Yvgenie

by CJ Cherryh

  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!

  4

  Bang! went the thunder, and Ilyana waked with her ears ringing and her heart in mid-leap. Rain on the roof. That one had shaken the house, as if a bolt had landed right in the yard.

  Missy positively hated storms.

  ‘Babi?’ She rolled from the side of the bed, touched a straw to the night-wick with shaking hands and lit the lamp.

  No Babi. Babi had been curled up on the covers at her feet, but he had probably gone for the stable the minute the storm started, that being his proper venue. She wished the horses well and calm, wished the lightnings not to hit that close again, please! while she pulled on the pair of trousers she wore for rough work, and the old pair of boots and the sloppy shirt, beltless. She flew through the door to the kitchen and opened the front door on a rain-laden gust and a red glare. There was a fire on the hill, a huge fire.

  Oh, god! ‘Papa! Uncle's roof!’

  Her father's bedroom door banged open and he came running through the kitchen and past her—he had stopped to dress, too, pushing his arm into his shirt as he headed down the walk-up into the storm without a word what to do— whether to come help or stay out of the way. He ran faster than she had imagined anybody could run, banged through the outside gate while she was still clumping down the walk-up in too-large boots worn slick on the soles, and holding to the rail in quivery fright. She could wish there to be no more lightning bolts, and for her uncle to be all right and for his house not to burn—

  Bang!

  A horse screamed. Boards splintered. She thought of fire and broken boards and panicked horses, and splashed around the corner to be sure the stable had not been hit. It was still safe; Volkhi and Missy were in the pen, but Patches was out, running around the yard in panic.

  ‘Patches!’ she cried, and wanted her to come to her; but Patches dashed in panic right through her mother's garden and charged right into the hedge—ran right through it, and the pickets, and fell outside.

  ‘Patches!’ she cried, running for the front gate, sure Patches had impaled herself on the pickets or the thorn-branches; but before she could even reach the fence Patches lurched up on her feet and bolted down the old road, toward the woods, where thickets and tangles could break her legs— her horse, her scared, stupid filly that papa had told her was absolutely her perso
nal responsibility.

  ‘Patches!’ she cried, ‘stop, come back!’ and, that working no more than the last, wanted her mother to know what was happening, wanted her to help papa and her uncle—wanted Missy—No— Volkhi; Volkhi was the fastest. She ran back to the stableyard, unlatched the gate and climbed the rails, wanting Volkhi against the fence, wishing him to stand still just long enough for her to slide onto his wet back and grab fistfuls of mane. Then she wished him, ‘Catch Patches!’ and Volkhi leapt into a run, right through the garden, right for—

  Oh, my god!

  She dared not wish him stop: she held on as Volkhi left the ground, and did not know the other side of the hedge how she was still on his back, except her lip tasted of blood and they were headed full-tilt into the trees. Branches raked her hair and splintered on her shoulders. Lightning flashed and confused her eyes. She hung on with both hands and went with Volkhi the way her father had taught her—impossible to see all the branches coming at her: it was Volkhi's sight she borrowed, different than hers, it was his body she felt moving, while she tried to remember where the bad spots were, to help him the best way she knew.

  ‘Patches!’ she yelled into the storm, what time she was not being Volkhi, insisting Patches come back; but if wishes were working right, Patches would have come to her in the first place, lightning would never have set her uncle's house on fire, and her father would not be back there where she should be right now, saving her uncle—god, god, she had done the wrong thing again. She should not be out here, listening too much to Volkhi and losing her wits . . .

  But now she was too far along and she could only lose Patches and be in grown-ups' way where the fire was.

  Be all right! she wished her father and her uncle; and wished her mother to do something—because her mother could, better than anyone.

  Oh, god, mother, put out the fire, and everybody be all right!

  ‘—Wake up, dammit! Wake up!’

  Sasha's face was waxen against the firelit grass, spattered with rain, the both of them sprawled in the yard as Pyetr slapped and shook at him. Then Sasha got a breath and objected to being hit in the face. Sasha rolled over and started coughing.

  Pyetr coughed, too, leaning on his hands and fighting for breath. A burning house was no way for Sasha to die, god, Sasha had such a terror of fire: he only just realized the fear he had felt, seeing Sasha's roof ablaze—when of a sudden Sasha scrambled up, headed back to the house.

  ‘No, dammit!’ He rolled and tripped Sasha by the ankle, then lost his hold as Sasha recovered his balance and dashed for the porch.

  Flames were already gusting out the windows. ‘Stop!’ Pyetr yelled, staggered up and ran after him, up to the smoke-seeping porch and through the door into a palpable wall of heat and light that seared the skin. Fire was already taking the stacks of papers, the air was thick with wind-borne cinders, too hot to breathe—but Sasha shoved two books at him and snatched an armload himself.

  A timber crashed down. Shingles fell in a hail of embers. Pyetr held the books in one arm, grabbed Sasha and ran, knocked into the wall and found the door by accident or wishes. A blast of cold rain shocked his burns and Sasha slid and fell on the boards on the way down, but Pyetr dragged him clear all the same, pulled Sasha down and far out onto the slope before his legs gave out, and he sprawled into the wet, prickly weeds beside him.

  ‘God,’ he moaned. His chest was burning. Rain stung like fire on his back and on his face as he rolled off the armful of books and let the water wash the smoke out of his eyes. ‘For a handful of damned books—’

  ‘Our lives,’ Sasha gasped. ‘Ilyana's—Oh my god, Ilyana—’

  Ilyana had been behind him a while back; he was onto his knees and intending another trip into the house before Sasha made him believe Ilyana had not gone inside after them—

  Oh, god, no, Ilyana was safe from the fire: she was out in the woods on a runaway horse, and Eveshka had cast off to sail home, through the storm—

  He had that from Sasha, or from 'Veshka herself, he did not stop to ask. He scrambled up and ran headlong downhill for a horse. Patches might almost be fast enough, but she was young and fritter-brained in a crisis—Missy came trotting up out of the lightning-lit downpour before he reached the hedge: Sasha's horse, no question who had brought her or how he was going to track Ilyana: he caught Missy's mane and swung up to her broad, rain-drenched back.

  Missy was the other side of too many years and too many apples, his sword was back in the house, he was soaked to the skin, blinded by rain, coatless and coughing so at times he could scarcely keep upright on Missy's back. Damned poor hope for a rescue, he thought, and hoped for Sasha to make the mouse use sense—burned and shocked and coughing his gut out back at the house, as Sasha was, with no horse at all and no way to follow him: Patches was what Ilyana and Volkhi were chasing. If his own wishes were worth anything, he threw them in: Wish Volkhi to use his head, if my daughter won't! What in hell's she doing out there?

  He thought he heard, then, faintly and full of pain: Pyetr, I don't know, but I swear to you I'm trying!

  There was Patches—Ilyana spied her through the brush, in the lightning flickers, with the roar of the rain-swollen brook in her ears. She was relieved to see Patches was on her feet, and terrified to see Patches had her hind feet almost in the flood: she had evidently fallen in, by the mud all down her side, and by luck or by a young lifetime of well-wishes, she must have gotten out again, if not all the way up the slippery bank. A heap of brush had partly dammed the brook there, and if Patches should step back and slip in now, Ilyana thought, that pile of brush could well trap her in the rush of water and drown her.

  ‘Be calm,’ she wished Volkhi, trying not to frighten Patches as they eased their way through the lightning-lit undergrowth. ‘Be calm. Easy.’ She wanted Patches to pay sober attention to the water behind her, please, and use good sense and come on to them if she had the strength to climb the slippery bank. She had heard nothing from uncle Sasha or from her mother. The familiar woods had turned scary in the dark, with the water and the wind roaring and the lightning making the trees and Patches like ghosts of themselves. She would have hoped Babi at least would have come with her; but nothing was going right tonight, nothing she knew was working, her uncle must be hurt at the very least, and she wanted to get back to the house and know everybody had gotten out of the fire, please the god: the silence from her uncle was wrong, she could not understand what she had been thinking of, or understand why she was still out here chasing after a damned horse, any horse, to prove she was responsible, when her father and uncle Sasha were in danger. She had made a stupid choice, she had counted on hearing her uncle and knowing he was all right, and nothing was right, god—

  But she was so close now—and Patches could still fall in and drown, right in front of her eyes, and if the damned horse would come on, it would only take a moment and she could ride back and leave the stupid filly in the woods until morning; she would be safe, just up the bank, just a few more steps up. ‘Come on. Patches, dammit! Oh, god—’

  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…