Chernevog

9

They came in sight of the house at twilight, both of them staggering tired, in muddy, chafing clothes that had dried on their backs, and with Volkhi so weary they were both afoot and leading him again. But at last there was the gray roof in sight, the hedge, the garden, their own porch, all safe and waiting for them, and Pyetr had no inclination to upset Eveshka twice. He opened the gate, shoved Volkhi’s reins at Sasha, calling out dutifully as he came running up onto the porch, “ ’Veshka, I’m home!”

He opened the door into a dark, cold house.

“’Veshka? Where are you?”

Sasha came thumping up onto the porch and walked in behind him.

“She’s not here,” Pyetr said, thinking, Well, damn! Now she’s gone out looking! Then he thought about the horse and the quarrel yesterday morning and had another opinion.

“She just might be out at the bathhouse,” Sasha breathed, and ran back down into the yard. Sasha’s voice drifted up distant and distressed: “Volkhi, get out of there!”

Hell with the garden, Pyetr thought, looking around a shadowy, supperless kitchen. He threw wide the kitchen shutters for light, opened the door into their bedroom and bashed his shin on a bench, opening the bedroom shutters.

Her book was gone from the desk.

He looked in the domes press, found clothes missing, walking boots gone; and slammed the wardrobe door so hard the piece rocked against the wall. “Damn!” he said, hit it with his fist and sulked out into the kitchen to find out what else missing—and by that just how long she intended to be off on her little pique this time.

He was finding blank spaces in the spice shelves when Sasha came running up onto the porch and inside to report breathlessly that she was not in the bathhouse, and he had found neither sight nor sense of the bannik, either.

“No need of any bannik,” Pyetr said. “She’s off again. She’s just mad and she’s left.” He pushed his cap back on his head, remembered Eveshka disapproved of caps in the house, and took it off, as if that could patch things. “She took her book with her this time. Damn her.” Then he added, with the least little remorse and no little worry in his heart: “Though I honestly can’t say I blame her.”

“I don’t like this.”

“Well, I don’t like it either, but it’s hardly the first time, is it?” He waved at the door, in the general direction of the woods “Trees make better sense to her than people do. They always have. Myself, I’m for supper and a bath. She’ll be back. Not my fault I got lost, not her fault she does things like this, is it?”

“I don’t think she’d go off like this. Not—”

“I do. I see absolutely no reason she wouldn’t. She’s done it too often. —Let’s get a light in here, have supper, get a bath. -Babi? Babi, where are you?”

Babi turned up at his knee, tugging at his trouser leg, upset, one could reckon, at finding no supper waiting.

“Go find her, Babi. Get her back here if you want your dinner. Or you’ll have to put up with my cooking.”

Babi dropped to all fours and walked the circuit of the room in a decided sulk, all shoulders.

“I really don’t like this,” Sasha repeated to himself, shed his cap and coat onto the kitchen bench and started sorting the books and clutter on the side of the kitchen table, the survivors of the broken shelf.

“Well, hell, I don’t like it either! But we haven’t any choice, have we?” Pyetr went to the fireplace, poked up the ashes and thrust a little kindling into the banked coals. Flame shot up quite readily, yellow light. He lit a straw, stood up and lit the oil lamp, which threw giant shadows about the walls and made Sasha’s worried frown disturbingly grim.

“She didn’t leave any note?” Sasha asked him. “Nothing on her desk, no paper or—”

“No.” It frustrated him, this leaving of vitally important messages on arcane little bits of paper. He jammed his hands into his coat pockets and set his jaw, thinking about the silence in the woods, the shapeshifter that had taken Uulamets’ likeness. “I don’t know why she would bother. Does she ever leave one when it’s important? —Damn it, Sasha, you know exactly what it is, she’s mad and she’s off to talk to the trees or whatever she does out there, I don’t see we should worry.”

Sasha ran a hand through his hair, left his books, went and pulled up the trap to the cellar.

“She’s not hiding down there, for the god’s sake,” Pyetr said, at the end of his temper, embarrassed, even though Sasha was their closest and only friend, at having a constant witness to their private difficulties. He knew he would end up, he always did, defending Eveshka to a boy who had more sense man Eveshka in his little finger. Then Sasha would end up, inevitably, telling him the same old things, that he just had to understand Eveshka, Eveshka had to have time, Eveshka had to be alone with her thoughts—

“It’s not safe out there,” was what Sasha said, on the first step of the cellar stairs.

Pyetr gave a twitch of his shoulders, uneasy at this urgent searching and poking about in dark places, as if something truly grim could have happened. “I know it’s not safe out there, we both know it’s not safe out there, but she’s a wizard, isn’t she? -What in hell do you want in the cellar?” Pyetr had a sudden, most terrible imagination that Sasha knew beyond a doubt that something was amiss—with a girl who could stop a man’s heart with a wish.

Certainly there was no chance any intruder could get past the front door—

Except a shapeshifter, except someone that she knew… or thought she knew.

Sasha said to him, casting a glance over his shoulder, “Is there bread?”

Pyetr glanced at the counter, where loaves of bread wrapped in towels—Eveshka had left that much for them, in the usual place, evidence she had planned for them coming home. She had at least done her usual baking…

But damn her, he had searched the woods for her on earliest disappearances, spent sleepless nights and called himself hoarse, all to no profit. She came back when she wanted to come back. There was no reason to think it was more than that, no matter the scare they had had.

He brought a loaf to Sasha, on the steps, waist-deep in the dark. He guessed by now what Sasha was thinking of: the domovoi, down in the cellar. The House-thing favored homey gifts like fresh bread: it had gotten fatter and fatter on Eveshka’s baking in the years they had lived here; but whatever wisdom it had, it sat on. It never offered them a thing but to stir when quarrels disturbed the peace, and to make the house timbers creak on winter nights like some old man’s joints. “What can it tell us?” he asked sullenly. “It’s only Eveshka it talks to.”

Sasha ignored his opinions and ducked down the stairs into the dark. What floated up to him was,

“Just stay there, don’t block the light and don’t say anything!”

Meaning that a magic-deaf fool was apt to open his mouth at the wrong moment and offend the creature. He was outstandingly good at that. If he had ever made sense to Eveshka she would not be off in the woods right now, and they would not be worrying and wondering if she was just off on a sulk or a soul-searching or whatever she did to keep herself, Eveshka would say, from her damnably dangerous tempers.

He paced. That was all he could do.

Then of a sudden Babi growled, leapt up and vanished right through the shut door to the outside.

“Babi!” Pyetr crossed the room hardly slower than Babi, jerked the door open, hand on his sword—

And saw Volkhi head across the neat rows of vegetables with Babi in pursuit, wreaking equal havoc in Eveshka’s rain-soaked garden as they went.

“Damn!” Pyetr whistled, loud and sharp. “Volkhi! —Dammit, Babi, get him out of mere!” Volkhi swung off toward the side of the house, with a kick in his gait. Babi followed. Pyetr set his arm against the doorframe and leaned his head against it, thinking, god, Eveshka had worked so hard on that garden, Eveshka had weeded it, watered and taken pride in that garden, and if she saw it before he smoothed that rain-soaked ground he would have to go and live with the leshys, that was all there was to it.

Nothing was wrong. She would come back, please the god Eveshka was only angry at him. He deserved it for his fecklessness and his stupidity: no one in Vojvoda had ever counted him a responsible type, the god knew ’Veshka had had a great deal to put up with. He only wanted her back safe, that was all he asked.

The domovoi did not like the light. It hated disturbances, it wanted peace, and if one ever wanted to see it, one might search the shadows at the end of the shelves, among the bins and barrels of the cellar. It stayed as far as it could get from the stairs and noisy comings and goings. So at the very limit of the dim light that came from the kitchen above, Sasha unwrapped his offering, squatted down and broke the bread for the domovoi, setting the pieces on the floor.

Timbers creaked at the end of the cellar. A shadow moved there. It was hard to see its real shape. Sometimes it was a bear. Sometimes it was a black pig. Sometimes it was a very shaggy, very puzzled old grandfather, which was what Sasha had seen when they had summoned it to feed it and explain their plans for the house and the changes they proposed to make. It had simply wanted to know the roof would be sound, Eveshka had said: that was all it cared about, besides a loaf of bread now and again.

One hoped it forgave them for the corner-posts.

“Domovoi, little father—” Sasha bowed very respectfully from where he was kneeling, and edged backward to give it room. “Pyetr and I are back, but now Eveshka’s gone off somewhere and we’re worried. Do you know where she’s gone? Do you remember her leaving?”

It moved, the shifting of a large, heavy body; it came out of the shadows and sat on the dirt floor looking at him, which was more attention than it usually paid.

It was a very old domovoi, by any account, and very odd.

It blinked at him. It remembered things, Uulamets’ knowledge told him: it knew very little about today, less about tomorrow, mostly dreamed about the way things had been, glossing the bad and exaggerating the good—at least a healthy one did, in a healthy house. The god only knew about one a wizard owned.

It hunched closer. It looked a lot at the moment like an old bear, the oldest bear anyone had ever seen, and the fattest. It swiped a half a loaf up in its paws and sat up to eat it like a man… completely unconcerned, it seemed, at Eveshka’s disappearance, which might be a good sign.

But of a sudden a memory came very strongly—a young man stood like a ghost on the wooden steps, very like the figure in the bannik’s vision—no feature visible, light felling on dark hair, white-shirted shoulders…

It might be himself. It was so real Sasha turned his head to see if it was there, or perhaps a recollection of his recent presence on those steps.

But there was nothing. He looked back at the domovoi, hands sweating. He imagined the room upstairs the way it had been He imagined violent anger in the house, Uulamets shouting till the rafters rang, Young fool! And Eveshka sobbing, Listen to me, papa—you never listen to me!

He was trembling. He took hold of the post beside the step looked up into the twilight of the room above, hearing Eveshka say, plaintively—

I don’t believe you, papa. You’re wrong! Doesn’t it ever occur to you that you might be wrong about someone?

Years and years ago—when Kavi Chernevog had come and gone on these steps, gotten herbs from this same cellar, slept by the hearth upstairs, while Uulamets and his daughter had had their beds at the end of the kitchen… and Chernevog had had his bed close to where he slept now.

God, why is it showing me this? What’s Chernevog to do with anything now? He can’t be awake, please the god it doesn’t mean Chernevog has anything to do with this.

“Little father,” he whispered to the domovoi, “what are you telling me?”

The house rang with ghostly voices:

Fool, love’s got nothing to do with him! He’s got no heart, he hasn’t had one for years! Good riddance to him!

Eveshka, furiously: You never give me a chance, papa, you never credit me with any judgment! Why should I ever be honest with you? You never trust me to know anything!

And Uulamets, then: Trust you? The plain question, girl, is whether you can trust yourself! The plainer question is whether you’re my daughter or your mother’s! Answer that one! Can you?

His heart was racing. He recalled a scratching at the shutters in the night, the raven that had held Uulamets’ heart prying with beak and claw to get inside… while Uulamets sat alone at the table by lamplight—reading and plotting and writing, night after night, wanting his daughter back…

Lonely nights, silent days, the scratching at the window—and Uulamets never listened to it. Uulamets had reason enough to want his daughter alive again, and a heart had very little to do with it. Eveshka was absolutely right about that.

Leaves on the river…

Spray flying from the bow…

Sasha broke out in sudden, sweating terror, scrambled up and ran up the steps, shouting at Pyetr: “The boat—”

The dock was empty, Pyetr saw that well enough from the top of the path: the boat was gone, and he went running down to the weathered boards, to stand there like a fool and look helplessly up the river—up, because he knew it was no trip down to Kiev that Eveshka had undertaken without him.

“She’s gone,” he said as Sasha came running up beside him. “It’s a bad dream. It’s a damn bad dream! What in hell does she think she’s doing with the boat? Where does she think she’s going?”

“I don’t know,” Sasha said.

“I thought she was worried I wasn’t back, I thought she had this notion something just damn well could have happened to me out there! I don’t mind if she’s mad, I can understand if she’s mad, but taking the boat—”

“She could have heard from the leshys.”

“Oh, god, fine, she could have heard from the leshys! Then she could damn well have had the leshys talk to us, couldn’t she?”

Sasha caught his arm, pulled at him to bring him up the hill again to a house Eveshka had deserted, along with everything else she had a responsibility to think of. “She cares,” Sasha said, “Pyetr, I know she does. I’m sure whatever she’s doing, she can take care of herself, she’s thought it through—”

“The hell!” he cried, and tore from Sasha’s grip. He climbed to the top of the hill, he stood there catching his breath under the old dead trees looking out at the house and the yard in the gathering dark, with a lump in his throat and a cold fear in his stomach.

He heard Sasha climbing the trail behind him. He was in no mood to talk about Eveshka, or to wonder aloud what kind of danger she might be in—he could think of all too many right now without a wizard’s help. So he shoved his way through the gap in the hedge, stalked up to the porch and inside, into the kitchen, where he snatched a basket down off the rafters and started searching for flour and oil.

He was aware when Sasha walked in the door, was aware Sasha standing behind him, upset and wanting to help.

“I’m taking Volkhi,” Pyetr said, “I’m going after her, I’ll find her, don’t worry about it. If she’s on the river, I’m not going to get lost following that.”

“Pyetr, I know you’re in no mood to listen to me—”

“It’s not your fault. —Where’s the damn flour? Did she have to take all of it?”

“It’s under the counter. It should be. —Pyetr, please, just think this through with me: she’s on the boat, she’s not out in the woods—so at least we know something; and I didn’t know exactly where you were, either, so long as I was any distance from you. It’s this quiet out there…”

He turned and glared at Sasha, expecting him to use good sense and shut up. But Sasha set his jaw and said, without flinching:

“We’ll find her. I promise we’ll both find her, let’s just not do anything rash, Pyetr.”

“Rash! God, let’s not do anything rash while she’s out there on the river, shall we? Let’s not take any chances while she’s out there alone on the water in the dark with the god knows what! There’s a shapeshifter loose! Who knows what shape it’s got right now? Who knows what she’s sailing with?”

“Pyetr, I don’t want you going without me, you understand me? I know you’re mad and I’m sorry, but I don’t want you running off out there!”

“The hell! Don’t wish at me, dammit! I know you mean well, Sasha, but just stop it! Stay out of my way! Stay the hell out of my way!”

“Pyetr, —”

He found the flour. “You give me advice, boy, when you’ve got a wife. I’m not sitting here while she’s out there begging for trouble and you can’t tell me what’s going on.”

“Pyetr, listen to me!”

He felt the wish hit him: he felt his thoughts scatter, his hands shake with an intention he suddenly had trouble recollecting, even when he knew what was happening to him. He slammed his hand down on the counter, leaned on it, because sleeplessness and cold and the rest of it were suddenly making his knees weak. “Don’t do that to me, dammit!”

“Pyetr, we’re going, I absolutely agree with you, we’re going after her as fast as we can, but we can go off with what we need or we can go without it—I don’t just throw things in a sack, Pyetr, and magic doesn’t win by luck and it doesn’t work by generalities!”

“Tonight it seems it’s not working at all!”

“I can wish her well—but that’s no good at all if somebody else wishes something a lot more specific, does it?”

“Somebody else. Somebody else— Is that what we’re talking about? Is that why we’re not naming names right now?”

“Pyetr, don’t doubt her, don’t doubt us! Doubt undoes magic, and that’s the absolute worst mistake we could make.”

“Doubt’s when you start to know you’re off the mark, boy, doubt’s when you start to figure out you’d better do something— and the stupidest thing we can do is sit here and let her sail off on the god knows what hare-brained notion while we believe things are going to be all right! North, Sasha, north is where she’s going right now, and if there’s something wrong down here, then it’s a good guess there’s something going on up there with the leshys, and if the leshys can’t stop it then I doubt my wife is the one of us who has any business up there!”

“If it’s not old magic,” Sasha said quietly. “And we don’t know: it could be. It could be a hundred years old—it could be anybody who ever lived here.”

That made no sense at all. He was not in a mood to listen to obscurities. But Sasha went on, with that worried, earnest look he had when he was trying to explain the unexplainable:

“A wish lasts. Like that old teacup that ought to break. We don’t want it to break either. I think we might keep that wish going. But I’m sure it’s still Uulamets’ wish keeping that cup in one piece. He’s dead and it still works because we use it. A lot else he wished just doesn’t matter to anybody now he’s gone, so it just fades away and doesn’t do anything—but there might be all sorts of old wishes floating around these woods that we don’t know about. There was Uulamets before there was Chernevog, there was Malenkova before there was Uulamets, the god only knows who taught Malenkova, hundreds and hundreds of wishes could still be working, for all we know, and we don’t know what we’re messing with or what it’s aiming at, or if it’s completely harmless until it bumps into something else and starts it moving.”

“God,” Pyetr said disgustedly.

“It’s all complicated, Pyetr, magic’s always complicated like that, and we can’t go off to the north rattling everything that’s settled and risking the god knows what, going right for what we’re most afraid of—”

“Well, she is, isn’t she? Who knows what ’Veshka’s going to do? —God, it’s Chernevog we’re talking about, not some damn village fortuneteller—not mentioning the ghosts in the woods up there. He murdered her! He had her heart in his hands once! Tell me again she’s got any kind of business going up there!”

“We don’t know for certain that’s even where she went.”

“Well, it damn sure wasn’t to Kiev market! What’s going on out there? What’s making the forest look different every time you look at it and why’s my wife off on the river in the dark if it isn’t his doing?”

Sasha bit his lip. “It could be. But—”

“Could, could, might! —I’ll tell you what I’ll do, friend, I’ll go up there and separate him from his head, that’s what I’ll do, and then we won’t have to wonder! The god only knows why we didn’t do it in the first place!”

“If you ever get there—if you can find your way through the woods—”

“I’ll get there!”

“You couldn’t even find the house!”

“Well, I don’t need a guide to find the damn river!”

“And what happens when we get up there without what we could have brought if we took time to think? —All right, all right, I don’t like what Eveshka’s done, I don’t think it was smart, I don’t think it was the best thing to have done, I want to catch up with her as much as you do—”

“I doubt that!”

“—but it’s no help, scattering like sheep all through the woods with no idea what we’re dealing with!”

“Fine! Pack! Let’s move!”

“Pyetr, god— Go take care of Volkhi, take care of Babi, go outside, just for the god’s sake give me time to think! Maybe I can reach her. Out! Please!”

Pyetr bit his lip. All certainties went sliding away from him— which could as well be Sasha’s doing, even without Sasha’s intending it: that was the kind of thinking that could drive a sane man crazy, especially facing a second night of no sleep, so tired und so scared for what Eveshka might be doing he was all but shaking. Sasha was in no better state, his voice was a hoarse shadow of itself; and without wizardry there was no hope they could overtake the boat tonight.

Pyetr flung up his hands. “All right,” he said, “all right.” He went to the washbasin, threw water into his face and toweled off the dirt, went to the grain bin and slammed it open, to do whatever Sasha wanted, trying not to wonder what might be going on elsewhere or what trouble the boat could get into with Eveshka sailing blind and alone. “I’ll get Volkhi rubbed down,” he said, throwing grain into the bucket. “Talk to her. Turn the wind if you can. If you can’t reach her I want to be out of here tonight, I don’t care if it’s only an hour along the shore, I’m not going to sit here waiting for word and I’m damn well not going to sleep.”

“Volkhi’s exhausted,” Sasha said. “I’m exhausted. Two nights now I’ve had no sleep, for the god’s sake! —Just—let me try. I’ll do what I can.”

“I know. I know you will.” Pyetr filled the bucket, did the mundane things a plain man could. All his life he had known a run of luck only lasted till a fool believed it enough to commit himself. Then the god tipped the dice and everything went to hell.

But, but, he argued with himself, he still had throws left, Sasha was saying he still knew things to try. Sasha and Eveshka could load anybody’s dice.

Only hope to the god it was not Chernevog responsible, or if it was, that Eveshka was not going up there to handle matters alone—because it seemed always the last thing in the world to occur to Ilya Uulamets’ daughter—that she was not the sole, competent in a world of fools and strangers.

—Oh, leave that alone, Pyetr, let me do it!

—Here, stop, you’re making a mess!

—Don’t touch that, Pyetr!

And when, too often lately, she would frown and stare into nowhere, chin on fist—and he would ask: What’s worrying you, ’Veshka?

She would say, Nothing. Nothing at all… As if she were looking past the walls, past everything he could see or think of seeing…

“When I left her here,” Sasha was saying at the edge of his attention, a hoarse and weary voice, “she kept wanting to hear from the leshys: maybe she got an answer. Maybe she just she had to go get one. She left the bread. So she knew we were coming back.”

Pyetr refused to be comforted. He said, tight-jawed, “Any-thing’s possible,” got the vodka jug from the shelf and cut down a couple of small sausages to take along with it. For his supper. And Babi’s. “I just wonder what the hell answer she did get, myself. Or whose. —I’ll take care of outside. I’ll wait out there till you call me. But for the god’s sake let’s not just trust to wishes. Do what you can and let’s get closer to her where we can do some good.”

“I’ll hurry,” Sasha promised him, “as much as you can hurry magic, I promise you.”

It was an eerily uncomfortable feeling Sasha had, entering Pyetr’s and Eveshka’s room—carrying the kitchen lamp into a behind-doors privacy he had never entered since the day he and Pyetr had moved the furniture in. He felt strangely furtive and guilty here—as if Pyetr would object to him being in this room, as if Eveshka herself might have set some wish here that he was crossing. He would never have expected that of her.

But he had his own specific purpose in this room, and wishing nothing else he searched the floor around the wash-basin and the table where one would expect her comb and her brush to be, if she had not taken them with her—a woman thinking of necessities, he thought—and searching by lamplight under that table and against the wall he found the leavings he was looking for—perhaps a last, hasty brushing as she was packing, a few pale strands broken and disregarded on a floor otherwise immaculately swept. He wrapped them around his finger and tucked them into his pocket: that was the link that he wanted, the single personal tie to her, be it ever so slight.

Everything indicated a point of decision, quick packing, reliance on the provisions the boat always had: a very worried young woman who likely had not slept baked bread, slow work, and left it neatly wrapped, two loaves, all the rising tray would hold, for menfolk she surely, desperately, wanted home; then, evidently suddenly, with book, inkpot and scant personal things—she went down to the boat.

He had herb-pots of his own to bring up from the cellar. The bread he had left the domovoi was gone, neither crumb nor track showing on the smooth-worn floor: “Little grandfather,” he called, but the House-thing made no appearance even when he brought his lamp into that area of the cellar it most haunted. He searched the shelves there for feverfew and woundwort, willow bark and yarrow, salt and sulfur, little pots he and Eveshka had neatly labeled, everything to Eveshka’s exacting sense of order.

Her touch, her presence was strong in this dark place, in the depths of the house she had grown up in, died near, returned to as a wife… He told himself there was nothing in the world to fear from Eveshka’s lingering wishes, there was nothing she would ever do or want that might harm him or Pyetr…

But he kept remembering—Chernevog came and went here, often.

He heard Uulamets shouting, heard her saying, in tears:

—You never give anyone a chance, papa. You never trust anyone! Why should anyone be honest with you?

Eveshka walking on the misty river shore, among like ghosts of trees long dead—toward a cloaked man waiting for her—

“God.” Sasha all but lost his breath, caught his balance against the shelf, pottery rattling against his arms.

Cold and dark, roots above a hollow bank, where the vodyanoi lived, Chernevog’s old ally—

Eveshka’s grave, such as it was, whatever it still contained…

He wished with all his heart for her to hear him. But that smothering hush fell like deep snow. He stood there smelling age and preservation, and listening to the distressed creaking of old timbers.

One never knew how long wizardry was going to take once It got started, Pyetr knew that, and there was no telling what Sasha meant to do in there, but a body was well advised not to walk in on things, no matter how tired he was or how desperate, no matter that it was dark out in the yard and he had no lamp.

A wizard did not have to think about such petty things. A wizard could talk about packing damned little pots while a man’s wife was in danger, a wizard could talk about reason while the sky was falling and then still cast about to be sure and double sure before he did anything.

So Pyetr had himself a supper of cold sausage, and poured a drink for Babi while Volkhi lipped up the last of his grain in the moonlight, under ragged cloud. Babi had zealously done what a proper Yard-thing should do: he had gotten Volkhi out of the garden and into his pen, Volkhi none the worse for a few greens on the way, and not at all disturbed about Babi, who had been, when Pyetr had arrived in the back yard, sitting in the gap he had left in the pen—insisting something at least behave itself and stay where it was supposed to.

Now Babi was a small black furball tucked as close to Pyetr’s boot as he could get.”Find ’Veshka, can you?” Pyetr had asked him, and maybe Babi had tried, silently, in whatever way a dvorovoi might know where his people were. Certainly Babi was not his ordinary cheerful self tonight—he moped, drank his vodka and dropped his chin on his small hands with a sigh.

“We’ll find her,” Pyetr said, and stroked Babi’s shaggy head. Babi growled then, which might mean almost anything.

But Babi had his head up staring across the dark yard; and Pyetr looked at the bathhouse, where Babi was looking, with the most uneasy feeling there was something in the shadows staring back at him.

Sasha fed kindling into the fire in the hearth, flung in herbs that master Uulamets had recommended; salt, baneful to certain wicked things; lastly a few strands of Eveshka’s hair: that was the essence of the spell he was casting. He looked for patterns in the light, he leaned close and fanned the smoke to him, taking whatever thoughts the smoke brought.

The spell was not the smoke, the spell was not in the smoke, it was in thinking about the things it held, not in one’s own order of importance—

It was in letting the smoke mix everything equally and spin out a new order of things—no one thing and no one question, momentarily, in greater importance than anything else—

A willow leaf balanced on a still current, a bubble stopped in the act of breaking —

In the quiet, think about hearth and house: Pyetr and Uulamets and Eveshka. Think of Vojvoda and Kiev; think of ordinary folk, oblivious to what existed beyond their fields and over the hills, think of all the tsars in all the kingdoms in all the world, because the currents went that far—

Everything poised motionless and waiting —

Think of a butter churn and a mud puddle; a house far north of this house, all in charred ruins—

Chernevog’s house. Malenkova’s house, once. Even Uulamets had lived there, when Uulamets had been himself an apprentice…

Be rid of hearts, Uulamets’ voiceless voice chided him: never rely on them; love nothing and nowhere above everything and all places.

Nothing more than anything, everything passing like the river passing the house. Uulamets’ wife was in that river and his daughter was in that river, Uulamets’ life was in that river: everything flowed past him, everything was always there, the paradox of leaves on the water-Breathe in the smoke, boy, breathe in, breathe in, breathe in…

Head above heart, boy. Head always above heart.

He pressed his hands against his eyes, thinking: Head without heart—that made Chernevog. Heart without head—what can that make anyone, but the town fool?

Thank the god, Uulamets had said, most wizards lose their gift young, most smother it, most wish the power of wishing away—

Always that choice was available, until the power grew too great, until one dared do nothing—not even retrace the steps leading to that one frozen moment—

’Veshka saying: I don’t want to be stronger—so that’s that, isn’t it?

He sat in front of the fire, he listened to the shifting of the domovoi in the cellar, bound to the house, lost in its memories; he thought about Pyetr out there alone in the yard.

Babi was with him. But there were things Babi could not deal with, there were things Babi had no power to fight—nor did he have. God, if it was Chernevog at the root of this, and if the leshys were failing to hold him…

A ring of thorns… where Forest-things wove in the danger that Kavi Chernevog had been —

He got up, shaking in the knees, he got all the books from the kitchen table and sat down again cross-legged in the heat and the light of the hearthside. He breathed the smoke, he asked himself what he was doing here, in Uulamets’ place, alone… it was Uulamets’ book he wanted, it was Chernevog’s he profoundly dreaded—but dread seemed like doubt to him, and wondering whether he was a fool even to contemplate what he was doing, he wished for answers from Chernevog’s: let it fall open to any page it would and let his eye find anything that stopped it—

Today Draga is dead. She had begun, I think, to worry about me.

Another skip of the eye:

… But she wanted me more than she wanted power: she had so much of that she didn’t want any more, so she settled for her own indulgence. That was her mistake…

—I don’t want to be stronger—so that’s that, isn’t it?

Learning it, I surpassed my teacher; understanding it, I despised her; using it, I killed her…

God, what’s it saying? Is it about ’Veshka?

Or does it mean anything at all? It’s like the smoke, it’s not what’s in it, the spell’s not in the smoke, it’s not in the words—

Chernevog’s not a wizard any more, he’s a sorcerer, whatever that means. Uulamets had to use real magic to stop him—he had to do it and the god only knows what he paid for it or how he got it or what helped him. That’s not in his book. That’s not in anything he left me.

He sat there in the smoke with the book open in front of him and felt colder and colder despite the sweat on his face: he thought of Eveshka out there on the river, Eveshka wanting Pyetr safe with all her might—

Uulamets saying: A rusalka is a wish—

A wish to live, a desire so strong it stole every life in its reach, up and down the river, leached life out of the woods, destroyed everything but what her father could keep from her grasp… until her wishing set itself finally on Pyetr—

Things change that can change—Always at the weakest point.

That was, they had always thought, Pyetr… but—

God—no, he did not want-Leaves moved, the bubble burst, dark water swirled aside from the bow —

What have I wished? he wondered, cold through and through. Father Sky, what did I just wish besides her getting home again?

He shut Chernevog’s book, he took up his own, desperate to recover his wits and remind himself of his own recent wishes. He opened it to the page last written.

There was Eveshka’s fine writing, the very last line. Take care for Pyetr. I know you’ll follow me. But I beg you don’t.

The spookiness from the bathhouse came and went. Pyetr took to glancing at the ground, talking to Babi, soothing Babi’s upset with a constant touch, then abruptly stealing a glance in the direction of the bathhouse, in hopes of surprising whatever was lurking in the shadows of its doorway, no matter that the door was shut.

Banniks, Sasha had said. Magical things. He had no pressing desire, in Sasha’s absence, to go over there and open that door: he did very well at believing in magic these days, even in dealing with it face-to-face—but this thing, bannik, ghost, whatever it was, made him sure if he opened that door it was going to dash out at him, and maybe get away from him altogether—along with everything it might tell them if he could only keep it for Sasha to deal with.

But it might be what Sasha was trying to raise with his magic, it might be the very answer he was conjuring—and in the completely unreasonable way of magical creatures, it might not stay long enough for Sasha to realize it was there.

He stood up, uncertain in the persistence of that feeling; he walked a few steps toward the bathhouse, stopped then in an increasingly unreasoning dread of that door, asking himself, on second and third thoughts, what a bannik might want with an ordinary man—the one of them hardest to bespell and most vulnerable if something actually got its hands on him—

Of a sudden something hit his leg, strong arms locked tight about his knee, Babi clinging to him and growling deep in his throat—while as strong as the terror of that closed door now was the idea the bannik might not intend to talk to anyone else, it might not wait for Sasha, it truly might not wait and they might lose every wisdom it might have for them.

But just then he heard the door of the house slam open, heard Sasha running hard down the boards, calling out, “Pyetr!”

He waited, while Babi let go of his knee and growled, with stay and go shivering through his exhausted wits. Sasha reached him, out of breath and he said, “There’s something in there.” He pointed at the bathhouse, expecting Sasha to find that of major significance, but Sasha caught his arm, saying,

“We’re going. Right now. Come inside, help me get the packs sorted out.”

“There’s a bannik!” Pyetr said; and Sasha:

“Let it be!”

Perhaps he was entirely muddled from lack of sleep, perhaps he expected Sasha to make clearer sense than he was making. Sasha held him painfully hard by a slack arm and drew him back to Volkhi’s pen, Babi growling as they went. “Just let it be! Don’t ask me anything, don’t argue, just get Volkhi around front.”

“What’s wrong, for the god’s sake? What did you find out?”

“Hush. Just bring Volkhi. Now!”

“Sasha, for the god’s sake—” Pyetr stopped and made a furious gesture back toward the bathhouse. “Did you even hear me? Are you listening? It wants something. It’s been trying to talk to me and I was waiting for you, before I did anything— Why are we suddenly scared of it?”

“Never mind! Just do it. Come on!”

There were times the boy showed a disturbing tendency to Uulamets’ habits—or it was wizardry that made one sit for hours and then, of course, immediately, the moment an ordinary man just momentarily began to believe the last piece of advice was gone—it was face-about in the other direction, and hurry about it -even though he had a gnawing feeling now that he truly wanted to open that door yonder, and he truly wanted to know what was in there and hear what it had to tell him. Eveshka was in trouble and that Thing in the bathhouse was the only creature in the world who knew precisely what was going on—it wanted to tell them—

“Come on!” Sasha hissed at him, and pulled at his arm. He hesitated, looking back—

But in any case of magic, he did exactly what Sasha asked.

The wind sang a steady song in the rigging, shifting only as the river turned, and Eveshka sat on the bench Pyetr had made beside the tiller, her arm over the bar, her eyes on the dark ahead. She distracted herself with recollections and precise reckonings, wished herself calm: Fear lends a certain strength to your wishes, papa had been wont to say, but does it ever make them wiser?

Papa’s advice. Always. She said, coldly, to the rushing wind and the dark, “Does arrogance, papa?”

And the dark said back, “You’re right, of course. You couldn’t possibly have that fault yourself.”

The answer disturbed her. There were ghosts aplenty in these woods, ghosts mat haunted her solitary walks, ghosts she met in anguish and in guilt—but of all the ghosts that could exist, this one she had decided by now would never come back.

And it had no right to turn up now, god! he did not, slipping up on her quiet as a memory. She still was not sure the manifestation was not exactly that: overwrought imagination—and dammit, she refused to flinch. This ghost owed her an apology by the god he did!

It said, so faintly it might have been the wind, Do I owe one to a fool? Just what are you doing up here, daughter?

She tossed her head, shook the blowing hair out of her eyes-aware in the same instant that the wind was changing, the pitch of the deck decreasing, the sail about to slat, uncertainty in every motion, her wishes all overwhelmed.

“Papa?” Fear struck her for a moment, her heart tottering unstable as the boat, but the wind came back to the sail, steadied the deck, carried the boat on its way, a wish as sure as the arms that had used to carry her. Her heart settled with a familiar, infuriating confidence—fluttered then, the whole world seeming to reel and pitch in the smothering silence and the humming of the ropes and the hull. One could sleep in that sound.

Going north? that whisper said to her. The tiller rocked and swayed beneath her arm, and the water hissed under the thrumming hull. —Young fool. I expected this. Sleep now. I’ll keep us steady.

She did not want to sleep. She hated her father taking things out of her hands, damn, he always did that to her; and she hated the quiet tone he took, as if she were a little girl again—god, she had even forgotten he could use that voice: papa tucking her in at night, kissing her on the forehead, walking away to bank the fire and blow out the light, in the single room the house had been in those years.

Good night, he would say then, out of the dark. Good night, mouseling. Safe dreams.

She tried to keep her eyes open. But the hiss and the hum ran through her bones, made her eyes heavy. Her head began to droop, the motion of the tiller rocking her to sleep.

The voice said, more substantial now, rough as she remembered him: Shut your eyes. You’ve taken on far too much this time. You need help. If you’ve not discovered it yet, young fool, that’s my grandchild you’re carrying.