… dying, until this morning.
Damn, he thought in panic. No, that’s not so, that’s not so, I’ve never been happier in my life…
Granted my misspent youth; and ‘Mitri and all the rest, not to mention all Vojvoda wanting my neck in a noose…
—That’s not altogether a happy life, is it?
“Pyetr? Is something wrong?”
His hands had gone cold. Volkhi was wandering under him without direction. He looked at Sasha with a sudden, acute fear that Sasha might have eavesdropped just then. But Sasha only looked puzzled.
“Pyetr?”
“I’m fine,” he said, knowing that had not come out as reassuring as he had hoped. He took up Volkhi’s reins. “Fine. I’m absolutely fine.”
Up one foggy hill of ghostly young trees and down another— Babi jogging briskly ahead, the carter’s mare going along at Volkhi’s side, her ears up, her nostrils working, a constantly worried look in her eye, as if she were still looking for a familiar street, or trying to figure what dangers hereabouts particularly relished horses.
But the mare kept up very well on the climbs, sturdy legs carrying her quite resolutely—straightforwardly trampling down the sort of nuisances Volkhi danced over.
Precisely when and why she had started from town and whether they had indeed only arrived at a place that the mare was headed for before any of them knew they were going to need her… that was the kind of thinking a sane man left to wizards; but if some of Sasha’s wishes were looking out for them before they even knew they needed it, then maybe their other wishes would come true. Maybe that was why he could feel as if—
As if a burden that had been on him for years was falling away from him on this dismal trail—as if, away from the house, with all the rules upset and his life in danger, he could breathe again.
He never, ever thought ill of ’Veshka, he swore to himself he never, ever begrudged her what he gave up to please her…
But he still thought, God, what’s the matter with me? What’s happening to me? And why am I so damned angry with her?
“What did she write?” he asked Sasha that night when, after a little hot tea and a bite to eat, Sasha opened his book and got out his inkpot. “Show me where she wrote.”
Not that he knew what good it would do him to see it. He mistrusted writing, he suspected books of contributing to their troubles, but Eveshka set great store by writing things, and her curious ways of thinking had been turning over and over in his mind all day. Her likes and dislikes made him so angry that for small, frightened moments today he had not even been able to remember anything but her frown—stupid of him, he knew; and self-centered; and all the reprehensible things he knew he had been before Sasha and ’Veshka had reformed him. So it suddenly seemed to him that, writing being magical, maybe—just maybe, Sasha doing the reading, and Sasha not knowing her quite so well, or not having the right spell on him, Sasha might have missed something essential.
So he overcame his apprehensions and asked to see the very writing; and Sasha carefully opened the book and canted it to the light while he shifted his shoulder to see past their single shadow.
He knew where her work was before Sasha ever pointed it out—marvelous as it seemed to him, the same as he could tell ’Veshka’s fine stitches from their coarser repairs, he knew precisely the two lines she had done. He did not touch the page: he had no idea whether that might disturb the spell; but he squatted on his heels looking at it, while Babi snuggled up as a warm lump in his arms, and he listened while Sasha ran his finger along the line and said what he read in it.
But it was only the same thing. “You said that already.”
“That’s what it says.”
One hated to accuse Sasha of inability. But it was a desperately serious point:’ “Try. I really think it ought to be more than that. Try again.”
“Pyetr, I swear by you, ink is ink, and not even a wizard can play tricks with what’s on that page. It doesn’t change.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pyetr, it doesn’t ever change. You can burn it, maybe, scrape it off, but nothing can make those letters into something else. It’s there, exactly what she said, as long as the book lasts.”
“What if some other wizard wishes it?”
“Not that easy. Not in any wizard’s book. Letters don’t shape-shift. What’s there is there. She wanted me to understand things by what she said. Bat I’m sure of exactly what’s there, too. She was worried about us coming after her.”
“And getting in her way.”
“Yes.”
That did sound like ’Veshka. He pointed at the blank space at the end. “Then write one about her being careful, too,” he said, and Sasha not forbidding, he watched while Sasha did that—because he saw a use for writing, finally, that no matter how his thinking shifted around, and no matter what happened to him, still, ink being ink, the way Sasha said, that wish if
Sasha wrote it might stay and take care of her, even if he failed her, or some spell on him made him forget everything he loved.
He wished with all his heart he could think of a better wish than that. He sat there looking into the fire and trying to think of one, but it seemed to him that anything beyond that doubted Eveshka, and he knew that was no help to her at all.
So he poured Babi a generous bit from the jug, he had some himself, and lay down to sleep, thinking, Well, we’re ahead by one horse, aren’t we? Things are looking better.
Pyetr did sleep, finally. One learned to be deft about magic, when one was cheating. Sasha spun sleep like wool, wished it soft and deep while he worked, all promises to the contrary—
Water curling white about the bow, ropes creaking —
One tried—even with one’s skin crawling, one snatched at thoughts like that the instant they came, tried to speak to Eveshka if it were at all possible… but all that echoed back was that sound, over and over, just when he thought he had the thread.
He kept wishing, he leaned his head against his hand, fighting sleep himself, and wrote, simply, with all the wisdom he had, I wish Eveshka may see Pyetr with her heart, and never doubt him.
That might be interfering. He was afraid that it was. It might in some unpredictable way be dangerous. But, doggedly unrepentant, he went on writing:
If there’s anything common about everything that’s gone wrong with us, it’s not the silence, it’s our losing touch with what’s going on around us.
Things happen that can happen. Pyetr reminds me: It’s the things we take for granted that we most of all mustn’t forget.
It was up before the dawn and roll the blankets, pack half-blind in the dark and the chill, and move again, one long half-asleep confusion—a bit of sausage by daybreak as they rode, and a drink from the jug, while Babi sometimes perched on Missy’s rump and sometimes Volkhi’s, and occasionally, the mood taking him, jogging ahead of them.
Pyetr gave up asking questions, reckoning he knew as much about the leshys’ reasons as Sasha did—which was very little: no one knew what went through leshys’ minds. But they were moving, gaining ground with the steady rhythm of the horses’ stride, up one hill that looked like another hill and down this one that looked like the last, slow down for the horses to rest, pick up the pace again, stop for the horses to recover their wind, rub their legs down with salves one could thank the god Sasha had brought plenty of, and on and on again.
Sometimes he completely despaired, fearing he would never see ’Veshka again, that events were combining against them, and that the short rest of his life was aimed straight for a disaster even leshys could not deal with. At such moments he was in no hurry at all to get where they were going, or to discover what was waiting there.