Or, likeliest of all, Ilyana.
It proved one thing, that they had not been safe all these years: things had begun going wrong very naturally, very quietly, from the very time they had left that place upriver, where Chernevog had died.
Baby mouse, Misighi had called her, lichenous, patch-hided old Misighi, no little crazed from the death of the previous forest. They had been so relieved when Misighi had found no harm in Ilyana as an infant, when he had cradled her in his gnarled arms, smelled her over and said, in that rumbling voice of his—new growth.
But after that, Misighi had not come to the house. A few leshys had. A very few. And he had asked why, in his wanderings in the woods—asked Wiun, for one, who was a little mad himself.
Wiun had said—A new wind, young wizard. A new wind will come.
And more and more rarely they would be there, leaving their backward, tracks on the riverside. Sometimes the orphans of some storm would turn up near his porch, or on it, sometimes a nest of birds—a young squirrel.
But none lately. None last winter. The woods had a lonelier, cruder feeling this spring.
He had written it in his book, and worried about it, and worried that perhaps Pyetr’s going to Kiev had been a mistake, coming home again with, perhaps, too much of the outside clinging about him—too much of tsars and tsarevitches and the noise of marketplaces and the smell of smoke. Pyetr declared he would not go to Kiev again: and suddenly that statement seemed ominous—as if all along their suppositions had been wrong, their fears misplaced: Pyetr could never have been in danger from Ilyana among the leshys. They would have kept him safe from harm—by means a man might not like; but he would have been safe.
Instead they had sent him south—and the leshys had ceased to visit them. They had made a choice of some kind, without knowing they were choosing.
God. Why didn’t we see it? Why did we ever think of it as waiting? Everything was going on around us. Misighi, Misighi, do you hear me, old friend?
Where did the years go? We thought it was your time being so long—but we’re the ones who’ve slept too long. Come back and see the mouse now, Misighi. She’s grown so. And she’s not wicked, she never was. You knew that when you held her.
But what’s in Chernevog’s heart? What does he want, but life he can’t have again, Misighi? Have you known about him, all this time, and not said?
All those times we met through the years—and you never once mentioned him? Or couldn’t you? Or couldn’t I once have suspected he wouldn’t die?
At least there was a sort of peace in the day—even if her filly managed to figure out the gate again, and got into her mother’s garden. Ilyana even found herself laughing—and laughing and laughing with tears in her eyes as Patches raced around and around the yard with a carrot-stem in her mouth, while her uncle and her father and Babi chased after her Uncle could have wished Patches back into the stable yard, she could have done it herself except she was laughing so hard, but uncle and father and Babi were all enjoying themselves, certainly Patches was, and meanwhile Missy escaped out the gate that uncle was trying to get Patches into and trotted straight for the garden.
She could not chase horses anymore. She was laughing so hard she was bent double, and finally, as they were about to not Patches in, her father yelled at her to get the gate. She managed to do that, then sat down on the bottom rail, holding the gate shut with her arm, and gasped and wiped her eyes, thinking that somehow something had just broken loose inside, and it might have been pain and it might have been laughter. Maybe it was both, because it could not be funny enough to make her stomach hurt.
Her father and Sasha were both out of breath from laughing and running and the Missy—chase was going slower and slower, until Missy was just trotting around the yard ahead of them.
Her father finally waved at Sasha, saying, between gasps, “ for the god’s sake, wish her in.“
Missy arrived, Ilyana got up and opened the gate and shut it behind her, and leaned on it.
Her father tousled her bangs. All three of them leaned panting on the gate.
Her father gasped, “God, why don’t we go riding now?”
And that set them all off again.
She had never laughed so much in her life. She felt better. And feeling better after what had happened felt like betraying her friend—but she could at least feel guilty now, instead of scared and mad. She did not, truly did not want to die. She wanted the rest of her life, now, because it seemed there were things to learn—
Like finding out her father and her uncle could laugh like that. It was wonderful and it was scary—completely beyond uncle’s power to stop it, and beyond hers, which she had always understood was terribly dangerous for wizards—
But it was funny, dammit, and surely laughing like that could never be wrong.
That was what the house felt like without her mother. She saw for the first time in her life what her mother’s presence did, and what her mother’s shape was in the house—a sad and frightening shape, that right now had no house to be in tonight.
She asked her uncle, while they were smoothing horse tracks out of her mother’s garden, “Is my mother really all right?”
“Why should you think not, mouse?”
“Can you tell her something from me?”
“All right.”
“Tell her I’m not mad at her anymore. I don’t want her to come back yet. And I can’t talk to her right now. But tell her I—” Want her to be happy? Was that bad to wish? “Tell her—no, ask her… if she wouldn’t please want herself to be happier.”
Her uncle looked at her as if that surprised him, but not that much. “That’s very kind of you, mouse.”
“I wish—god, I can’t stop myself today!”
“That’s all right. You’re old enough to let loose a few wishes—you’re old enough to use your father’s axe, too, if you’ll get him to teach you how.”
Her uncle meant that wishes were like that axe, a very dangerous thing to use badly. She thought about her mother and said, “I think my mother is so scared. What of?”
“There’s a thing, mouse—I’m not even sure it’s a thing: maybe it’s just the place magic comes from—that she dealt with once, in a way she shouldn’t have. She still knows how to reach into that place. If she ever loses her good sense, she might get scared enough to do that; and if she did—she could become what your grandmother was. That’s enough to give anyone nightmares. Your mother killed people. I think she could forget that—if she didn’t know she could do it again and that she could want to do it again.”
“She can want not to do it again!”
“Oh, she does. She does. But she can’t believe it. The fact is, mouse, once you’ve used that kind of magic, it starts using you. It’s like drinking too much vodka. Only you don’t get silly. You get dangerous. I’ll tell you something—I’ve done it. I’ve done it very briefly, and in a very minor way, and I got away from it as fast as I could. Your mother—”
People always stopped in the middle of important things. She wanted the rest of it, she needed the rest of it now, dammit!
“I’ll tell you, mouse, I couldn’t tell you when you were small, because little children are very apt to try exactly what you tell them not to: they’re curious, they test things, and they don’t understand that consequences are real. But this is the most important Don’t there is in the world: Don’t ever use any magic but your own. Don’t borrow; absolutely don’t borrow magic. For one thing, it makes you drunk and it spoils your judgment. For another thing, the creatures that will offer it to you are all harmful. Every one of them. The good ones, like Babi, won’t let you. Babi would show you his teeth if you even thought about it. Does that tell you something, or doesn’t it?”