I don’t know yet what I should do to help the situation. I don’t know how much is my fault, or how much I dare try to help, or even how much I’m imagining because I’m upset. Master Uulamets taught me all he could in the little time he had, but thank the god, Eveshka had more than that, and maybe I ought to listen to her. I understand how to do things, but I don’t always know whether I ought to do them, or why. She does. I need her to tell me where I’m wrong, I need her to keep me from her father’s mistakes, most of all, because master Uulamets did make them, he made terrible mistakes… and I don’t want to be him. Father Sky witness I don’t want to turn into him…
He had taken to the rebuilding of the house with more enthusiasm than Pyetr could possibly understand, clearing out Uulamets’ cobwebby past, changing the very outlines of the house Uulamets would recall, pushing master Uulamets and his wishes and his memories further and further into the past. The old man, dying, had wanted a boy wizard to know all he knew; and have all he had, and a boy who desperately needed that knowledge-fought back as much as he could, knowing his master’s mistakes as well as his virtues.
Old memories still attached to this place… chaotic, fragmentary recollections, the river when the ferry had been running, travelers on the road; the forest before the great trees had died: mere curiosities, those—
Excepting memories of a woman in this house, one on whom Uulamets had sired a daughter he did not, could not trust.
Excepting his student, Chernevog—also in this house, who had wanted that gift he had gotten, and tried to steal it.
I wish for bodily comfort, Chernevog had written in his own book: I wish for gold—why not?
Old Uulamets sitting in his shabby little house, old Uulamets teaching foolishness, mistaking cowardice for virtue —
Uulamets talks about restraint—restraint in a world of cattle, who know nothing, have no power over their own wishes, understand nothing that they want—while we live apart, all for fear of damaging these peasants. Foolishness.
That was Kavi Chernevog, whose reasoning twisted back on itself like a snake—whose reasoning was founded on assumptions totally selfish and shortsighted.
Sasha dipped his quill and wrote, mindfully pushing Chernevog out of his thoughts: The things master Uulamets wanted me to know, like writing, I have to use, and I don’t forget. But what I didn’t use right off just faded, and the things that just come up less and less, I forget. And don’t entirely forget, of course, because there’s his book to remind me, but there are things that used to be very strong; and now they’re just less and less likely to occur to me—I think as much as anything because it’s not the house he knew anymore and we’re not the way he expected us to turn out.
Mostly he’d be surprised, I’m sure he would be. He’d be mad about Eveshka marrying Pyetr, I have no trouble thinking what he’d say about that.
Maybe that’s why I keep worrying about them. Myself, Sasha Misurov, I certainly don’t want to have bad thoughts about my best friends in the whole world. I think I have to watch that, and stop being upset with Eveshka, because Uulamets really didn’t like people much—not since he married his wife, anyway, and after he found out she was after his book: Draga made him distrust people and then Chernevog came along —
Chernevog was his really big mistake.
But what might mine be? Letting myself remember too much? Letting what happened to him make me suspicious?
And selfish. What about the horse? What about me wanting Pyetr to myself again? I’m feeling lonely, and I’ve got to stop that. There’s no good in it. There’s not even any sense in it. Uncle’s house was awful and nobody ever liked me till Pyetr did. So what do I want to change? Eveshka’s mad at me, and she’s right: nothing’s good that upsets us this much, nothing’s, good when a wizard starts wanting love from people, it’s not fair to them.
I knew that once, when I lived in Vojvoda, I was so good about not wishing things, till I came here and master Uulamets took me up.
But he didn’t want my welfare, or even Eveshka’s; he wanted his daughter back before she could join Chernevog: he died with this wish I still can feel —
His heart was beating so he could almost hear it. He could imagine the old man wanting to go on living— wanting his way with them and with his daughter, because Uulamets had held this woods more than a hundred years, and Uulamets was not the kind to give up on anything, least of all his life or his purposes.
Maybe that wish is still going, god, maybe I’m still part of it, and it’s still going, because I can’t not wonder. I wonder what will become of us, and whether we’re right to hold on to our hearts and whether we’ll be good wizards or bad—and what if I didn’t like the answer? There’s so much that could go wrong. Or even what if it was good? How can you enjoy what you’ve got if you can see everything that ever will happen to it?
But Uulamets wanted to know what would come after him. And I’m scared to know even where I’m going. Maybe that’s why a bannik’s never come. He used to say, Don’t-know and afraid-to-know always wins a tug of war—
The pen dried while he was thinking. He dipped it again in the inkpot and made his crabbed, unskillful letters, writing so no wish could make him forget what he had thought tonight, hoping to the god that Eveshka was not awake and eavesdropping.
So in one sense the horse might not have been a mistake. I need something to get my mind off all the might-be’s I’ve been worrying about since we built the bathhouse. When you start worrying about might-be’s, that worry is wishing about things that aren’t even so yet, and then it wishes on what you’ve changed, and the god only knows what kind of damage you could do. I’m afraid master Uulamets did a little of that. So maybe wizards have to be very careful with banniks. But wizards wish on their guesses, too, and their guesses might be a lot less reliable than that.
It does disturb me that I forgot wishing for Volkhi—but then, if I had remembered, I’d certainly have done something to stop it; so maybe after all even forgetting was part of the wish. Maybe I had to forget so it had a chance to come true, and it’s good after all.
Things change that can change and wishes only take the shape they can take. Never wish things against nature or against time…
Wish a stone to fly, master Uulamets had said—then beware of the whirlwind.
Wish a horse from Vojvoda… god, one could imagine dreadful things that could have brought the horse to them: a rider falling and breaking his neck, a stable burning—the whole town of Vojvoda going up in smoke or being put to the sword…
A whole host of might-be’s like that—while a draft twisted the lamp-flung shadows at the end of the kitchen; and he thought with a sudden shudder of the worst thing in the world to disturb, that forbidden, thorn-hedged place where leshys watched, patient as the trees themselves…
Something cracked, the whole shelf above him tipped on one end, books and pottery came crashing down onto the table and off it in a thunderous tumble. He scrambled back, the bench scraping as he caught his balance against the table edge and overset the oil-lamp. He grabbed for something to smother the spreading fire, feverishly wished it out and flung a towel over it, trembling in fright as the last bits of pottery rocked and rattled to a stop.