Yvgenie (15 page)

‘
I'll tell you, mouse, I couldn't tell you when you were small, because little children are very apt to try exactly what you tell them not to: they're curious, they test things, and they don't understand that consequences are real. But this is the most important Don't there is in the world: Don't ever use any magic but your own. Don't borrow; absolutely don't borrow magic. For one thing, it makes you drunk and it spoils your judgment. For another thing, the creatures that will offer it to you are all harmful. Every one of them. The good ones, like Babi, won't let you. Babi would show you his teeth if you even thought about it. Does that tell you something, or doesn't it?
’

She nodded, sobered.

Her uncle said, leaning on his hoe,
‘
All the ones that will lend their magic seem connected to something—in that place Babi goes to when he isn't here. Maybe there's more than one place. But whatever it is, it's not like here. And if you go borrowing magic—it's like pulling on a little string that turns out to be tied to a snake, but the snake's got his head in deep water, and he's holding on to something else, something that's pulling back very strongly, do you understand me? That's what it feels like.
’

A little shiver went over her skin. Her uncle went on:

‘
A rusalka's not quite that. A rusalka borrows life: the same kind of mistake: it only happens to kill people. But a wizard wishes nothing outside of natur
e; while a sorcerer when he uses
magic borrows something I can't even put a name to, maybe something alive: your mother thinks it is. I'm less sure of that, but I do believe it's at least self-interested; and as far as any of us understand, it doesn't seem to have any law or limits the sorcerer doesn't give it. Pretty
soon he can't remember what he's changed and he'
s
thinking how things are connected—he can fix things, r
ight?
Pretty soon it's making the decisions, or the total of his w
ishes
are—and he's not. That's a feeling you don't ever wa
nt to
have, mouse, not ever in your life. Once you've gone that brink every choice you make to stop yourself is an u
phill
climb. Every fear you have and every knotty problem face, it's so easy to remember the quick solution and to f
orge
t the mess it got you into. You lose your wisdom. You
lose
your sense. Thank the god I could step back again to
safe
ground. Your mother went so deep in that it's very easy
for
her to slip back: your mother fights on that slanting ground all alone, for the rest of her life. No other wizard can get
into
her heart and help her.
I’ve
tried.
’

‘
She's hurting my father!
’

‘
Your father loves her without her wanting him to, and in spite of everything, it's his decision. Yes, she hurts him. And she knows it. She even tried to send him to Kiev, so he'd forget about her. Foolish thought. He got himself in trouble
.
He nearly got himself hanged—your father can be a very reckless man when he's at loose ends, and the plain fact was, he didn't care about his own safety when he was apart from your mother and you. He was desperately unhappy, he got into a dice game with some people, and he drank too much. And I'll tell you the rest of it when you're old enough not to wish the tsarevitch to break out in hives, or worse. Your mother did enough to him.''

Her parents had dimensions she had had no idea of. They had done things she had no conception of. There had been a whole world going on she had not seen while she was growing up. Of course she remembered the year her father had gone to Kiev.
But
she had thought that was because she had had a really awful tantrum and her mother had just told him to go further away than usual.

It was the time she had decided once for all she had better grow up and stop having tantrums, because she had figured
out that every time she had one her mother sent her father
a
way.

And she hated him being gone. Uncle was better company than mother was, but she wanted—

God, she had never figured out how much she had been wanting her father back—after her mother and uncle wished him out—exactly the kind of wickedness she had been about
t
o accuse her mother of doing. She wanted her uncle to know she had just figured that out, and that she was truly, truly embarrassed.

‘
Children do that sort of thing,'' her uncle said.
‘
Grownups have to think very carefully what their wants do to other people. You're very definitely growing up, mouse. Some people never do get that grown-up.
’

—But I've got to think what else I've been wanting from people—

—like for my parents to love me and my mother to stop yelling at me. But my mother and my uncle can wish me to
mind
my own business. Wishing at my father
…
that's really unfair.

Her uncle said,
‘
The test for whether it's right to want something of someone, mouse, is not whether you think it won't hurt them, and not even whether you think it's for their own good—but whether you'd want them wishing it about you. You figured that out very well a moment ago. But don't worry about wanting your parents to love you or your father to stay—although I do think you ought to watch that, and remember that it's a lot better to let go and trust someone you love to do the right thing on his own.''

That was what she had been trying to say. Her uncle found it for her. She said,
‘
My mother doesn't trust me. She won't let me out of her light. And I'm not a baby anymore.''

‘
Your mother had almost learned to trust herself when you came along. And knowing you were magical, and loving you and your father, both, she's grown more and more afraid of a little girl she might have wanted—at some time—far too much and at far too great a risk to things as they were. You
were a change, a really major change, the sort every wizard's afraid of. Once she had your father and once she had you, she wasn't on her own anymore. She couldn't assure herself you could take care of yourself the way your father can— because of course a child can't. And that's precisely where you can help your mother: she's been looking out for you through some very scary years—and now she has t
o learn to trust your judgment.
’

‘
'Should I wish her that?''

‘
Wish, yes—and
do,
mouse. Doing is of equal importance. What, besides your friend, upset your mother when she saw you on the river shore?
’

‘
I don't know.
’
A lecture was coming. Her uncle could be so kind talking to her; and then he could frown and scold her. She hated this part.

‘
You weren't supposed to be down by the river. Personally, I don't think it's a reasonable prohibition—but she made it; and you'd slipped down there in secret, and you were doing something your mother didn't know about. Maybe she
had
told herself she could trust you, and what she saw shook her so badly—
’

‘
I
don't
think I was doing anything wrong!
’

‘
That's because you're making choices for yourself, a lot of which don't go wrong, and in your own best judgment, you didn't think this one would. You're not a baby who'll fall off the porch anymore and I don't honestly fault you for making a decision. Nor even for making the decision not to tell us. It may, for one thing, have been
his
wanting you not to tell—
’

She had not even suspected that. God!
‘
—But really, outside of the danger he is to you, the hurt he's dealt your mother is very real and very serious. He didn't tell you all the truth about your mother, and about what he did. Possibly he remembers only up to a point—possibly he has his own interests. She is your mother, and your father loves her, and I think you can figure out from here what you ought to do. Can't you, mouse?
’

''That's a dirty trick, uncle. No, I don't know what to do!
’

‘
It certainly is. And I don't either, except that you've figured out now that getting your mother to trust your judgment is a very important point, because hers in his case is very complicated—but I'm not going to wish you into it. You don't become grown-up at midday on your birthday. It's not a day, it's a progression of days, and it never quite stops—
I'm
still growing up. Your mother is. So's your father. But there is, step by step, a point that your mother should trust your judgment on grown-up matters, the same way she watched you and gradually decided you wouldn't fall off the porch if she let you play there on your own.''

‘
She had to let me try, didn't she?
’

‘
And hasn't she? And can't she make mistakes? You're in grown-up things now, mouse. In whatever way you reckon him, Chernevog is an encounter far more dangerous than falling off the porch—and you weren't where you were supposed to be. You scared your mother out of her good sense— and she slipped. Do you understand that?
’

It made a kind of sense. She was not sure she agreed about being wrong. She was not sure her uncle had even said she was wrong.

But if she tried to explain that to her mother, her mother would start wishing at her and she would forget all her own good sense and wish at her right back.

She was not sure whose fault that would be, but it was certainly what would happen; and she decidedly did not want that.

So it was better to fix her mother's bean rows, since she could not fix things with her mother. She
might
go down to the river this evening to see if her friend was back, maybe with her uncle knowing about it and giving her permission—

But her friend might not come then. He might believe she had turned against him if she did not come back or if she told her uncle. And in spite of everything her uncle said, her friend—Kavi—would be reasonable, if only she could find
him and talk to him quietly without people getting upset
and
without her uncle or her mother wishing at him.

If her friend was Kavi Chernevog (and he had not, con fronted, denied it) then he was not fifteen years old. And
if
he was who they thought—and if he had done all these name less dreadful things and killed her mother—still, her moth
er
was alive; and Kavi had not been a thoroughly bad person she did not get that impression, not even from her father who had been as upset with him as she had ever seen h
er
father upset with anyone—her father had called himself the only friend Kavi had ever had
…
and would her father be a friend to anyone wicked? No. Absolutely not.

So Kavi was not absolutely wicked. Nor quite a murderer, nor quite hateful to her mother—something had happened, maybe before she was born: and her mother was concerned for
him,
her uncle had said that, too, what time she was not being scared of him for what he was.

Her mother had been dead. God! Did uncle truly mean that?

But Kavi was. She had known that for years—and it had J never seemed entirely unreasonable that he was a ghost.

So there were grown-up secrets around him, tangled as grown-up secrets could be—but they looked not half so formidable or so forbidden as they had yesterday. Her uncle had talked with her as if she were grown-up. And if everybody could just be reasonable, her friend, whoever he was, might even hold some of the answers to what had happened to her mother, that her uncle and her father had no clue to. He might even help her mother, maybe talk to her, and show her he meant no harm, so her mother could stop being afraid and stop being so crazy about things. God, if she could just see him again—if she could just—

If she could just—

Her hoe beheaded a bean plant. Her mother would have a fit.

Uncle had always said that wishes could lie around doing nothing for years and then rise up and get you. Little things
going wrong could be a sign of them. Wishes could last and last, even when you were dead, like that patch on the one old
te
acup, that uncle said her grandfather must have done; and
if
Kavi had been at their house before, if Kavi had known all of them when he was alive—then there very well could be a lot of old wishes hanging around and causing trouble for him
and
all of them.

Uncle said old wishes could make smart people forget things, or do little things that were not smart or stupid in
th
emselves, but that just added up and pushed bigger things in a general direction—

You could never wish anything against nature, that was the
first
rule. You could wish a stone to fly, but it would not, as her uncle would say, do that of its own nature; an improbable wish just added to the general list of unlikely wishes always hanging about in the world waiting to happen when the conditions were right. And there must be a lot of them in the world, because other wizards had to be children once, and make stupid wishes—