As wishes went it seemed harmless. He was not sure it was at all sane. But he pushed the door open and started dragging baskets out onto the deck.
The third he pulled out— —’Veshka’s book—here. Oh, god-He wanted light. Or something did. He rummaged feverishly in the deckhouse, looking for the lamp they kept there—managed, with many false efforts and desperate wishes, to get the thing lit, while the cold swirled about him and through him. He set the fluttering light down inside the deckhouse door and gathered the open book into his lap, tilting it until he could see the last pages written. He read, first:
I don’t know what to wish about the baby. Papa would say you can undo anything but the past…
Draga threw herbs onto the fire and sparks flew, a cloud of stars whirling up the chimney. Draga said, “Many things pass boundaries: not all are changed. Wood and water and iron go into the same fire. Each behaves differently. Does fire frighten you?”
“No,” Eveshka said.
“You’d put your hand into it? “
“I could,” Eveshka said.
Draga reached into the fire and gathered up an ember. Eveshka thought, It’s the same as reaching into the fire—she’s wishing the heat away as fast as it comes. But she’s very good,
Draga closed her fist about the coal, so there was nowhere for the heat to go. —Where is it going? Eveshka wondered. Can she wish it back into the fire?
“I’m not wishing it anywhere,” Draga said, and opened her hand. The cinder had become black. It still smoldered. There was soot on Draga’s hand. “That’s the very simple difference between your wizardry and mine. Your wish would be very modest and constant, very fussy, and if someone said your name you might burn yourself very badly, mightn’t you? Because you’d lose your spell at the first pain, and you might not be able to restore it. But real magic doesn’t bother to figure out a clever way to hold the fire. It ignores nature.”
The ember began to glow again, and burst into fire in the middle of Draga’s hand.
“That,” Draga said, “is magic.”
“A straw actually does as well,” Eveshka said, with Pyetr’s stubborn pragmatism: her mother was pushing her, undermining her way of doing things, and a straw was better, not least because it did not tempt one to throw wishes about carelessly.
“Wishes just don’t matter. That’s the thing, dear, you don’t have to be that careful. If you make a mistake you can retrieve it.”
“ Don’t eavesdrop, mama!”
“You don’t want me to know certain things?”
“I’m not your echo, mama, and I like my privacy, thank you.”
“And what happens if you do make a mistake? What happens if you don’t understand what else you’re wishing?”
“That part is the same. There are consequences. Only some of them happen here, in the natural world.”
“Can magic find them out beforehand? Reliably?”
“Some of them.”
“Then it’s damned stupid, mama, doing anything of the sort.”
“Shhh. You raise a rainstorm. Do you know every leaf that falls? The law is that leaves will fall. Which leaf is meaningless to know. What you care about is that the rain come—and stop in due course. The difference is scope, dear.”
“My husband is no leaf, mama!”
“Neither is that baby.”
“I don’t know that I want a baby! I don’t know I want one at all”
“The one you don’t want, dear, is the one you and Kavi might have had. Or the one you and Sasha might have had. This one is manageable. But not, considering your enemies, the way your father managed you.” Draga shook ash from her hand. That was all that remained of the ember. “Does it matter in the magical world that a bit of wood burned? No. And yes—if it makes you understand what’s essential, it’s of extreme consequence there and here. There’s no reason by which that bit of wood should have that value. But it may.”
“The value isn’t in the wood,” Eveshka said doggedly, “the answer isn’t in the smoke.”
“That’s Malenkova, did you know that? She used to say that.”
She had thought it was her father. She had thought so many things were only his.
Draga said, “The value of a piece of wood, dear, is wherever a sorcerer assigns it. That’s the important thing. You can vest a value in a thing… put a spell on it, if you like. You command a thing to be of a certain value. Or state.”
The fire was out. There was no light. Suddenly it burned again, as if nothing had happened.
“That wasn’t a trick,” Draga said. “It happened. Do you believe me?”
“If you can do it you can make me believe you did it, don’t you? So it makes no difference. I’ll grant you did. Why did you do it?”
“You do sound like your father. I did it because I wanted. Because I can do it.”
“Well, why bother with fires? Wish yourself tsarina of Kyev. Wish yourself a dozen handsome men to wait on you and rings on all fingers…”
“I could do that.”
“I prefer my husband.”
“I’ve had one, thank you.” Draga dusted her hands one against the other, wiped the soot off with a towel. “And of course you’re right, nothing’s that easy. My little business with the fire was showy—but a straw is better, with a little wish in help it, and ten handsome servants might be nice, but then, I’ve help when I need it.”
“What help?”
“Oh, him or her, whatever suits.”
“A shapeshifter?” Eveshka was appalled.
“Dear, you won’t have a dvorovoi or a leshy anywhere near you if you do magic. They don’t like demands on them. A shapeshifter’s one of the most selfless creatures you’ll deal with if you’re careful what you let it be. You have to be very stern with it. And you have to be aware there are creatures that aren’t at all selfless, and they’d very happily take any situation and turn it to their advantage. You have to learn your way in magic— and the wizard who’s very likely to find serious trouble, my dear, is the one who’s doing magic without knowing what he’s borrowing from, because a good many of your silly, childish spells are, truly, borrowing from something outside the natural.”
A rusalka had no trouble understanding that: Eveshka bit her lip, clenched her hands and tried not to remember that feeling, that flood of life into death—
“ A wizard-child does it—and there are always creatures ready to help, unless he’s guarded.”
“I knew one that wasn’t guarded! He had no help. And he’s not a sorcerer.”
“Sasha’s very unusual. But Sasha burned his parents to death. Did you know that?”
“He told me.”
“So he did make a mistake. It scared him out of doing magic at all until your father got his hands on him. He’s very innocent. His wish was not to do harm. And the strength of the innocent in magic is like the strength of children—naive and terribly dangerous.”
“ How do you know about him?”
“I have my sources. I even know what wanted him. It still does. And of course he’d be very foolish to deal with it. You never deal with the one that wants you most. You deal with Something just a bit stronger—and you have to be very stubborn. You can smother a gift the way your young friend did; but it’s very unusual for a child to do the right thing. Usually they don’t. Horn in an ordinary situation, they can do very dangerous things—and very many fall right into the magical world and become—the god knows what. If a child is being attacked—” Her mother caught her hands in hers and held them so tightly the bones ground together, pain she opened her mouth to protest, but her mother said, “As you were attacked, dear. Kavi wanted you dead and you wouldn’t die. You fought back as hard as a wizard could fight, you fought him by wanting your life so much… so much… you pulled at everything in sight, like someone drowning—”