“Patches!” she cried, running for the front gate, sure Patches had impaled herself on the pickets or the thorn-branches; but before she could even reach the fence Patches lurched up on her feet and bolted down the old road, toward the woods, where thickets and tangles could break her legs— her horse, her scared, stupid filly that papa had told her was absolutely her personal responsibility.
“Patches!” she cried, “stop, come back!” and, that working no more than the last, wanted her mother to know what was happening, wanted her to help papa and her uncle—wanted Missy—No— Volkhi; Volkhi was the fastest. She ran back to the stableyard, unlatched the gate and climbed the rails, wanting Volkhi against the fence, wishing him to stand still just long enough for her to slide onto his wet back and grab fistfuls of mane. Then she wished him, “Catch Patches!” and Volkhi leapt into a run, right through the garden, right for—
Oh, my god!
She dared not wish him stop: she held on as Volkhi left the ground, and did not know the other side of the hedge how she was still on his back, except her lip tasted of blood and they were headed full-tilt into the trees. Branches raked her hair and splintered on her shoulders. Lightning flashed and confused her eyes. She hung on with both hands and went with Volkhi the way her father had taught her—impossible to see all the branches coming at her: it was Volkhi’s sight she borrowed, different than hers, it was his body she felt moving, while she tried to remember where the bad spots were, to help him the best way she knew.
“Patches!” she yelled into the storm, what time she was not being Volkhi, insisting Patches come back; but if wishes were working right, Patches would have come to her in the first place, lightning would never have set her uncle’s house on fire, and her father would not be back there where she should be right now, saving her uncle—god, god, she had done the wrong thing again. She should not be out here, listening too much to Volkhi and losing her wits…
But now she was too far along and she could only lose Patches and be in grown-ups’ way where the fire was.
Be all right! she wished her father and her uncle; and wished her mother to do something—because her mother could, better than anyone.
Oh, god, mother, put out the fire, and everybody be all right!
“—Wake up, dammit! Wake up!”
Sasha’s face was waxen against the firelit grass, spattered with rain, the both of them sprawled in the yard as Pyetr slapped and shook at him. Then Sasha got a breath and objected to being hit in the face. Sasha rolled over and started coughing.
Pyetr coughed, too, leaning on his hands and fighting for breath. A burning house was no way for Sasha to die, god, Sasha had such a terror of fire: he only just realized the fear he had felt, seeing Sasha’s roof ablaze—when of a sudden Sasha scrambled up, headed back to the house.
“No, dammit!” He rolled and tripped Sasha by the ankle, then lost his hold as Sasha recovered his balance and dashed for the porch.
Flames were already gusting out the windows. “Stop!” Pyetr yelled, staggered up and ran after him, up to the smoke-seeping porch and through the door into a palpable wall of heat and light that seared the skin. Fire was already taking the stacks of papers, the air was thick with wind-borne cinders, too hot to breathe—but Sasha shoved two books at him and snatched an armload himself.
A timber crashed down. Shingles fell in a hail of embers. Pyetr held the books in one arm, grabbed Sasha and ran, knocked into the wall and found the door by accident or wishes. A blast of cold rain shocked his burns and Sasha slid and fell on the boards on the way down, but Pyetr dragged him clear all the same, pulled Sasha down and far out onto the slope before his legs gave out, and he sprawled into the wet, prickly weeds beside him.
“God,” he moaned. His chest was burning. Rain stung like fire on his back and on his face as he rolled off the armful of books and let the water wash the smoke out of his eyes. “For a handful of damned books—”
“Our lives,” Sasha gasped. “Ilyana’s—Oh my god, Ilyana—”
Ilyana had been behind him a while back; he was onto his knees and intending another trip into the house before Sasha made him believe Ilyana had not gone inside after them—
Oh, god, no, Ilyana was safe from the fire: she was out in the woods on a runaway horse, and Eveshka had cast off to sail home, through the storm—
He had that from Sasha, or from ’Veshka herself, he did not stop to ask. He scrambled up and ran headlong downhill for a horse. Patches might almost be fast enough, but she was young and fritter-brained in a crisis—Missy came trotting up out of the lightning-lit downpour before he reached the hedge: Sasha’s horse, no question who had brought her or how he was going to track Ilyana: he caught Missy’s mane and swung up to her broad, rain-drenched back.
Missy was the other side of too many years and too many apples, his sword was back in the house, he was soaked to the skin, blinded by rain, coatless and coughing so at times he could scarcely keep upright on Missy’s back. Damned poor hope for a rescue, he thought, and hoped for Sasha to make the mouse use sense—burned and shocked and coughing his gut out back at the house, as Sasha was, with no horse at all and no way to follow him: Patches was what Ilyana and Volkhi were chasing. If his own wishes were worth anything, he threw them in: Wish Volkhi to use his head, if my daughter won’t! What in hell’s she doing out there?
He thought he heard, then, faintly and full of pain: Pyetr, I don’t know, but I swear to you I’m trying!
There was Patches—Ilyana spied her through the brush, in the lightning flickers, with the roar of the rain-swollen brook in her ears. She was relieved to see Patches was on her feet, and terrified to see Patches had her hind feet almost in the flood: she had evidently fallen in, by the mud all down her side, and by luck or by a young lifetime of well-wishes, she must have gotten out again, if not all the way up the slippery bank. A heap of brush had partly dammed the brook there, and if Patches should step back and slip in now, Ilyana thought, that pile of brush could well trap her in the rush of water and drown her.
“Be calm,” she wished Volkhi, trying not to frighten Patches as they eased their way through the lightning-lit undergrowth. “Be calm. Easy.” She wanted Patches to pay sober attention to the water behind her, please, and use good sense and come on to them if she had the strength to climb the slippery bank. She had heard nothing from uncle Sasha or from her mother. The familiar woods had turned scary in the dark, with the water and the wind roaring and the lightning making the trees and Patches like ghosts of themselves. She would have hoped Babi at least would have come with her; but nothing was going right tonight, nothing she knew was working, her uncle must be hurt at the very least, and she wanted to get back to the house and know everybody had gotten out of the fire, please the god: the silence from her uncle was wrong, she could not understand what she had been thinking of, or understand why she was still out here chasing after a damned horse, any horse, to prove she was responsible, when her father and uncle Sasha were in danger. She had made a stupid choice, she had counted on hearing her uncle and knowing he was all right, and nothing was right, god—
But she was so close now—and Patches could still fall in and drown, right in front of her eyes, and if the damned horse would come on, it would only take a moment and she could ride back and leave the stupid filly in the woods until morning; she would be safe, just up the bank, just a few more steps up. “Come on. Patches, dammit! Oh, god—”