The front door opened and shut. Pyetr lifted his head from the pillow, and Eveshka whispered, “He’s perfectly all right.”
There were other small, reassuring sounds, the domovoi settling again in the cellar, Sasha walking about in the kitchen, a log going on the fire, which sent up a small flurry of sparks on their side of the hearth.
But Pyetr heard the sound of the bench pulled back in the kitchen and thought distressedly that Sasha was at that damned book again, scribbling and studying.
“That’s no life for a boy,” he said, “reading all day and writing all night.”
Eveshka said nothing. He had only her shoulder.
“He’s eighteen,” Pyetr said. “He’s not going to find everything he needs in that damned book, Eveshka.”
“He made a mistake,” she said. “He’s trying to find out why.”
“A mistake. The boy wants a horse. Why shouldn’t he?”
“A wizard shouldn’t.”
“God.”
“It’s very serious.”
“Can you help him?”
She shook her head, motion against the pillow. “It’s his business. His question. He has to answer it.”
Eveshka’s father had given more than a book to the lad. Eveshka’s father, when he died, the black god take him, had worked some sudden spell or another and magicked everything he knew into the boy’s head, things a boy could have lived quite happily without, things far, far more than reading and writing.
No real memory of things, Sasha insisted. Nothing I can’t deal with, Sasha said.
The double-damned, unprincipled old scoundrel.
“It’s not natural,” Pyetr said. “It’s not natural, ’Veshka.”
But she seemed to be asleep. At least she offered no conversation. So he lay there thinking about his own misspent years in Vojvoda, not regretting many of them, except the quality of the company.
Maybe he would sail down to Kiev after all. Maybe he would finally sail down to Kiev of the golden roofs, with Sasha in tow, just himself and the boy-Shop around a little. Find a tavern. Do something thoroughly reprehensible. Or at least mildly riotous.
If he dared leave Eveshka.
He could not, not that long: Eveshka was far too prone to melancholy. The god knew she slipped too readily toward that state of mind.
So, hell, they would take Eveshka along—show her the golden roofs, the rocs and the crocodiles and the palaces, which everything he had ever heard assured him were abundant in Kiev.
Not forgetting the elephants.
It would do the boy a world of good. Do good for Eveshka too. Show her how ordinary folk lived, show her that people could live together, more of them in one place than she could ever imagine.
Wish the boy up a tsarevna, she could, one of the Great Tsar’s nieces or such.
No. A pretty beggar girl, who would be ever so glad to fly off to the deep woods and live like a tsarevna for the rest of her life—
A girl who would, wise as wizards, keep her wishes modest.
Sasha pulled the lamp a little closer on the kitchen table, going over the page again which, as best he remembered, ought to record his wish for the horse—which he did very well recall, but he had not even written the matter down, nor made any entry at all for that day, that was the puzzling thing. One hardly wrote down every little thing one did: even in the quiet of the woods there were days one got busy and let records slip a day or two, but he did not remember what could have gotten in the way that day, or why he had forgotten it entirely—when he recalled now how it had upset him at the time.
The day they had first fired up the bathhouse—and all of them had been wondering about banniks…
But they had felt nothing banniklike since but the slight spookiness a dark bathhouse might have: a whole (if slightly twisted) roof was not an invariable guarantee of banniks, by all he knew. Uulamets’ book recollected a shy, slightly daft old creature that had sometimes provided visions—but it had hardly been a happy Bath-thing: Uulamets’ bannik had deserted the place after Eveshka had died, Uulamets pursuing it relentlessly for foreknowledge— About his hopes of raising the dead. Not a happy creature, not a happy parting, and, Sasha had thought from long before they had put the roof cap on, certainly nothing he really wanted to provoke to anger. It surely must have been glad, as Pyetr had said, to find some more cheerful establishment to haunt, say, down in Kiev—if (and this was the most substantial of his fears) repairing the bathhouse had not by some law of magic called it back against its will. He recalled he had thought about that possibility, that day.
They had talked about Kiev. He had gotten quite light-headed from the heat—had been quite, quite giddy when he had thought about the horse. They had had to go outside.
God, he thought, what was I thinking then? About banniks? Or was it remembering the bathhouse at uncle Fedya’s that made me think of the horse?
Vojvoda. Pyetr and Volkhi and the butter churn-He rested his eyes against his hands, elbows on the table, thinking himself: Or was I worrying about Pyetr? Was I afraid he’d go off to Kiev and leave us and not come back once he saw the gold and the crocodiles and all? Or was I thinking about him and ’Veshka—because I’m afraid I am messing things up with them? Maybe I really should build that house on the hill over there.
But if I’m not right here with them when they argue, to say, ’Veshka, don’t wish at him—then who’s going to say it? He won’t always know until it gets really plain—and she does it, damn it, she doesn’t mean to, but she does it all the time.
But maybe my not wanting to leave the house is a wish too, and maybe that’s why things are happening that shouldn’t, maybe that’s what’s putting things out of joint.
God, why am I so confused?
Uulamets’ teaching said, uncompromisingly: Write down everything you don’t understand, —fool.
He certainly had enough to write tonight, about Missy and the black and white cat, along with, the god forgive him, shapeless, resentful, thoroughly dangerous thoughts about his aunt and uncle…
He squeezed his eyes shut a moment, got a breath and concentrated deliberately on writing a simple reminder to himself: Unwish nothing. Start from where you stand and trust only to specifics—with a shivery thought toward all the peace they had here, balanced on Eveshka’s resolve to forget all too many grim things, his, to grow up without foolish mistakes; and Pyetr’s, to be patient with two wizards trying their best to keep their wizardry and their hearts out of trouble.
For most of three years he had found one excuse and the other not to rebuild the old bathhouse, for fear of banniks—for fear of one showing them the will-be and might-be in the life they had chosen here, so long as Eveshka was still so fragile and it was still uncertain whether wizards could really live with each other at all. But Pyetr had kept after the matter till it had begun to seem silly and inconvenient not to have it. So one particularly frozen, icy day he had given in.
But what was I afraid of? he asked himself, pen in hand. What specifically was I afraid of learning?
Of seeing myself alone? Or Pyetr changed?
Eveshka wanted Pyetr to herself, of course a new wife would— but ’Veshka was not just any wife, Pyetr had a right to his friends, too, damned if he should build any small, lonely house up on the hill and live in it in exile.
He had a right to have something to love him.
Was that why I wanted the horse?
Everything was perfect, Eveshka said.
At least Eveshka was happy…
Or at least—we got along.
Dammit.
He did not understand his own temper. He did not understand why he had a lump in his throat, but he intended to have no patience with it. He rested his elbow on the table, his chin against his hand, and kept writing, merciless to himself and his notions: Having a heart is no protection against selfishness in that heart-mine or hers.