Ilyana was standing there, wrapped in mist, two lovers, one mortal, one—
“Ilyana!” Eveshka flung up an arm to ward off the white owl that instinctly flew at her. It whisked away, shredding on insubstantial winds.
“Mother!” Ilyana gasped, thank the god she could cry out—while the ghost, the very familiar ghost, turned to face her with a familiar lift of the chin.
Young. Oh, yes, he would be that, here, with Ilyana. She remembered him that way, remembered him in the house, in her father’s time.
“You damned dog!” she cried. “Wasn’t I enough? Get out of here! Don’t you dare touch my daughter!”
The whole world swirled and moved, and stopped, ringing with her mother’s voice. Ilyana blinked, still dazed, still tingling to a touch unlike anything she had ever felt, a magic so intoxicating that for a moment yet she had no breath in her body.
Her mother screamed, “You sneaking bastard, get away from her!”
And her friend said faintly, “Eveshka, listen to me… Please listen.”
“Get out of here! Out, do you hear me? You’ve no right here! You’ve no claim on me and none on my daughter, Kavi Chernevog!”
“He wasn’t doing anything!” Ilyana found breath to say, and ran and caught her mother’s arm. The look her mother threw her was cold as ice, a rage that did not belong on her mother’s face—
And oh, god, her father was here with the axe in his hand, but the same moment uncle Sasha slid down the bank through the sapling birches, all out of breath, with leaves snarled in his hair.
Her mother seized her arm so hard it bruised, shouting. “Go awayl“ at her friend. “Never come back, never!”
She wished her mother not to say that, and her mother wished at her with a force that made her dizzy.
Her uncle grabbed her and embraced her, and with an angry force she never imagined her gentle uncle had: “Get out of here, Chernevog, go back! You’ve no right here.”
Her friend lifted his wrist and collected Owl, who assembled himself out of misty pieces. He looked at her then with a dreadful sadness and said, so faintly a breeze could have drowned his voice, “Ilyana, don’t forget me, don’t forget—”
Forget him?
She could not. She never would. Her friend and Owl were fading. Her uncle surrendered her to her father, but she did not want to go to him: he had the axe in one hand. She had never been scared of her father before: he had never carried a weapon in her sight, not the sword that hung among the coats next the door, not so much as a stick the time he had chased the bear out of the yard. Her father caught her face painfully in his hand and made her look him in the eyes. “Are you all right?” he demanded of her. “Ilyana?”
She tried to say she was. She stammered something like that, and tried to protest, “He never hurt me—” but no one was listening to her. Her father let her go and she ran up the shore—
Stopped, then, because her mother wanted her to stop, but her uncle said, “She’s all right, she’s just going to the house. Let her go.”
Then she could run, up the slope and up through the hole in the hedge and across the yard to the rail of the walk-up before she ever stopped to catch her breath.
There was magic going on behind her. She felt it strangling her, her mother and her uncle were wishing, oh, god, wishing her friend back into his grave—and wishing Owl to the place he had died, somewhere far separate from him.
“Stop it!” she cried. “Stop it, stop it, stop it!” There was silence after that, and a heaviness in the air. It was her they wished at now, wanting her quiet, and wanting her to know—
She wanted not to know. She wanted them to leave her alone. She shoved herself away from the rail, walking she had no notion where until she saw the stableyard fence ahead of her, and all the horses standing with their heads up and I heir nostrils working, staring toward the river.
They were afraid. So was she. Babi was in the yard with them, growling as she ducked through the rails—but not at her; Babi would never hurt her. She came up to her filly, patted a rock-hard shoulder, put her arms about a rigid neck, and Patches tossed her head and snorted, beginning to shiver. She was shivering, too, now. This yard was the only safe place in the world, the only place she could keep danger out of, the only place with creatures she trusted and hearts she knew were honest.
She did not want to face her parents right now, she did not want to see uncle Sasha with anger on his face, or meet her lather’s look when he had hurt her: she could still feel the strength of his fingers when he had stared right into her eyes, as if—
As if she had done something horrible and wicked and it would show in her face forever, that she had let her friend kiss her and put his hands on her and make her feel—
So dizzy, so terribly dizzy and cold and warm and magical she wanted to hold on to that feeling. She wanted that moment back, if only to find out what it was. She wished—
—wished he were alive and they could have run away together into the woods so this never would have happened: her mother would not have called his name, her mother would not have said:
Wasn’t I enough?…
She buried her face against Patches’ mane and leaned on her solid shoulder, wanting to stay there against that warmth and not to think, but the thought kept coming back.
Wasn’t I enough?
He was the mistake mother made, he was what father was talking about—mother knew him. Mother was in love with him, mother was with him before—
Before she met my father.
Eveshka, he had called her mother, in the tone only her father ever used. Sasha had come to this house with her father, and Sasha had known her friend on sight.
Worse and worse. Oh, god, all she ever wanted was someone to love and take care of the way her mother had someone, and for a handful of moments she had had that someone, until it turned out everyone in the world knew him, and her own mother had been with him when he was alive.
Now she understood her father being angry, and why he had bruised her face—but, but, god, they need not have sent Owl apart from him: that was somehow the worst thing they could do to him.
She did not cry often, but she cried now, mopping tears with Patches’ mane, while Patches made those strange soft sounds that meant there was something going on that Patches did not like. Babi was in a shape that seemed all shoulders and teeth, growling, facing the yard or the river where her parents and Sasha were. She was not sure whether they could feel the anger she felt—
But it was over now; they were coming back up from the river. She looked past Patches’ jaw and saw them pass the hedge and cross the yard to the walk-up, felt her mother catch sight of her and turn her way with angry intent, but Sasha caught her arm and stopped her. Her father was still carrying the axe when he went behind them up the walk-up, and she had no idea what he was going to do with it inside the house, but Babi went on growling and the horses kept smelling the wind and making nervous sudden shifts.
Looking at the river, she thought. They were definitely looking toward the river, which might mean they had done something down there that the horses and Babi had somehow feIt, some truly dreadful magic.
She wanted her mother not to be angry at her, she wanted her father not to be, wanted uncle Sasha—
Her uncle’s magic spoke to her heart, then, saying, It’s not your fault, mouse. Don’t wish at your father. Please. He’s really upset, but he’s all right, if you just don’t wish at him right now.
She tried, oh, god, she tried not to. She did not blame him for being mad, she did not blame her mother, not truly, please.
She felt her uncle’s presence like a comforting touch on the shoulder, heard her uncle whisper all the way from the house, Your mother loves you. No one’s angry now. Your mother’s just awfully upset and trying not to be, if you’ll just be calm right now, can you do that, mousekin?
Yes, she promised him the way she had promised for her uncle before, when she was little and had tantrums.
/> Only this one was not her fault. It was not fair for them to be mad at her, it was not fair for them to have taken Owl away, it was not fair of them to think that what they were thinking had happened between them—
Even if it was true what they had been doing together, and even if it was true that she had felt dizzy and that he could have killed her. But he wouldn’t have, she wanted them all to know that. We didn’t—he wouldn’t—
Her uncle said, I believe you, mousekin. He wasn’t all bad when he was alive. And what you were doing—
She refused to hear him. Usually she could not shut uncle out. But this time she could. This time she made him shut up and leave her alone, and told him he would have to come after her and talk out loud, the way her father insisted reasonable people ought to do with each other, not wish thoughts into each other’s heads or meddle in other people’s embarrassment.
Oh, god, mother did that with him, too, when he wasn’t dead. And father knows it.
The storm inside the house was ebbing. The one outside might be, but Ilyana had built a defense like a wall, and shut herself inside it. “I’d better talk to her,” Sasha said, not sure Pyetr and Eveshka even heard him—Eveshka was sitting on the bench in front of the fire, Pyetr holding her hands tightly in his. But Pyetr, with more spare concentration than a wizard could afford, glanced over his shoulder and said, “God, do. She’s scared, she’s just scared, Sasha, she had no idea.” Whether Pyetr believed that or whether he was saying it to placate Eveshka, the god only knew: Sasha hoped it was the case. And beyond a doubt Pyetr would be out there himself, except he was the only one of them who could reason with Eveshka, the only one Eveshka might listen to, the way she was listening to Pyetr now, Pyetr, trusting them to protect her daughter—
Which might be Eveshka’s distracted urging to him, for all he knew. If it was, her breach of attention was dangerous, and he was going, now, anything to keep the peace.
So he slipped quickly out the door and soft-footed it down the walk-up and around the corner toward the stable. Ilyana was still standing with her arms about the filly’s neck and Ilyana did not wish him to stop. That was a hopeful sign. But he felt—
Felt exposed to a presence at his back, something—
—familiarly dangerous. Babi had bristled up into his most fearsome shape, the horses clearly smelled something disturbing, and of a sudden he knew what it was.
Snake. Vodyanoi.
He spun about to face the river and said aloud, “Hwiuur, you damnable sneak, go back to sleep! There’s nothing here for you. Go away!”
The feeling immediately slid away like a serpent into water.
But another presence slipped up behind him. Ilyana’s magic came around him. He had felt her tantrums, he had stilled her wild panics, but this was not anger, or fear, or with him—it encompassed him, it aimed his wishes at the linger—
It scared him more than the presence in the river did: he wanted her to know that on no uncertain terms.
She stopped at once, thank the god. He turned, saw her face and felt as if he had slapped her—
“No, mouse,” he called out loudly enough for her to hear across the yard. “You’re no more mouse—not when you wish like that. But be careful! You don’t know everything yet!”
“ I know more than I wanted to know!” she shouted, with tears in her voice, and that strength was there again, like a wall excluding him. “My mother was in love with him! Whose daughter am I, anyway?”
God. “You’re Pyetr’s!” he shouted back. “You’re most undeniably Pyetr’s, I swear to you that’s so! Chernevog was in no condition to father a child when you began, and there was never any doubt whose you are.”
“Could there have been? Why should I believe you? Everyone’s lied to me!”
“Not so!” He walked as far as the stableyard gate and set his arms on the topmost rail, at comfortable speaking distance. “Ilyana, love, maybe we didn’t tell you everything, but no one lied to you. We just kept the truth back too long.”
“What truth?”
Wary young fish—suspecting a hook in what he offered. He had taught her that caution. They all had. So he used no words. He handed her his heart without warning, prepared for pain.
There was. She seemed confused, and let go the filly’s name and looked him in the eyes, something that was his looking right back at him, defensive and waiting.
She surely realized then what he had done. She had no notion yet what she could do with it, but she knew the moment he thought of it, that she could do him terrible harm, and he wanted her to know, with that, how implicitly he trusted her.
“That’s what you should do,” he told her, quietly, “before you ever contemplate certain kinds of magic: put your heart somewhere absolutely safe before you make any sudden decision, mousekin. I have very little feeling now, except my own interest. You have all of that. All I have left is a heartless, self-interested reason for standing here; I want you well for my own sake. The part that can think of others— you have at the moment. You know me now, don’t you? You know I wouldn’t lie to you.”
She did. And she wanted his heart back in him, because she was afraid of it—which was enough: it came back with pain, with anger, with a dread of grown-up hearts holding grown-up secrets. And very much of loneliness. That one chord rang through them both, that the loneliness was too long, and too much.
“Oh, mouse,” he said, ducked through the rails and caught her in his arms, fever-warm and soggy as the much smaller girl who had cried on his shoulder for far smaller tragedies.
No truth for a while, not until she wanted it. Right now she only wanted both of them not to hurt, which was as kind and as dangerous a wish as a wizard had ever made for him. “Hush, stop,” he said against her ear. “You know you shouldn’t wish changes on us. Not hurting can equally well mean dead.” “I wish—”
“Hush! I wish you good things, and life, mousekin, and, yes, it’s very hard. I know.”
“It’s not fair!”
“Maybe it isn’t. But the stronger you are, and you’re very strong, mousekin, the more it’s true. You can hurt someone so easily, with the best and kindest intentions. I’ve never been as lucky as your mother is, to have found someone like your father is for her—I don’t know if there is anyone else in the world like him. There can’t be many ordinary folk who could put up with us.”
“It hurts, uncle.”
“I know it does. Which is why, mousekin, other wizards give up their hearts—bestow them somewhere they can’t be hurt, because caring and power together eventually will hurt you: and most of all corrupt your judgment. You see someone suffering and you want so much to do something about it that you might forget your good sense, and do something awful to innocent people you simply forgot to include in your idea. It’s the rule about rainstorms. There’s only so much rain to go around.”
“So maybe they’re drowning, elsewhere! Maybe watering our garden would help them— You don’t know! You can’t ever know! So we should never wish anything? Is that it?”
“You don’t know the what of things unless you use your head, mouseling, and you don’t know the true why of things unless you also use your heart. Try to keep both, even if it hurts right now, even if things seem too hard for you.”
“They are!”
“No. No, you’re stronger than that. And you’d better be strong today, mouse. It’s time for me to tell you some things.”
“What, that I’m going to be alone all my life?”
“The way I am? Yes. Possibly you will be. But you don’t know what will happen next month, certainly not next year. No one I know can foretell that, and I come as close to doing it us anyone. We’re deeply sorry we scared you. We’re sorry we didn’t warn you—but we never foresaw this, we absolutely didn’t foresee it—though maybe we should have. Our wizardry failed us. If it’s not our fault, certainly it’s not yours.”
A series of little breaths, a quiet sob, and she leaned her haul against him. “Un
cle, I think I love him. I don’t even know.”
“I know, I know. I wouldn’t doubt—he was an extraordinary man.”
“ Man?” She pushed back against his chest. Tear-wet eyes looked up at him, wide and shocked.
“He’s well over a hundred. So’s your mother, mousekin. Your father’s less than half that. And I’m the youngest, except for you. Your mother died when she was sixteen—”
“My mother’s not my mother?”
“Oh, ‘Veshka’s very much your mother, mouse. But did die. And Chernevog had something to do with that, killed her.”
The mouse opened her mouth and looked suddenly as she might pass out. Quick as thinking, he grabbed her and made her sit down on the bottom rail of the gate, right where she was, and he knelt in the stableyard dust, pressing her chilled hands in his.
“It might be romantic to say what you’re feeling right now is shock, mousekin, but the fact is, it’s also what comes dealing with rusalki. He’s very dangerous. Very attractive. The way Babi guards stableyards and vodyaniye live in water—attraction is a rusalka’s nature. And they feel very good. —Are you going to faint?”
She made a little gasp, getting her breath, and shook her head bravely.
“That’s my girl. You’ll be all right.” His heart said stop now, stop telling the child what had to hurt her. But cold good sense said keep going as long as he had her whole attention: it might not come again, not in her whole life, or his. “Your mother drowned on that shore. A vodyanoi carried her body to a cave north of here—yes, that vodyanoi, the one I chastised a moment ago—stay with me, now, mousekin! Chernevog murdered her and her bones lay in that cave under an old willow’s roots a hundred years before your father found them. Do you know why the trees in the yard are the oldest trees about? Why all this woods is, as forests go, quite young? Your mother killed this woods, your mother damned near killed your father—not mentioning a number of innocent people she did kill, men, women, and children she drew the life right out of them. Ask your mother about rusalki, little mouse. No one knows more than she does about that kind of ghost. She was one.”