things. Vines writhed like snakes and crept across gray, weathered stone—

A fair-haired little girl walked precariously along a streamside, a little girl who would look up any instant and say, with a glance to fill up all the empty spots—

“Who are you?”

Threatening question. Important question. He had been hiding in the woods. A terrible lady would find him and take him to her house. She had Ilyana’s face. Or Ilyana would have hers someday. But for now Ilyana was a little girl who walked balancing on the water’s edge—lonely, too, he was sure, though lonely did not always mean harmless.

He was on a porch, at a door of a house he knew, and Ilyana opened it—of course: it was her house the lady had sent him to find and it was Ilyana’s father the lady aimed at— a fierce, unforgiving wizard, who lectured him about honesty, and wanted things of him the way the lady did—

But he would not, could not give himself or his trust to anyone again. The lady held him. The lady made demands on him. He stole the old man’s book and searched it for secrets that might free him or save him—before the old man caught him at it.

Ilyana wanted him back, Ilyana or Eveshka or Draga, the images tumbled over and over in his memory—fair-haired child or girl or woman, all alike. Ilyana wanted him to a meeting, wanted him to face her father, trust her father—

He had drowned Ilyana. Or was it Draga? He could not remember. The wolf was there again, in the brush—he saw it staring at them.

If Ilyana would scream, if she would move, he might move—if she would say, Yvgenie, help me—he might have strength enough. But nothing moved, except the wind among the leaves. His joints were locked, his jaw would not move or let out a sound—

He could only remember he had killed her, or would kill her, to save himself. He bit his lip until the pain could bring sense back and he could recall the bathhouse, and the way back to what he knew. He remembered the hunters, and Ilyana, and Vojvoda—

He remembered his mother, and his nurse—a fat, comfortable woman who had told him about wizards and wolves, and flying houses. But that did not agree with being lost in the woods, or living in that terrible house with Ilyana. His house had had tall pillars. Dogs, not wolves, slept at the door. And he had never met Ilyana until he had come to her house to be betrothed to her, but he had ridden to Vojvoda, because they were hunting her to kill her—for wizardry—and murders—

Both could not be true, god, he could not remember both at once. Draga’s wolf circled their fire, while Ilyana wrote by firelight, the way Draga would…

“You take this,” her father told her, and put a packet of something in her hand. “Salt and sulfur. You put it in a ring about you and Sasha, and you stay inside that ring no matter what and don’t trust anything you see, no matter if it looks like me, or Yvgenie, or anyone else you know.”

“Why?” Nadya asked.

“Shapeshifters. Vodyaniye. Trust Babi. And take care of him.” With a glance toward Sasha, and to her again: “Tell him where I’m going and tell him—” He hesitated, with a second worried glance and a shake of his head. “You don’t have to tell him. He knows things like that. Just take care of him. He doesn’t remember to do that himself.”

He’s a wizard, Nadya thought. What kind of wizard is he that he needs people to take care of him?

Her father turned his back to her. Her father was going after his legitimate daughter and Yvgenie, alone, because somebody, he said, had to look after Sasha till he waked, and because the other horse was too old and too fat, and the black one could not make any speed carrying her. She knew that he was right, and that she was no help but here. But his saying tell Sasha this and tell Sasha that upset her stomach He should tell Sasha when he had found Yvgenie and his daughter and come back—because she was not through talking to him, please the god. He knew the important things about her. She knew nothing about him.

She thought—I should at least tell him I want him to come back, I should at least hug him goodbye—it’s not lucky, him saying those things…

But he was in the saddle before she had quite made up ha mind, and then it was too late. He looked down at her, said, “If everything else fails, there’s a house south of here, on the river. No one comes there.”

And while she was wondering what house, and what he meant, he turned the horse’s head and rode away, fading quickly into the dark outside the fire.

A shadow fell across the page. Ilyana looked up at Yvgenie’s dark shape between her and the fire, and he said quietly, kneeling and taking her hand:

“Ilyana, put the book away. Please. You’re coming no closer to the truth.”

“You’re eavesdropping!”

A lowering of lashes—a glance up at her: Yvgenie’s eyes, pale and deep and gentle. Kavi’s unmistakable gesture. And the motion of Yvgenie’s hands to lips and heart and to her. I love you. To brow and to heart, frowning. I’m worried. It was the old way of talking. Maybe it was the one he found easiest now. And he was as silent as only her uncle could be, not a whisper of his being there the moment she accused him.

“Sasha’s very good,” he said ever so softly. “And very strong. He scares himself. And that’s good. A little fear will save you so much pain.”

Sweat glistened on Yvgenie’s face. A bead broke and ran. “Kavi—is that truly your name?”

A nod.

“Is it so hard to speak?”

A second nod. A gesture toward his heart, with a hand visibly trembling. “He can’t last much longer. He has to rest. Just a little farther, Ilyana, and then we can all rest…”

One did not like this idea of resting when a ghost said it. But looking into his eyes this close made her think how it felt to touch him and to be touched, and one wished—

—one wished, that was the trouble, when a wizard loved a ghost: one wanted, and one could have, and if it were not for Yvgenie’s gentle, distressed look to warn her she would not even be thinking no, this is wrong, this is dangerous. He looked so dreadfully upset—

“Please don’t,” Yvgenie asked her, “please don’t.” And after that, taking her hand in his, on the open book that nobody was ever to touch but her, “He loves you. He loves you very much, Ilyana, and he’s very scared, and something’s dreadfully w-wrong tonight. We’re going somewhere dangerous—and he’s trying to t-tell you—I don’t think he’s ever loved anything in his life but Owl, and he loves you so much he doesn’t want you to go on with this. He wants you just to go home to your father and not to try to help him anymore. Please. He can’t—can’t—go any farther with this—”

“With what?”

Yvgenie had no idea. And Kavi when she tried to wish him to speak to her was uncatchable, scattered in pieces, like Owl on the river shore. There were tears in Yvgenie’s eyes, which he was not accustomed to shed in anyone’s witness, he wished he could make her understand that—but he knew what Kavi was doing now, and he knew that for all the advice Kavi tried to give he was helpless to leave her, he could not stop following her or loving her or killing her the way he was doing—he loved her, he loved her whether it was Kavi’s idea or his own, he had come to think more of her in these few days than he had ever loved his own confused existence—

He touched the back of her hand, where it rested on the book, and she felt that tingling she could never forget and never quite remember. He began to say something—

Then hurled himself to his feet and away from her, as far as the old tree that sheltered them both. He leaned against its trunk, holding to it like a living person, wanting—

—it’s life, because he refused to die, he could not want in die.

Not life, uncle had told her, and she had not heard him. Not life—but hell.

She folded her book and got up to go to him—wanting him—god, wanting to hold him and help both of them wanting just that touch again—

The first leaves drifted free of dying branches, and need had become its own wish—little it could matter. She reached out to touch him.

But he shoved away and turned his back on her. Yvgenie wanted her not to touch him, not to make him touch her, please, no—and he stopped cold, if only because there was nothing in the world Yvgenie could do to stop her. Not fair, not fair to wish someone who could not even hear her doing it, not fair to insist on her own way with someone who could do no more to stop her or Kavi than he was doing now.

The mouse could never do that—never hurt her father never hurt this boy…

But mother thinks otherwise. And expecting something is a wish, isn’t it? The mouse can’t hurt anybody. The mouse—can’t. That’s why I like her better.

Ilyana’s not that good. Ilyana’s her mother’s daughter. But what’s the mouse to be, uncle, grown-up and lonely for the rest of her life because she can’t want anybody?

That’s crazy, her father had used to shout at her mother. Because we both want something, you have to want not?

“Yvgenie,” she said, in the mouse’s voice, very soft, very quiet, and held her hand a little away from touching him, making herself not want him the way she wanted Kavi. “Yvgenie, I’m sorry. It’s safe. Please look at me if you want to.”

One had to be careful with ordinary folk. And when he did look at her, one could never know whether it was wizardry or not or whether she was only deceiving herself.

She said, with as much honesty as she could find, “People have to love me if I want them to, even wizards, especially wizards, uncle says, because we hear magic—but ordinary people, too, if we want them to. They can’t help it.”

“A spell?” he asked her.

“I don’t know what you call it. I don’t. I just didn’t want in be alone all my life and I wanted Kavi back—I never wanted anything bad to happen to anyone, I never did, I don’t know what’s gone wrong, or why it was, except it’s wrong to want people to love you—”

He touched her cheek and looked her in the eyes. “If I’m bewitched, I don’t care, so long as you love me back—that’s what matters, isn’t it? I love you, I do, the same as he does. And I don’t care why—”

It hurt. God, it hurt.

He said, then, faintly, “Damn him.” He shut his eyes, and she wished, aching, Don’t do that to him, Kavi. Please. It’s not fair.

Yvgenie sank down where he was, head on his arms, not looking at her. There was pain, that was all she could hear, pain and fear and not wanting her to die because of him, when he was already sure he would die, and follow her, and do anything he had to to stay with her until someone put an end to him—because he would not leave her—not so long as he existed—

Nor touch her again, so long as he could help it, no matter what he killed—

“Please,” he said without looking at her. “Please just leave me alone.”

She wanted—but wanting stopped short of hurting him again. She went back to her book and sat down and wrote.

I wanted someone like my father. I didn’t know what I was wanting. I don’t know what my father is with my mother, what Kavi is and what she was. Now I know what it feels like. Now I know and I can’t do anything. There’s nothing I can wish that doesn’t hurt and there’s nowhere for me to go but with Yvgenie, because—

A leaf fell onto the paper. Other leaves were falling, some on the ground, a few into the fire, where they flared and burned and perished.