by CJ Cherryh
THE GHOST BOY
Eveshka had a dreadful impression of danger. She ran across the yard and headlong down the slope to the ferry dock, toward the river. Past the gray, weathered boat she ran, then down the overgrown shoreline, fending her way through reeds and a thin screen of young birches.
Her daughter Ilyana was standing there, wrapped in mist. Two lovers, one mortal, one— a ghost.
‘Ilyana!’ Eveshka threw up an arm to ward off the white owl that flew at her. It whisked away, shredding on the winds.
‘Mother!’ Ilyana gasped, 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 with Ilyana. She remembered him that way in her father's time.
‘Get out of here!’ she cried. ‘You've no right here. You've no claim on my daughter, Kavi Chernevog!’
By C. J. Cherryh
Published by Ballantine Books:
RUSALKA
CHERNEVOG
YVGENIE
THE GOBLIN MIRROR
Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as ‘unsold or destroyed'' and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.
A Del Rey Book
Published by Ballantine Books
Copyright © 1991 by C. J. Cherryh
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copy-right Conventions. Published in the United States of America by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 91-91909
ISBN 0-345-37943-8
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Hardcover Edition: November 1991 First Mass Market Edition: November 1992
1
The white owl flirted a wing past Ilyana's fingertips, a little breath of cold, a flurry of wing beats above the river and a long, sweeping glide back to the shore.
The boy, mist and shadow, waved his arm and sent Owl another course back toward her. She had met the boy when she was small, when first she had wandered alone in the woods, in the days when leshys still visited them. A fey, sad little boy had turned up sitting on an old log, and scowled at her when she came near—but curious, she had felt that from the first moment she had seen him; and a little girl who had no other child to play with had not minded the scowl. She had been very clever in her approach: she had shown him the smooth stones she had found, had let him see the jay's feather and the snakeskin she had picked up beside the stream—how could he resist? He had examined her discoveries, he had said not a word, but he had scowled a little less, and then she had shown him how she made leaf boats, like the real boat her father sailed on the river, except her father's had a great white sail.
The boy had put out his hand to catch her leaf boats. Bui they sailed right through.
He had come every day for a while. Then he had stopped coming, she had feared forever, and she had been desolate. But he had reappeared the next spring, and every year since, daily at the edge of summer, and fading away as the sun grew warmer.
He never spoke. He could not speak, for all she knew. He would only nod or shake his head to her questions, but they understood each other. And every year he grew older, right along with her.
To this day she had never seen another child, and she never expected to see one but him. She had heard about great Kiev, of course, and farms downriver, and she had heard of Vojvoda, the other side of the woods, where there were other children—but somehow there had always been dangers and there were very good reasons, so her parents assured her, that she should live safe in the woods, never visiting towns and cities. This might be so. She had no way to tell.
But her friend was her secret, her secret of secrets, that she had never told anyone, not even when she was small and foolish. Every springtime she looked for him, and every summer brought regret when he went away.
The springtime they both were twelve, he had brought Owl with him. Owl had looked at her with pale, mad eyes, ruffled up, immediately turned his back, and refused for all that visit to face her except over his shoulder.
It had been three years now—they were both, perhaps, fifteen. Owl still held his distance. Her friend mimed things to her with long, quick fingers: notice of the river, a sign to his face and toward her, a smile and a glance that could steal a heart. Owl glided up to perch as a sullen wisp against a tree trunk, and her friend shrugged, smiled shyly and offered his hand to her instead, touching her skin with the cool, faint sensation of his fingers. Ilyana, his lips said soundlessly, and he glanced down and closed his hand, as if he could no more be sure where her fingers were than she could feel his: that was as close as they could come to touching. She could gaze into his eyes, this close, but it was still the edge of daylight, and if she did not imagine very, very hard, she could see the trees and the riverside behind them. His hand about hers felt only faintly chill.
He had grown so much taller. And he looked at her with such solemnity—the way she looked at him perhaps, with all the effort it took to see her, and all the bittersweet anticipation of so short a time he could stay. He had Owl; she had Babi and Patches and all, but he always seemed lonelier than she was—being, as she was almost certain, dead.
Perhaps he had died in late spring: perhaps that was why he haunted the woods in this one short season. He might have lived near here once. Or fallen off a boat, in the days when ordinary boats had used to come this high on the river. She was afraid to ask her parents, who were very quick to guess her secrets. She was equally afraid to ask him, although he could answer her questions with nods or shakes of his head: ghosts were often ghosts, so her uncle's tales advised her, because they had never realized that they were dead. In that case a careless word might send him away forever.
So she balanced now between the truth her eyes told her and the imagination of a touch beneath her chin, and his face near hers. Easier to feel that touch if she shut her eyes: and when she did so he dropped a shivery cool kiss on her cheek. That was nice.
On her lips, then. She opened her eyes wide and stepped hack, not sure whether that had been a joke or not—to kiss her the way her father kissed her mother.
Not a joke, she thought, by the earnest look on his face. She felt—not shivery—but warm, and shaky in the knees, and short of breath—which might be a spell or a wish. She had no clear thought in her head for a moment, a very dangerous condition, her mother and her uncle would agree.
But her friend had meant no harm, she was sure. She was halfway sure that kiss had been—very sweet, if she had not been so startled.
And now that she thought along that line, perhaps it was only another change with time—like Owl's arrival. Like flowers blooming. Like the changes that had made her more and more aware of spring, and of the foxes' games, and the birds' dances and their seasonal obsession with twigs and straws. She knew what nature was; and she apprehended a very profound change in her thoughts this spring. Like a second birthday, this annual meeting, that she had waited for and waited for and sought by evening shadow, reckoning moon-phases and the rising of summer stars. This year she had plaited blue ribbons in her hair. She had worn—not her best frock for him: she was too secretive and clever for that— but a favorite one, with her own embroidery of lilies, while he appeared this year in much plainer clothing, leaner about the face and broader in the shoulders, as much a young man suddenly as she felt herself becoming a young woman. She apprehended that kiss suddenly as very much what was between her mother and her father—
And she did not think it wrong. She thought, now that she did think of it, that this year was a very reasonable time he d
o that—unbearable if, after so many years of growing together, he should never have begun to love her, or if in a spring with all the woods gone giddy and wild, she should have had no feeling for him at all.
Danger, her heart said, and, here friendship could end, here it might go on, but forever changed—and what if he liked it and I didn't? Was it really pleasant, just then?
One wanted to know. One could try again. But where did one go from there?
To where the foxes went? She had no such plans. She had made no wishes one way or the other. She only thought—If I were to love, of course it would be him. There's no one else. There never could be.
She backed further away—it seemed safest, under the circumstances.
He held out his hands.
‘I don't think we should,’ she whispered. She honestly had no idea what the next step could be except the one that she knew her mother would disapprove. ‘Why don't we go for a walk? Come up by the stable. Patches has grown so—’
He went on smiling at her and held out one hand, indicating the river shore with the other—no, he did not want to go up near the house; and he might be right: it was a good way to get caught. So she walked with him into the deeper shade, where it was easier to see each other.
Oh, so many details of his face were changed: she stood there only staring at him a breath or two before she felt un-easy and looked away to the water, which was far less an attraction. ‘Patches has grown, of course,’ she said, in a voice higher than she intended, and went on to tick off on her fingers the things that had happened since last year. ‘The fox kit went wild. We had a nest of mice this spring, and mother said if I let them loose near the house she'd wish me lost in the woods.’
A chill touch came on her shoulder. She let it rest there, because if she turned around now, they would be facing each other much too closely. She said, ‘Don't do that. You make me nervous.’
He took his hand away. So she did glance back at him, finding him still closer than she thought safe, holding his hand just a little way from touching her, as if to say he wanted to, but he would not if she forbade it.
His face was so much more grown-up—except the eyes, which regarded her with the familiar anxiousness to be understood: he shook his head at her, meaning, she hoped, that he was sorry he had scared her; and he signed to her that he wanted her to walk with him further along the shore.
That seemed far safer than looking into his eyes at this range. So she walked with him, while Owl glided along ahead of them, sometimes so milky white she could see the barring on his wings, sometimes nothing but gossamer in a shaft of evening sun.
They discovered curious branches the river had washed up, they found shells, they found dens of this and that creature that lived on this shore—all these things had used to occupy their walks. But such diversions seemed trivial now. She picked up a water-smoothed shell to show him, but it was an excuse for distraction, a chance to discover whether her hands were shaking.
She said, ‘You're not wishing me, are you?’
He put a hand on his heart, sank down on his heels and reached out to stir the foam at the water edge with his fingers. Froth moved: that was all the strength he had in the living world. Perhaps that was what he was trying to tell her—that he could not really touch her.
He could never really touch her.
And she did want him—not now, but someday, perhaps this year, perhaps the next or the next, at some time her thoughts and her heart agreed.
She caught some faint impression from him then. Listening to his thoughts was like seeing him by sunlight: the eyes saw and the ears heard so many substantial things it was hard to concentrate on one's imagination. His thoughts were like that: she had heard his as rarely as she had seen him by bright day, and beneath the murmur of the river and the sighing of the reeds and the leaves it seemed she could even hear his voice, saying something about the dark and waiting.
‘I can almost hear you,’ she whispered.
He stood up, face to face with her. His lips moved—she thrust the river sound to the back of her mind and listened for him. She said, ever so quietly herself, ‘I'm afraid to ask you questions. I might ask a wrong one. If I asked the wrong one mightn't I send you away?''
He shook his head.
‘No question can hurt you?’
He touched his heart. He gestured toward her, inviting her to go on.
A thousand questions leaped up. She said, breathlessly, ‘Is it safe to ask what you are?''
That made him laugh. She thought, Foolish question. Of course. He's a ghost.
She asked, ‘Is it safe to ask why you come here?’
Another gesture from heart to her, to his eyes.
Flattering, but her father gave answers like that to her mother when he wanted his own way. She made herself coldly sensible like her mother, and asked, ‘But why here? Why here instead of the woods lately? Do you have anything special to do with this place?’
He reached and touched beneath her chin, said words too faint to hear.
He laid a finger on her lips, then, and a chill came on them and on her heart. She whispered, ‘So you can't answer everything.’
The way he gazed into her eyes made her think about the kiss he had given her, and sent a shiver through her knees. She wished please not, not yet, she was hardly sure about the last one. She thought it had been nice. She just wanted to think a while about the next one.
He went on looking at her. She said, ‘I don't even know your name.’
His lips moved. She heard ‘...your friend, Ilyana,’— which was what she wanted to hear, and all she wanted to hear, until she could get her feelings and her thinking straightened out. She was shaky—not scared, just—shaky all over.
While birds courted like crazy things through the branches of the trees.
He gestured upward. ‘Look at them,’ she heard.
She did look, and on the way down from looking up found herself looking straight into his eyes. She thought, But what comes of that is baby birds. And with a ghost?
She thought, or he said—she was not sure—
‘—I'd never do you harm, Ilyana. I'd die first.’
She said, aloud, before she thought, ‘You are dead.’
That might have banished him then and there, if it were mere ignorance holding him to the earth. He had made her that reckless, that inconsiderate of her actions. But he said, ever so faintly to her ears: ‘You're why I come here, so long as I have the strength. I swear to you, I've never broken the rules.’
‘What rules?’
She thought, for no reason, of leshys, tall as trees and very like them. She thought of a ring of thorns, a stone, and golden leaves.
He said, ‘Don’t betray me, Ilyana. Don't tell anyone. And never ask for my heart. I'd so quickly give it to you. Owl's such a hardhearted bird.’
‘You're a wizard!’
‘Oh, yes.'' His voice came much more strongly now. And she had never been sure of the color of his eyes or his hair, but they seemed dusky now, and a faint flush colored his face against the shadow of the brush. ‘I was. And you are. Maybe it was your wish all along that brought me. Or mine. I fear I'm no more than a wish—my own, for life; and yours— perhaps for company. And mine again now—for you. Do you understand rusalki? Do you know now?—Please don't run.’
It had crossed her mind. So did staying for questions, since it was still her friend gazing so closely into her eyes. ‘Rusalki are drowned girls—’
‘And I'm not.’ Gentle laughter, a downward glance of still-boyish eyes, a look up again, under her lashes. ‘Neither drowned nor a girl. Not particularly angry at my fate. So it can't be sailors that I court, nor travelers in the woods; it's only you, Ilyana. And forgive me—I've borrowed a little of your strength; but only enough to speak to you with my own voice. I won't take more than that, I swear to you.’
‘Oh, god.’
‘Please.'' He caught at her hand to stay her and from that chill touch a tingling ran throu
gh her bones. ‘I'm the one in danger now. I'm the one your thought can banish. I beg you don't. I beg you listen to me.’
‘God.’ Everything was tottering, her one friendship in all her life gone first confusing and threatening, and imminently fatal, if a rusalka was truly what he was.
‘Nothing spiteful,’ he answered her thoughts, ‘nothing selfish—well, perhaps a little. I promise you, I'd never harm you. I'll do anything you want.’
‘Then tell me what I ask you.’
‘I have no choice.’
‘What do you want from me?’
‘The things that only you can give.''
‘Riddles!’ It was a danger with magical things, who might be bound to answer in riddles—on all the places where a trap might lurk.
He said, ‘There was a vodyanoi once, who lived along this stream.’
‘I know about him. His name is Hwiuur. My parents and my uncle warned me.’ Worse and worse thoughts: the old snake had never been in his den so long as she had lived. ‘What's he to do with you?''
‘A threat to you. That's one thing. He's come back.'' His voice grew fainter. ‘I daren't borrow more from you. I can't stay longer. Believe me, Ilyana—’
‘Don't wish at me! I won't believe you if you do things like that!’
‘You're growing up, Ilyana. If I've any magic left, I wish it to come in this season, while I'm with you. I don't want you to be alone, Ilyana, and without me, you would be— alone—’
‘Alone for what? I'm always alone! I've no friend but you!’
His voice was fading. He said, hardly audible, ‘I can't explain now. Don't fail me... tomorrow...’
‘Ilyana!’ faintly came from beyond the trees. Her mother was calling her. The twilight even out on the river was deeper than she had thought—god, it was nearly dark. And her Mend mimed that she should go, now.
‘Back in the morning!’ she said, and ran.
‘Ilyana!’
Her mother wanted her home, now, immediately, and when one's mother was a wizard, there could be no question of it—not wise to delay, not now, no thought of why, only obedience: I'm coming, she wanted her mother to know. Yes, mother, quick as I can, mother—