Yvgenie

2

“Get her out of the house,” Sasha said to Pyetr as they were riding through the woods, while birds sang like lunatics in the cool dawn. “That’s my opinion, whatever Eveshka says. Take her downriver with you. You don’t spend enough time with her.”

Pyetr thought instantly of crises developing on that trip, weather, meetings with people ashore, some of them ill-mannered or merely fools. “God, Eveshka would never have that.”

“Eveshka’s far too strict with the girl. Yesterday evening every truant from here to Kiev must have run home to his mother—instantly. Thieves and burglars in all the Russias must have mended their ways. Our mouse had reason to be upset.”

An ordinary man could not hear such storms. But he could certainly see and feel their effects in people he loved.

“I’ve talked with ’Veshka.”

“And she said?”

“Owls.”

“Owls.”

“She dreamed about one. She said an ordinary man—no, that’s not fair—” The plain truth was that he did not remember exactly what he had said to ’Veshka or she had said to him last night: when they argued, he tended to forget exactly what he had said and what he had thought to himself; but when a man was arguing with a wizard, saying and thinking were very little different anyway. “It’s that season, that’s all. One can’t help but remember—”

Sasha said: “She’s certainly on edge. I can feel it in her.”

An ordinary man also had to accept that his best friend knew more about his wife than he did, and constantly heard things from her that went past him. “So what can I do about it?”

“Warn her. Advise her. She listens to you.”

“What do I know? At least ’Veshka had a father to look to. Mine was no good example. And your uncle Fedya was certainly no substitute.”

“Master Uulamets was a lot of things; but he wasn’t wise with his daughter—or with his wife.”

“How can I advise her? How can I reason with her? I’m just an ordinary man. I don’t understand. I can’t hear, I can’t see.”

“Tell me, what would you have done if your father had decided you shouldn’t be on the streets, and locked you in The Doe’s basement?”

Appalling thought. “I’d have—”

“Of course you would.”

First chance he got, up the chimney, or out the door. He would never have abided captivity. Never.

Sasha said, “If Eveshka’s worried about her own nature in the girl, think about your own.”

What gives you the right? he had asked his father, every time Ilya Kochevikov had made a desultory attempt at reining him in. Where were you when I needed you?

“I really think you ought to take her with you this next trip south,” Sasha said. “Maybe to Anatoly’s place. There might even be some young lad to think about.”

Some young lad. His heart went thump. “God, give her something else to worry about while we’re about it! She’s got enough to deal with!”

“She’s fifteen, Pyetr. She’s never seen ordinary folk.”

“What for the god’s sake do you think I am?”

“You’re everything she knows of the world outside this woods, but you’re not as ordinary as you think. She needs some sense of other people, a whole variety of people. When she wishes, she needs to have some vision of what and who she might be touching.”

“Her mother’s never been out of this woods. Her grandfather never—”

“Yes, and it never helped them. It would be very hard for Eveshka to go, this late. She wouldn’t know how to see things. She wouldn’t have any patience with the Fedyas and the ‘Mitris of the world.”

“They’d be cinders.”

“Not as readily as you might think. But Eveshka certainly does have a way of finding the dark in the world. And your daughter doesn’t, yet. Your daughter just might look past people like ‘Mitri and see, for instance, old Ivan Ivanovitch, or some nice young farmer lad.”

“She’d have no idea how to deal with boys.”

“So tell her.”

“Tell her what?”

“Whatever fathers tell their daughters. Tell her what you’d have told yourself when you were that age. Tell her what you needed to know.”

“God, I wouldn’t say that to her!”

“Forgive me.” Sasha was distinctly blushing. “But someone should.”

“She’s still a child!”

“Not in all points. What were you thinking about when you were fifteen?”

“A drunken father. Money. Staying alive.”

“And?”

A succession of female faces came to him, some of them nameless so far as he was concerned, one of them three times his age. Riotous living. Being drunk, on the rooftree of The Doe.

“She’s a girl!” he said aloud, and then thought that it was all the more reason for worry.

“She’s still your daughter.”

Sasha knew Ilyana better than he did, too, Pyetr was sure. It was love for him that had made Sasha and Eveshka pack him off to far places whenever Ilyana had had some problem, for his safety, Eveshka had always said, and so had Sasha, whose parents had both burned to death the day his father had beaten a very frightened young wizard once too often. Lightnings might gather (literally) over the cottage. But bolts had never hit the house, and it had been a long time since Ilyana’s last real tantrum. Perhaps their magic had won the day, or perhaps Ilyana had just grown old enough to think before she wished.

“My daughter, yes, but, god, Sasha, I can’t talk to her about young men—”

“Should ’Veshka?”

“Sasha, I don’t know my daughter that well. I’ve missed so much of her life—sometimes it seems it’s all the important parts. You’re more her father than I am. You talk to her.”

“God, no!”

“Sasha, I’d botch it. I’d scare her half to death.”

“Don’t ever say that. Absolutely she’d listen to you. She tells me how very special her father is.”

“Has she got the right fellow?”

“Don’t joke. Not about that. You’re the sun and the moon to her. She loves you more than anyone alive.”

“She has no idea who I am. Or what I was. Or what I did or might have done.”

“I think she knows very well what you are. And you should remember one other important thing.”

“What, for the god’s sake?”

“That I was about her age when I took up with you. That’s what fifteen is.”

It was true, god, it was true, he had let the years creep up on him with no understanding how they added up: he had hardly figured his wife out yet.

But Sasha had indeed set out into the world at about that age—carrying a half-dead fool through the woods, sustaining his life on wishes and a handful of berries; a fifteen-year-old had fought ghosts and wizards for his sake before all was done—not to mention that Eveshka had eluded her father and gotten herself killed, hardly a year older than fifteen: that disaster, they had certainly been thinking of—and denying with every wish of their hearts.

“She’s growing up,” Sasha said. “Whatever we’ve done hitherto, she’s arrived quite naturally now at making choices of her own, choices that we won’t always know about—nor should we. The child’s due her day. She’s smothered her magic so far—we’ve all encouraged that. But Eveshka smothers hers for more reasons than mothering: she refuses to let it out any longer. She thinks if she says nothing but no, a child is going to choose the same course and renounce magic. Maybe. But I certainly wouldn’t bet on it; besides which, in doing that, she’s not showing the child how to be responsible for her wishes—and Ilyana hasn’t had the experience I’d had, nor the experience her mother had had by her age, either. Let me tell you, you may have missed a few scary moments, Pyetr, but for the next few years, you may be the most important influence in her life. She worships you.”

“God.”

“Don’t put on a face like that. I’m very serious. Your wishes—if you can think of it that way—have as much power now with the mouseling as mine or Eveshka’s will hereafter. She’s had our teaching. She’s had every piece of advice from us she can stand or understand. She’s had two very different teachers, in magic. But more and more now our mouse is going to choose her own way, test her own ideas, put her fingers into the fire to see if it’s hot. Didn’t we both?”

That rang true. But he had never stopped at burned fingers.

“She’s your daughter,” Sasha said. “In that much you already know the things she might do.”

“God, no wonder Eveshka’s worried.”

Her friend had not been there in the morning, when it had been easy to slip away. She had waited and she had waited by the river shore, and finally given up and walked the long way around, up the bank and into the woods the long circuit behind uncle’s cottage, all so her mother would not see her coming from the riverside.

In the afternoon she wrote in her book, in which every wizard, her mother swore, had to keep faithfully all his wishes, all his reasons, and all the possible things those — wishes could touch.

Never lie to the book, her mother had told her: I’ll never read it without your leave. That’s a promise, Ilyana.

She did not trust that promise. Her mother might have told her so, but her mother might just as easily change her mind, when her mother was so unsettled as she had been lately— and while she had never caught her mother sneaking a look at her book, her mother was not that easy to catch. That her mother seemed to work magic very seldom might only mean that she very rarely let anyone know she was doing it.

So Ilyana wrote small stupid things in the book, like: I should help mother more; I shouldn’t upset her—instead of the thoughts that were really on her mind, such as: What if he’s harmful? What if he came and hurt my family? Could I possibly be mistaken about him?

But then she thought—I’ve known him all my life. Surely I’d have understood by now whether he’s good or bad, and he’s never hurt anything. If he’s a rusalka or anything of the kind, it can’t be true that all of them kill things. The leshys haven’t been here for years—but uncle sees them. He walks with them in the woods. They would surely have warned us. Babi at least would have objected.

She filled a desultory quarter of a page with dull, dutiful considerations of why her mother had to be strict with her.

She thought that that would placate her mother if her mother was secretly reading her book.

Her mother was grinding herbs today, making the medicines for downriver, and when Ilyana finished her notes, she ground and measured and mixed until her arms ached, while her mother lectured her on why one should never use magic for housework, and told her how a wizard had to lead a thoroughly disciplined life. Her mother was very much on discipline, and Ilyana earnestly tried to listen, hoping for something new that would make the other things make sense—or only to hear something in a new way, as her uncle was wont to say, if her growing up were truly getting somewhere of a sudden.

But there was nothing but the same old lecture. Her mother said, for the hundredth time at least, “You don’t want to fall into careless habits. Magic can’t be a substitute for good work. Or ingenuity. Or caution. You can’t want everything perfect. You make it perfect. Patience and discipline.”

It did not seem to her that her mother’s patience was all that long; and as for discipline, it all seemed to be hers in this house.

Hut she most earnestly tried not to think that.

In the late afternoon her father came riding in with uncle Sasha, and she felt cheated, because being out on the trail all day on Patches would have been ever so much nicer than grinding herbs. And she had not found her friend in the illuming—about which she was not thinking, so she went back in the house and pounded herbs with a mallet until her mother came inside and complained about the racket.

“ Honestly,” her mother said, “if you wanted to ride you should have gone riding. Temper is not what I want to see from you. Not under this roof, not elsewhere. God, Ilyana, what ever is the matter with you lately?”

“ Nothing,” she said. And avoided looking at her mother.

“Ilyana,” her mother said, “all your father has to do is love you. And I’m always the one who has to scold you. It’s my responsibility. I have to talk to you in ways you understand. I’m trying to do better with you than I had when I was a child. Don’t sulk. It’s not becoming.”

“I’m not sulking.”

“I know a sulk, young woman. Don’t lie, either.”

“Yes, mother.” She wanted to pound the board to splinters. But she would never get out of the house today if she did that. “I try.” Dammit, she was going to cry. She wanted not to do that, and that helped, and it stopped. “I’m tired. My arms ache.”

Her mother came over to her, patted her on the shoulder and said, “Ilyana, listen to me. Be wise. Be sensible. That’s all I want you to do.”

“Yes, mother.”

Her mother sighed and brought ajar for the spice to go in. “Let’s clean this up,” she said. “Time we started supper. There’ll be yesterday’s bread. Running a house doesn’t happen while you walk in the woods, Ilyana. There’s wood to be cut, there’s a garden to be weeded, there’s bread to be baked—the god knows your uncle Sasha is a dear, but he doesn’t run a house, he lives in one. He lets the clutter pile up because he knows where everything is—but with three of us in this one I assure you we rapidly wouldn’t. There’s always work, if you’re at loose ends. You’re getting to be a young woman, and this house being as much yours as ours, I’d think you’d start showing some initiative in taking care of it—dear, don’t let that get on the floor.”

“I’m sorry!”

“You have your father’s temper. You sound exactly like him.”

“Well, at least my father yells about things, he doesn’t yell at people! I wish you’d—”

“Think what you’re doing, dammit! God!”

They were yelling. And her mother was right, she had wished at her mother, like a fool.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry, mother—god, you’re driving me crazy!”

“Maybe you’d better listen to advice! And don’t swear, young miss! It’s dangerous!”

“I listen! I listen! But nobody ever listens to me!”

“Just—” Her mother put a hand to her brow and shook her head. “Just go outdoors for a while.”

Her mother wanted her quiet, her mother wanted her to do as she was told before they got to wishing back and forth ill each other, and most of all her mother wanted her to be happier than she had been in her life—surely her mother had nut meant her to hear that last. Her mother wanted her out of the kitchen now, this moment, her mother was trying not to think things that scared her—

“Get out!”

Ilyana threw down the towel and fled the house as fast as her feet could carry her, not thinking, no, of anything but netting down the walk-up to the yard—

She stopped against the garden fence and caught her breath.

“Ilyana?” her father called out to her, from the stable.

She did not want to talk to her father right now, she did not want to talk to anyone: she was still trembling from that exchange inside, even if her mother had not wanted it to happen—

Only her mother thought it perfectly all right to wish at her and did not at all like it coming back, the same as her mother would cuff her ears when she had been too little to reason with and wish her No! so strongly she still felt the terror of it.

“Ilyana?” Her father had ducked through the stableyard fence. He was going to ask her what had happened; and hug her and make her safe again, but she had no desire to draw him into the quarrel or start a fight between her parents.—Mustn’t wish at your father, no, Ilyana, it’s not nice, it’s not fair, he doesn’t know you’re doing it, and he can’t wish I back, Ilyana—

Her father’s arms came around her. Her father said, “What’s the matter, mouseling? God, you’re shaking.”

“I’m all right,” she said, “I’m all right. It’s just mother.”

“What happened?”

It was impossible to talk about it. She waved an ineffectual hand and shook her head. Her father hugged her tighter, smoothed her hair, told her her mother loved her—and that made her heart ache. Probably it was true, only they hurt each other all the time, because her mother wanted her to do everything she wanted, and never wanted to listen to anyone else’s reasons, refusing to regard anything she had to say as important, or in the least sensible.

“Poor mouseling.” Her father lifted her chin and wiped her eyes with his thumb. “I’ll talk to her. All right?”

“She thinks I have no sense at all. She thinks I’m lazy. She thinks I don’t try.”

More tears, which a wish stopped. She did not want to upset her father. Nothing was his fault, and he had argued with her mother last night as much as he could. Her mother ran everyone’s lives, except uncle Sasha’s. Uncle Sasha had had the good sense to move out and build a house up on the hill while she was still a baby.

And when her mother had had enough of her she had used to march her up the hill. Stay with your uncle, her mother would say. See if he puts up with you.

Her mother might make her sweets and show her cooking and teach her the names of flowers: those were the good things. But her mother did not like her off by herself, her mother did not want her doing anything exciting like clambering around on the boat down at the old ferry landing, or imagining she was sailing to Kiev, or doing anything, it seemed, but kitchen work and cleaning and writing in her book.

Which she was sure her mother read.

Her father said, “I really think you should have gone with us today. Baby mouse, your mother’s not a bad woman. But she’s a very serious woman. She takes responsibility for so very much—”

“I wish she’d just have fun sometimes.”

“So do I, baby mouse. So do I.”

“It’s not fair.”

“A lot of things happened to your mother, things she wouldn’t want for you—things that have made her afraid all her life, and she tries too hard to make sure you’re safe from them. You know that Sasha’s not really your uncle…”

She nodded. They had told her that. Maybe it was supposed to matter to her, but it never did, it never would. She had no uncle but Sasha, nor wanted any, and it made no difference she wanted to think about. Sasha had been a friend of her father’s in Vojvoda. That was where her father and Sasha had both come from. But that was all they ever told her.

So what did it matter at all—if her mother never let her out of the house? Certainly she was not going to Vojvoda, ever, no long as her mother had anything to do with it.

Her father put his arm around her shoulders and walked with her along the garden fence, past the old tree that dwarfed the house. “Sasha and I met when he was about your age. He wasn’t even sure he was a wizard then—he only suspected he might be, but he’d had no one to teach him, and he spent everything he had being careful. Which he was doing quite well at, for a boy who didn’t have a mother or a father to teach him.”

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.

Ilyana was standing there, wrapped in mist, two lovers, one mortal, one—

“Ilyana!” Eveshka flung up an arm to ward off the white owl that instinctly flew at her. It whisked away, shredding on insubstantial winds.

“Mother!” Ilyana gasped, thank the god she could cry out—while the ghost, the very familiar ghost, turned to face her with a familiar lift of the chin.

Young. Oh, yes, he would be that, here, with Ilyana. She remembered him that way, remembered him in the house, in her father’s time.

“You damned dog!” she cried. “Wasn’t I enough? Get out of here! Don’t you dare touch my daughter!”

The whole world swirled and moved, and stopped, ringing with her mother’s voice. Ilyana blinked, still dazed, still tingling to a touch unlike anything she had ever felt, a magic so intoxicating that for a moment yet she had no breath in her body.

Her mother screamed, “You sneaking bastard, get away from her!”

And her friend said faintly, “Eveshka, listen to me… Please listen.”

“Get out of here! Out, do you hear me? You’ve no right here! You’ve no claim on me and none on my daughter, Kavi Chernevog!”

“He wasn’t doing anything!” Ilyana found breath to say, and ran and caught her mother’s arm. The look her mother threw her was cold as ice, a rage that did not belong on her mother’s face—

And oh, god, her father was here with the axe in his hand, but the same moment uncle Sasha slid down the bank through the sapling birches, all out of breath, with leaves snarled in his hair.

Her mother seized her arm so hard it bruised, shouting. “Go awayl“ at her friend. “Never come back, never!”

She wished her mother not to say that, and her mother wished at her with a force that made her dizzy.

Her uncle grabbed her and embraced her, and with an angry force she never imagined her gentle uncle had: “Get out of here, Chernevog, go back! You’ve no right here.”

Her friend lifted his wrist and collected Owl, who assembled himself out of misty pieces. He looked at her then with a dreadful sadness and said, so faintly a breeze could have drowned his voice, “Ilyana, don’t forget me, don’t forget—”

Forget him?

She could not. She never would. Her friend and Owl were fading. Her uncle surrendered her to her father, but she did not want to go to him: he had the axe in one hand. She had never been scared of her father before: he had never carried a weapon in her sight, not the sword that hung among the coats next the door, not so much as a stick the time he had chased the bear out of the yard. Her father caught her face painfully in his hand and made her look him in the eyes. “Are you all right?” he demanded of her. “Ilyana?”

She tried to say she was. She stammered something like that, and tried to protest, “He never hurt me—” but no one was listening to her. Her father let her go and she ran up the shore—

Stopped, then, because her mother wanted her to stop, but her uncle said, “She’s all right, she’s just going to the house. Let her go.”

Then she could run, up the slope and up through the hole in the hedge and across the yard to the rail of the walk-up before she ever stopped to catch her breath.

There was magic going on behind her. She felt it strangling her, her mother and her uncle were wishing, oh, god, wishing her friend back into his grave—and wishing Owl to the place he had died, somewhere far separate from him.

“Stop it!” she cried. “Stop it, stop it, stop it!” There was silence after that, and a heaviness in the air. It was her they wished at now, wanting her quiet, and wanting her to know—

She wanted not to know. She wanted them to leave her alone. She shoved herself away from the rail, walking she had no notion where until she saw the stableyard fence ahead of her, and all the horses standing with their heads up and I heir nostrils working, staring toward the river.

They were afraid. So was she. Babi was in the yard with them, growling as she ducked through the rails—but not at her; Babi would never hurt her. She came up to her filly, patted a rock-hard shoulder, put her arms about a rigid neck, and Patches tossed her head and snorted, beginning to shiver. She was shivering, too, now. This yard was the only safe place in the world, the only place she could keep danger out of, the only place with creatures she trusted and hearts she knew were honest.

She did not want to face her parents right now, she did not want to see uncle Sasha with anger on his face, or meet her lather’s look when he had hurt her: she could still feel the strength of his fingers when he had stared right into her eyes, as if—

As if she had done something horrible and wicked and it would show in her face forever, that she had let her friend kiss her and put his hands on her and make her feel—

So dizzy, so terribly dizzy and cold and warm and magical she wanted to hold on to that feeling. She wanted that moment back, if only to find out what it was. She wished—

—wished he were alive and they could have run away together into the woods so this never would have happened: her mother would not have called his name, her mother would not have said:

Wasn’t I enough?…

She buried her face against Patches’ mane and leaned on her solid shoulder, wanting to stay there against that warmth and not to think, but the thought kept coming back.

Wasn’t I enough?

He was the mistake mother made, he was what father was talking about—mother knew him. Mother was in love with him, mother was with him before—

Before she met my father.

Eveshka, he had called her mother, in the tone only her father ever used. Sasha had come to this house with her father, and Sasha had known her friend on sight.

Worse and worse. Oh, god, all she ever wanted was someone to love and take care of the way her mother had someone, and for a handful of moments she had had that someone, until it turned out everyone in the world knew him, and her own mother had been with him when he was alive.

Now she understood her father being angry, and why he had bruised her face—but, but, god, they need not have sent Owl apart from him: that was somehow the worst thing they could do to him.

She did not cry often, but she cried now, mopping tears with Patches’ mane, while Patches made those strange soft sounds that meant there was something going on that Patches did not like. Babi was in a shape that seemed all shoulders and teeth, growling, facing the yard or the river where her parents and Sasha were. She was not sure whether they could feel the anger she felt—

But it was over now; they were coming back up from the river. She looked past Patches’ jaw and saw them pass the hedge and cross the yard to the walk-up, felt her mother catch sight of her and turn her way with angry intent, but Sasha caught her arm and stopped her. Her father was still carrying the axe when he went behind them up the walk-up, and she had no idea what he was going to do with it inside the house, but Babi went on growling and the horses kept smelling the wind and making nervous sudden shifts.

Looking at the river, she thought. They were definitely looking toward the river, which might mean they had done something down there that the horses and Babi had somehow feIt, some truly dreadful magic.

She wanted her mother not to be angry at her, she wanted her father not to be, wanted uncle Sasha—

Her uncle’s magic spoke to her heart, then, saying, It’s not your fault, mouse. Don’t wish at your father. Please. He’s really upset, but he’s all right, if you just don’t wish at him right now.

She tried, oh, god, she tried not to. She did not blame him for being mad, she did not blame her mother, not truly, please.

She felt her uncle’s presence like a comforting touch on the shoulder, heard her uncle whisper all the way from the house, Your mother loves you. No one’s angry now. Your mother’s just awfully upset and trying not to be, if you’ll just be calm right now, can you do that, mousekin?

Yes, she promised him the way she had promised for her uncle before, when she was little and had tantrums.

Only this one was not her fault. It was not fair for them to be mad at her, it was not fair for them to have taken Owl away, it was not fair of them to think that what they were thinking had happened between them—

Even if it was true what they had been doing together, and even if it was true that she had felt dizzy and that he could have killed her. But he wouldn’t have, she wanted them all to know that. We didn’t—he wouldn’t—

Her uncle said, I believe you, mousekin. He wasn’t all bad when he was alive. And what you were doing—

She refused to hear him. Usually she could not shut uncle out. But this time she could. This time she made him shut up and leave her alone, and told him he would have to come after her and talk out loud, the way her father insisted reasonable people ought to do with each other, not wish thoughts into each other’s heads or meddle in other people’s embarrassment.

Oh, god, mother did that with him, too, when he wasn’t dead. And father knows it.

The storm inside the house was ebbing. The one outside might be, but Ilyana had built a defense like a wall, and shut herself inside it. “I’d better talk to her,” Sasha said, not sure Pyetr and Eveshka even heard him—Eveshka was sitting on the bench in front of the fire, Pyetr holding her hands tightly in his. But Pyetr, with more spare concentration than a wizard could afford, glanced over his shoulder and said, “God, do. She’s scared, she’s just scared, Sasha, she had no idea.” Whether Pyetr believed that or whether he was saying it to placate Eveshka, the god only knew: Sasha hoped it was the case. And beyond a doubt Pyetr would be out there himself, except he was the only one of them who could reason with Eveshka, the only one Eveshka might listen to, the way she was listening to Pyetr now, Pyetr, trusting them to protect her daughter—

Which might be Eveshka’s distracted urging to him, for all he knew. If it was, her breach of attention was dangerous, and he was going, now, anything to keep the peace.

So he slipped quickly out the door and soft-footed it down the walk-up and around the corner toward the stable. Ilyana was still standing with her arms about the filly’s neck and Ilyana did not wish him to stop. That was a hopeful sign. But he felt—

Felt exposed to a presence at his back, something—

—familiarly dangerous. Babi had bristled up into his most fearsome shape, the horses clearly smelled something disturbing, and of a sudden he knew what it was.

Snake. Vodyanoi.

He spun about to face the river and said aloud, “Hwiuur, you damnable sneak, go back to sleep! There’s nothing here for you. Go away!”

The feeling immediately slid away like a serpent into water.

But another presence slipped up behind him. Ilyana’s magic came around him. He had felt her tantrums, he had stilled her wild panics, but this was not anger, or fear, or with him—it encompassed him, it aimed his wishes at the linger—

It scared him more than the presence in the river did: he wanted her to know that on no uncertain terms.

She stopped at once, thank the god. He turned, saw her face and felt as if he had slapped her—

“No, mouse,” he called out loudly enough for her to hear across the yard. “You’re no more mouse—not when you wish like that. But be careful! You don’t know everything yet!”

“ I know more than I wanted to know!” she shouted, with tears in her voice, and that strength was there again, like a wall excluding him. “My mother was in love with him! Whose daughter am I, anyway?”

God. “You’re Pyetr’s!” he shouted back. “You’re most undeniably Pyetr’s, I swear to you that’s so! Chernevog was in no condition to father a child when you began, and there was never any doubt whose you are.”

“Could there have been? Why should I believe you? Everyone’s lied to me!”

“Not so!” He walked as far as the stableyard gate and set his arms on the topmost rail, at comfortable speaking distance. “Ilyana, love, maybe we didn’t tell you everything, but no one lied to you. We just kept the truth back too long.”

“What truth?”

Wary young fish—suspecting a hook in what he offered. He had taught her that caution. They all had. So he used no words. He handed her his heart without warning, prepared for pain.

There was. She seemed confused, and let go the filly’s name and looked him in the eyes, something that was his looking right back at him, defensive and waiting.

She surely realized then what he had done. She had no notion yet what she could do with it, but she knew the moment he thought of it, that she could do him terrible harm, and he wanted her to know, with that, how implicitly he trusted her.

“That’s what you should do,” he told her, quietly, “before you ever contemplate certain kinds of magic: put your heart somewhere absolutely safe before you make any sudden decision, mousekin. I have very little feeling now, except my own interest. You have all of that. All I have left is a heartless, self-interested reason for standing here; I want you well for my own sake. The part that can think of others— you have at the moment. You know me now, don’t you? You know I wouldn’t lie to you.”

She did. And she wanted his heart back in him, because she was afraid of it—which was enough: it came back with pain, with anger, with a dread of grown-up hearts holding grown-up secrets. And very much of loneliness. That one chord rang through them both, that the loneliness was too long, and too much.

“Oh, mouse,” he said, ducked through the rails and caught her in his arms, fever-warm and soggy as the much smaller girl who had cried on his shoulder for far smaller tragedies.

No truth for a while, not until she wanted it. Right now she only wanted both of them not to hurt, which was as kind and as dangerous a wish as a wizard had ever made for him. “Hush, stop,” he said against her ear. “You know you shouldn’t wish changes on us. Not hurting can equally well mean dead.” “I wish—”

“Hush! I wish you good things, and life, mousekin, and, yes, it’s very hard. I know.”

“It’s not fair!”

“Maybe it isn’t. But the stronger you are, and you’re very strong, mousekin, the more it’s true. You can hurt someone so easily, with the best and kindest intentions. I’ve never been as lucky as your mother is, to have found someone like your father is for her—I don’t know if there is anyone else in the world like him. There can’t be many ordinary folk who could put up with us.”

“It hurts, uncle.”

“I know it does. Which is why, mousekin, other wizards give up their hearts—bestow them somewhere they can’t be hurt, because caring and power together eventually will hurt you: and most of all corrupt your judgment. You see someone suffering and you want so much to do something about it that you might forget your good sense, and do something awful to innocent people you simply forgot to include in your idea. It’s the rule about rainstorms. There’s only so much rain to go around.”

“So maybe they’re drowning, elsewhere! Maybe watering our garden would help them— You don’t know! You can’t ever know! So we should never wish anything? Is that it?”

“You don’t know the what of things unless you use your head, mouseling, and you don’t know the true why of things unless you also use your heart. Try to keep both, even if it hurts right now, even if things seem too hard for you.”

“They are!”

“No. No, you’re stronger than that. And you’d better be strong today, mouse. It’s time for me to tell you some things.”

“What, that I’m going to be alone all my life?”

“The way I am? Yes. Possibly you will be. But you don’t know what will happen next month, certainly not next year. No one I know can foretell that, and I come as close to doing it us anyone. We’re deeply sorry we scared you. We’re sorry we didn’t warn you—but we never foresaw this, we absolutely didn’t foresee it—though maybe we should have. Our wizardry failed us. If it’s not our fault, certainly it’s not yours.”

A series of little breaths, a quiet sob, and she leaned her haul against him. “Uncle, I think I love him. I don’t even know.”

“I know, I know. I wouldn’t doubt—he was an extraordinary man.”

“ Man?” She pushed back against his chest. Tear-wet eyes looked up at him, wide and shocked.

“He’s well over a hundred. So’s your mother, mousekin. Your father’s less than half that. And I’m the youngest, except for you. Your mother died when she was sixteen—”

“My mother’s not my mother?”

“Oh, ’Veshka’s very much your mother, mouse. But did die. And Chernevog had something to do with that, killed her.”

The mouse opened her mouth and looked suddenly as she might pass out. Quick as thinking, he grabbed her and made her sit down on the bottom rail of the gate, right where she was, and he knelt in the stableyard dust, pressing her chilled hands in his.

“It might be romantic to say what you’re feeling right now is shock, mousekin, but the fact is, it’s also what comes dealing with rusalki. He’s very dangerous. Very attractive. The way Babi guards stableyards and vodyaniye live in water—attraction is a rusalka’s nature. And they feel very good. —Are you going to faint?”

She made a little gasp, getting her breath, and shook her head bravely.

“That’s my girl. You’ll be all right.” His heart said stop now, stop telling the child what had to hurt her. But cold good sense said keep going as long as he had her whole attention: it might not come again, not in her whole life, or his. “Your mother drowned on that shore. A vodyanoi carried her body to a cave north of here—yes, that vodyanoi, the one I chastised a moment ago—stay with me, now, mousekin! Chernevog murdered her and her bones lay in that cave under an old willow’s roots a hundred years before your father found them. Do you know why the trees in the yard are the oldest trees about? Why all this woods is, as forests go, quite young? Your mother killed this woods, your mother damned near killed your father—not mentioning a number of innocent people she did kill, men, women, and children she drew the life right out of them. Ask your mother about rusalki, little mouse. No one knows more than she does about that kind of ghost. She was one.”

She looked at him as if she were sleepwalking, eyes wide tear-tracks drying on her cheeks. Her hands were like ice unresponsive to his.

“She’s not dead,” she said, hardly a sound at all. “My mother’s not dead—”

“Your grandfather is. That was what it cost to get her back.”

Eyes blinked. Like a wince. Be felt that: it had not been her mother she had been thinking of when she had whispered an instant ago, Not dead… And that: What it cost… had killed her last hope. Dead. Dead beyond recovery.

“Yes, he is, mouse. Don’t even imagine that kind of exchange. Wizards are hard to kill. We’re very hard to kill and by what I’ve seen, we’re very hard to convince we’re dead. But I saw him die. There’s no doubt of it.”

“Can’t you let him have Owl back?”

“Mouse, he’s dead. Owl’s dead. They have no place in this world. Where they’re buried, if they’re buried, shouldn’t matter to them. Owl held his heart once. That kind of creature’s as tenacious as any wizard. Like your grandfather and his one-eyed raven. They’re gone. Wherever they are, they don’t belong here, and if you are in love with Kavi Chernevog then believe this: what he has right now is not life, it’s a hell I saw your mother go through. She loved your father—and in spite of her absolute best intentions, she would have killed him, she would have killed him just as surely as rain falls and fire burns. If you do love Chernevog and if, god help you both, he loves you—there’s only one hope for him, and that’s for you yourself to banish him from this earth.”

“No!”

“Mouseling, that’s not kind to him. That’s the most selfish thing you can do. And if he kills you, you understand, you won’t be the last he’ll get. You listen to me: listen! Your grandfather and your grandmother and your mother were all wizards. That never should have happened. Your mother is, so to say, twice-born: her mother and her father both were wizards; and you’re thank the god Pyetr’s daughter and not mine and not Chernevog’s, or I don’t know what you’d have been, do you understand me? Wizard-blood is far, far better diluted: you already have it in too large a measure to handle easily, and we’ve done everything we could to see you grow up without killing your father or calling up something no young wizard would know how to deal with. That’s still a danger. You have a very good heart, and hurt as you surely are, if I’ve taught you anything, you’ll hold back what you can do about what’s happened and think instead about what you ought to do. If we haven’t taught you that—then we’re all of us in trouble.”

Her hands gave a little twitch in his, but that was all. They remained limp and cold. Finally she looked into his eyes, really looked at him, as if she were searching for something, and said, ever so faintly, “Do you really love me, uncle? Do any of you really love me?”

“With all our hearts, mouseling. No wizard has to have a child. No wizard can have one against her will. You were the most terrible risk your mother could take. And we had to get your father away from you, both of us, when your temper made you dangerous. He’d have held you, god, yes, Pyetr’s held you while your mother and I just held our breaths. People do love you. You don’t have to want us to. And I doubt you had to want Kavi Chernevog to, either. Someday when it hurts less I’ll tell you about him.”

“Tell me now.”

“No, mousekin. There’s too much that’s dark in that story, that you don’t need to hear today. But there’s a lot that’s not dark at all, and I’ll tell you both parts when I do.”

“I can’t wish him away until I know, can I? —Because you’re telling me to do something I’m not sure of; and magic won’t work when I doubt. Will it?”

She had him on that one, fair and hard. But there was too much of that story to tell here, perched on a rail in the stableyard, and with Eveshka as upset as she was.

“First we’d better make sure your mother’s all right.”

“She didn’t have to be so cruel. I don’t feel the least bit sorry for her.”

“You don’t know what she felt, either—finding him with you, in that particular place? Part of that was pain, child. Part of that was remembering; and part of that was the shock of learning he wasn’t as peacefully dead as she thought he was. Chernevog went through hell in his life. I assure you, he’s going through it now. And your mother more than saw it—she felt it. It wasn’t just her child she wanted to save. It was him.”

She was listening, she was listening very hard now. The color was back in her face. Her hands were no longer lifeless. They were clenched in his.

“Your mother,” Sasha told her, “is one of the bravest people I know, and she has a kinder heart than you could imagine. But she would never give you her heart the way I just did—not to a child. And that’s true in several senses. She doesn’t want you to know her. She specifically wants you not to know her until you’re grown. And even then—she may doubt it’s good for you.”

“Why?” There was indignation in that question. And pain.

He said, “Because she’s afraid you’ll think too much about her mistakes, and maybe, by thinking about them, fall into them.”

“How can I avoid them if no one tells me what they are? Kavi Chernevog was her big mistake, wasn’t he? And she never told me, no one ever told me except my father, the other day—and he didn’t tell me what that mistake was! How am I to know anything?”

He laid a finger on her forehead. “With that, mouseling. With your own intelligence. There aren’t any right answers lo certain questions. There are best answers. But if you’ve left anything unconsidered in what you do, that’s the thing that will most surely haunt your sleep at night. Do you understand me?”

Very softly, after a moment of looking into his eyes: “Yes, uncle.”

“Good,” he said, and stood up and pulled her to her feet. “Good for all of us.”