Pegasus, Lion, and Centaur

Chapter 2

The Wings of a Friend

When a man does not deny himself pleasures but gets too many of them, he becomes accustomed to them and ceases to feel anything. He needs increasingly more ingenious and artificial pleasures, and everything ends with inevitable degradation. But if pleasures, on the contrary, are limited by degrees, then each day everything will be new. Real. Even just a drop of water, the sun, or a five-minute rest on a hike will make you incredibly happy.

At five in the morning Ul got up to guide Yara. He climbed up, then again descended and, taking a shortcut, went through the gallery. His steps resounded far along the long empty corridors of HDive. In the dining room there was not a soul – not even the angry old lady Supovna, who, unceasingly grumbling and complaining that no one helped her, allowed no one to approach within ten metres of the stove. However, even without Supovna in person, her presence was felt. The infallible remedy for sleep stood on the centre table: three mugs of strong tea, pickles, and a plate with heavily salted black bread. One mug was empty.

“It means Dennis is already in the stable,” said Yara, appearing soon after Ul. She was eternally late, but late in a civilized manner: about five minutes. Ul nodded and salted a pickle. “I love everything salted!” he said to himself. “Although what can one think about the man who salts pickles? Lacking some mineral!” Sitting in the semi-darkness, Yara bit off black bread in large mouthfuls, sipped her tea, and examined a thick stack of photographs, small and hard as playing cards. The photographs were taken in part with a hidden camera, in part with the help of a telescopic lens.

“This is only in the last week. What do a system administrator, a gym teacher, a theatre lighting technician, a student, a boiler room attendant, and a deaf fellow, a former musician, have in common?” she asked, hiding the photographs from Ul. “The same as the elderly astrologer, the gloomy unsociable person with an umbrella, and the respected-by-law criminal with fingers like sausages. But earlier we didn’t deal with these. It means they’re recruiting new warlocks. Expanding the reserves of the forts,” Ul instantly answered. Yara stopped chewing. “What? You knew?” “It was simple to guess. Athanasius took the picture of the lighting guy. Then showed me the scratch on his jacket. He maintains: they fired at him from a schnepper,”2 said Ul.

“I wish they were vampires,” Yara sighed. “In your dreams. If they were vampires, the problem would be solved in a week with the strength of forty-fifty people. Or could appeal to the Vends.3 But they aren’t vampires, and there’s nothing more to say,” Ul cut her off.

He went out first and stopped on the porch to wait for Yara. Suddenly huge hands grabbed him and lifted him up off the floor. Ul was dangling with his head down and contemplating the wide-mouthed essence in an unbuttoned sheepskin coat. By the porch, a giant of three-and-a-half meters in height was standing unsteadily. This was a living attraction, an incident, animated by one of the founding fathers of HDive. In the daytime it hid in the Green Labyrinth, at night it trampled around HDive. Several times girls that had disappeared were found in its stomach, once even Kuzepych himself.

“I am Gorshenya, clay head, hungry belly! I’ll eat you!” the giant informed him. He pronounced the words slowly and thoughtfully. “You’ll choke! Let me run up and jump!” proposed Ul. Gorshenya chewed on this thought for a while and then unclenched its hands. Ul’s head stuck in a snowdrift. Gorshenya took a step back and trustingly opened its enormous mouth. Four hundred years in a row it had fallen for one and the same trick.

The snow thawed in the night and shaped well. Ul rolled a snowball and threw it into Gorshenya’s mouth. When Gorshenya was standing with mouth open it saw nothing, because the two amber buttons, which served as its eyes, were thrown back together with the upper half of the head. Gorshenya slammed shut its mouth. “Perhaps I did not eat you?” “You ate my brother. And you’re not supposed to eat two brothers in one day.” said Ul. Gorshenya was saddened.

Yara came out onto the porch. Gorshenya stretched its hand out to her, but Ul slapped it on the fingers. “She doesn’t taste good,” he whispered, “but she has a tasty sister. She went that a way!” Gorshenya, waddling, limped off to search for the sister. “Poor dear! It believes everything,” Ul leniently said. “We’re the poor ones, believing nothing,” remarked Yara. “They say it buried treasure somewhere, and now it’s guarding it,” recalled Ul. The body warmed in the night was lazy. Ul generously scooped up snow and, snorting, washed himself. Melted water flowed down his collar. After understanding that whining would only make it worse, his body put up with it and agreed to be cheerful.

The scattering of stars drew a path to Moscow. From here, the vicinities of Moscow, the city was not discernible, but on a clear day it was possible to climb up the high pine tree and, from the “robber’s lookout” hammered together from boards, see a bright flat spot. That was Moscow. The path was covered. It could only be surmised by the lantern posts and the long snowdrifts, from which projected the humps of park benches. In the huge hdiver jacket, Yara seemed deceptively plump. Ul teasingly called her Winnie the Pooh. Staying on the main path, they reached the place where old oaks outlined a proper oval shape. Yara extracted a boot from the snowdrift and… placed it already on green grass.

Edged with stones, slender straight cypresses stretched to the sky. A climbing rose weaved itself around the iron arches. The lower part of its stem was the thickness of a kid’s hand. Stripping the petals, the wind carried them beyond the invisible boundary and dropped them onto the snow. It seemed to Ul that the snow was stained by blood, but to Yara the snow had been kissed. Yara looked around. The boundary of snow and grass was designated very clearly. Two distant oaks dozed in the snow, but a third, finding itself inside the boundary, did not even know that winter was somewhere beside it.

This oak was Yara’s favourite. She embraced the warm tree and pressed her cheek to it. Ul had noticed long ago how much skin and hands could tell Yara. Now she caressed the bark. Felt it not only with her palms, but also the back of her hand, her nails, and her wrists. She took in the tree with all its bends with the greediness of the blind, gaining a new sense instead of sight. Somehow she acknowledged to Ul that she would want to scratch her hand down to the nerves so that the sensations would intensify. “It happens,” said Ul.

Now he was standing beside her, chewing on a blade of grass and admiring Yara like a technician admiring a female humanist who does not remember what an integral is but willingly discusses the historical fates of peoples. The difference between Yara and Ul was approximately the same as that between a two-handed sword and a nervous foil. He respected her mind and sensitivity; she respected his determination and the ability to grasp the essence of anything without being distracted by details.

“You want to hide the newest tank from the female spy, place a nest with chickens on its motor,” remarked Ul. Practical things interested Ul greatly. He knew that somewhere here the most powerful marker was hidden from the day of the founding of HDive. This was what warmed the earth thoroughly and gave trees the life force. Now Ul for the umpteenth time gauged where the marker was hidden and what would be its size. Its power was colossal. Not a single one of those markers that Ul himself extracted could melt snow for more than five-six steps.

In front of Ul, creaking slightly from time to time, a huge pine tree, similar to a sail and with a flat top, was swinging from the wind. Among its roots was a blue beehive, along the roof of which lazily crept morning bees yet not thoroughly warmed by the sun. From the pine tree began the extensive Green Labyrinth – a carefully pruned mix of acacia, laurel, juniper, and boxwood. In the centre of the Labyrinth was the fountain – an enormous split stone with a whimsical crack, along which water flowed.

All around chrysanthemums grew wildly. Yara usually fell on her knees and felt the flowers with impatient fingers. Ul, though, was amused by the names. “How many rounds of hookah must one smoke in order to name chrysanthemums ‘Ping pong pink’? And ‘A spring dawn on the dam of essence’?” he was interested. Yara would visit the chrysanthemums even now, but this was impossible. After going around the Labyrinth, they crossed one more invisible boundary and again snow began to creak under their feet.

Dennis was waiting for them by the winged-horse stable. He sat on the planted-in tire and reproachfully froze. Frail, his face was pale. His nose was similar to a radish. He looked a year or two younger than his sixteen years of age. His hdiver jacket was zipped all the way to the top. His eyes were like that of a hamster: like beads. His right shoulder was lower than the left.

“He’s nervous!” said Ul. “And you weren’t nervous before your first dive?” “Four hundred times more… Well, I lied: three hundred and ninety-nine!” Ul corrected himself. Yara laughed. It is a miracle what a person can now and then fit into some infinitesimal thing: a short phrase, an action, a look. Here Yara also by mysterious means fit into her two-second laughter: energy, spontaneity, affection without coyness. “I remember how you swaggered into the dining room after your first dive. Turned up at breakfast in the jacket. Everybody’s jacket was new but yours was chafed. And so mysterious! Simply a super hdiver!” she said, still splashing her delightful laughter. “I was pretending,” Ul explained, embarrassed. “I scratched the jacket with a brick. Later I really got it from Kuzepych.”

After seeing Yara and Ul, Dennis jumped from the tire. He moved like a lizard. Quick fits and jerks. “Why Delta for me? It’s unfair! I’m best in the subgroup. I held my ground in flight on Caesar!” he shouted. “Flight is a different matter. For the first dive a steady horse is better,” Yara patiently explained. Dennis outright called Delta a stool. “Now that’s wonderful. You won’t fall off a stool,” Yara praised and, having left Dennis in the company of Ul and Delta, dived into the stable.

Everybody’s mama Delta was bored. It shifted from foot to foot and snorted into the snowdrift. An elderly, somewhat short-legged mare, ash-grey, “mousy” coloured, with a black stripe on the back and a thick tail to the ground. Wing feathers the size of a human arm. The feathers themselves were brownish with dark ends. There were no foals beside it, and there was nobody for Delta “to cheresh,” according to Ul’s expression.

After noticing Ul, Delta made off in a business-like manner towards him to beg. “You’ll manage without! I’m a cruel and greedy animal hater!” warned Ul. It did not move away. Ul’s action now and then did not match his words. Moreover, it was well-known to clever Delta that the pockets of his jacket were never empty. After feeding it half a rusk, Ul appraisingly shook the saddle and loosened the girths a little. The saddle was slight, stretched forward. The front pommel was turned down, girding the muscular bases of the wings in those parts where the feathers had not yet begun.

Ul approached Dennis and in a friendly way slapped him on the shoulder. “Checked the pockets? Combs, ball-point pens, cosmetic fillings on the teeth?” Dennis shook his head. “Well, look, otherwise will think of something,” promised Ul.

“More briefing. First of all, understandably, is your ride. When you’ve gained height, you take the horse into the dive. It happens, a novice is nervous, pulls on the rein, and attempts to turn it around. You’ll only confuse the horse with this. At the moment before the dive, the speed is such that it can no longer take off. But if it foolishly stretches them out, all its bones will turn into corkscrews. In short, you panic, you’ll destroy yourself and the horse.”

“Dispersion?” Dennis prompted. Ul clicked his tongue. “Nuh-uh! Way off base, as the saying goes… Dispersion is when the horse crosses over but you don’t. Usually this happens when a hdiver doesn’t trust the horse. Then the horse disappears and the hdiver is pressed into the asphalt.” Dennis turned pale and Ul was sorry that he said too much. “In short, trust Delta. It has already been diving for ten years. The main thing, you don’t interfere with it: it’ll do everything itself,” he said in haste. Dennis looked with doubt at Delta, which, after dropping its lower lip, was begging for another rusk.

“Next, the crossing! Here everything is so instant that you don’t have time to be aware of anything. A hundredth of a second and you’re in the swamp. This is the most unpleasant phase. What’s the main principle of passing the swamp?” “The principle of the three little monkeys,” Dennis’ answer was learnt by heart. “Correct. ‘Hear nothing, see nothing, and say nothing.’ The most important rules, the first two. Don’t listen to anything excessive, keep eyes closed or look at the horse’s mane.”

“But if…” Dennis began carefully. “No ‘ifs’!” Ul cut him off. “Can never believe anything in the swamp, however plausible it may seem. I personally knew an outstanding fellow who, after the swamp, tried to wave my head off with the trowel.” Dennis cautiously looked at Ul’s head. It was on the spot. “Why?” “It seemed to him that I stole his head and replaced it with mine. Here he decided to put things right,” Ul willingly explained.

“And why am I not diving with Athanasius?” Dennis asked suddenly. Ul tensed up, because the fellow who attempted to change heads with him was Athanasius. And now Ul was considering: whether Dennis surmised something or this was an accidental shot. “Yaroslava is an experienced hdiver. She has more than a hundred dives,” Ul said, accentuated with his on-duty voice, and removed a straw stuck on Dennis’ shoulder. “Well, break a leg! Pass the swamp, and in Duoka your guide will show you everything.”

Yara went along the stable. In the semi-darkness a snorting was heard, a friendly puffing. Icarus was playing with a plastic bottle. Ficus was chewing something. Münnich, a calm old gelding with a white-yellow stripe on its head, was licking the grid. Its tongue was frozen to the metal, and Münnich was surprised by the new sensation.

But here was also Eric, a powerful, broad-chested stallion, so high in the withers that once Yara was scared of it. Yara slid attentive fingers along Eric’s wings, beginning from the base and ending with the feathers. She had to ascertain that everything was in order. It happened that the horses got frightened at night, began to thrash about in the tight stalls, and incurred injuries. Eric watchfully squinted and pressed down its ears. Winged horses do not love having their wings touched. “So, I can’t touch you but it’s okay for you to roll around?” Yara asked, pulling out hay stuck between the feathers.

Yesterday Eric was taken out till snowfall and now, having stuck its snout out of the stable and scared by the prickly whiteness everywhere, it snorted, started, and attempted to take off. Its wings were the shade of straw. Each was about four metres. Huge, of oppressively perfect shape. Yara held it with difficulty. She let it study and smell the snow, and little by little Eric calmed down.

Dennis was fighting with Delta, persuading it to straighten its wings. Otherwise he could not sit down on the horse. Sly Delta was being obstinate. The stable was just fine for it.

“The mission!” Ul reminded them in an undertone. Yara, having completely forgotten about this, looked gratefully at him and touched Dennis’ clms with her own. Bluish smoky letters flowed out into the air. After waiting until they faded, Yara scattered them with a hand. “A three-month-old girl’s heart is developing incorrectly. The operation is today. Chances are small. Need a marker. The girl’s name is Lyuba,” she said.

Dennis loosened Delta’s cheek strap. “This isn’t a training legend?” “Training jump to Duoka?” Ul evaded the question, and Dennis, confused, began to pull the strap again. “And if we get a marker, the operation will still take place?” he asked after a time. “Most likely. But then who knows? A marker creates development…” Yara said honestly.

She took Eric’s left wing aside and jumped into the saddle. Eric itself had already raised the right wing, saving it from a foot. The steadiness, with which Yara, timid and shy in everyday things, steered a horse, always amazed Ul. It seemed that an entirely different person was sitting in the saddle. She sat down, tossed back her hair, and became a hdiver. Here and now precisely this transformation took place in front of his eyes. “Eric first, Delta behind!” Yara shouted to Dennis. Ul hemmed, appreciating how craftily she said this. Not “After me!” but “Eric first.” Female management has its special features.

Ul walked beside her and led Eric. There were yellowish circles under his eyes. “You promised yesterday that you would sleep!” Yara with reproach reminded him. “Well, somehow…” Ul said guilty, and it was not clear what formidable Somehow prevented him from lying down. “Go lie down now.” Ul looked at the snow, expressing by the look that it was impossible to lie down right here and now. “Can’t. I’ll hang around the stable and wait for you. Aza’s foot must be looked at. Bunt kicked her. HOLY! Dang! Call themselves gentlemen! Really kicked a mare? Although Bunt, of course, knows nothing on the subject.” “Who’s dearer to you: Aza or me?” Yara asked jealously.

Ul looked cautiously at Dennis. That one was sitting like a statue on Delta. Occasionally, he jerked his hand and with such energy seized the red nose as if he wanted to tear it off. “Last night our people saw warlocks… You’ll take this?” Ul thrust his hand inside his jacket and pulled out a small crossbow with a pistol handle: a schnepper. Yara shook her head. “I rely on Eric,” she said, in order not to say something else. A single-shot crossbow is not all-powerful.

Yara and Dennis walked the horses in a circle and then two more in a light trot. Only then did Yara permit Eric to get into a gallop. It was only waiting for this. It rushed, out of mischievousness dashed off to the fence, flapped its wings dangerously, and took off from the ground. Yara heard a quiet hit: kicked with a hoof after all, snake! Already in the sky she turned in the saddle in order to see Ul. A small, beloved point next to the brick quadrangle of the stable.

Delta attempted to be sly and slowed down, but Dennis raised his voice at it, pushed it on with his legs, and made it take off. Having swung the lazy mare around – it was striving unnoticeably to turn in the direction of the stable – he sent it after Eric. Eric wanted to gain height sharply, but for the time being Yara held it back, forcing it to do this gradually. It would be spent, it would be covered with sweat, but its strength must last a long time.

The horse’s back under her shook slightly. The sensations of flight and gallop were different. She could distinguish them even with eyes closed. Yara bent down to the horse’s neck. When the wings were flapping and, slowly scooping up air, swept back, she saw a sparse forest. Further were warehouses and a large field connected to the highway by a winding road.

Yara muffled her face with a scarf. The head wind burned her cheekbones, brought tears to her eyes. Yara knew that a little longer and she would feel like a piece of ice, which was set crookedly on the horse. Everything would fuse into a frozen mass: thoughts, happiness, love for Ul, and even fear. Only the desire for warmth would remain. Dennis overtook and flew beside her. Delta’s “mousy” fur began to turn white, covered with hoar frost. The hair below the snout iced up, as if the old mare had grown a rare white beard.

The sky in the east was crimson-striped like a treacherously killed zebra. Yara kept the course directly to these stripes, anxiously examining them. Suddenly something changed in the sky, and above them hung a large cloud, dazzling-white on the edges and rather soiled in the centre. Wisps separated from the cloud. Imagine a cat hidden inside ripping it up with its paws. Yara looked down and estimated. Still low. Must get higher for the dive. She waved to Dennis and directed Eric into the cloud. About ten seconds later it shot up out of the other side. Now the cloud was lying below, more like a loose pile of snow. Above, as far as the eyes could see, more clouds were drifting. One overhead, fiery, resembling a hippopotamus, swallowed the sun and slowly digested it.

Dennis appeared only after a minute. He pointed at Delta with indignation and threatened it with the whip. The mare had a devious look. Yara understood: Delta pretended that the cloud scared it, using this as a pretext in order to return. Its tricks were well known to Yara. In her time she also started with Delta.