Her mother had to have known the truth from the day she was born. Her uncles must have seen it: anyone in Vojvoda must have seen it, if they had ever laid eyes on her real father—and now she knew why her uncles had never allowed her outside her garden, never allowed her to meet any children except her nearly grown cousins, never let her see the world except secretly, over the garden walls, never let her speak to anyone but the trusted servants who lived within the house—and except Yvgenie and Yvgenie’s father’s men, for a few bewildering hours when they had made the betrothal, and drunk a great deal, and for those few hours made the whole house echo to voices and to strangers’ laughter. She had spent her whole life afraid of spells in her drink and in her food, spells on her doorway and on the steps she walked. She had expected assassins and wizards every day of her life, and dammit, her uncles had surely known all along who she was and whose she was: that was what she could not stop thinking, clinging as she must to her father’s waist, jolted and tossed on the way to finding a husband she had never had: They knew. They knew all along and they lied.
Her new-found father frightened her: she was sure he used the sword he wore on bandits and trespassers in this woods—she earnestly hoped, on no one else. But when he had seized her hands in his, looked her straight in the eye and told her his side of things, everything he had said made clearer sense than she had ever seen or heard out of her uncles or her mother; and as for Sasha—Sasha looked nothing like the dreadful wizards of her imagining, either, except the books he carried. She had seen no skulls, no dreadful ravenous creatures, unless one counted the sullen-looking furball that suddenly turned up beside the horses, or, when they stopped to catch their breaths and got down, popped up in one blink on the black horse’s rump, tugging at the pack with hands like a man’s, looking askance at her with eyes round and gold as the moon.
Pyetr said, “Vodka, yes,” got the vodka jug and poured the creature a drink in mid-air.
One never expected to see a dvorovoi with one’s own eyes, since she had never seen one in her garden. Sasha lived sequestered in the woods? She had no idea of the world except her nurse’s tales about talking birds and lost tsarinas and horrid wizards with long white hair and long fingernails. She had never ridden a horse before, she had never spent a night under the stars, she had never waded a brook or clung desperately to a branch to save herself from drowning—and now had done all of that, fallen asleep on the bare ground night after night and waked up one morning face to face with her true father—like the tsarevitch in her nurse’s story. And of wizards—one never expected one who taking a pot of salve from his pack, spent his rest like her father, rubbing down his horse’s legs and talking to the creature in fond and worried tones, more kindly than she generally heard people speak to other people. Sasha’s hair was brown, his very nice nose was sunburned and she found herself recalling how, waking this morning he had looked as startled as she was. Besides, he had said please. Would a wizard who laid spells on people’s doorways and winecups beg anyone’s pardon? Her uncles scarcely would. Only Yvgenie—Yvgenie who had met her a moment by the stairs—
Yvgenie who had shyly met her behind the stairs while their elders were talking and promised her Kiev and all the world—Yvgenie who had said—
Her father nudged her arm, offering her a kind of grain cake from their packs, all wrapped in sticky leaves. He had his own mouth full. He insisted with a second offering and she took the cake doubtfully and bit into it.
Honey. Grain and currants. It was the best sweet she had ever tasted in her life, with her hands all over dirt and the tart musty leaf sticking to the honey. Her father went on to hand one to Sasha, who after washing his hands in the spring was wiping them on his breeches. Sasha took it and made one mouthful of it while he was putting the salve back in the packs and preparing to get back on his horse, all of a rush as everything had gone. Her father took up the black horse’s reins, swung up in one sudden move and reached down u hand for her, while all she could think, trying to swallow down the sweet in a mouthful to free her hands, was how dreadfully it was going to hurt.
He looked her in the face, looked over her head at Sasha and said, “God, she’s sore as hell, Sasha, can you do something?”
Her face must have gone absolutely, devastatingly red, when something odd happened, and the soreness went away. Like that. She glanced at Sasha, who looked elsewhere, and looked her father in the face, her heart pounding.
“Magic,” he said, and whisked her up by an arm and left her nothing to do but to catch hold of him and the saddle and him again, trying desperately to get her skirts arranged while the horse was starting to move.
Her whole life seemed suddenly caught up and sped along faster than she could sort out the images. Nothing was true but the things everyone had said were false, her father just had embarrassed her beyond bearing and yet known exactly what was wrong with her, and cared, more than that, cared for someone he had no time for, in his care for his other daughter—
In her life she had been nothing but convenient to everyone around her, when they had talked about Yvgenie’s father, and her wedding, and how she was going to bring the whole family to court at Kiev, and she was to remember how to mention this uncle to Yvgenie’s father, and that uncle—
She felt cold, thinking: They needed me, god, yes, they did.
She remembered one summer climbing up the stack of old boards by the garden shed, and up and up the last scary bit to the forbidden crest of the garden wall, where she could look out on the lane behind the house.
There was a girl who walked by sometimes, with heavy baskets. One supposed she was a servant. But she sang as she went. And the richest girl in Vojvoda had used to wish she were that girl, able to wander the town with no fear of wizards and murderers.
Fool! her mother had cried, when a cousin caught her at it and told. You fool! Don’t you understand anything?
Now she did. God, now she most certainly did.
Bielitsa lagged further and further behind, and Ilyana reined Patches around and rode back along the hill, seeing Yvgenie had gotten down and walked away from Bielitsa—on private business, she supposed. She got down from Patches and waited for him, taking the chance to adjust the girth that had been slipping the last while.
But something was wrong. It might be her mother wishing at them. It was coldness, it was demand, and need, and all those things she had felt lifelong from her mother—
Then she thought, with a chill, No, not mother—it’s him. It’s him, the same as my mother feels, sometimes—
She wanted immediately to know where he was, got a worse and worse feeling, and walked after him, leaving Bielitsa and Patches to stand.
She found him sitting on the hillside, on a carpet of old leaves, looking out at a hillside no different than this one. She walked up to him and he said, still gazing elsewhere: “I need to rest. Please. Just let me rest a while.”
She wished him well, then, but he made a furious gesture. “There’s nothing left, Ilyana.” He put a hand over his eyes and wanted something, but there seemed a wall between them, and a wall ahead, and a weakening of her own wishes that made her feel as if—as if her mother were wanting her again, calling her away from the river shore.
Ilyana, Ilyana, come home now—
And if she gave up and came home supper would be waiting on the table again and Babi would be there and Patches and Volkhi and Missy in the pen. Papa and uncle would be there safe and sound and no one would be angry with her.