She truly did not like to hear this, but she was all but afraid to breathe, fearing her mother would stop talking down this track and close off what she knew: it was so hard, sometimes, to talk coherently about magic—perhaps that there were no words to compass it; or that certain things—believing her father for a moment—did not want to be talked about…
“—but I’ve come to wonder if he was any boatman’s son. I’ve come to wonder very seriously if he isn’t… what we talked about, you know—doubly gifted…”
She stopped talking then, gazing off into the woods. Eveshka felt her heart racing, thinking, Dammit, she wants to scare me.
“… or maybe it was Malenkova. Malenkova was a terrible woman. She taught both your father and me. That’s where we met, in her house.”
“What happened to her?” Asking (hat was like lifting a heavy weight. It was a question that did not seem to want to be asked. “Is she still alive?”
“I don’t think so. But then—one never knows.” Her mother looked distracted, blinked, reached for the needle and a new thread. “I’ve asked myself… if there’s any remote chance Kavi was hers.”
“She was an old woman!”
“You’re very old, dear—in some people’s reckoning. So am I. And I’d put nothing outside possibility with her. Even—though I much doubt it—that Kavi’s your half-brother.”
Oh, god! Eveshka thought, thought of Kavi in the cellar, Kavl stopping her at the shelves in the back—
“I certainly didn’t think that when I was sleeping with him,” Draga said.
“You mean he might be yours?” Eveshka asked.
“No, no, dear, your father’s. Your father and Malenkova—”
“My father was only a—”
“Young boy? Not mat young. He ran away. Malenkova let him, I suspect. Sometimes she just grew careless. Sometimes she had reasons. Eventually I escaped, and we were lovers. But Malenkova poisoned everything we might have had. Your father had become very bitter. He’d become so afraid, so unreasonably afraid—of having a child… “
Eveshka felt her heart beating so mat she feared she would faint. What was inside her suddenly seemed real, and destructive of everything she most wanted.
“There was a year or so I didn’t see Malenkova at all. She was like that—you lived in her house, the very house Kavi had, the one that burned… and you did what she wanted; then she would be off in the woods somewhere, I suppose, for months at a time. But the god help you if she came back and there was any least thing wrong. She was a terrible woman. I don’t know how old she was. Your father—you understand, he looked his years, well, at least—he looked appropriate for them: But he was letting himself age when I joined him. He said—he said, I remember it very clearly—I don’t plan to live forever. He wouldn’t use magic on himself. He didn’t. He’d cut his finger— he’d just let it bleed. I think Malenkova made him a little crazy. And I never, never thought he’d go so crazy when I had you. I tell you, dear, I was terrified—I was terrified he’d drown you when you were born. I thought he’d done that… I was lying in bed, he took you away—and I got up and I tried to get you back. But I couldn’t. I was afraid he’d kill me in the state I was in. I wasn’t thinking very clearly. I was afraid of him. I ran away. That’s where all the grief started. Maybe I should have stayed and fought him for you. But maybe I would have died.”
“He said you tried to kill him.”
“I did try—I meant to, if it would have saved you. Sometimes a mother doesn’t think very clearly. I was glad, at least, to know you were alive, I was able to spy a bit, you see. And your poor father—I can say that now—” A knot. A small laugh. “You did run him ragged. His idea of bringing up a child… was simply to prevent you doing magic.”
Filings fell into place, then, papa always wishing at her…
“And you being a wizard-child on both sides… of course what he was doing to protect nature from you was completely un naturaclass="underline" he could only stop you with magic that scared him to work. I think he finally realized how crazy mat was. He didn’t know really what to do. And for all the harm he did, now, I can lot give him a great deal. Malenkova did terrible things to him. She dealt with deep magic. With sorcery, if you want to call it that, though there’s no real distinction except in degree. And if he truly was Kavi’s father—”
Her mother stopped talking. New flowers chained across the wool, one after the other.
“Mother? —If he was Kavi’s father?”
Half a flower more. “Well, the time doesn’t work. Although—” The needle stopped. “I don’t put anything beyond Malenkova. Her magic had no rules.”
“Why? Why would she want a child?”
“Dear, I don’t know she did—for any reason anyone would like to talk about. She’d—”
“Mama?”
Her mother’s lips went to a thin line. She crushed a petal. “If that was so,” her mother said, slowly, “then he’d be exactly what you are—wizard-born on both sides. More than that: your father discouraged you from magic; but Kavi—”
There was silence. Eveshka waited, watched her mother think and almost eavesdropped, she wanted so badly to know.
“If Kavi was hers,” her mother said, “he was conceived for a reason: she was careless—but never in something that inconvenienced her. She was terribly powerful. I can’t even explain to you what she did—but she wanted to get into the magical, she wanted to go into that realm herself—and I’m far from sure all her absences were into the woods, if you want the truth.”
“What would she do with a child?”
“As I said, the time doesn’t work. By years. But that’s not saying time is the same there. As a matter of fact, I’ve very strong suspicions it isn’t. And I’m not sure where Malenkov is.”
“God, mother.”
“One has time for very strange thoughts in a hundred years I’ve turned it over and over and over—what happened, why happened—where Malenkova is. And how Kavi was so—damnnably precocious. That’s why I want you here. That’s why you mustn’t leave and go running off to fight him on your own. You’ll lose. And I’m very much afraid—very much afraid that there’s something in the magical realm with an interest in this world. You have to understand—that’s never been true. But it may be, now. To tell the truth, I don’t know why you were born. I don’t know if you’re what magic’s arranged to counter Kavi Chernevog—or whether you’re something magic’s made to be his match—to bear a child we don’t want to think about.”
Eveshka stood up abruptly, cold to the marrow. Her mother looked up at her, the sewing crumpled in her lap.”Don’t panic You mustn’t panic, ’Veshka. Do you understand me? I want you to listen to me. Don’t make any wishes right now, not about you, not about me, not about your husband, certainly not about that baby—think about flowers, ’Veshka, think about flowers… “
Flowers with thorns. Flowers red as blood…