Yvgenie

3

The whole house felt charged with lightnings, which called to mind what her father had said about mother and thunderstorms. Ilyana made herself very quiet, coming through the door with uncle Sasha, and found her mother sitting on the bench in front of the hearth, her father sitting on the floor next to her. Her father’s worried glance tried to warn her; but she knew. She knew. She kept all but the most shallow, immediate thoughts out of J her head, and carefully bent and kissed her mother on the side of the face.

Her mother suddenly reached and caught her skirt. She panicked, then remembered uncle Sasha was there to protect her and made no effort to escape, while her mother hugged her so hard it hurt.

She knew she ought to feel sorry for her mother. She knew she should think about her mother’s unhappiness, but she could not, right now. She found only pity enough to do the dutiful thing and put her arms about her mother’s shoulders. Her mother’s hair still had tiny twigs caught in it, the braids were coming undone; she had lost the kerchief somewhere, and torn her sleeve, and scratched her cheek on some branch, us it looked: she had run down to the bank, her mother actually must have run, when she could hardly remember her mother running in her life—

Which was one of the problems with her mother, dammit, and it did not make her feel any sorrier for her, it made her feel nothing but angrier, if she let herself think about it, and she did not want to do that. She sat, quietly, smoothing her mother’s hair, wishing her thoughts to herself.

“Mother, I’m upset. I’m thinking about it.” Without her intending it, it turned out to be a recitation, word for word her mother’s own example to her what to say when things got out of hand; she decided her mother’s exact words could hardly upset her, since her mother did not approve the things she thought on her own. She tried not to want her mother to let her go, she tried not to want anything, which with nothing right, was hard. So she just wanted all of them to feel better, instead, and for her father not to be upset. After a moment her mother let her go, took hold of her hands and looked up at her with eyelashes damp and tear trails on her face.

“Ilyana. Child—”

(I’m not, mother, not as much as you think.)

“—I didn’t aim at you.”

Her mother was holding out for an answer. Ilyana said, as steadily as she could, “Uncle explained that.” She thought maybe she could get the breath and the wit to go on and explain things of her own, how long she had known her friend, how he had never hurt her, but she could not get it out in time.

“He’s not safe, Ilyana. He’s not what you saw.”

“I know. Uncle said he was a hundred years old. At least. He said you—”—died, she almost said, but that was not something to talk about with her mother upset as she was. She meant to say: Mother, he grew up with me—

But her mother squeezed her hands till the bones ground together and said, “Ilyana, don’t ever call him back. Do you hear me? You don’t know him. He’s not anything you possibly understand right now.”

She thought, You don’t think I understand anything. But I do, mother. Things like getting half the truth. And lies.

Like things you shouldn’t have done.

Father has to be upset with her. With him. With me. God, what can he think, seeing me with this same man—

Who’s not really fifteen years old at all.

Of a sudden she could not bear to face any of them, could not think how to get free of her mother’s hold: she just said: “Let me go. Please let me go—” and thought she was going to be sick at her stomach.

Her mother wished not, her mother was wanting to know what she was thinking, and she jerked her hands from her mother’s and backed away, hitting the table so it screeched behind her. The whole house creaked, the domovoi complaining.

Her father grabbed her and hugged her so hard she could scarcely breathe. She said, “I’m sorry, papa,” the word she had used for him when she was small; and stopped thinking and let him hold her until she was dizzy.

“Pyetr.” Uncle’s voice. Uncle’s touch lighted on her shoulder, and her father let her go. “Pyetr, let me take her up the hill tonight. I think it will be better.”

Like a baby, she thought, sent up the hill to stay in uncle’s house till her tantrum stopped. She drew herself free and lifted her chin, as grown-up as she knew how to be, “No, no, I don’t need to, it’s all right. I’m sorry. I’d like my supper. Then I’d like just to be quiet a while.”

Her mother touched her shoulder, said, “I’ll get your supper. Sit down, dear. Sit down.”

She did not know how she could face her father across the table. She winced as her mother wished something, but it was not at her.

Her father smoothed the hair at her temple, and said, in a voice so shaken it hurt to hear, “Mouse, I knew him. We, were enemies and we weren’t, and you saw him the way he was when your mother met him.”

“Every year since—” Now it came out. She caught her breath, thinking, God, I shouldn’t have said anything, I don’t want to talk about that—

Her mother said, “Ilyana—every year—since when?”

Damn it, she was eavesdropping, her mother was probably passing everything to her father and her uncle, every private thought she had.

She wanted not to talk to them. She wanted to faint away and not deal with any of it.

And she did.

“Mouse?” Pyetr asked. She looked so pale, and so sad, and so frighteningly still against the pillows, in the lamplight of her bedroom.

Sasha said, at his side: “Wake up, mousekin. It’s all right. We won’t talk about it. Your mother’s bringing some supper for you.”

She had just become a weight in Pyetr’s arms, just gone out of a sudden; and scared him so he was still shaking, scared ’Veshka, too, he understood. Sasha was the calm one, Sasha still was: “Wake up,” Sasha said; and without any fuss at all, Ilyana’s eyelids fluttered and she began to wake up.

A little confused at being in bed, maybe. “You fainted, mousekin. You scared me.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, hushed, as if breath were still very short. “I’m really sorry, papa.”

“Ilyana, it’s not your fault. Nothing’s your fault. I’m not even mad at Chernevog. I was as close to a friend as he had in the world.”

Maybe she did not quite believe that exaggeration. But it confused her. A great many things surely confused her—and confusion might multiply wishes, but it subtracted effectiveness.

“We’ll talk about it,” he said. “Later. Are you going to be all right?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. I’m fine.”

“A fib, but I’ll take it for a promise. Don’t do that to me again.”

“I’m—”

“—sorry. You’ve been talking to your uncle. Sorry’s his word. Don’t be sorry: you don’t have to apologize to anyone. There’s not a thing in the world you’ve done wrong, except I wish you’d told us a long time ago what was going on.”

“Mother would have said don’t.”

He understood that. Eveshka said “don’t” to anything chancy. He was not in the habit of telling Eveshka when he had decided to risk his neck, either.

Your daughter, Sasha had said.

He said, “I got drunk once, jumped a fence that scared the hell out of me. Risked my horse’s neck, not mentioning mine. It didn’t scare me at the time, of course. But to this day I have nightmares about that fence coming at me.”

“What’s that to do with—?”

“Just that’s who your papa is. A fool, sometimes. And prone to rush into things. But your papa didn’t have anybody worrying about him. He never had anybody who gave a damn whether he survived. Mouse, you do have. Break your neck and you’re going to make all of us very unhappy. But not with you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Maybe he shocked her, telling her things like that. It was the speech Sasha had talked about this morning, not the one he would give his daughter: the one someone should have given him—if anyone had cared whether he lived or died, before Sasha had begun to.

She said, faintly, “I didn’t think it was dangerous. I still don’t. He never, ever hurt me.”

“I believe you,” he said, on an uneasy stomach. “I almost believe his intentions. But I don’t believe he can hold to them.” He remembered Eveshka’s touch—then, in those days when it was both dizzying and deadly. He knew the compulsion—on both sides; and thinking of his daughter trapped in it, his daughter locked in an embrace like that— “It’s like vodka, mouse. It corrupts your judgment about the next cupful. Or the next wish and the one that patches it. You could die like that and not care. I know what you’re not telling me. You don’t have to tell me what it feels like. I’ve felt it.”

Stop, he heard her say in his head; and Sasha laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Mousekin,” Sasha said. “I know. It’s all right. Rest. I’ll stay here in the front room tonight. I’ll be here. I’ll bring you your supper in bed. All right?”

“All right,” she said. And Sasha got him out the door.

Distress hit him then, like a weight in his chest: Eveshka’s heart settled against his and he stood there, unable to move, scarcely able to breathe, the pain was so acute. Eveshka was finishing Ilyana’s supper tray. She laid a napkin on it and gave it to Sasha to take into the room, all quite easy, quite calm. He realized that he was in the way: he opened the door for Sasha and shut it after him.

“How is she?” Eveshka’s voice asked him; but her heart had already found that answer and the anxiousness smothered, it suffocated him.

“She’s doing a lot better,” he said, struggling for calm. “Eveshka, listen to me, you’ve got to give her more rein. A lot more, not less. Trust her.”

He felt her panic arguing with his—he remembered things a man did not want to remember about his wife: and remembered things about himself, the young fool who had gotten himself skewered by a jealous husband, ensnared by a rusalka and damned near killed by Chernevog—before he had carried Chernevog’s heart a while himself: he knew Chernevog, by that, the way he knew his wife, the way he knew Sasha, and all the pieces of their lives came together in him, or refused to go together at all—

He forced them to meet, dammit, one with the other, in his own opinions of what to do: trust Ilyana, he thought; and he thought unawares of Ilyana and Chernevog; and dying, and killing, and a watery cave that figured in their nightmares. He propped himself against the fireside stones, breaking a bit of kindling in his hands, snap, snap, snap, thicker and thicker pieces, until he could not break them any longer, then did break them once more. There was blood on his hands, then.

“God, you fool,” Eveshka whispered. Her heart struggled to escape his. She wanted her daughter to herself, she gave no credence to his unwizardly opinions that were blind to the dangers reaching out for them, out of magic, out of that unnamable place magic used—

He said, leaning there, sucking a bloody knuckle, “You’ve made a mistake, wife. You understand me. Beat the horse— and she’ll kill you, sooner or later. Don’t do it with my daughter.”

He was not talking to the heart lodged next to his, he was talking to a wizard, doubly and triply born—who found his daughter a cipher, and hurt his daughter because she let her nightmares override her good sense—

“A mistake,” he said, “that’s still able to be fixed. But not by doing the same thing your father did to you. Don’t hedge her about with rules, ’Veshka. Chernevog will be back, I don’t know when, but he’ll be back: I doubt you drove him that far. This isn’t something that’s solved and panic won’t help.”

“The vodyanoi is awake,” Eveshka said quietly, turning her back on him. “Sasha drove him off. More than that may have slipped its peg with what happened out there.”

Glistening black coils, sleek as oil; cold, and mud, and bones. She was making him remember. He was dizzy for a moment, and the wife who feared anything unplanned came face to face with the boy who had walked The Doe’s rooftree drunk, on a dare—that boy and the hard young man who had done it thereafter on bets—for money, because in Vojvoda, you had to have money or you fell further than that…

Eveshka did not understand that place. But she knew fighting for what she wanted, and she knew fighting to stay alive.

“What’s a rusalka,” he asked her, in that one point of understanding, “but a wish so strong it drinks the life out of anything it wants? How close will you hold Ilyana? Or me? If it’s that again, ’Veshka—then, dammit, stay to me. Don’t do it to our daughter!”

There was anger in front of him, then, terrible anger inside him. And fear. Her heart wanted free of obligations. It wanted—

But her heart had no magic to fight with. Neither did he.

The anger in front of him did. The anger could do anything it wanted. It would be a fool to do any of those things to a man who had her heart, and they both knew that—but that heart began to go this way and that in panic at the thought of it.

He said, “ ’Veshka, is the word ‘wrong’ so damned difficult? Take it back, ’Veshka, I know it hurts, dammit—but I don’t like what I’m seeing.”

She looked at him coldly. She walked away and picked up a basket from the stack in the corner, and put it on the table.

Packing, then.

“What does that mean?” he asked.

“It means you can do what you like with her. Maybe you can do better.”

Her heart was saying something else. It was feeling betrayal and terror and wanting fools it loved to do exactly what it thought safe.

She wanted him to do what she said, wanted not to hurt him any further, and wanted out of here before she killed him—because she was drowning in confusion—

And when she could not breathe, she would grab anything and anyone that could give that next breath to her—she would do it again and again, the way she had done, to live, her way—

He held on, he shut his eyes to shut it out, but the panic was not coming from the outside, it was inside him, a panic that must not get to his daughter—he could not let it get to her—

She said, a living voice, “I’m taking the boat. It’s stocked isn’t it?”

He nodded, in the moment’s sanity her cold voice made. He left the fireside, managed to reach the kitchen table and sit down, with the sudden thought that there had been no sound from Ilyana or Sasha. Sasha must be taking care her, Sasha must be trying to get hold of the situation—

He leaned his head on his hands, tasted blood and realized he had bitten his lip. He did it then deliberately, pain to stop him thinking, pain like sunlight to distract a man’s eyes from ghosts.

He heard her steps echo in the bedroom and eventually come back again; he heard her pass behind him to the door, getting her cloak. It was not like the first years of their marriage, when she would bolt and run—heart and all. He did not know now if she meant to take her heart back when she left or whether she might leave him like this, because what she was now was safe, and clearheaded, and cared for nothing more than itself. Perhaps she had no choice. Or she found no reason now to suffer with ordinary folk.

She said, the part of her that had no heart: “I’ll call for it—when I can.”

“Sasha?” he murmured, hoping Sasha could hear him— wondering if Sasha was all right. If Ilyana was. If Eveshka was not about to kill all of them along with her heart, a coldly reasoned self-murder—against the nightmare she had feared all these years—

“No,” she said aloud. He heard the door open, felt a gust of cool night air against his left side.

He thought, he could not help himself: Chernevog wasn’t worse than this. God, what has she become?

“Too strong,” his wife’s voice said from the door. “Too powerful to deal with magic.”

Pain surpassed pain. He slumped onto his folded arms, wanting her to go, put distance between them; but he heard her walk back, while the whole house groaned in pain, felt her shadow against the wind as she bent over him. Her lips brushed his temple and he began to fall then, a long helpless slide into dark.

He thought she said, while he was spinning and falling: “I have to do this, Pyetr. I have to. Or we’ll all of us die.”

“I don’t know what the hell she meant.” His hands were still shaking at breakfast, but the heart next to his was quiet, thank the god. Thank the god Ilyana was still sleeping—or thank Sasha, he thought, who was responsible for the breakfast and maybe for his sanity. “I’m not even sure she said it. It’s what I remember.”

Sasha sank slowly onto the other bench and stared at him.

“Have some tea.” Pyetr picked up the pot. It was the cracked teacup Sasha had this morning; and the magical patch from Uulamets’ time still held. So not everything had fallen apart, though his pouring splashed tea on the tabletop and the pot rattled as he set it down.

“She’s on the river somewhere south of here,” Sasha said, “she’s taken the boat. I think the vodyanoi’s gone after her.”

“Oh, god, fine! What more?”

“Worry about the vodyanoi. It’s even possible she’s called it. I can’t tell.”

“Good god, Sasha—”

“She’s very well this morning. She’s watching the sun rise, listening to the water—she’s improved a great deal since last night.”

A memory came back, with a brief shortness of breath. “I was scared to death she had gone at you. I couldn’t hear you.”

“She told me held Ilyana asleep and not to interfere.” Sasha was a little pale himself this morning, and unshaven as yet—razors did not seem a good idea, considering the amount of tea on the table. “I couldn’t, was the plain fact: I had to trust her. If we’d gone at it—”

Sasha did not need to finish. He had felt it. He did not want to remember that this morning. Sasha must have hauled him off to bed last night. And had breakfast on the table when he waked.

“Are you all right?” he asked Sasha.

“Considering. How are you feeling?”

“Better for the tea and the breakfast. What in hell are we I going to do?” That question unsettled Eveshka’s quiescent presence. He wondered if she had meant last night that she was not going to get better and she was not coming back, and that scared him.

Sasha said, “I don’t know, to both questions.”

“Don’t listen to me like that. She doesn’t like it.”

“She can be patient under the circumstances.” Sasha did something: he felt calmer of a sudden, numb in a certain spot. “She’s right, I think, about how long she can keep this up.”

“Keep what up, for the god’s sake?”

“Easy, easy. —Using magic. Using magic is what she can’t keep doing, considering her state of mind. I’m terribly afraid something’s loose.”

“What do you mean, “loose?” “

“The vodyanoi, maybe, but he’s not an instigator. He likes to think he is.”

’Veshka’s heart struggled to express itself, then calmed again, angry, now.

“She doesn’t like that idea,” he said.

“I think she knows it, though. The business with Chernevog—there are no coincidences in magic. No great ones, at least. Chernevog’s condition certainly isn’t coincidence. Anything that’s ever been associated is always associated.”

“What are you saying, he’s linked to her? Is—” The heart in him disturbed his own. —Is she fading? he wondered. Is that what’s going on —that she’s going back to—

“—rusalka-form?” Sasha caught up his thought. “I don’t I think that’s it. I certainly hope not. Calm. Easy. We’ll solve this.”

“I’d like to know how!” He was not sure now whose panic it was. He fought a shiver, bit an already bitten spot on his lip. “Sasha, she’s not doing well.”

“She’s doing very well indeed.” Sasha’s voice laid calm down like a blanket. “She knows exactly what she’s doing and she’s asking us to keep the mouse from foolishness. It’s what we knew could happen. I just never thought—never thought of Chernevog himself as an unsettled matter. But of course he was. It’s the things you don’t think about—and there may be a reason you’re not thinking about them—that make a way to you. Silences can be the most dangerous spots.”

“ Something made us forget him? He made us forget him?”

“He was very strong; he was very—cheated of his life. His appearance in that place certainly isn’t all that unreasonable.”

“You think he’s the cause? Or is something behind him?”

“I’m not sure,” Sasha said, and Eveshka’s heart shuddered in him, wanting—

“Certainly it’s not Eveshka at fault,” Sasha added in that same deathly hush. “If anything, this business came at her first—not a hundred years ago: I mean now, maybe with the mouse’s birth, maybe in something that happened when she was with her mother.”

Another shiver. Yes, he thought. And the shiver came through him, a twitch of his arms. “It might have been.”

“She believes in magic as a thing with intent. She believes there’s some—power behind the Yard-things and the Forest-things that doesn’t like us, or at least, isn’t like us. I don’t think so, not—truly. I think it’s something else, something far less alive, certainly less aware. Maybe she recognized some danger I didn’t, maybe she sensed some gap in our defenses I didn’t—I don’t know. But I do think she’s been fighting this back for longer than we know, without consciously knowing she was fighting anything specific, if you want my guess.”

“This—what “this?” “

“This slippage. This sliding into magic. I don’t know whether she’s fighting the danger or whether she is the danger.”

Cold silence lay next his heart. He could not tell whether it was agreement: he tried not to think about it. He leaned his chin on his hand and listened to Sasha saying:

“—If she did any one thing wrong, it was sealing herself off alone with the problem and not explaining—if it was actually awareness. If it was going on, I didn’t feel it going on. Or I didn’t feel what was going on. But maybe Ilyana did: she used to have a bad habit of eavesdropping; I suppose all children must, before they understand it’s wrong—but if the mouse got too close to her mother, I understand now why ’Veshka would have shut her out. Ilyana wouldn’t. Ilyana wouldn’t have any way to understand it: Ilyana started fighting her, and Ilyana still doesn’t understand. That’s our greatest danger. Our mouseling’s been hurt, very badly hurt, and she’s so young—”

Fear and hurt. Pyetr studiously found the teacup of overwhelming interest, picked it up and took a sip. The tea was cold. “What you’re saying is that ’Veshka’s the chink in our armor.”

“In many senses, yes. ’Veshka’s standoffishness from her daughter—she sees it as protective, holding questions off till the mouse is old enough. I feel she’s not chosen the best way—but ’Veshka—Honestly, ’Veshka can’t feel at ease with the child; can’t let go. Perhaps it’s a limit she’s decided for herself; but if it is—it’s still real; and I can’t answer the mouse’s questions, not the deep ones that ’Veshka’s rebuffs have created. I can say it—but the hurt’s still there. Which may mean it’s all on you. You’re the one point—the one person in this world who can possibly hold all our hearts.”

He shuddered, so badly his hand overset the cup and banged into the plate. He got a breath, rescued the cup before it reached the edge. “I’m sorry. I’m not doing so well this morning.”

“You’re doing very well. Steady. In one sense you already hold them. There’s not one of us would see you come to harm. In that sense you’re the most protected man in all the Russias. In another you know very well that you’re another vulnerable point.”

“A fool with a sword—”

“At close range, before any of us could protect you, yes—some fool with a sword could put it in our hearts. Literally.”

“He’d truly be a fool. I don’t think I’d want to see what would happen to him.”

Sasha moved back from the table, sudden scrape of wood on wood. He said: “Abandon that thought. Please.”

Sasha was not one to panic. Equally frightening, the rise of panic he felt inside.

“Nice weather,” he said, with a break in his voice. It was often good to discuss the weather, when wizards were upset. “Looks like the sun’s shining.”

“The sun’s in danger,” Sasha said.

God, craziness. It was enough to make his skin crawl.

Sasha said, “That’s better.” A deep breath. “I think we’d better wake Ilyana.”

“I’m not so sure. I’m not so sure you’re doing that well, friend. And what in hell’s going on with my wife?”

“She’s wished—” Sasha stopped for another breath, and there was such fear in Sasha’s expression his heart went cold. “She’s left me to make the decision with Ilyana. She says I’m the only one—and she’s the unstable point—I don’t know how she knows that. —Eveshka, dammit—”

She was gone. She wanted him to know in parting—he heard her speaking clear as clear—

I love you, Pyetr. I can’t come home till things are changed.

Come to me if there’s no other hope. But Sasha will be gone then, and your life and your soul will be in danger.

Most of all, don’t rely on Ilyana. Don’t. You don’t imagine what she can do to you.

Warn Sasha—

What? he wanted to ask her. Warn Sasha of what?

But her heart had left him by then.

Waking up was like any morning at first, with the birds under the eaves, and all, but that was only for a breath or two.

Then Ilyana realized that something was weighing down her bed on one side and she remembered—

Her father was sitting on the edge of her bed. Her father looked tired and sad, and he brushed her hair away from her face and asked:

“How are you, Ilyana?”

He almost never called her name unless she was in trouble; no one did, except her mother; but she was in trouble with her mother so often she could never tell what her mother meant.

She was certainly in trouble with her mother now. Mother and father had had a terrible fight, so bad uncle had had to hold her—

She did not even remember going to sleep. But her father was all right this morning. That was the important thing. She was glad he was all right.

She could not tell about her mother. Her mother was being very quiet this morning. That probably meant she was mad.

And her friend was gone. Her mother had banished him. Maybe forever.

A tear rolled down her face, just spilt, without her even thinking about it.

Damn.

She wanted not to cry. That stopped the tears, but it did not cure the feeling that lay cold as a stone in the middle of her chest.

“Ilyana?”

“Mother’s mad, isn’t she? I’m sorry.”

“I’m glad you’re sorry, mouse.” He touched her under her chin. “Fact is—I want you to be very calm now and don’t wish anything—”

That always meant something terrible. She wanted him to say it—fast and plain.

“Your mother’s left, mouse. She’s gone out on the river.”

“There’s a vodyanoi!”

“I know it. She knows it. But the greater danger’s here.”

“Me.” Things were her fault, they were always her fault, dammit!

“Mouse, I want you to think as kindly toward her as you can. And be very honest with me—please be honest. Do you promise?”

“I didn’t do anything!”

Her father patted her hand. “It’s all right.”

“What are you saying, that I made her leave?” Her father was mad at her. Her father was treating her the way her mother did when no one cared what was right, her father had his opinion, and that was her mother’s doing, dammit, no telling what her mother had told him except it was Ilyana’s fault, everything was always Ilyana’s fault—her mother arranged it that way.

Another tear spilled, plop, down her cheek.

“Don’t cry,” her father wished her. But her wishing had to stop it. He gathered her up, covers and all, and held her und rocked her, while she laid her head on his shoulder dry-eyed and thought how she wanted—

No. She mustn’t think bad thoughts. Mustn’t want people hurt.

Even her mother, for trying to take her father away from her for good, and for pulling a tantrum and making him blame her, when it was all her mother’s fault.

Her mother never wanted anybody to like her, her mother never, ever wanted her to have anybody, and if she had not fought back and if it were not for uncle Sasha, her mother would have made her father mad at her forever and driven him away. As it was, she was just miserable, and upset, and she wanted—

—wanted her friend back.

Mouse, her uncle reprimanded her. No!

Uncle Sasha believed she was wrong. Everyone did. All the time.

Even when she loved them. Her mother took everything she ever wanted away from her and nobody was ever on her side. She had no idea why her mother wanted her to be alone or why everyone thought she was a fool or why they always protected her mother.

Her uncle said, inside her head, Mousekin, don’t think like that. Absolutely we’re listening to you. But you have been wrong a couple of times in your life. Haven’t you?

She had to admit yes, but she still refused to believe it tin time. She told her uncle: I’ve been seeing my friend every spring, every spring since I was little. And he’s never hurt me. I don’t know why he would now.

She embarrassed her uncle. She caught something about her being grown-up now and grown-up girls being an entirely different question with a rusalka.

If men can be rusalki: that thought came through the confusion, too. Her uncle was not entirely sure that was possible.

So maybe you’re wrong about what he is. So there, uncle. Who’s not listening, now?

That was impertinent, her mother would say. That would get her sent to her room if her mother were here. Which her mother was not, this morning. And she was already in her room, with her father stroking her hair and saying:

“Dear mouse, don’t give me trouble, please don’t give me trouble today. Your mother’s gone away so you’ll have some rest and quiet. And we’ll talk about it, if you like—”

If I don’t like, too…

“But mostly, right now, mouse, I just want you to dry your eyes and come have breakfast and let’s not worry about it.”

He can only come here a few days more. And then it’s another year. And I can’t even talk to him—

Not wise, her uncle said.

Leave me alone! she wished him.

But she did not completely mean that. She really did not completely mean that.

“Breakfast?” her father asked.

She nodded against his shoulder. And wished her uncle not to be mad at her, which he was kind enough to tolerate.

“I’ll make breakfast,” Sasha insisted; and Pyetr decided to help—

Cleverly, he thought, because Ilyana needed something to take her mind off the situation—and two men trying to find essentials in her mother’s carefully arranged shelves had her off the bench in short order, had her protecting her mother’s things; and perhaps, a devious man could surmise, beginning to want her mother back when it came to overdone cakes for breakfast, because two men who very well understood campfire cooking were not going to put off breakfast-making on a child who had not been well, no, absolutely not. They could make breakfast, they had done it before.

And of course they would clean up.

Babi sulked about the cakes. Babi still had extras and got tipsy on vodka. And the batter spilled across the hearth would eventually clean away, even though it had cooked on, between the stones, where no mop could reach it.

The domovoi complained, too, about the smoke.

And Ilyana sat at the table with her chin on her hands and watched, back and forth, back and forth like a cat.

“You’re trying to make me want her back,” Ilyana said.

“It wouldn’t be nice to spy on your father,” Pyetr said.

She said, chin on fist now, frowning, “I didn’t.” And winced and shut her eyes as pottery clattered. “Uncle—”

“It didn’t break,” Sasha said.

“Mother’s going to blame me. She always does.”

“Nothing’s broken,” Pyetr said. “And your mother won’t blame you. I take all responsibility. Why don’t you run down lo the stable and bridle up the horses?”

“I don’t want to ride.”

“No? What do you want to do today?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, why don’t we ride until you do?”

“I think I’d better write some things down.”

“That might be a good idea,” Sasha said.

“I don’t think so,” Pyetr said. “God, she’s had enough of magic. She’s a child, for the god’s sake. That’s whal wrong: too much taking care of. She should skin a knee or something a little less damned dire, can’t she?”

“Don’t fight,” Ilyana said; a wish; even he heard it. Ilyana had her lips clamped as if something else was going to escape.

“We’re not fighting. Your uncle and I used to discuss this before—” He almost said, Before I married your mother. Which was true. He said instead, “We’re friends. It doesn’t mean you don’t like somebody if you yell.”

“I know,” she said, with exactly her mother’s frown.

It was not fair to Eveshka, either. He remembered pain. He remembered—

She said, sullenly, “I’ll go riding if you want.”

“I’m not going to make you do anything, mouse. That’s the point, isn’t it? Your mother’s just very fragile. Maybe she always will be. But she doesn’t want you to grow up like her. She wants you—”

“Wants” was not a good word. He knew that after all these years, dammit, he knew better.

The mouse bit her lip. “I don’t know what she wants. It changes. All the time.”

“What would you like to do? That’s the point. Go do it.”

“You wouldn’t like what I’d do…”

He saw that expression in the mirror when he was shaving. On a bad day. He tilted his head and gave her one that matched it.

“Mouse, if you’re a fool, I’m going to be very upset. There’s a vodyanoi to consider now, in your slipping about the woods with secrets—he doesn’t stay to the water, let me tell you something about Chernevog.”

“I don’t want to hear!”

That stung. And he forgot what he was going to say.

Sasha said, “She’s distressed, she didn’t intend that.”

“What about him?” the mouse asked, very quietly. And it came back to him what he had been going to say—that a man Chernevog’s age had no business with a fifteen-year-old girl.

But he did not think, on second thought, that she would understand that.

Instead he said, “If you should see him—tell him I’ll talk to him. Alone.”

She looked upset with that idea, and not only, perhaps, for fear of what he might say to Chernevog in that exchange. Maybe she was thinking about the danger he could be in—knowing what Chernevog was. That was what he hoped she would see, at least.

She said, cautiously, “What would you say to him?”

“I’d ask him what he wants. I owe him my life, mouse. But I don’t owe him yours. And I’d pay mine to keep you safe.”

Something wizardous went on—so strong he felt his skin crawl.

She said, “Don’t talk like that!”

“It’s every bit true, mouse.”

She jumped up from the bench and ran for her room. In a moment, through the open door, he saw her sit down on her bed with her book in her lap.

Not sun. Books.

He shook his head.

Sasha said quietly, “You scared her. That’s good. She’s thinking—very noisily right now. I can’t avoid hearing.”

“Don’t tell me. I don’t want to deal with her that way.”

“She’s making wishes to protect the house, she’s making wishes for all of us to be wise—even her mother. Winding them around like yarn. That’s the way she’s thinking of it. Don’t push her—to do anything, even to enjoy herself. That’s the real point, isn’t it? Let her think.”

The mouse came out with ink stains on her fingers and reddened eyes. Tears as well as ink on that page, Sasha thought, and put his own pen away and folded his book. She had done all that crying without disturbing the house—in any sense. No small feat.

“A very good mouse,” he said. “I didn’t even hear you.”

“Where’s my father?”

“Trimming horses’ feet. Or weeding the garden. One or the other.”

The mouse came very quietly and sat down opposite him at the kitchen table. “Uncle, what made me so mad was—nobody even asked if he’d done anything wrong. Nobody ever asks my opinion.”

“You mean no one asked you this time. “Ever” is quite large word.”

“It feels like “ever.” “

“I’m distracting you. Yes. We were upset. I’ll tell you, Chernevog was a very strong wizard. And one could suppose he’s old enough to know better than what he’s doing: we didn’t have to explain to him why we were upset—he knew that when he came here. But I do agree with you: you weren’t consulted. It had to scare you; it certainly scared me—I knew Chernevog. If he’d wanted a fight, it could have been bad down there—very bad.”

She had not tried to say anything. He left a silence for ho to think about that. Finally she said:

“I think I’ll go help my father. Is Babi with him?”

“Last I saw.”

She started for the door, turned around again with a lift of her chin. “Have you been talking to my mother?”

He shook his head. “No. But she’s all right, I’m sure.”

“There’s a vodyanoi out there. She should be careful.”

“She can handle the old Snake. No question.”

A very good sign, he thought, watching her go out the door. And the inevitable afterthought, considering the blond braids and that outline against the sun: God, she looks like her mother.

Old Snake had not a chance if he crossed Eveshka right now, no more than Kavi Chernevog had had when, clinging to a scrap of life, he had drifted toward the only friends he had had in the world. And found Ilyana.

No. Not Chernevog as he had died. The boy who loved Owl had found Ilyana; and Ilyana had found someone to play with. And to love.

God help both of them, he thought, sick at heart.

But that was not the worst thing about the affair. The worst thing, the thing that haunted Eveshka and that haunted him and Pyetr, too, so far as Pyetr’s understanding went—was that fifteen years ago they had patched something very wrong in the world; things once associated were always associated—and if there was a way for it to get back into the world it was through Kavi Chernevog or it was through Eveshka—

Or, likeliest of all, Ilyana.

It proved one thing, that they had not been safe all these years: things had begun going wrong very naturally, very quietly, from the very time they had left that place upriver, where Chernevog had died.

Baby mouse, Misighi had called her, lichenous, patch-hided old Misighi, no little crazed from the death of the previous forest. They had been so relieved when Misighi had found no harm in Ilyana as an infant, when he had cradled her in his gnarled arms, smelled her over and said, in that rumbling voice of his—new growth.

But after that, Misighi had not come to the house. A few leshys had. A very few. And he had asked why, in his wanderings in the woods—asked Wiun, for one, who was a little mad himself.

Wiun had said—A new wind, young wizard. A new wind will come.

And more and more rarely they would be there, leaving their backward, tracks on the riverside. Sometimes the orphans of some storm would turn up near his porch, or on it, sometimes a nest of birds—a young squirrel.

But none lately. None last winter. The woods had a lonelier, cruder feeling this spring.

He had written it in his book, and worried about it, and worried that perhaps Pyetr’s going to Kiev had been a mistake, coming home again with, perhaps, too much of the outside clinging about him—too much of tsars and tsarevitches and the noise of marketplaces and the smell of smoke. Pyetr declared he would not go to Kiev again: and suddenly that statement seemed ominous—as if all along their suppositions had been wrong, their fears misplaced: Pyetr could never have been in danger from Ilyana among the leshys. They would have kept him safe from harm—by means a man might not like; but he would have been safe.

Instead they had sent him south—and the leshys had ceased to visit them. They had made a choice of some kind, without knowing they were choosing.

God. Why didn’t we see it? Why did we ever think of it as waiting? Everything was going on around us. Misighi, Misighi, do you hear me, old friend?

Where did the years go? We thought it was your time being so long—but we’re the ones who’ve slept too long. Come back and see the mouse now, Misighi. She’s grown so. And she’s not wicked, she never was. You knew that when you held her.

But what’s in Chernevog’s heart? What does he want, but life he can’t have again, Misighi? Have you known about him, all this time, and not said?

All those times we met through the years—and you never once mentioned him? Or couldn’t you? Or couldn’t I once have suspected he wouldn’t die?

At least there was a sort of peace in the day—even if her filly managed to figure out the gate again, and got into her mother’s garden. Ilyana even found herself laughing—and laughing and laughing with tears in her eyes as Patches raced around and around the yard with a carrot-stem in her mouth, while her uncle and her father and Babi chased after her Uncle could have wished Patches back into the stable yard, she could have done it herself except she was laughing so hard, but uncle and father and Babi were all enjoying themselves, certainly Patches was, and meanwhile Missy escaped out the gate that uncle was trying to get Patches into and trotted straight for the garden.

She could not chase horses anymore. She was laughing so hard she was bent double, and finally, as they were about to not Patches in, her father yelled at her to get the gate. She managed to do that, then sat down on the bottom rail, holding the gate shut with her arm, and gasped and wiped her eyes, thinking that somehow something had just broken loose inside, and it might have been pain and it might have been laughter. Maybe it was both, because it could not be funny enough to make her stomach hurt.

Her father and Sasha were both out of breath from laughing and running and the Missy—chase was going slower and slower, until Missy was just trotting around the yard ahead of them.

Her father finally waved at Sasha, saying, between gasps, “ for the god’s sake, wish her in.“

Missy arrived, Ilyana got up and opened the gate and shut it behind her, and leaned on it.

Her father tousled her bangs. All three of them leaned panting on the gate.

Her father gasped, “God, why don’t we go riding now?”

And that set them all off again.

She had never laughed so much in her life. She felt better. And feeling better after what had happened felt like betraying her friend—but she could at least feel guilty now, instead of scared and mad. She did not, truly did not want to die. She wanted the rest of her life, now, because it seemed there were things to learn—

Like finding out her father and her uncle could laugh like that. It was wonderful and it was scary—completely beyond uncle’s power to stop it, and beyond hers, which she had always understood was terribly dangerous for wizards—

But it was funny, dammit, and surely laughing like that could never be wrong.

That was what the house felt like without her mother. She saw for the first time in her life what her mother’s presence did, and what her mother’s shape was in the house—a sad and frightening shape, that right now had no house to be in tonight.

She asked her uncle, while they were smoothing horse tracks out of her mother’s garden, “Is my mother really all right?”

“Why should you think not, mouse?”

“Can you tell her something from me?”

“All right.”

“Tell her I’m not mad at her anymore. I don’t want her to come back yet. And I can’t talk to her right now. But tell her I—” Want her to be happy? Was that bad to wish? “Tell her—no, ask her… if she wouldn’t please want herself to be happier.”

Her uncle looked at her as if that surprised him, but not that much. “That’s very kind of you, mouse.”

“I wish—god, I can’t stop myself today!”

“That’s all right. You’re old enough to let loose a few wishes—you’re old enough to use your father’s axe, too, if you’ll get him to teach you how.”

Her uncle meant that wishes were like that axe, a very dangerous thing to use badly. She thought about her mother and said, “I think my mother is so scared. What of?”

“There’s a thing, mouse—I’m not even sure it’s a thing: maybe it’s just the place magic comes from—that she dealt with once, in a way she shouldn’t have. She still knows how to reach into that place. If she ever loses her good sense, she might get scared enough to do that; and if she did—she could become what your grandmother was. That’s enough to give anyone nightmares. Your mother killed people. I think she could forget that—if she didn’t know she could do it again and that she could want to do it again.”

“She can want not to do it again!”

“Oh, she does. She does. But she can’t believe it. The fact is, mouse, once you’ve used that kind of magic, it starts using you. It’s like drinking too much vodka. Only you don’t get silly. You get dangerous. I’ll tell you something—I’ve done it. I’ve done it very briefly, and in a very minor way, and I got away from it as fast as I could. Your mother—”

People always stopped in the middle of important things. She wanted the rest of it, she needed the rest of it now, dammit!

“I’ll tell you, mouse, I couldn’t tell you when you were small, because little children are very apt to try exactly what you tell them not to: they’re curious, they test things, and they don’t understand that consequences are real. But this is the most important Don’t there is in the world: Don’t ever use any magic but your own. Don’t borrow; absolutely don’t borrow magic. For one thing, it makes you drunk and it spoils your judgment. For another thing, the creatures that will offer it to you are all harmful. Every one of them. The good ones, like Babi, won’t let you. Babi would show you his teeth if you even thought about it. Does that tell you something, or doesn’t it?”

She nodded, sobered.

Her uncle said, leaning on his hoe, “All the ones that will lend their magic seem connected to something—in that place Babi goes to when he isn’t here. Maybe there’s more than one place. But whatever it is, it’s not like here. And if you go borrowing magic—it’s like pulling on a little string that turns out to be tied to a snake, but the snake’s got his head in deep water, and he’s holding on to something else, something that’s pulling back very strongly, do you understand me? That’s what it feels like.”

A little shiver went over her skin. Her uncle went on:

“A rusalka’s not quite that. A rusalka borrows life: the same kind of mistake: it only happens to kill people. But a wizard wishes nothing outside of nature; while a sorcerer when he uses magic borrows something I can’t even put a name to, maybe something alive: your mother thinks it is. I’m less sure of that, but I do believe it’s at least self-interested; and as far as any of us understand, it doesn’t seem to have any law or limits the sorcerer doesn’t give it. Pretty soon he can’t remember what he’s changed and he’s thinking how things are connected—he can fix things, right? Pretty soon it’s making the decisions, or the total of his wishes are—and he’s not. That’s a feeling you don’t ever want to have, mouse, not ever in your life. Once you’ve gone that brink every choice you make to stop yourself is an uphill climb. Every fear you have and every knotty problem face, it’s so easy to remember the quick solution and to forget the mess it got you into. You lose your wisdom. You lose your sense. Thank the god I could step back again to safe ground. Your mother went so deep in that it’s very easy for her to slip back: your mother fights on that slanting ground all alone, for the rest of her life. No other wizard can get into her heart and help her. I’ve tried.”

“She’s hurting my father!”

“Your father loves her without her wanting him to, and in spite of everything, it’s his decision. Yes, she hurts him. And she knows it. She even tried to send him to Kiev, so he’d forget about her. Foolish thought. He got himself in trouble. He nearly got himself hanged—your father can be a very reckless man when he’s at loose ends, and the plain fact was, he didn’t care about his own safety when he was apart from your mother and you. He was desperately unhappy, he got into a dice game with some people, and he drank too much. And I’ll tell you the rest of it when you’re old enough not to wish the tsarevitch to break out in hives, or worse. Your mother did enough to him.”

Her parents had dimensions she had had no idea of. They had done things she had no conception of. There had been a whole world going on she had not seen while she was growing up. Of course she remembered the year her father had gone to Kiev. But she had thought that was because she had had a really awful tantrum and her mother had just told him to go further away than usual.

It was the time she had decided once for all she had better grow up and stop having tantrums, because she had figured out that every time she had one her mother sent her father away.

And she hated him being gone. Uncle was better company than mother was, but she wanted—

God, she had never figured out how much she had been wanting her father back—after her mother and uncle wished him out—exactly the kind of wickedness she had been about to accuse her mother of doing. She wanted her uncle to know she had just figured that out, and that she was truly, truly embarrassed.

“Children do that sort of thing,” her uncle said. “Grownups have to think very carefully what their wants do to other people. You’re very definitely growing up, mouse. Some people never do get that grown-up.”

—But I’ve got to think what else I’ve been wanting from people—

—like for my parents to love me and my mother to stop yelling at me. But my mother and my uncle can wish me to mind my own business. Wishing at my father… that’s really unfair.

Her uncle said, “The test for whether it’s right to want something of someone, mouse, is not whether you think it won’t hurt them, and not even whether you think it’s for their own good—but whether you’d want them wishing it about you. You figured that out very well a moment ago. But don’t worry about wanting your parents to love you or your father to stay—although I do think you ought to watch that, and remember that it’s a lot better to let go and trust someone you love to do the right thing on his own.”

That was what she had been trying to say. Her uncle found it for her. She said, “My mother doesn’t trust me. She won’t let me out of her light. And I’m not a baby anymore.”

“Your mother had almost learned to trust herself when you came along. And knowing you were magical, and loving you and your father, both, she’s grown more and more afraid of a little girl she might have wanted—at some time—far too much and at far too great a risk to things as they were. You were a change, a really major change, the sort every wizard’s afraid of. Once she had your father and once she had you, she wasn’t on her own anymore. She couldn’t assure herself you could take care of yourself the way your father can— because of course a child can’t. And that’s precisely where you can help your mother: she’s been looking out for you through some very scary years—and now she has to learn to trust your judgment.”

“Should I wish her that?”

“Wish, yes—and do, mouse. Doing is of equal importance. What, besides your friend, upset your mother when she saw you on the river shore?”

“I don’t know.” A lecture was coming. Her uncle could be so kind talking to her; and then he could frown and scold her. She hated this part.

“You weren’t supposed to be down by the river. Personally, I don’t think it’s a reasonable prohibition—but she made it; and you’d slipped down there in secret, and you were doing something your mother didn’t know about. Maybe she had told herself she could trust you, and what she saw shook her so badly—”

“I don’t think I was doing anything wrong!”

“That’s because you’re making choices for yourself, a lot of which don’t go wrong, and in your own best judgment, you didn’t think this one would. You’re not a baby who’ll fall off the porch anymore and I don’t honestly fault you for making a decision. Nor even for making the decision not to tell us. It may, for one thing, have been his wanting you not to tell—”

She had not even suspected that. God! “—But really, outside of the danger he is to you, the hurt he’s dealt your mother is very real and very serious. He didn’t tell you all the truth about your mother, and about what he did. Possibly he remembers only up to a point—possibly he has his own interests. She is your mother, and your father loves her, and I think you can figure out from here what you ought to do. Can’t you, mouse?”

“That’s a dirty trick, uncle. No, I don’t know what to do!”

“It certainly is. And I don’t either, except that you’ve figured out now that getting your mother to trust your judgment is a very important point, because hers in his case is very complicated—but I’m not going to wish you into it. You don’t become grown-up at midday on your birthday. It’s not a day, it’s a progression of days, and it never quite stops—I’m still growing up. Your mother is. So’s your father. But there is, step by step, a point that your mother should trust your judgment on grown-up matters, the same way she watched you and gradually decided you wouldn’t fall off the porch if she let you play there on your own.”

“She had to let me try, didn’t she?”

“And hasn’t she? And can’t she make mistakes? You’re in grown-up things now, mouse. In whatever way you reckon him, Chernevog is an encounter far more dangerous than falling off the porch—and you weren’t where you were supposed to be. You scared your mother out of her good sense— and she slipped. Do you understand that?”

It made a kind of sense. She was not sure she agreed about being wrong. She was not sure her uncle had even said she was wrong.

But if she tried to explain that to her mother, her mother would start wishing at her and she would forget all her own good sense and wish at her right back.

She was not sure whose fault that would be, but it was certainly what would happen; and she decidedly did not want that.

So it was better to fix her mother’s bean rows, since she could not fix things with her mother. She might go down to the river this evening to see if her friend was back, maybe with her uncle knowing about it and giving her permission—

But her friend might not come then. He might believe she had turned against him if she did not come back or if she told her uncle. And in spite of everything her uncle said, her friend—Kavi—would be reasonable, if only she could find him and talk to him quietly without people getting upset and without her uncle or her mother wishing at him.

If her friend was Kavi Chernevog (and he had not, con fronted, denied it) then he was not fifteen years old. And if he was who they thought—and if he had done all these name less dreadful things and killed her mother—still, her mother was alive; and Kavi had not been a thoroughly bad person she did not get that impression, not even from her father who had been as upset with him as she had ever seen her father upset with anyone—her father had called himself the only friend Kavi had ever had… and would her father be a friend to anyone wicked? No. Absolutely not.

So Kavi was not absolutely wicked. Nor quite a murderer, nor quite hateful to her mother—something had happened, maybe before she was born: and her mother was concerned for him, her uncle had said that, too, what time she was not being scared of him for what he was.

Her mother had been dead. God! Did uncle truly mean that?

But Kavi was. She had known that for years—and it had J never seemed entirely unreasonable that he was a ghost.

So there were grown-up secrets around him, tangled as grown-up secrets could be—but they looked not half so formidable or so forbidden as they had yesterday. Her uncle had talked with her as if she were grown-up. And if everybody could just be reasonable, her friend, whoever he was, might even hold some of the answers to what had happened to her mother, that her uncle and her father had no clue to. He might even help her mother, maybe talk to her, and show her he meant no harm, so her mother could stop being afraid and stop being so crazy about things. God, if she could just see him again—if she could just—

If she could just—

Her hoe beheaded a bean plant. Her mother would have a fit.

Uncle had always said that wishes could lie around doing nothing for years and then rise up and get you. Little things going wrong could be a sign of them. Wishes could last and last, even when you were dead, like that patch on the one old teacup, that uncle said her grandfather must have done; and if Kavi had been at their house before, if Kavi had known all of them when he was alive—then there very well could be a lot of old wishes hanging around and causing trouble for him and all of them.

Uncle said old wishes could make smart people forget things, or do little things that were not smart or stupid in themselves, but that just added up and pushed bigger things in a general direction—

You could never wish anything against nature, that was the first rule. You could wish a stone to fly, but it would not, as her uncle would say, do that of its own nature; an improbable wish just added to the general list of unlikely wishes always hanging about in the world waiting to happen when the conditions were right. And there must be a lot of them in the world, because other wizards had to be children once, and make stupid wishes—

So, one day maybe years later, along would come a whirlwind; or somebody to pick up that stone and throw it. Or a passing horse might kick it. And it would fly. But a storm or a person or a horse would have had to go out of the ordinary way to do that, which might cause something else and something else forever, to the end of the kingdoms of all the tsars in the world;

A lot of wizards had grown up around this house, it turned out, and terrible things had happened here, that could make even a grown wizard wish without thinking. Wishes attached to objects, wishes on the gates, the yard, her own room—

All the things uncle had told her began to come together of a sudden and assume shapes that made her—on the one hand—feel better, because maybe there was an explanation for her mother acting the way she had: maybe her mother was not after all so awful as she seemed. Being killed could certainly make one anxious about the place where it happened. And maybe she could do something right for once, maybe one single wise wish would satisfy all the old wishes that might exist hereabouts: that was how to untangle a magical mess, as her uncle called it, just like looking through yarn for the master knot that snarled the little knots.

But—on the other hand—it was not all that simple: her parents certainly had never found that knot; and going down to the river tonight to ask the one other person who might have something important to say was not safe: she trusted her friend, but rusalki killed people, if she was mistaken; or even if she just said the wrong word to her uncle right now and he gave her the wrong answer and she believed it and made a wrong wish—something terrible could happen.

She was afraid to move when she thought that. She might be the only one in the house in a position to see the answer, the one person everyone ought to trust, and the very people she most wanted to protect could tell her no and wish her not to do things and lie to her, that was the scariest thought.

Her mother had been running things and wishing things in the house for a hundred years, her mother and Kavi both had, as seemed—not even mentioning her grandfather who had lived here before her uncle and her father had come. And her grandmother, who she supposed must have. And that was a lot of wishes—a dangerous lot of wishes that her uncle as well as her mother might not know about.

Not to mention her mother was the one her uncle said was fighting that magical thing, whatever it was, that was so easy to use again.

If her mother had been dead a hundred years she could hardly have kept her book current. So her mother had broken one of the first rules she had ever learned: to write down exactly what she had done, in all its shapes. Kavi, who could not move the foam on the river, certainly had no means to write down his wishes—what was more, he had come back as a little boy: little boys hardly had good sense, rusalki could hardly help themselves; and if a rusalka could still do magic—god, what might a young one have wished?

“Uncle?”

Her uncle was squatting with the hoe against his shoulder, patting the earth along the radishes by hand. He looked up at her.

“If Chernevog’s dead—what happened to his book?”

Her uncle went a shade of white against the flecks of mud on his face, but she felt nothing but her own careful thought. He was good: he truly was very good. “What put that question into your head, mouse?”

“I just realized… ghosts don’t write things down. And wizard-ghosts could get in a lot of trouble that way, unless they remember things better than live people do. Couldn’t they?”

“They don’t. They’re worse. God, mouse. Did you think of that all by yourself?”

“I think I did.”

“I think you did, too. You’re a very astute mouse. Yes. I’ve thought of that; and I assure you your mother has. It worries her.”

“So where is his book?”

Her uncle got up and brushed his hands off on his trousers. “As happens, mouse, I have it.”

“Have you read it?”

“Yes. I’ve read it very carefully. That, and your grandfather’s book; and on one occasion, your mother’s.”

“Do you think she reads mine?”

That question seemed to give him pause. “I don’t think so. I think I’d have known. And we agreed between us not to do that.”

That was different than she had thought. Her mother might lie to her: anybody might lie for good reasons; but her uncle wouldn’t have that particular expression on his face when he did, or be as easy to overhear as he was at the moment.

He was thinking: ’Veshka might have. But she’s curiously moral when you least think she will be.

Her uncle had not meant her to hear that. She felt herself blush; but she was also glad she had heard it: it made more sense of her mother in a handful of words than anything she had ever heard.

She said, “Would you let me read those books?”

Her uncle did not like that idea. No. He took a breath, and said, “I think they’d disturb you right now, to be honest. There are some few things left for you to learn before you’re grown—things also more serious than the porch was; and I want to explain them to you the right way, before you read other people’s mistakes.”

“So explain them now.”

“I don’t know how to explain them.”

“God!” She threw up her hands, her father’s expression, she realized it even when she was doing it; and she looked at him the way her father would.

“I know, mouse, I know. I can say this much: some of Chernevog’s reasons and your grandfather’s… weren’t right ones. You can learn from those books. But you have to realize where their mistakes were—and what they were, because the reasoning that led them to those mistakes looks very sound, if you don’t see certain things a youngster might not know. And you can’t learn them all at once, this afternoon.”

That was at least the sanest no she had ever gotten. But it was a no. And it was still frustrating.

Her uncle said, “You’re like your father. “Why” is his word.”

“To you?”

“To the whole world, mouse, “Why?” and “Why Not?” He doesn’t believe easily—not until he sees a thing happen. Which could be a very bad habit—except he doesn’t believe a thing can’t happen, either, including the chance that he could be wrong. He’s stayed alive: he’s kept me alive. And I was a very foolish young wizard.” Her uncle took up his hoe again and gave the radish row a thumping down with the flat. “A very small dose of skepticism is a healthy thing in magic. And your father would add—a sense of humor is the most important sense. More precious than your eyes or ears.”

She looked across the yard to where her father was sitting, planing down a board. She thought: How lonely he must feel, with mother and me both having tantrums.

She thought, I should have gone riding with him. I really should have.

She leaned her hoe on the garden fence, and went and hugged her father and told him that she was sorry, could they go riding in the morning?

“I suppose we can.” He pursed his lips, peeled another curl from the board, and looked at her sideways from under his hair as if he was keeping just a little of his doubt back—in case she was up to something. That was not at all the effect she wanted.

She said, to cajole him out of that idea without magic: “Will you teach me how to jump Patches this afternoon?”

Eyebrows went up. “Your mother would—”

—kill me, he thought. She heard that completely by accident, saw him clamp his lips.

“I think I’d better teach you to ride by more than wishes, then, mouseling: staying on’s not enough.”

She’s a great deal calmer, Sasha wanted Eveshka to know, before he opened his book that night. I’ve gone back up to my house, my own bed, you know. God, Pyetr’s a restless sleeper.

He could feel the loneliness in her asking: How is he? and he answered her with all he knew—which he hoped was some measure of reassurance; about the talk he had had with her daughter, how Ilyana was not rebelling, was not going back to the river—

Be sure, Eveshka said, and almost—he felt it and wanted that thought quiet, quickly and thoroughly. Please, he said. She’s sleeping. She’s beginning to believe she can talk to you. Don’t undo it all. She does love you. She will want you back—in not so long, I think.

Refraining from anything she had an opinion in was very hard for Eveshka. Refraining from her daughter was the hardest thing she could do—save one.

She said, Tell Pyetr I love him.

I will, he assured her, and wished her well.

It was quiet then, in his heart, in the house. Just the cluttered tables, the shelves, the little spot of light the candle made. He dared open his book then, separate of that troubling presence, and uncap the inkwell.

Damned lonely little house, never mind the bed was comfortable. The fire in the hearth, neglected last night, had gone out again, and the night chill reached his bones. He was alone up here. Eveshka was alone on the river. But he had laughed today, dammit, laughed so hard he had pulled a stitch in his side; Pyetr had—until the tears ran; and, god, yes, part of it was pain. They had been on the knife’s edge for years with the child, Pyetr was desperately worried—and here were the two of them fooling about with that silly horse, playing games like the boys they had once been—

Because for that moment the years had not been there; and Pyetr had been himself; and he had. Not wise, not careful, considering all the things they had taught themselves to be, weighing every word and every wish—

They had laughed, and so had the mouse, thank the god— which gave him hope that, as much sense as the mouse was showing about what she was learning, there might be the day they could do that again, with Eveshka home. That was the wish he wrote in his book. That would make him happy—having his family back together, he was sure of that. A most definite wish—

The circle of light seemed very small tonight. Perhaps the wick had burned too fast for a bit, and drowned in wax. The untidy stacks seemed to close in on him—books and papers, books and papers, oddments that comprised his whole damned life.

No more mouse to make toys for. No more little girl to come up to his house and make messes with his inkpot.

She was growing up, his mouse was. Not for him. The thought had indeed crossed his mind that they might be each other’s answer—but he could not give up that little girl, could never change what had grown to be between them, or change her uncle Sasha in her eyes—they would both lose by that. Immeasurably. He could not think otherwise.

But he did think sometimes—of, as Pyetr had joked with him once, not really joking—sailing downriver with marriage in mind, to find himself some beggar girl, Pyetr had said, who would think him a rescue.

When once they had joked about wanting tsarevnas, each of them.

But, fact was, he thought, making Ilyana’s name carefully in his book, the fact was, while there had been one woman in the house down there, there were getting to be two, who had difficulties as it was—and somehow he did not think bringing some stranger into the household and dealing with an ordinary woman in the midst of magic was going to solve their problems this year or next.

Which meant that his own house just stacked up higher and higher, a pending calamity of stacks ready to crash down—and somehow he just could not care about the house he lived in: that was his house down there, dammit, that was his family, and up here was just where he spent his nights and kept his papers.

He closed his book, put away his pen, and rubbed his eyes—god, they were scratchy tonight; or maybe it was the sleep he had not gotten, with Pyetr tossing and turning all the rest of the night, after he had gotten him to bed at all.

He unstuck the candle from the desk—slopped hot wax onto his finger, and onto the floor. Damn it. Probably onto his trouser leg. Candles were a mess—safer than oil-lamps in this clutter, but certainly hell on the furniture.

He set the candle on the bedside table, in a ring of previous wax spots, sat down to pull his boots off, thinking, A wife would be very nice. Someone to talk to would be nice. Someone to keep the damned fire in the fireplace lit, and the house warm, and echoing with voices.

That thought got completely out of hand. Completely. He thought, Why should I give up my whole life for everyone else?—which was not even reasonable: if not for Pyetr and his family he would be the sole occupant in that house down the hill, and within a year it would look like this one—or worse, stand neat and silent and foil of unused furniture.

No, left on his own, he would have probably gone and courted some farmer’s daughter downriver, and maybe had a little girl of his own by now, who did not exist, thanks to the years he had spent bringing Ilyana up; and who probably would never exist, considering the years he had already spent working and making notes and piling his house full of things he meant to take care of and still had to do. Somehow he had just gotten—

—damned lonely, in an overcrowded little house he did not quite know how had gotten this way. He wished for someone—

Oh, my god, he thought.

No. I don’t want that.

He could not lie to himself. That never worked.

He thought—There’s nothing for it; I’ve done it now. I’ve got to do something about this before it just happens—maybe go out and find somebody, if I can reason with ’Veshka and not have some poor girl turned into a toad on my account.

God, what have I done to myself? I haven’t got time for this. I’m not sure I even want a wife. I’m not sure I want any stranger coming between me and my family. I’m not sure I want some strange woman who can’t read straightening up my papers, or having another little girl to bring up, who might be a wizard, too—or, god help me, a little boy, or three or four of them—

It did not help that there was the sound of thunder in the distance: rainstorms were natural enough in the spring. But one did not like to make important wishes when nature was unsettled. Instabilities bred instabilities, and he certainly did not want distractions tonight, while he was chasing this unruly, unasked-for notion of a wife: distractions like Eveshka out on the river in a thunderstorm, or Pyetr worrying about her or Ilyana making wishes about the weather for her mother’s sake—

Damn it all, miss us! Go north! We can do without the rain tonight!

But thunderstorms were damnably difficult to deter.

He blew out the light, slipped under a comfortable weight of covers and stared at the dark overhead, thinking—

I truly don’t want this. I really, truly don’t want this. I don’t know why I do such contrary things—but I can’t take it back, now. Something slipped, just then, I felt it go: old wishes, maybe—remembering the mouse was worried about me, something she wished for me.

Dammit all.

The wind rose. It was moving fast, that storm: hope that Eveshka was safely moored somewhere—but she had taught them all they knew of handling that boat, and she could certainly see and hear the storm coming. He had no doubts of her, so long as she had her wits about her.

Eveshka would kill him for what he had done—wishing for a wife. Maybe she even knew about it. Maybe that was the source of the storm. Or maybe what he had just wished was the answer to their present difficulties, maybe it was even good, what had happened: impossible to know until the air settled. They had brought Ilyana this far alive and well and nature had to take its course: he had no intention to do to the mouse what Uulamets had done to him—bequeathing him in one instant everything he knew: which itself might solve matters, but it was damnably hard on a fifteen-year-old, he knew that from experience; and besides, he was by no means sure a wizard who was not dying could do it.

Rumble. A spatter of rain.

Not a good time to think about Uulamets’ death, or about lightning—god, he hated fires. He remembered Chernevog’s house burning, and remembered, earliest of memories—his parents’ screams, the neighbors flinching while he huddled behind a forest of grown-up legs, feeling the heat—

The neighbors had said, The boy’s a witch, you know. Vasily beat the boy once too often—

Now a fire would not stay lit in his hearth.

He gazed into the dark above the rafters—hearing the thunder. He had a vision of himself directly beneath the sky, the roof seeming suddenly no shield from Uulamets’ fate; or Chernevog’s.

He felt the storm, felt the instability in the heavens. He thought—I should get up. I should go down the hill for safety tonight. I don’t like this. Something’s definitely fractured.

But to go outdoors under that lightning-pregnant cloud, perhaps to bring ill luck with him, to Pyetr’s house, right where Ilyana—

No, that’s foolishness. I should wish not, the lightning’s up there right now, and I can’t want it away from me—

Not if Pyetr’s house is its other choice. Send it to the woods, burn the forest down? The leshys wouldn’t understand that.

God!