That was a lonely thought. “Was he all by himself?”
“Better if he had been. His uncle and aunt were scoundrels, both of them. And your uncle was a very good lad, not to turn them into toads—”
“You can’t turn anybody into a toad. You might make them think like a toad.”
“Well, he didn’t do that either. —And I wouldn’t put toads beyond your reach, mouse. You’re stronger than you know you are. That’s one reason your mother is so set on you holding your temper. She knows if you made a really bad choice she might not be able to stop you. You see what I’m saying? You’d hate to make me a toad by accident, wouldn’t you? You’d much rather intend it.”
“That’s not funny, father.”
“—Or remember the night the filly came and you wanted to hurry things?”
She did remember. She still could not comprehend why it would have hurt, but she did know now her wish had been too general and too risky, and her mother had rebuffed it so hard it hurt—haste, she understood: her mother had hugged her fiercely after, and said she was sorry, but she should never wish into situations she did not completely understand.
Which seemed to be the whole world, in her mother’s considered opinion.
Nobody was happy with her. She was not happy with herself. She walked with her father’s arm about her, kicking at last year’s weed stalks, that tugged spitefully at her hem.
Her father said: “I think you should talk to your uncle; Sasha. Mind, I don’t know a thing about wizardry—but he says, and your grandfather used to say, that there’s nothing in the world stronger than a wizard-child’s wishes—thank the god, your uncle would say, babies just want to be fed and held. A toy or two. It’s not till you start to grow up that your; wishes get to involve other people, really to involve them, in ways that mean one of two people getting his own way in things that can break your heart. Then things truly get complicated. Don’t they?”
“I just don’t know why she won’t listen to me.”
“Maybe because she’s not that much older than you are. Your wants are a lot like hers, and it’s harder and harder to argue with you.”
Not much more grown than her. That made no sense! “She’s a lot older than I am. At least fifteen years!”
“Oh, but the difference between where you are and where she is grows less and less every year—a lot of difference when you were a baby, fifteen years ago. But the years a young child up faster than they grow any of us old, does that make sense? It doesn’t seem yesterday that your uncle was your age. And hardly yesterday again since I was fifteen, doing things I assure you nobody’s mother would approve! But I, mouse, I was just an ordinary boy, not a wizard who can leave just a little smoking spot where our house was. Your mother can do that, first thunderstorm that comes along. So can you, if you ever wanted to—you could do it without ever realizing you’d done it, so naturally your mother’s a little anxious about tantrums.”
The idea was strange. But her father always made her feel safer and wiser, just by being by her—for one thing because lie never wished at her, would not, could not, it made no difference: the fact was he did not, and all the world else did. Her father always made sense to her, in ways even uncle Sasha did not, and her mother almost never.
“I can see that,” she conceded.
He gave her a hug and a kiss, and they walked as far as the edge of the trees, where the old road had used to go through the woods. He stopped there, set his hands on her shoulders, looked at her very seriously and said,
“ Your mother did something very terrible once. She didn’t mean to. She never intended what happened. And don’t let her know I even told you that much: someday you will know, but for now just take my word for it—it was as bad and it went worse and worse before anyone could help her. It’s because she’s so very strong that she got in trouble. And she loves you very much and she can’t explain to you.”
“ Why can’t she explain?” What her father was saying offered for the first time in her whole life to make sense of her mother—but he shook his head and said, maddeningly:
“Some mistakes you have to be grown-up to make, or to understand; and you’re getting there fast, mouse, but you’re not there yet. Just, when you think your mother’s holding you or watching you far too closely for your peace of mind, remember that she sees you as so much like her—she was sixteen when this thing happened, understand? And you’re sixteen and your mother’s dreadfully scared.”
It traded mysteries for another mystery. And maybe she should want her father to tell her everything he knew and even make him do it, but it was more than wrong. There were secrets grown-ups kept: that was the rule she had learned, and if a nosy girl got into them she could look to have everyone she loved unhappy with her, maybe forever and ever.
Though some things were awfully hard not to want, when they were almost in her hands.
“Are you wishing me?” her father asked her.
She shook her head, shook it harder, and tried, in the way her uncle had taught her when she was troubled, to think about running water—
But that made her think about the river; and about Owl.
“I’m trying not to,” she said, and put her arms about her father’s neck and hugged him with all her might. “I love you.”
Her father hugged her back, and said, “I love you too, mouse. Be good. All right?”
When her father said that it was easy to be good. For at least as long as she could keep from thinking.
Pyetr’s step echoed on the walk-up. A not at all happy Pyetr, Eveshka supposed, and tried to think simply about the herbs she was grinding and how she was going to try a little more rosemary in the stew this evening.
Pyetr opened the door and took his cap off, came over and put his arms around her and kissed her—which she was sure had everything to do with her daughter storming out of the house.
She said, in advance of complaints, “I know Ilyana’s upset. I’m upset. We’re both upset.”
“Hush,” he said, and hugged her and rested his chin against her head. “Hush, ‘Veshka, it’s all right.”
She had not even known she was tired until then. Her shoulders ached. “She’s just being difficult.”
“She doesn’t understand why you worry.”
“I wasn’t scolding her, I was talking to her. She’s in a mood, that’s all. There’s nothing you can do with her.”
“She’s just fine, ‘Veshka, the storm’s over. No lightning. She’s just confused why you were fighting.”
“I’ll tell you why we were fighting! She’s so sure she knows everything in the world and of course we couldn’t possibly understand her, since we don’t agree with her! She’s the first one in all the world to want her own damned way!”
“Hush.”
“I’m not a child, Pyetr, don’t coddle me. I know what she’s going through.”
“May I say, ‘Veshka, please don’t get angry at me—”
“It’s not a good time, Pyetr. Today isn’t a good time.”
“Listen anyway. I trust you. What happened to you when you were sixteen wasn’t all your fault. Your father made no few mistakes himself, bringing you up. You couldn’t go to him. You couldn’t trust him. He made that bed for himself and he regretted it all his life. Don’t let him teach Ilyana. Hear me?”
She felt cold all over. And sixteen again. And scared, except for Pyetr’s arms keeping her safe. The house timbers groaned: the domovoi in the cellar felt that chill.
“He’s gone,” she said. “There’s nothing left of him, except what he passed to Sasha. Ask him.”
“Except his lessons. Except his wishing you. And he did do that, ‘Veshka.”
“I don’t do it with Ilyana!” She pulled away and stood squarely on her feet. “Dammit, Pyetr, I don’t wish at her and I don’t read her my father’s lessons—I’m trying to tell her instead of letting her find things out the hard way, the way I did, and she’s not listening.”
“She wants
very much to please you. She doesn’t know how.”
“Oh, damn, if she doesn’t know how! She can try showing up for supper before it’s on the table, she can try—”
“ ‘Veshka. ‘Veshka.” Pyetr held up his hands and looked upset with her. “Your father wanted his house kept, wanted his meals on time, wanted you to say Yes, papa, and Of course, papa, and Anything you want, papa. He wanted a damn doll in pretty braids, I saw it. He wanted you right where he could see you, because you looked like your mother, ‘Veshka, and he was scared to death you were going to turn into her some night before you were grown if he couldn’t turn you into his ideal of a young girl!”
“Pyetr, someone has to do the housework, or it doesn’t get done. I don’t wish the broom to dance around the room or wish the bucket up and down the hill—”
“It’s more important to go riding, ‘Veshka.”
“Oh? “It’s more important to go riding?” And what, when you get home and supper isn’t waiting? It’s Where’s my supper, ‘Veshka? Are you sick, ‘Veshka? I’m sorry about your floor, ‘Veshka!”
He bit his lip, ducked his head a little. “I am sorry about the floor.”
“But I mop it. And my daughter goes riding in the woods. My daughter can’t remember to come home at dark, never mind I’ve done all the cooking—”
“A bargain. I’ll mop the floor. You and Ilyana go riding.”
“Oh, god, you’d mop the floor. You’d have water—”
“Now!” he said, holding up his finger. “Now, ‘Veshka, there’s a problem we should talk about.”
“What problem?”
He threw up his hands, hit his cap on his leg, walked a small circle back again. “Dear wife, let somebody do something right for you.”
“I’m not having water dripping into my cellar, all over my shelves—”
“Are you calling me a fool?”
“I don’t want my shelves soaked in mop-water!”
“Am I fool? Is Ilyana a fool? Is Sasha? God, I’ve waited years for this one, ‘Veshka! And I want you to answer me. No squirming out of it.”
“You’re not a fool.”
“Then will you let me mop the damn floor?”
“If my cellar floods—”
“If our cellar floods, dear wife, I’ll bail it. I might eve fix a rim around the trap so the water doesn’t drip straight through. Some things a little carpentry solves better than magic.”
Pyetr had not a smidge of magic, none, he swore it. But he certainly had an uncanny way of getting things he wanted out of two or three wizards of her acquaintance, and the wizards in question could wonder for days exactly what had happened to them and why they felt so good afterward.
“Bargain?” he said.
It was very certainly magical. She hugged him tight and felt a tingle from her head to her feet, which she had felt the first time she had laid eyes on him.
Her father was talking to her mother, with what good result Ilyana was dubious; but the air felt clearer, at least, and uncle Sasha had gone up the hill to sit on his porch with his book and his inkpot, so long as the light lasted: she could see him from the garden fence, where the berry vine made part of the hedge—almost ripe, she decided, coincidentally, and plucked an early dark one and popped it into her mouth, for a sweet, single taste.
She felt better, over all: and she put away everything her father had said in a place to consider later, on a day when she had not been so angry at her mother. At least she was not angry now. She did not think her mother was angry at her any longer either, and all in all she felt more cheerful, never mind she had given up the ride she had coaxed her father for since the weather had warmed, no matter she had done it because she had thought her friend might be down by the river this morning.
She pulled another berry which somehow was not as sweet us the first, and thought (she could not help it) that this year had gotten off to a bad start. Nothing she did seemed right. Her friend turned out—
Turned out both handsomer and more scary than she wanted to think about near the house, so she slipped through the garden fence and down the old road toward the woods.
Not directly or by any straight path toward the river, no, not right past the house this time, with mother always worrying about her drowning—
I don’t wish to drown, mother! she was wont to declare, in her father’s way of speaking. I swear to you, I absolutely wish not to drown, and I’m perfectly safe down on the dock, god!
Her mother had not been amused, or convinced.
Her mother, direly: Vodyaniye don’t ask you to fall in. They’ll come ashore after you.
Well, I haven’t seen him, she had said to that. And her mother: Wish him asleep. Don’t think about him.
All her life, don’t think about this, don’t think about that—
Now she was afraid to think about her friend, because she knew that a mother who was scared she was going to fall into the river and drown would have a great deal to say about rusalki, and have very definite wishes about the only company besides her parents and her uncle she had ever had or hoped to have—without even asking whether he had ever hurt her, or, the god forbid, listening to her explain she had known him all her life—
He was not a rusalka who was going to drink up her life or do harm to the woods. The leshys would never let anything wicked come into the woods, her parents had said that— though her father had said, once, that the leshys did not see good and bad the same way wizards did, that a nest of baby birds and a little girl were all the same in their sight, and that she should be careful in the deepest woods—where there were wild leshys who had no memory of debts to any of the two-footed kind, and who defended the woods with their ability to deceive and to cast true spells—because they were magical.
Which meant they would never let her friend come here if be harmed anything—if ghosts were truly magical creatures, or if wizardly ghosts were, and if the leshys could do anything to prevent him.
That was a question. That was, as her uncle would say, a very good question. She had no idea what the limits of the leshys might be: she remembered them visiting the hillside when she was small—like walking trees in a very faint dream. Her parents said the oldest had once held her in his arms and first called her mouse. Her uncle said they were shy creatures, and shyer as time passed—but she had always trusted in them to keep harm away. She had no idea, now she thought of it, what the limits of a ghost might be against the Forest-things she had believed in so implicitly, or whether rusalka could even describe a young man, who said—
Said (though he had never spoken before) that he had not died by drowning.
She was well along the path to the river shore, in the shivery kind of fear he had begun to make in her, when she thought, Maybe he won’t be there this time either. Maybe I broke some rule, finding out what kind of ghost he really is. Ghosts are supposed to follow rules. Maybe he can’t come back now. —Or maybe mother wished something to banish him forever. Maybe I’ll never see him again!
She hurried along, batting brush aside, through thickets that caught at her skirts, in an afternoon that, in the thick of the woods, seemed much farther along toward twilight than she had realized. There was shadow enough now to see a ghost, with the sun far below the trees, and the shade was deepening by the moment.
The path let out on the river well beyond the old ferry dock, at the place she had last seen him. She took the steep slope with now and again a catch at a leafy branch, right down to the marshy edge of the water, where rushes grew— careful there: she had no desire to come home to supper with wet feet.
She looked up and down the shore, even looked up into the trees, in the thought of spotting Owl, who often came before him.
No more than this morning. She sighed; and felt a little chill down her back.
“Hello,” he said.
She turned on her heel and looked directly at his chest—up, quickly, into pale, misty-lashed eyes.
“Where were you this morning??
?? Fright made her entirely too sharp with him.
“Near. Near you last night, too, but you’ve so many guards.” He touched her cheek with icy fingers, and put chill arms around her. “Ilyana.”
Babi turned up in the kitchen, looking for tidbits in advance of supper. From the yard, Pyetr’s saw ripped away at a board for the cellar trap, and from high on the hill, came an impression that Sasha was busy with his book: Eveshka listened no more deeply than that into other people’s business, no matter her daughter’s opinion.
In the same virtue she did not wonder where her daughter was, late as it was getting. Pyetr was right. There was no cause for alarm and she did not wish to know, or worry, or do any other thing that a rebellious young girl might construe as spying.
But after Babi had had his bits from the kitchen counter, and she said, “Babi, where’s Ilyana?”—then was time to worry, because Babi dropped his head onto small manlike paws, and made a despairing sound quite unlike Babi.
God, she did not like that.
So she went outside and called out to Pyetr over the noise of the saw: “Where’s Ilyana?”
Pyetr stopped, straightened with a stretch of his back and wiped his brow. “I don’t know. Down by the stable.” He looked over his shoulder to see. But there was no Ilyana.
She had a worse and worse feeling. She looked up the hill toward Sasha’s house, and saw Sasha get up from a seat on his porch and look—
Toward the river.
She had a dreadful impression then, of danger, of—
“Pyetr!” she cried, and ran down the walk-up, across the yard, through the hedge and headlong down the slope to the ferry dock—
Past the gray, weathered boat, then, with a stitch in her side, off the dry boards of the dock and down the overgrown shoreline, fending her way through reeds and a thin screen of young birches.