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Then the wind – or whatever passed for wind here – began to draw her together.
The snowflakes that were Vera came nearer one another.
At first reluctantly.
Then more quickly.
As if every little part of her had suddenly remembered that it was not alone, that there were other parts close by, and that together they were not merely snow at all, but somebody.
She knew then, with perfect clarity, that the world below was vast and beautiful and dazzling – but if she forgot who she was, it would be perfectly content to leave her drifting in it forever.
That thought was beautiful too.
And terrifying.
Below her, a bright surface was rising to meet her now – soft and snowy and gently pulsing with light.
Vera thought she was about to hit it.
Then she thought that snow had no bones and therefore very little in particular available for injury.
Then she thought it was really much too late for foolish thoughts.
And in the next instant she landed, smoothly and all at once, in every snowflake.
Not as a girl.
As a shining drift of snow spread across the luminous ground.
For some time Vera lay there trying to work out three things at once.
First, whether she was alive.
Second, where her hands had gone.
And third, how long one could reasonably remain a heap of snow before becoming seriously alarmed.
The answer to the first question was, fortunately, much more yes than no. The second was distressingly unclear. And the third appeared not to interest the local laws of nature in the slightest.
She was everywhere, if one wanted to put it beautifully and unhelpfully.
And nowhere in particular, if one preferred the truth.
She could feel every snowflake in the shining heap as herself, and this might have been fascinating if it had not also been extremely awkward.
«Very funny,» said Vera.
What came out was a faint shiver of light.
Not a voice. Not even a whisper. Merely a few snowflakes trembling with such indignation that, apparently, the meaning was obvious even to the air.
Above her stretched the strange sky – deep and endless, with neither sun nor moon. Light did not fall from above, as it did at home, where it generally preferred lampshades and, occasionally, the refrigerator. Here it was born everywhere at once: in each flake, each hill, each thin tower on the horizon. The whole world shone as if someone absurdly generous had scattered coloured secrets over everything.
Ordinarily Vera would have stared herself silly.
But just now she was in no mood for wonder.
Because somewhere back there were Mum and Vadim and Danya and Dad…
And the more sharply she remembered them, the more strongly something inside her began to pull itself together. Not metaphorically. Quite literally. The snowflakes stirred, reached for one another, and packed themselves closer.
Mum, thought Vera.
Something to her left glowed softly.
Vadim.
Several more sparks lifted and joined.
Ilya. Natan. Dad. Domino, you horrid, tailed traitor…
The shining heap shivered. Somewhere inside it came the feeling of shoulders. Then a head. Then something still rather vague, but unmistakably familiar:
I am me.
And this is only a dream.
That was encouraging.
And extremely odd.
A minute later – or an hour later – or whatever counted here as a minute – Vera no longer looked so much like a drift of snow as a very badly made snowman who had grand plans for becoming human. The top half had come together reasonably well. She had arms. She had a head. Her hair, admittedly, still resembled a glowing snowbank that had considered the idea of a hairstyle and then not pursued it.
She had no legs.
Or rather, she seemed to have them somewhere a very long way below, as if the world had decided to store them away until conditions improved.
Simply
«Help!» Vera shouted.
This time it came out properly human.
Her voice spread through the air in bright rings, the way ripples spread on water when you throw in a stone. Only here the water was snow, and the stone was panic.
«Help!» she shouted again. «Anybody! I’m stuck here! And for the record, this is not a metaphor!»
Nobody answered.
Far away, towers shimmered silver. Over the low hills darted things of light – bright creatures rather like birds, or else thoughts in a desperate hurry to be somewhere else. But near Vera there was nothing.
She had already drawn breath for a third call – possibly the most dramatic of her life – when a voice directly above her said,
«She’s making a noise.»
Another voice replied,
«She is not making a noise. She is declaring distress. That is different.»
Vera craned her head back.
Two creatures were hanging above her.
They were not large. They were not frightening.
But they were so very peculiar that for the first three seconds all one wanted to do was blink and wait for the world to correct itself.
The first was long and fine and softly lit from within, as if it had been made from morning frost and one careful breath. Its outline kept shifting a little, growing sharper and then blurring again, like a sketch on misted glass. Its eyes – if they were eyes – were dark and round and mildly astonished.
The second was brighter, sharper, and altogether more angular. Sparks kept racing over its golden-orange body, as if it did not stand or hover or even exist in peace, but was perpetually having a mild disagreement with its own edges. It wore the expression of a being who had managed in a single day to become involved in five conversations, three quarrels, and one misunderstanding, and saw no reason to stop there.
«Who are you?» Vera asked.
«She asks!» cried the bright one, delighted. «That means she’s thinking. Good sign. Or bad. I haven’t decided.»
«Answer first,» said the pale one gently. Then it turned to Vera. «We are Yin and Yang.»
«I’m Yang,» said the golden one at once. «And that’s Yin. She thinks slowly, but much too much.»
«And Yang thinks quickly,» said Yin, «which means not always with the appropriate part of himself.»
«Splendid,» said Vera. «Delighted to meet you. I’m Vera. Now perhaps one of you could explain why I appear to be an unfinished snow accident?»
Both of them bent lower.
Yang flew a quick circle round her.
«Because you haven’t finished assembling.»
«What a remarkably helpful observation.»
«I do what I can.»
Yin settled herself in the air – if one can settle oneself without possessing a chair, a floor, or apparently any very fixed ideas about anatomy.
«You fell fresh,» she said. «New arrivals always come apart. Especially if they fall for a long time and think too much on the way down.»
«And if they don’t think?»
«Then they fall faster,» said Yang brightly. «But get lost more often. You’re doing rather well for a puddle, actually.»
«Thank you,» said Vera through her teeth. «I have always longed to hear that.»
Yang peered at her.
«She’s sarcastic.»
«Then she is certainly alive,» said Yin with a nod.
This was said so matter-of-factly that Vera did not at once have time to be offended.
«Of course I’m alive!»
«That,» said Yang, «is rather a philosophical question. A great many things here are alive while they are remembered. And some are extremely lively whenever anyone is looking at them.»
«Where is here?» Vera asked quickly. «What is this place? Why did I fall as snow? Why didn’t I have any legs? Why is everything glowing? Why are you like this?»
«That,» said Yin, «is several questions.»
«I like them that way,» said Yang. «Only just arrived and already wants the whole structure of the universe in three sentences, preferably before lunch.»
«We do not have lunch,» Yin reminded him.
«That explains why everyone’s so highly strung.»
Vera stared at them.
«Could you answer like human beings?»
«We could,» said Yang. «Sometimes we choose not to.»
Yin gave a small sigh, with the air of someone accustomed, and likely to remain accustomed, to another person’s restlessness.
«This is the Snow World of Meanings,» she said. «Everything that has ever been named, thought, spoken, or felt leaves a trace here. It gathers. It falls as snow. It settles in layers. And it becomes part of the world.»
Vera was silent.
The words were simple enough. But inside them was something far too large.
She looked round again.
Now that the fright had drawn back a little, the world did indeed look like that – a place made not of stone and wood, but of something finer and tougher. Memory. Thought. Speech. All the things people insist are invisible until they begin disappearing.
«Why snow?» she asked.
«Because falling out of your world is the most honest way to arrive,» said Yin.
«And because it’s prettier,» added Yang. «Worlds do like dressing up, you know.»
«Fresh snow falls from above,» Yin went on. «Light, bright, newly made. Old snow sinks lower. There it grows denser, heavier, quieter.»
«At the top everything is quick,» said Yang. «Noisy, shining, forever changing. Cities flare up and alter so often that nobody ever quite gets used to them. Deeper down, things slow. They grow older. More stubborn.»
«Like school and a library?» said Vera, not quite sure why that was what came into her head.
«A little,» said Yin. «Though not exactly. Nothing here copies your world directly. It is your world reflected in dream. Or in water. Or in the memory of someone who loved it very much and got some of it wrong.»
Vera looked into the distance.
Now she could see that one cluster of towers was pale and airy, all swift bridges and bright lines. In another place there were darker hills, calmer somehow, as if the snow there had lain a very long time and become serious. And farther still something glimmered so faintly that it looked either like a city or the memory of one.
«And who lives here?» she asked.
«Oh, all sorts,» said Yang, brightening at once. «Simple ones. Complicated ones. Old ones. New ones. Things said a thousand times. Things remembered by only two people, but properly. Things born yesterday. Things almost forgotten. Things that had no business existing at all, but made a determined effort.»
«We are simples,» Yin explained. «The smallest stable kind. We gather. We join. We help hold shape together, provided the shape is not too wilful.»
«And you,» said Yang, poking a glowing finger in Vera’s direction, «are currently an extremely wilful shape.»
«I had no legs.»
«That does tend to sour the temper.»
Vera gave an unwilling snort.
And instantly took advantage of it.
«Then put me together.»
Yin and Yang exchanged a glance.
«Just like that?» said Yang.
«What, do you take bookings on Thursdays?»
«As a matter of fact,» said Yang, «we are under no obligation – »
«But we can,» said Yin gently.
«But we are under no obligation,» he repeated.
«But we can.»
«But – »
Yin merely looked at him.
Yang subsided. He hovered there radiating the expression of someone to whom the worst injustice in history had just been done.
«All right,» he muttered. «We’ll put her together. But if she turns out to have a dreadful character, that’s on you.»
«I already have a dreadful character,» said Vera. «I manage it quite well.»
«I like her,» said Yang unexpectedly.
«Don’t get attached,» said Vera.
Yin stretched out her hands.
From her fingers came thin pale threads – not ropes, not beams, but something between movement and intention. They touched the snowy light at Vera’s sides, gathered it, and drew it upward. Yang joined in at once. His threads were brighter and sharper and worked with the brisk competence of someone catching a falling saucepan – not because it is elegant, but because if no one does, there will be a mess.
Vera felt something forming beneath her.
At first vaguely.
Then unmistakably.
Knees. Calves. Feet.
It was not painful. It was simply unpleasant. As if her legs were having to remember they were legs after a long and unsuccessful attempt at being weather.
«Ow,» said Vera.
«Excellent sign,» said Yang. «The material is returning to a healthy disagreeableness.»
«Gently,» said Yin. «She is not fully fastened yet.»
«I can hear you,» Vera informed them.
«That also is a good sign,» said Yang.
A little later – or what may locally have been half a year – Vera was standing. Not very steadily. Somewhat glowy. But definitely standing.
It felt so marvellous that she immediately wanted to run somewhere at once while asking at least ten more questions as she went.
She settled for exactly ten.
«So if somebody is forgotten, they disappear?»
«Not at once,» said Yin.
«First they fade,» said Yang. «Then weaken. Then sink lower. Or come apart. Or become a shadow of themselves.»
«And if they’re remembered?»
«Then they hold,» said Yin. «Sometimes very strongly. Stronger than you would expect.»
«Is a name really that important?» Vera asked.
This time both of them answered together.
«Yes.»
Then Yin said, «A name is what gathers you into one thing. Here, without a name, it is difficult to stay whole. You may be bright, strong, ancient – but once the name begins to go, the shape starts quarrelling with itself.»
«And a shape quarrelling with itself is never attractive,» Yang added. «Sometimes it is even explosive.»
«And you?» Vera asked. «Are you made of names too?»
«We are simples,» said Yin. «We are named by what we do. That is enough for us.»
«I should prefer something grander,» said Yang. «Lord of Brilliant Decisions, for instance.»
«You cannot make decisions,» Yin pointed out.
«That is why it sounds grand. Nobody would suspect a thing.»
Vera laughed.
And while she laughed, she felt the world around her again: shining, deep, strange, unlike anything she had ever seen and yet horribly familiar too.
The Snow World breathed round her in quiet coloured light. Far off, cities shimmered. Above one hill a long creature drifted by like a ribbon of brightness. The sunless sky glittered as if every star had decided to come and see for itself.
And everything might almost have been wonderful, if Vera had not suddenly remembered the most important thing.
«Wait,» she said. «How do I get home?»
Yin and Yang looked at one another.
And Vera immediately disliked how long they were silent.
They had the look of beings who know the answer perfectly well and would much rather not be the ones to spoil matters with it.
«What?» said Vera quickly. «Why are you being silent in that dreadful way?»
«We are not being dreadfully silent,» said Yang, offended. «We are making a meaningful pause.»
«That is almost always a bad sign,» said Vera.
«Not always,» Yin said gently. «Sometimes a pause is necessary in order not to say all the most unpleasant things at once.»
«Wonderful,» said Vera. «That is extremely reassuring.»
Rustlers
Vera had just opened her mouth to demand an explanation at once when Yin suddenly lifted her head.
Yang stopped crackling in his usual distracted way and seemed, somehow, to gather into himself.
And the air around them – that marvellous, shining, snowy air – grew heavier.
Vera felt it at once.
Not as a sound.
Not as movement.
More like someone else’s attention.
As if into a splendid hall full of music and lights there had suddenly walked someone who could not hear music at all, but was extremely good at counting other people’s spoons.
«What?» Vera whispered.
Yang turned to her slowly.
«And there,» he said, «is your answer to why you ought not to have shouted like that.»
«I wasn’t shouting! I was calling for help!»
«For local hunters,» said Yang grimly, «that amounts to much the same thing.»
At first Vera saw nothing.
Then on the far slope the glittering snow suddenly seemed wrong. Like fur lifting along the spine of a frightened animal. A shadow twitched there – long, swift, and much too smooth to be anything good. Then another.
And another.
They slid out of the radiance the way some thoughts arrive in the middle of the night: noiselessly, badly, and at entirely the wrong moment.
«Who are those?» Vera asked, already quite certain she was not going to like the answer.
«Rustlers,» said Yin quietly.
And one had to admit that the name suited them.
They were like wolves only in the sense that a nightmare is like a dog. The general arrangement was there, but the soul flatly refused to acknowledge the relationship. Long and supple and blue-silver, they skimmed over the snow as if they were not stepping on it at all, but drawing light out of it. Their fur neither bristled nor lay flat. It streamed, like smoke on water. Their muzzles were too narrow, too drawn out, and where their eyes ought to have been there were only dark hollows in which pale glints kept flashing – as if other people’s forgotten names were still trapped there, fluttering and unable to get free.
But the worst thing was not their faces.
It was the way they listened.
The Rustlers stopped in a half-circle, and all at once Vera understood. They were not looking at her.
They were listening to her.
To the way she was put together.
To the way her name held inside her.
Like hungry creatures that do not want meat, or blood, or bone.
They want meaning.
«Why are they staring at me like that?» Vera asked very softly.
«Because you’re fresh,» said Yang.
«And whole,» said Yin.
«And noisy,» Yang finished. «Which, if you will forgive me, was not a strategic triumph.»
One of the Rustlers moved forward.
The snow under its paws did not crush.
It dulled.
Wherever the creature passed, the coloured sparks went out for a moment, as though someone had drawn a wet grey hand across the world.
«What do they want?» Vera asked.
«To bite off a piece,» said Yang with disgusting calm.
«A piece of what?»
«Oh, a memory, perhaps. Or a name. Or a feeling. They generally begin with the tastiest bits.»
«And what is the tastiest bit about me?»
«Judging by the way they’re behaving,» said Yang, «all of it.»
«Yang,» said Yin.
«I’m being honest!»
The Rustlers came nearer.
Now Vera could hear them properly. They did not growl. They did not pant. They did not show any decent wolfish teeth.
They rustled.
Softly, dryly, steadily – like pages turning in an empty room when nobody is there. At the sound of it, the skin on Vera’s back prickled so fast it was as if it had been rehearsing.
She took a step back.
Then another.
«Can we run?» she asked.
«We can,» said Yang.
«Will we get away?»
«No,» said Yang.
«Wonderful.»
«I have a gift for clarity,» he observed.
Yin moved forward.
Or rather, she did not exactly move. She simply found herself a little farther ahead, the way water somehow gets between a bank and a falling stone.
«Behind me,» she said to Vera.
«And behind me too, if you prefer your survival with a little more excitement,» Yang added.
Both of them flung up their hands.
The light around them shivered.
The Snow World of Meanings, quiet and beautiful a moment ago, suddenly began rearranging itself before Vera’s eyes. The hill to the left bent and grew higher. Behind them a shining ridge reared up. Thin silver trees shot instantly into a thick glittering wood. A distant tower broke apart into misty radiance and reappeared somewhere else entirely.
«What are you doing?» Vera gasped.
«Confusing the trail,» said Yin shortly.
«We’re simples!» Yang shouted, and golden sparks flew from his hands into the air. «But useful ones! I can muddle the near things, she can hold a shape steady. Between us we are pure bureaucracy for any pursuit!»
The first Rustler sprang.
Vera did not even have time to scream.
Right in front of her face a thin white arc flashed into being, and the creature struck it with a dry, horrible sound – not like an animal hitting a wall, but like a knife striking ice. The Rustler recoiled. Grey sparks spilled from its hollow eye-sockets.
«Run!» Yang bellowed.
They fled down the slope.
Or rather, Vera fled down the slope, trying not to look behind her and at the same time wanting desperately to look behind her, which, as is well known, is very bad for dignified running. Yin and Yang skimmed beside her, not so much running as directing the landscape itself. Bright tracks flashed beneath her feet. Stones shifted aside. Drifts opened into passages.
Behind them the pack rustled on.
The Rustlers came without growls, without howls, without any respectable warning at all. Only that dry hungry shh-shh-shh over the snow, which made the throat feel suddenly hollow.
One burst out on the right so fast that Vera did not see it until the grey shape was already reaching for her shoulder.
«Look out!» cried Yin.
But Yang was quicker.
He clapped his hands – sharp and furious, with an accuracy one would not have expected from so fidgety a creature. A golden ring flared in the air. The space in front of the Rustler jerked and folded like a sheet of paper, and the beast struck not Vera but its own shadow.
Vera had never seen a shadow scream before.
It was deeply unpleasant.
«Good heavens!» she gasped, still running.
«I told you I was useful!» Yang shouted, sounding absurdly gratified.
«You can boast later!» Yin snapped.
They shot out into an open stretch between two high shining cliffs.
Here the snow was falling more thickly. More brightly. The air was so crowded with radiance that everything looked as though it had been sketched in lightning.
And that was bad.
Because the Rustlers could see them perfectly too.
They were circling fast, skilfully, with that dreadful patience peculiar to creatures that have been doing the same thing far too long.
«They’re cutting us off from the path,» said Yang.
«I can see that,» said Yin.
«What does cutting us off from the path mean?» Vera demanded, breathless.
«It means exactly what it sounds like,» said Yang. «We are about to be divided into convenient parts.»
«That is a horrible way to explain things!»
«But a clear one!»
One of the Rustlers crouched to spring.
And then Vera saw that in one of its hollow eye-sockets something familiar flashed for an instant.
Not a face.
Not a word.
A feeling.
Warm summer. Laughter. Someone’s hand in hers.
Gone.
Vera went cold.
«Have they… already eaten things?»
«A great many things,» said Yin quietly.
And at that moment the Rustler sprang.
Vera flung up her arms over her head, though she knew perfectly well that elbows were poor defence against creatures that ate memories.
But no blow came.
Instead the world split with thunder.
Not metaphorical thunder.
Not beautiful thunder.
Actual thunder.
The sky – that deep strange sky with no sun in it – blazed with a white-gold crack. A shock rolled across the snow that flattened every Rustler to the ground at once, and inside Vera’s chest everything jumped as if her heart had suddenly decided it was leaving on its own.
A shadow fell across the clearing from above.
Huge.
Cat-shaped.
«Just try,» said a voice that made the air itself remember discipline, «touching my girl again.»
Vera looked up.
And for a second forgot how to breathe.
Domino was there.
And not merely there, either – for standing was a word for ordinary cats, the sort that slept on radiators and despised humanity in comfort. This Domino towered over the clearing like a thunderstorm that had taken the shape of a cat out of convenience and personal preference. His fur was blacker than water at midnight and whiter than fresh snow all at once. Thin lightnings ran along his sides. His whiskers shone like silver wires.
And above his head – whether one believed it or not – there gleamed a crown.