Chernevog (4 page)

“
It's not funny, Pyetr!
”

“
So what's the matter? You're not jealous of a horse, are you? That's silly.
”

“
I'm just—
”
The spoon went back into the batter, and Eveshka wiped her eyes.
“
Sorry. I'm selfish, I can't help being selfish, I wish—
”

“
For the god's sake, don't!
”

She rested her mouth against her hand. Shook her head, not looking at him.

“
I want too much,
”
she said.
“
And it's not fair to you. It's not fair. It's never been fair!
”

Time was, he had been going cheerfully from trouble to trouble in Vojvoda, where ordinary folk lived and where wizards were, if gifted at all, hardly fit to cure warts. Now here he was, the god have mercy, with a wizard-wife who could have her way with passing thunderstorms.

He tipped her chin up, gently, tried with a quirk of his mouth to coax a smile from her.
“
Now in Vojvoda mere was this girl who wanted too much—
”

Her lips trembled while she looked at him, scowling. There was the distinct smell of cakes well-done.

“
But her papa wasn't a wizard,
”
he said, tracing a line down her cheek.
“
He was a tavern keeper. And she wanted to live like a boyarina. She never wanted to work. She wanted the clothes, the jewels—any fellow who'd have her, she wanted to order around. So she settled on this handsome rich lad named Ivan—
”

“
Are you sure his name wasn't Pyetr?
”
“
I wasn't rich. Besides, I was too smart for her. And we figured out, some other lads and I, what she was up to. She'd gotten this potion from this wizard to slip into his drink—which had this dreadful effect. It didn't make him fall in love at all. But then, we'd switched drinks. She was dreadfully sick for a week.
”

“
You don't make love with potions!
”
“
Wizards do in Vojvoda. But then, they're not very good wizards. I tell you, Sasha could set up shop—
”

“
My cakes are burning!
”
she cried, and escaped him to snatch for the spatula.

“
A little dark,
”
he said, as she turned them.
“
Oh, they're ruined!
”
“
Wish them unburned.
”

“
Wishes don't work like that, you know they don't. Damn!
”
“
That
won't help the cakes, either.
”
“
God.
”
She clenched her fists, bowed her head against them.
“
Pyetr, don't.
”

He sighed and put his arm about her.
“
What do you want?
”

“
Nothing.
”

“
Do you want Sasha to chase the horse back to Vojvoda? Is that the trouble? Will that satisfy you?
”

“
I don't want that!
”
she cried, pushed free of him and got up, her wonderful hair all shining in the firelight—

“
God, 'Veshka—
”

“
Don't look at me like that! Don't love me because I want you to! Oh, god, I knew, I knew you weren't safe from me!
”

“
Dammit,
I
know what I want.
”

She went across the kitchen and began taking random things off the shelves.

‘‘What are you doing?
”
he asked, scrambling for his feet. He very well knew what she was doing: it would not be the first time Eveshka had gone out into the woods alone for a day or so, and come back better for it, the god knew, after worrying him sleepless—saying nothing of where she had been or what she had done. But she had never taken off in the da
rk, in the middle of a quarrel.
”
'Veshka, for the god's own sake, ask me what
I
want. Anything we both agree on, we can't have because you want it? That's crazed! That means we only get what neither of us wants! That's damned stupid, 'Veshka!
”

A piece of bread went into a basket; a handful of fruit. Eveshka stopped and leaned against the table, head bowed.

“
'Veshka? Is it something I've done?
”

She straightened her shoulders then, took the things out of the basket, wiped a knuckle across her cheek and wiped the hand on her apron. The basket went back on the shelf.

He came up behind her and put his arms around her, whispering,
“
I have exactly what I want.
”

The grease scorched, meanwhile.

“
My cakes!
”
Eveshka said,
“
oh, damn, Pyetr, —
”

The cellar-supports shifted, the much-taxed domovoi getting the smell of smoke, perhaps, as Eveshka rescued the overheated griddle and the blackened cakes.

The house settled, then. Everything seemed to.

“
Babi?
”
he said, remembering the dvorovoi.
“
Honeycakes, Babi.
”

Babi did not put in an appearance. Perhaps Babi was waiting for higher bribes. Like vodka.

So Pyetr went to the door, put his head out and told Sasha there was a good chance of supper. Then he got down the jug.

Babi appeared not even for that, as happened.

While the horse was still in the yard. Dammit, a dvorovoi was supposed to like livestock, and take care of things and keep the horse out of the garden, for the god's sake, not have his nose set
out of joint.

But Babi had him for a personal responsibility, two wizards
had told Babi so, and quite probably, Pyetr thought, Babi was
somewhere out around the hedge feeling jealous, rejected and
sorry for himself. Damn, he thought, and went to put the dishes on.

3

Supper was quiet, everything was calm, not a stray wish or an ungoverned thought flew across the table, just Pass the cakes, please; more tea, Sasha?
O
nly Babi still seemed to be sulking, put out about the horse in the yard, Sasha surmised distressedly, and neither honeycakes nor vodka would bring him.

“
He'll come around,
”
Pyetr muttered.
“
At least by break
f
ast.
”

So Pyetr and he made up a bit of grain and honey for Volkhi, (hey curried him down, the two of them, by lamplight, and they built a sort of a pen around him at the back of the house, where afternoon sun let wild grasses grow. It was a hasty sort of work, but Sasha wished the posts to stay put—much easier than wishing the horse, to be sure, which had a mind of its own and which could not be wished out of a taste for new spring vegetables for more than a few moments at a time.

Eveshka came out to help lift the bars into place, and helped wish them to stay. She even brought Volkhi a bit of honey-cake.

“
I'm sorry about the cabbages,
”
Pyetr whispered to her in Sasha's hearing, across a fence-rail; and Eveshka whispered back, leaning to take Pyetr's kiss on the lips:

“
Hush, it's all right, I don't care about that; nothing is your fault.
”

Another kiss. After that Pyetr ended up on the other side of the rail and the two of them went walking arm in arm around the corner of the house.

Probably, Sasha thought, they did not need a house guest to turn up in the front room any time soon.

So he shrugged his coat back on, the night being somewhat cold since he had stopped hefting rails about, and lingered to test the posts they had set, figuring that Pyetr and Eveshka would not linger long in the kitchen.

Eveshka had been sixteen when she had died: she had been a sixteen-year-old ghost for better than a hundred years before she had gained her life back and gone on with living it. Sometimes it seemed to him she was still sixteen when someone crossed her—and, god, Sasha thought, resting his arms on the rail, if she caught him thinking that, best he find a bed somewhere in the deep woods tonight, perhaps for several nights.

She had had all those years of Uulamets' personal teaching and all those years of being both a wizard and a ghost
...
but she had spent so long as a rusalka and so comparatively few years dealing with the simple pain of burning a finger on a pot handle, or dealing with a husband who sometimes, being Pyetr, did things not even a wizard could predict—

(Say
what you want, Pyetr would remind them both cheerfully: just speak it out loud, it's only fair: tell me what you want me to do and let
me
decide, is that so hard?)

Sometimes, for Eveshka, it truly was. Sometimes it seemed the hardest thing in the world for her.

And then, just when everything seemed possible and they had everything in the world they ought to want—Pyetr's best friend had to do a stupid thing like this, and bring this poor horse into the question.

The horse was looking at him quite warily as it might, now that they were alone with only a rail between them. One misgiving equine eye shone under a black thatch of bangs. Its nostrils worked as if it could smell something unnatural about the place and the night and about him.

Poor fellow, Sasha thought: one night in a snug stable, by the well-cared-for look of him, and the next bolting through a woods full of dangers of very terrible sort.

“
Volkhi?
”
he said gently, ducked under the rail and held out
a hand to the horse—not cheating, this time, simply letting the horse make up its mind about his character. A few steps closer.
“
There's a lad. Come on. I'm a Mend of Pyetr's. I'm really not a bad sort. See, not a wish one way or the other.
”

Volkhi eyed him a moment more, then stretched out his neck and breathed the air about him.

“
Don't be afraid, there's a good fellow.
”

The horse investigated his fingers, carefully. Sasha felt warm breath on his hand, and the touch of a soft, interested nose, while the lamplight showed their mingled breaths like fog.

A wizard once a stableboy could be a great fool for something like
t
his, could ask himself how he had ever gotten along without such feelings—a warm and friendly creature snuffling his ringers on a nippish night and nosing his face and his coat, looking for possible apples.

For a moment, defending his cap from the search, he was no wizard at all, only his uncle's stableboy, who had found his only true fellowship in his charges, in the black and white stable cat and old Missy and the various horses that had come and gone with the rich young men of the town. Pyetr had seemed only one of that wild crowd in those days—once upon a time and only, it seemed now, yesterday: The Cockerel's stable came back so vividly for a moment Sasha wondered just for whom he had really wished up a horse in the first place; or how he could be so warmly drawn back to days he wanted to forget.

But he had been a great deal safer then, he had been so very good in those days about not wanting things of people—not wanting things at all, except where it concerned his four-footed charges. He had never been sure he was doing it, for one thing: they had never accused him for his small sorcery, second; and he had never felt guilty about loving them, nor been reluctant, whenever he had gotten on his uncle's bad side, to come to the stable to lean on a comfortable warm shoulder and pour out his troubles to a patient friend like old Missy, that he could miss so much of a sudden—

He was that boy again, tonight, the town jinx, that no one wanted around, he had made a mess of things again and Eveshka had every right to be put out with him, on top of which, he had just come recklessly close to wanting Missy here for himself— knowing very well that she was Andrei the carter's horse, and
that Andrei Andreyevitch in no wise deserved to be robbed by some selfish, self-pitying young wizard.

Missy. For rides in the woods, no less—himself and Pyetr out and about together, the way he had dreamed of it being when the three of them had settled here on this riverside.

God, he thought. The cat, too, why not? The house needs a cat. Why not the whole stable, fool?

That was how helplessly unreasonable he was being, longing for ordinary, common things a wizard could never, ever have, and, like a fool, thinking he needed something all his own to love. So things were more complicated in the house than a callow fifteen-year-old had once thought they would be. A man loved his wife. It did not mean he stopped being a friend. A wife took time, especially Eveshka, who had her own difficulties, not least because he was, dammit, too often under Eveshka's feet, in Eveshka's house, with Pyetr the one who ended up with a burned supper and an angry wife and Babi not speaking to any of them.