Authors: CJ Cherryh
“
I'm sure all of this is going to make sense.
”
“
I can't hear the woods,
”
Sasha said.
“
I couldn't find Babi and I can't hear a thing except
'
Veshka
when she's close, I can’t even hear you when you're right next to me, and it has to do with the bannik, it all started with the bannik, the same as Volkhi coming here.
”
“
You're not getting enough sleep,
”
Pyetr said.
’‘It's that damn book, you know, those little crooked marks you stay up all night staring at—
”
“
Things are going wrong, Pyetr, they're just going wrong!
”
“
Because you can't hear the trees.
”
“
I don't mean hearing the trees. It's not like a sound, Pyetr—
”
“
God. I don't care what it is. You say yourself once you start doubting you can do something it won't happen, so maybe you're tripping over your own feet, did you ever think about that?
”
“
I think of it.
”
“
So wish it right again.
”
“
I do! But there's nothing I can reach, Pyetr, and the bannik just showed up and I'm not sure I even wanted it myself, I know Eveshka didn't, and nothing's right.
”
Pyetr put his hand on Sasha's shoulder, walked with him that way, Volkhi trailing them of his own volition.
“
Listen. Maybe 'Veshka's right. Forget Uulamets. Leave his damned book alone. Leave everything a while. Quit trying so hard to think of trouble before it happens. Aren't you likely to wish it up that way? Forget it. We'll take the boat out, maybe even sail down to Kiev, you, me, 'Veshka
...”
The very thought touched him with sudden panic—all those people, all those wishes and needs weighing on his heart, unstable as things were. Not now. God, not now, and Eveshka certainly could never bear it. Even dealing with two people she loved was hard.
“
There's girls there,
”
Pyetr said.
“
Girls who'd think you're a damn fine catch.
”
“
No!
”
“
Life doesn't go on in a damn
book,
boy!
”
Sasha caught a breath, stopped thinking for a moment, stopped even trying to listen with his ears or his wizardry, so that everything Pyetr said became only sound to him. He had used to do that when his uncle had upset him—go away until his heart was quiet.
“
Boy?
”
Pyetr said, shaking at his shoulder as they walked.
“
What's the matter?
”
“
I just want the woods back, Pyetr, I just want things to go right.
”
He tried not even to think about Kiev, or the people and the girls and the idea of escape Pyetr was talking about. They frightened him, they brought him to the edge of wishes, and he could not let himself want the things ordinary folk might—Uulamets had made that mistake. And Pyetr would not understand that. Pyetr only let him go after a moment, unhappy and worried, he needed no eavesdropping to know that much.
He said to Pyetr carefully, reasonably,
“
I want everything we've done to hold.
”
“
It's going well enough. You found me, didn't you? I didn't break my neck. Whatever that was, it was scared of you. It ran. If the old snake's at his tricks again, we can deal with that, we always have.
”
“
We got the bannik, and when Eveshka wondered where you were, all it said was thorns and branches.
”
“
Well, that was the truth, wasn't it? But it didn't take any damn prophecy to know that
...”
Blood on thorns
...
“
Did it?
”
He was afraid to answer. An answer meant nothing. An answer might change before he could so much as think of it.
’‘Will-be is always moving,
”
he said faintly.
“
Everything we do changes what's going to happen. That's why banniks don't like wizards.
”
“
'Veshka says. At least the last one didn't like Uulamets— but I can understand that. So we've got a bannik. And the forest is quiet and you're seeing thorn-bushes and it scares you. —You don't make sense all the time, you know.
”
The quiet was absolute.
Leaves on the current, the current stopped
...
Waiting
...
“
Sasha?
”
“
I want us
home,
“
Sasha said.
“
Why? What's wrong?
”
“
I don't know.
”
He faced Pyetr about and pushed him Volkhi's side. ‘‘I'll just feel better when we get there.
”
Pyetr gave him an anxious look, then swung quickly up to Volkhi's back and offered him his hand.
9
They came in sight of the house at twilight, both of them staggering tired, in muddy, chafing clothes that had dried on their backs, and with Volkhi so weary they were both afoot and leading him again. But at last there was the gray roof in sight, the hedge, the garden, their own porch, all safe and waiting for them, and Pyetr had no inclination to upset Eveshka twice. He opened the gate, shoved Volkhi's reins at Sasha, calling out dutifully as he came running up onto the porch,
“
'Veshka, I'm home!
”
He opened the door into a dark, cold house.
“
'
Veshka? Where are you?
”
Sasha came thumping up onto the porch and walked in behind him.
“
She's not here,
”
Pyetr said, thinking, Well, damn! Now
she's
gone out looking! Then he thought about the horse and the quarrel yesterday morning and had another opinion.
“
She just might be out at the bathhouse,
”
Sasha breathed, and ran back down into the yard. Sasha's voice drifted up distant and distressed:
“
Volkhi, get out of there!
”
Hell with the garden, Pyetr thought, looking around a shadowy, supperless kitchen. He threw wide the kitchen shutters for light, opened the door into their bedroom and bashed his shin on a bench, opening the bedroom shutters.
Her book was gone from the desk.
He looked in the domes press, found clothes missing, walking boots gone; and slammed the wardrobe door so hard the piece rocked against the wall.
“
Damn!
”
he said, hit it with his fist and sulked out into the kitchen to find out what else missing—and by that just how long she intended to be off on her little pique this time.
He was finding blank spaces in the spice shelves when Sasha came running up onto the porch and inside to report breathlessly that she was not in the bathhouse, and he had found neither sight nor sense of the bannik, either.
“
No need of any bannik,
”
Pyetr said.
“
She's off again. She's just mad and she's left.
”
He pushed his cap back on his head, remembered Eveshka disapproved of caps in the house, and took it off, as if that could patch things.
“
She took her book with her this time. Damn her.
”
Then he added, with the least little remorse and no little worry in his heart:
’‘Though I honestly can’t say I blame her.
”
“
I don't like this.
”
“
Well, I don't like it either, but it's hardly the first time, is it?
”
He waved at the door, in the general direction of the woods
“
Trees make better sense to her than people do. They always have. Myself, I'm for supper and a bath. She'll be back. Not my fault I got lost, not her fault she does things like this, is it?
”
“
I don't think she'd go off like this. Not—
”
“
I do. I see absolutely no reason she wouldn't. She's done it too often. —Let's get a light in here, have supper, get a bath. -Babi? Babi, where are you?
”
Babi turned up at his knee, tugging at his trouser leg, upset, one could reckon, at finding no supper waiting.
“
Go find her, Babi. Get her back here if you want your dinner. Or you'll have to put up with my cooking.
”
Babi dropped to all fours and walked the circuit of the room in a decided sulk, all shoulders.
“
I really don't like this,
”
Sasha repeated to himself, shed his cap and coat onto the kitchen bench and started sorting the books and clutter on the side of the kitchen table, the survivors of the broken shelf.
“
Well, hell, I don't like it either! But we haven't any choice, have we?
”
Pyetr went to the fireplace, poked up the ashes and
thrust a little kindling into the banked coals. Flame shot up quite readily, yellow light. He lit a straw, stood up and lit the oil lamp, which threw giant shadows about the walls and made Sasha's worried frown disturbingly grim.
“
She didn't leave any note?
”
Sasha asked him.
“
Nothing on her desk, no paper or—
”
“
No.
”
It frustrated him, this leaving of vitally important messages on arcane little bits of paper. He jammed his hands into his coat pockets and set his jaw, thinking about the silence in the woods, the shapeshifter that had taken Uulamets' likeness.
“
I don't know why she would bother. Does she ever leave one when it's important? —Damn it, Sasha, you know exactly what it is, she's mad and she's off to talk to the trees or whatever she does out there, I don't see we should worry.
”
Sasha ran a hand through his hair, left his books, went and pulled up the trap to the cellar.
“
She's not hiding down there, for the god's sake,
”
Pyetr said, at the end of his temper, embarrassed, even though Sasha was their closest and only friend, at having a constant witness to their private difficulties. He knew he would end up, he always did, defending Eveshka to a boy who had more sense man Eveshka in his little finger. Then Sasha would end up, inevitably, telling hi
m the same old things,
that he just had to
understand Eveshka
, Eveshka had to have time, Eveshka had to be alone with her thoughts—
“
It's not safe out there,
”
was what Sasha said, on the first step of the cellar stairs.
Pyetr gave a twitch of his shoulders, uneasy at this urgent searching and poking about in dark places, as if something truly grim could have happened.
“
I know it's not safe out there, we both know it's not safe out there, but she's a wizard, isn't she? -What in hell do you want in the cellar?
”
Pyetr had a sudden, most terrible imagination that Sasha knew beyond a doubt that something was amiss—with a girl who could stop a man's heart with a wish.
Certainly there was no chance any intruder could get past the front door—
Except a shapeshifter, except someone that she knew
...
or thought she knew.
Sasha said to him, casting a glance over his shoulder, there bread?
”
Pyetr glanced at the counter, where loaves of bread wrapped in towels—Eveshka had left that much for them, in the usual place, evidence she had planned for them coming home. She had at least done her usual baking
...
But damn her, he had searched the woods for her on earliest disappearances, spent sleepless nights and called himself hoarse, all to no profit. She came back when she wanted to come back. There was no reason to think it was more than that, no matter the scare they had had.
He brought a loaf to Sasha, on the steps, waist-deep in the dark. He guessed by now what Sasha was thinking of: the domovoi, down in the cellar. The House-thing favored homey gifts like fresh bread: it had gotten fatter and fatter on Eveshka's baking in the years they had lived here; but whatever wisdom it had, it sat on. It never offered them a thing but to stir when quarrels disturbed the peace, and to make the house timbers creak on winter nights like some old man's joints.
“
What can it tell us?
”
he asked sullenly.
“
It's only Eveshka it talks to.
”