Lightning showed something caught in the brush pile, something the water had pushed there, not a log or even a dead animal. It looked like cloth. It looked like—
She made out a hand, a face profiled against the brush, above the white spray of the flood.
Oh, god, she thought, a drowned person, caught in the brush. She did not want to find someone dead—she wanted her uncle or her father, right now: grown-ups could deal with gruesome things—
But she was all there was, and if there was help she had to give it: she slid down from Volkhi’s drenched back and wanted him and Patches to stand very still while she worked down the bank beside Patches and had a look at this person to see if he was alive. Patches gave a nervous little whicker and proved she could move by easing over for her, but she did not want Patches to do that: she grabbed a handful of Patches’ black and white tail to help her footing on the mud. “Hey!” she yelled over the roar of the flood and the rain, hoping if the person was not dead he would hear and move and reach up a hand to her so she would not have to touch him to find out. But he did not move, so she leaned out over the rushing water, and grabbed a fistful of wet coat. “Move, Patches! Go on—dammit, no! Up!”
Patches gave a sudden jump and pulled so hard that both her arms were like to break. She held on until she had the body most of the way out of the water and that was all she could do: she let go of Patches’ tail and fell on her knees in the mud, hauling on the coat and the arms and trying to get the body where it would not fall back in.
The lightning showed her a handsome young face—in which the eyes were partly open and the mouth was working to breathe. He coughed up water, choked, and she quickly rolled him over on his side so he could spit it out. Awful water, full of mud, he had been in; and carried the god only knew how far in it and under the flood. He coughed and coughed and finally caught a bubbling breath.
She shook at him then. “Come on, get your legs out of the water! My uncle’s house is on fire and I’ve got to get home! Come on! Please, try!”
He tried: he got a knee under him, and slid immediately back toward the stream.
She grabbed him and pulled his limp body up against her, both of them sliding until she dug a heel into the mud. He weighed more than she did; he had fainted and she could pull him no further without chancing going in herself.
“Wake up!” She shook at him, he moved, and she shouted into his ear, “Get higher, get something to hold on to!”
Suddenly a Thing popped up right in their faces with a hiss and an appalling row of white teeth: the boy yelled and flinched back against her.
Babi, thank the god. Missy was beyond the screen of brush, her lather was jumping down and running to reach her—
The breath went out of her. Her arms were numb, the leg that was bracing both of them began to tremble. She was soaked through, and cold, but all at once she could hear her uncle wanting her to answer him, and he could hear her, telling him she was safe, everybody was safe, her father was here with Missy and Babi, and she had found a half-drowned boy…
Her mother said, without warning, Oh, god—
Her mother—
—wanting this boy to slip back in—
“No!” she cried, wanting her mother not! not! to think of killing.
The feeling stopped. Her father had her arm, pulled her by that and the boy by the collar and said, in a voice as shaky as she felt, “It’s all right, mouse, steady, I’ve got you both.”
The boy certainly explained something, magic not working, Sasha’s house burning, everything going wrong at once. Pyetr did not like this, he wanted Sasha to know, if Sasha was listening.
Sasha was not. Sasha was busy or Sasha was not doing, well, or magic had failed again, for some reason, none of I which possibilities made him feel any better at all.
“Your uncle’s not answering me,” he said to Ilyana, and Ilyana:
“He’s probably holding mother off. She’s—oh, god, papa, she wants—wants to kill him—”
He got the gist of that, grabbed her and hugged the breath out of the mouse, trusting Babi to go for the boy’s throat if he made a single hostile move. Ilyana was soaked, cold, exhausted, he was no better; and getting her back to the house was all he cared about at the moment. A man could never count on winning with magic running wild like this— wishes stacked up like so much old pottery, Sasha described it, a whole place heavy with an unstable stack of wishes, all waiting for some reasonable thing to satisfy the impossible condition—
Like a girl desperately wanting a boy. A wizard desperately wanting someone—
Damned right Eveshka was upset. He was upset, and he could not feel magic happening around him.
Ilyana said, against his shoulder, “Did uncle’s house all burn?”
“I’m afraid there’s not much left of it. At least the sparks are all drowned.” The rain was pouring down again, soaking them to the skin. “Who is he?”
“I don’t know.” She let go of him to kneel and look at the boy—handsome lad, Pyetr saw. Damn the luck. Older than Ilyana, maybe by several years. And that collar under the sodden coat glittered very expensively.
No farmer lad, that was sure. He dropped to one knee and gently slapped the boy’s cold face. “Who are you, lad? Do you have a name?”
Eyes slitted open while he thought uncomfortably of shape-shifters.
Lips said, faintly, “Yvgenie. Yvgenie Pavlovitch.”
“Where are you from?”
“Kiev.”
“You’re rather far from Kiev. The river washed you backwards, did it? Spat you out upriver. How did you get here?”
The eyes rolled, showed white. The boy had fainted away.
Didn’t at all like that question, did it?
“We’ve got to build a fire,” Ilyana said, through chattering teeth. “We’ve got to get him dry, he’s freezing.”
He thought—Hell if I want us alone out here with him. Get him to Sasha, is what we’ve got to do, and the faster, the better.
Aloud, he said, “In this rain, mouse? A horse’s back is the warmest place we can put him; and your uncle needs our help. Let’s just bundle him up and get him on a horse. You ride Missy back, you’re lightest.” He got his arms around whatever-it-was and pulled him up against him, the most dangerous position he could think of to be in with something magical, but he aimed him for Volkhi, as, after Missy, the most mannered horse they had.
In the small chance that this was truly the only shape young Yvgenie Pavlovitch owned.
* * *
Eveshka shoved at the tiller and the boat’s sail slatted and thundered above the rain. Way fell off immediately, and the boat began to toss as she brought the bow on about, holding with both arms and all her strength against the jolt as the sail came over. The boat reeled at the deepest slack to a sudden, violent gust, and only a wish and the ferry’s good trim kept her from rolling over in that instant before the wind slammed into the sail on a new tack and the tiller bucked against her arms. She hated the dark water, she hated the storm; she fought the river and the weather for her life and safely damned what could feel no possible danger from her.
She could not think now. She should not think now. Rain and tears blurred the shoreline as old River tried to take her a second time. The cold water wanted her back, and the deadliest thought of all was that for everyone she loved it might be the best answer.
Sasha insisted: The river’s not the way, ‘Veshka! You can’t leave us. You couldn’t leave your daughter or Pyetr if you died, and you know that—you know what you’d become!
Do you hear me, ‘Veshka?
She had heard. She knew. They feared her: Sasha did, Ilyana did—even Pyetr would not trust her help or her opinions.
She completed the turn and the wind sank. Having done its best to capsize her, the storm settled down to a cold, drenching rain.
Sasha shoved logs into the bathhouse furnace, slogged back out in the rain to the woodpile and carried his next armload of wood up to the por
ch and into the house, never minding the mud on Eveshka’s floors. Pyetr and Ilyana were coming in with the boy, all of them half-frozen and covered with mud: he had water for washing, he had a stack of towels, clean clothes, dry boots, blankets, water was boiling in the house and in the bathhouse—
He had hidden all the books in the cellar with the domovoi, the safest and driest place he could think of under the circumstances, and he hoped to the god to be mistaken about what Pyetr and the mouse were bringing home.
Thorns. Thorns and golden leaves and blood—
Owl dying—
No magery. Memory. His mind conjured him that nightmare of Chernevog, the warning dreams—the dreadful stone—
Pyetr lying in the brush, in the dark, white shirt—dark branches—
He shuddered at that one. It had come true. Everything had come true, fifteen years ago. It was over with and he did not want to see those things again, or remember their so-thought bannik—
Not tonight.
Himself on a white horse, something clinging to his back—
But that had only been Missy. Missy had saved his life and saved all of them, thank the god. That dream had come true, and nothing but good had issued from it—
Patches had come of it. The mouse had. All these things. Chernevog was buried however restless his ghost. No bannik had ever come to the bathhouse to replace that strayed fragment of Chernevog’s soul. And if all of it should have strayed back tonight—
—in whatever form—
But by the sounds of horses coming along the hedge outside, there was an answer forthcoming, very quickly now.
He changed to a dry coat at the door (one of Pyetr’s old coats, as happened, a little long in the sleeves for him) figuring he was about to do a great deal more trekking about in the rain before he saw any rest tonight. He took down Ilyana’s coat from the pegs, picked up a bundle of blankets and opened the door just as the front gate banged, and he spied Pyetr afoot, holding the yard gate open for three very tired, very sore horses.
“The stable gate’s open,” Sasha shouted, on his way down. “Just let them go.”
Ilyana was riding Missy, and they had the boy slung over Volkhi’s back, with Volkhi walking free. Patches broke into a jog for the stable, and Pyetr called out, “Stop Volkhi, for the god’s sake, before he dumps the boy on his head.”
Sasha wanted Volkhi to head sedately for the bathhouse while he was about it, and met them in the yard. “Warm water inside, mouse, once you’ve rubbed the horses down. Pyetr, here, two blankets. I’ve got Ilyana’s coat. The bath house is fired up and ready for the boy.”
“Good,” Pyetr said, and trudged after Volkhi, wrapping one blanket about his shoulders as he went. He called back: “Ilyana, warm water for their legs, and a rubbing down. I’ll help you as soon as I can. Don’t over-water or over-feed, mind, a quarter measure of the grain, no more than that.”
A very tired, very sore mouse slid down as Missy walked for the stableyard gate. Sasha caught her arms and steadied her, and flung her coat around her as Babi ran off after Missy “Sorry,” he said, then, on his own way to the bathhouse “Help you when we can, there’s a good girl.”
“I’m all right,” she panted, and overtook him, struggling in the mud, trying the while to put the coat on. “Is the house all gone, uncle?”
She desperately wanted him to be all right and not to sad about his things. The truth was, and he let her know weak-kneed though he was from the scare and with his hand burned and his chest hurting from the smoke, his books were safe and the rest of it was actually a relief: there were no stacks of clutter in his house anymore. “Spring cleaning” he said, and coughed. “Finally got around to it.”
The mouse grinned, the flash of a sidelong glance in tin light from the shutters. He tousled her wet hair as their ways parted at the stable gate. “Brave mouse. Watch yourself. Magic’s certainly loose tonight.”
At the bathhouse, Pyetr had pulled the unconscious boy off Volkhi and hauled him in a trailing tangle of blankets for the door. “Go on,” Sasha told Volkhi, slapping him on It side. “Good fellow, Volkhi. Warm rags and a rub in the stable.” He followed Pyetr into warmth and light, in time to pull the door to behind them.
“She seems all right,” he said to Pyetr, as he took the boy’s feet and helped lay him on his back on the bench.
“Thank the god for that.” Pyetr unfastened the boy’s sodden coat. “Patches brought her right to this boy. I wish we had another place to put him.”
Gold thread. Silk. Sasha whistled softly, helping Pyetr rid the boy of his sleeves. “No farmer and no fisher, whoever he was.”
“You think he’s dead?”
“Not quite sure. He’s certainly breathing.” He picked up a chill white hand, and laid it on the boy’s middle, put his hand on the side of the boy’s neck and felt the beat. “Cold as last winter, though. There’s hot water and towels over by the fire. He’s already soaked to the skin. I’d say just pile them on him and let him and the towels and all dry in the heat. The fire’s good till morning.”
“Good enough.” Pyetr went and soaked the towels while Sasha pulled the boy’s boots off. He came back with an armful and began spreading them over the boy.
The boy opened his eyes, lifted his head and promptly fell back with a thump on the bench. Pyetr slipped a hand under his neck and shoved a hot towel under his hair. Dark hair, it was. Pale blue eyes that wandered this way and that in confusion. “This is a bathhouse.”
“Our bathhouse,” Pyetr said, setting his foot on the end of the bench and resting his arms against his knee. “As happens. He’s Sasha, I’m Pyetr, and you’re Yvgenie Pavlovitch, the last I heard, who swam all the way up from Kiev to drown in our woods.”
“I rode a horse,” the boy said, faintly, “from Kiev. I—”
There was a complete muddle in the boy’s thoughts: running afoot through the woods, the rain coming down—
Someone or something chasing him, something to do with his father.
A fabulous palace, gold and gilt everywhere, a gray-haired, frowning man, not happy with him, no: his father would beat him, and kill the men who had lost him if they did not him back.
Sasha put a hand on the boy’s forehead, wished him calm and the wish fluttered this way and that of an anxious heart. He looked through the boy’s eyes and saw two sooted, wild-haired strangers hovering over him, who might intend to rob him or worse. His thoughts leapt around like a landed fish: death, and a demand for ransom, which his father might well pay—if only to have him in his hands.
Impossible to say whether he was what he seemed. A shapeshifter believed what it was and would not seem otherwise until one managed to find its single essential flaw.
He said, gently, “Yvgenie Pavlovitch, you’re in safe hands if you’re what you look to be. But this forest is full of tricks and tricksters. We don’t dare ourselves trust everything to be what it seems.”
Yvgenie said, “There was a girl—”
“My daughter,” Pyetr said. “She pulled you out of the water: What were you doing in the woods?”
“I—don’t—don’t remember.”
“Where did you come from?”
The boy thought (Sasha eavesdropped shamelessly): How did I get to this place? Aloud, he said, “Kiev.” But there were black pits everywhere in his remembering.
“What’s your father’s name?”
“Pavel...” The father’s features ran like wax, eluding the boy’s recollection, and the thoughts began jumping again. Dark places multiplied.
“He doesn’t remember,” Sasha said, laying his hand on Yvgenie’s chest, the better to gather up stray thoughts or hostile intentions. He wished the boy’s body well, at least: wished it warmth and ease of the aches and bruises it had suffered.
“Is that better?” he asked.
Wizard, the boy thought in sudden fright, fearing what he felt happening to him, and not daring protest it.
“Yes,” Sasha said, “I am what you’re
thinking—which is a good thing for you. Pyetr, put some water on the stones. He’s cold through.”
Pyetr dipped up water and flung it onto the hot stones. The water hissed, fire-shadows jumped, and wind whirled curtains of steam and shadow about the walls. The lad at least could not suffer chill in here—fainting now from the heat, perhaps. Sasha wiped the hair out of the boy’s face and slapped his cheek gently to bring him back, but the boy’s eyes kept going shut, and his breath was rattling.
Not good, not at all good.
“Come on, boy,” he said, and put his hands on either side of the boy’s face, wishing warmth and well-being and easy breath, thinking only about that, and not his doubts of the boy’s nature. “Listen to me, Yvgenie Pavlovitch, you’re not to die, do you hear me?”
“No,” Yvgenie Pavlovitch whispered, with his eyes shut, looking, Pyetr thought, very young, and very handsome, and very rich in his gold collar and his red silk shirt—which meant at least the opportunity to grow up a scoundrel, Pyetr knew it from his own youthful associations.
But a very ill and almost dead young scoundrel, for all that, and for the first time Pyetr found himself seriously wondering whether he might have been too rough with what might after all be an innocent boy. He listened to Sasha’s mumbling over the lad, heard the breath rattling in the boy’s chest in a most disturbing congestion, and truly, he did want the boy lo live—
And be on his way to Kiev or wherever, without having the least to do with his daughter.
But Ilyana had already seen him, and the mouse was inevitably curious and most damnably, reprehensibly stubborn—which first trait was his and the latter one she had gotten fairly from both sides. Present the mouse a mystery, tell her no, and absolutely there was no stopping her.
And might this boy be, he wondered distractedly, the answer they had wished for, to win Ilyana’s heart away from a most dangerous ghost?
Or might he be (as he most acutely feared) Chernevog’s chosen way back from the grave?