Dmitrii Emets
Methodius Buslaev. Ticket to Bald Mountain

© Dmitrii Emets, 2022

Translated from Russian by

Jane H. Buckingham

Translation edited by

Shona Brandt

Cover designed by

Eva Elfimova

Titles in the Series

Methodius Buslaev – The Midnight Wizard

Methodius Buslaev – The Scroll of Desires

Methodius Buslaev – Third Horseman of Gloom

Methodius Buslaev – Ticket to Bald Mountain

Chapter 1
The Fairy Middlelina

Eddy Khavron yawned. Eddy Khavron Sighed. Eddy Khavron looked in the fridge, but discovered only soup from the day before yesterday, covered by a skin of congealed fat. He was hungry and angry. Only a handful of change jingled in his pockets, as if he pestered passers-by on the way to the subway.

His job at the fitness club had ended disgracefully a week ago, when, printing the next menu, Eddy, for the sake of mischief, changed its heading. In the new version the proud Queen of the Beach became Queen of Cellulite. According to Murphy’s Law, precisely this distorted menu was sent for radio ad preparation, and no one, of course, checked anything until the very last moment. Eddy’s boss did not appreciate the joke and, ejected from the quiet creek of cocktails and vitamin salads by a hostile coastal current, Eddy drifted further along the river of life.

Money quickly ran out. And then, his beloved sister Zozo, taking a long weekend, went off to a holiday centre near Moscow, where she attempted to arrange her fate once again. Daphne and Methodius had also disappeared somewhere, but Eddy hardly remembered them: there was no time for it. He, I repeat, was hungry and angry.

The doorbell tenderly chimed once, again, and suddenly had a fit. Khavron was surprised. He was not expecting anyone. “Who’s there?” he asked.

“Telegram!” he heard the reply.

Eddy opened the door. But, alas, he never got the telegram. If, of course, one does not count the telegram smacking his chin with a fist. He did not manage to dodge. The dusty doormat with the Demerdzhi Mountain was thoughtfully laid under his fallen body.

Nevertheless, Eddy had not lost consciousness and, lying on the mat, he watched three men stepped over his body and entered the apartment. The first was a stout, clean-shaven person in a white turtleneck and black jeans, over whose belt hung a fat and probably sweaty belly. The companions of the stout person were two typical mobsters dressed in tracksuits and sneakers. They differed from each other only in that one had auburn hair and the other had a scar across his cheek.

After slamming the door shut, the owner of the fat belly kicked Eddy.

“F***!” Eddy gasped.

“You’re it, you! Get up, sailor! We’ll talk!”

“Thanks. Better if I stay down. Had a rough day, you know,” Khavron declined, pensively touching his chin. He figured that if he got up, then he would most likely get it again.

“I said, get up!” the fat man said through his teeth and kicked him again.

Eddy got up reluctantly. He could understand intonations. They dragged him into the room and pushed him rudely into an armchair.

“I came to have a talk with you sailor to sailor. My name is Felix,” the stout person stated, straddling a chair.

Eddy wanted to ask why he called him sailor, but wisely kept silent. Call me sailor, just do not make me swim.

“Sailor, do you know why debts exist? In order to repay them! My job is to get money from those who don’t want to do this voluntarily,” Felix continued. The phrases poured out of him as if from a gramophone. Considerable experience and deep professional conformity were sensed.

“I don’t owe anything,” Eddy started to argue gloomily.

Refusing to own up, he hurriedly pondered over with which of his numerous debts this visit was connected. He owed a pile of people, but merely token amounts. In any case, there was no smell of a scuffle anywhere. At the most they would throw a cutlet or a tomato at him.

The fat man clicked his tongue. “Two years ago you worked in the Egypt restaurant?”

“Uh-h…” Eddy said, not daring to deny this. “Possibly. I worked in many places.”

“In the bar?”

“Well…”

Felix patted his cheek. “Smart boy, sharp! Remembers everything! So, sailor, you and your partner sold booze there and pocketed part of the takings. Then you quit. Your partner continued the previous stunt. He recently got caught… We already spoke with him,” the fat man looked at his own fist. “He repented and already paid a penalty. Besides that, he told us about you.”

“A real friend,” Eddy uttered miserably. Intuition advised him that denial was not the best idea in this case.

Felix chuckled approvingly. “Here’s a smart boy, understood everything! A real sailor! On the whole, three thousand from you, and we’ll go our separate ways.”

“Three thousand what? Roubles?” Khavron inadvertently blurted out and almost flew over the armchair. He did not even notice when the fat man swung. The pugnacious hulk definitely had a boxing past.

“No offence, sailor! Roubles aren’t considered here! This is so that you’ll be smarter. You’ll return the money?” Felix said.

“Yeah. No problem!” Eddy said maliciously, touching his cheekbone. “Oh yes, I forgot! I’ve donated it to the freezing of Antarctica! Please call my banker next week…”

The fat man’s fist took off again. This time Khavron caught the movement, which started in the hip, but, not having time to dodge, he again nuzzled his ear into the armchair.

“Listen, you! Keep your hands to yourself! What, do I look like one who has money?” Eddy yelled.

Frowning, Felix turned to his boys. The redhead, with great mental strain on his face, was cleaning his nails with a switchblade. The fellow with the scar was yawning openly, examining his sneakers. His long horse face was moody. Both were clearly bored with the routine work.

“What do you think? Does he not have money?” the fat man asked.

“Looks like it,” the redhead reluctantly said through his teeth. “The apartment is hopeless. No car, no computer, equipment is trash. Even if we clean out everything, it won’t run up to five hundred bucks… In short, the fellow is in deep.”

“Alright, sailor. You convinced me!” Felix said. “We believe you don’t have the money. We’ll give you three days to find the necessary sum. You get it – lucky you. You don’t get it – it’s on you. Today I hit you with one-third strength. Next time, three of us will hit together. And another thing, sailor, don’t even try to hide. If you do try, we…”

“Let me guess! Something like I’ll strongly regret it?” Khavron clarified by inquiring.

The fat man unstuck his massive backside from the chair. “Don’t be a smartass! I also see that you’re sharp,” he acknowledged.

The dour threesome marched past Methodius’ empty bed, also incidentally squinted without interest at his childhood photo, and flowed out onto the landing. “You, sailor, don’t relax too much! Or else you’ll be ugly!” the redhead said in farewell and made a crisscross motion with the knife, as if painting Eddy’s face.

Waiting until the door was closed, Khavron flung a sneaker at it and, propping up his head with his hands, put himself at the mercy of gloomy thoughts. Since Eddy had no prospects of getting money, his thoughts did not linger for long on this dead-end subject. They glided further, turning to the most abstract things.

“My mama must have looked at a zebra in the zoo while carrying me in her belly. Since then, my entire existence has been in stripes. Huge black and teensy-weensy white!” Eddy thought, leafing page after page through his life full of trouble.

Gradually he reached childhood, and in his memory, his nurse popped up as a bloated blue drowned man. Thin white lips with small dry cracks. Greyish short nose. Coarse thick hair on the chin. He moves every time she speaks. Here, his nurse grabs his arm painfully, pulling him to herself, takes off the dark glasses, and he sees terrible eyes without pupils.

“Aren’t the treasures of the Dnieper Rapids enough for me? Gold, weapons from dozens of shattered boats. The money that your parents paid me, I would make from mud. One day your life will bring you to a crossroad, and I’ll be there again! For the present, let your mother remove this dead bird!” the voice crackled softly. The toddler grows numb in soundless weeping. He vaguely feels that if he cries out, the witch’s dry fingers will close around his throat.

And again, although years had already passed, Eddy felt horror and the terrible dryness in his mouth. For decades, the old woman had become his nightmare.

“Pooh! Enough! Down with reminiscence! Everything in its own time. The time for tears and snot hasn’t come yet,” Eddy said to himself.

He shook his head and stood up, ready to go into the bathroom in order to immediately study his face. The face, having met Felix’s fist several times, began to grow suspiciously heavy. Eddy knew very well what this meant. Tomorrow morning he would only be able to leave home in dark glasses. The day after would be even worse: everything would be purple.

“Have to look at the bright side in everything. I’m lucky that I don’t do commercials,” Khavron muttered.

He was about to take a step towards the door, but at that moment a trickle of sand ran down from the ceiling onto his head. An astonished Eddy lifted his head, not understanding what this trick was, and barely had time to save his forehead from a small leather suitcase. The suitcase caught his chest, bounced, fell to the floor, and opened. Before glancing into it, the amazed Khavron stared at the ceiling. He expected to see a crack or a gap, but… nothing like that. The ceiling appeared so ordinary, like millions of other ceilings. At worst, a layer of plaster or a chandelier could fall from it, but definitely not a suitcase.

As a deeply materialistic person, Eddy hastily counted the options. “How did it get there? Aha! Methodius or Daphy had taped the suitcase to the ceiling. Why? Hmm, never know what nonsense gets into people’s heads… The suitcase is small, and the tape held it… But would tape stick to plaster? And then, where’s the tape now?” Eddy thought, getting more and more puzzled.

He squatted down and carefully peered into the suitcase. If the suitcase had been absolutely empty earlier (Eddy could have sworn a tooth in this, if not his own then someone else’s), then now a sheet of dense yellowish paper folded eight times lay on its bottom.

“Some kind of poster,” Khavron thought and automatically unfolded it.

ATTENTION: reward of 10,000 bagel holes.

The Bald Mountain maglice department (the intersection of Gallows Street and Two-Coffin Lane) is searching for a dangerous criminal.

Name: the fairy Middlelina.

Characteristics: height 9 cm, waist 7.5 cm. Never parts with her hat. Prone to irrepressible delight. Smokes Afghan cigarettes. Possesses skills of combat magic. Burns on finger tips. The sole surviving participant in the 1478 European Team Championship in Fatal Evil Eye.

Charges: participation in the theft of artifact and illicit predictions of the future, influencing its course.

She could have fled to the moronoid world. Rendering any assistance to the criminal is forbidden.

If you know anything, call the number 000-00-00 from any inoperative telephone or use the standard maglice summoning spell.

Eddy re-read the poster twice. It never came to his mind for a second that this could be anything more remarkable than a child’s scribble. “Who wrote this? Daphy? Or Mety? This is how everything begins. Anything at all, some amusement… About cigarettes there…” Eddy uttered in an undertone.

He had barely mentioned the cigarettes when someone coughed politely beside him. “Ah, what a nice young page! What a noble face, only a little stubble! Marvelous young man, do you have a light?” Eddy heard a quiet, husky voice.

He turned abruptly, but saw no one. “I imagined it,” he thought with dismay and, not keeping his balance, sat down heavily on the floor. More correctly, he almost sat, because the next moment, an unknown force had already tossed him into the air and hurled him to the sofa. Eddy lay patiently and waited until the image was restored before his eyes.

“You almost crushed me! Sitting in the presence of a lady is still okay. It’ll pass as necessity… But to sit on a lady is such bad taste that it isn’t allowed in polite society! What’s your excuse? Huh, what?” the voice said indignantly.

Eddy carefully slipped off the couch and, lying with his stomach on the floor, blankly examined his interlocutor. In appearance it was a very young, joyful, and energetic little lady – although who would undertake to determine the age of fairies? She was as tall as a ballpoint pen. On her head was a romantic looking straw hat. Behind her back were four wings, delicate, transparent, dragonfly-like, and in constant motion. The little lady held a fan in her hand. In the corner of her red lips was a cigarette inserted in a cigarette holder.

“Prince, I’m embarrassed! Why are you staring at me like a ram at the creation of non-Russian folklore? Better assist with a light. You see, the lady is in disarray,” the stranger said languidly.

“No light,” Khavron uttered with difficulty.

“Well, no light and no guillotine! Have to resort to magic, since everything is so run down!” the interlocutor sighed, easily lighting the cigarette with the touch of her fingernail.

“You’re the fairy Middlelina!” Eddy suddenly blurted out. At the same time, he wondered whether all these hallucinations about fairies were a direct result of Felix hitting him on the head.

The young lady was alarmed. Her wings began to flutter. Her hat dropped. Eddy saw the long dark hair caught with a gold ring. “I beg you, no more noise, prince! Magic and my name, uttered aloud! It’s enough to find out…”

“Find out what?”

“Shh! Not so loud! I’m not deaf! Why do you giants always yell this way? Trust me, the simplest words have much more power and meaning if you utter them in a whisper.”

“Huh? What?” Khavron did not understand.

Impatiently waving Eddy away, the stranger hastily folded her fan, turned it over, and – a magic wand ending in a crystal sphere appeared in her hands. Violet lightning intersected inside the sphere with a dry, unpleasant crackle.

“Magic wand-fan of five-hit action… No moronoid should touch the sphere, if, it goes without saying, becoming ashes isn’t in his plans… Shouldn’t even look again. But now a minute of patience, a carload of understanding, and I’ll shield the area!” the fairy warned.

She went around the room and alternately touched all the walls and the floor with her wand. Eddy heard a dry crackle. Only once did it seem to him that a transparent wall, delicate like muslin, merged with the main wall of the room. But most likely it was an optical illusion. The last was the ceiling’s turn. Fluttering her transparent wings, the fairy soared and touched it.

“Phew! Now I’m calm. If they didn’t spot me earlier, then I’m safe. Ah, overgrown duke? What do you think?” Middlelina asked, calmed down. Eddy silently swallowed the controversial title.

Fluttering all around, the fairy was suddenly interested in his face. “Well, dear man! How is it possible to be so careless to your face? You’re only given one. I’m surprised at you, man! Just what are you thinking? Is it really impossible to punch another place?”

“Apparently so,” Eddy muttered.

“Ah-ah-ah! Why such a prickly voice? Your mama should’ve loved you more in childhood, prince!”

“She loved me very much.”

“Trust me, I know better. Your mama loved your sister more. It’s noticeable from the small wrinkle slightly higher than the bridge of your nose. From the pattern on the retina of your left eye. And don’t argue with me, moronoid!”

“What did you call me?” Eddy asked inquisitively. He never missed an opportunity to supplement his rich dictionary of expletive vocabulary.

“Excuse me, prince! I forgot that you’re unenlightened. Chuck everything out of your head! Let me work on your face… I have a lot of experience. I was present several times during the production of mummies. You look slightly better, but so pale… You’re not a corpse by any chance, are you?”

Without resorting to the magic wand, the fairy touched Eddy’s face with a light palm. He felt a tingling sensation and the next moment, Middlelina was already sitting on the edge of the wardrobe dangling her legs as if nothing was the matter.

“Oh, how delightful! Doesn’t hurt anymore, does it? There won’t be any marks! I give a lifelong guarantee. Incidentally, I removed a couple of specks of cavities from your teeth, and relieved you of pimples, earwax, and dandruff! And of some other little things!” she bragged.

Eddy rushed to the mirror. A rather insolent, unshaven, but very healthy and contented face, which could belong as much to a marriage swindler as to a trumpeter of a provincial orchestra, stared at him from the mirror. The fairy was not joking. She had removed all the excess: the unhealthy blue under the eyes, the marks of Felix’s fist, and even the goofy birthmark on the right eyebrow. Standing by the mirror, Eddy hurriedly considered all the pluses of owning his own fairy. There was a sea of pluses, but, admittedly, also minuses. Eddy’s main minus was connected with those searching for the fairy. After thinking about this, he looked sideways at the phone, pondering whether to call 000-00-00, but this renegade thought did not linger longer than a second. To exchange a living and omnipotent fairy for some bagel holes! Dismiss it!

Khavron as a person belonged to the now widespread mercenary and cynical type; however, in his soul he was even slightly idealistic. True, if someone were to say something similar to him, Eddy most likely would turn around in disgust and start to protest.

“I won’t deliver you to anyone! You’re a treasure!” Eddy exclaimed.

Middlelina gave him an indulgent smile. “Thanks. I’ve already been told that. Although I have also heard the opposite. Especially from ungrateful rivals. They accuse me of all sorts of crimes.”

Khavron frowned. “I won’t say ‘you’re welcome’ to your ‘thanks’. But why are they looking for you?” he asked, checking.

“Dear giant!” the fairy said, burring nicely. “Remember this once and don’t repeat the mistake. If you did see the poster, it’s only because I wanted it…”

“Is what’s on the poster true?”

“It goes without saying. Illicit predictions of the future are half of the trouble. They would turn a blind eye to this for a long time if not for my other misdeed… I helped steal the artifact,” Middlelina said.

“That’s interesting. How did you do it?” Khavron asked.

The fairy glanced at him quickly and frowned. “One evening a little fellow muffled in a cloak came to me. I didn’t even make out his face. Something so small and insignificant. He brought a small sack of diamond dust and requested that a spell be cast on it. Diamond dust, you see, is a wonderful thing. The majority of artifacts are protected from teleportation and theft; however, if we sprinkle on them diamond dust, to which fairy magic is superimposed, an artifact can be taken away without much risk…”

“Typical setup! Why did you agree?”

Middlelina fluttered up and flew over to the window-sill. “I couldn’t refuse. Once long, long ago a wizard saved my life. I presented him with a ring and promised that I’d comply with any – even the most improbable – request of whoever would show it to me. And that evening my ring was returned to me and I was reminded of the promise in the form of an ultimatum.”

“But why didn’t you refuse?”

“You’re foolish! Magic promises can’t be broken! Even dark sorcerers are forced to keep their word if they’ve given it…” Middlelina replied with exasperation.

“Did he come to you? The one who saved you?”

The fairy shook her head so decisively that she almost lost her hat. “Nothing like that. He was much taller and wouldn’t begin to hide his face. But the ring was mine. I couldn’t take the oath back and cast the spell on the diamond dust. The little fellow turned without a sound and disappeared, hiding the sack with the dust under his cloak. A day passed, another day, then a week. Everything was quiet. I already began to calm down, when suddenly in the middle of the night there was a terrible commotion on Bald Mountain. Vampires, witches, werewolves, all sorts of other scum – everyone was rushing around as if scalded and gossiping like smooth grandmas, although no one really knew anything. Even corpses crawled out of the graves, although they had a rightful day off and it was not their night at all…”

“What, there are nights like this?” Eddy asked with superstitious horror.

Middlelina frowned. For her, the answer was too obvious. “Next morning, the bosses from Magciety of Jerky Magtion came in large numbers and started moving. The area where the Artifact Depository is located was immediately cordoned off. The night before, someone had infiltrated the depository, and it’s as confusing as a labyrinth. The placement of corridors and rooms changes each new moon. They assumed that the thief was still inside, because it’s impossible to teleport from the depository. Two groups of combat wizards and a guide entered the depository and rummaged through everything there. It goes without saying, they found no one. A hole gaped in the floor of the depository. Definite work of evil spirits. Only evil spirits could undermine the labyrinth in such a short time. All the artifacts were in place, except one…” the fairy knocked a new cigarette from the pack. Eddy thought that she was either terribly bothered or really smoked like a chimney.

“Baron, a flame! Ah, yes, I forgot!” she said and again used her fingernail.

“So, what did they steal?” Eddy, not liking long introductions, asked impatiently.

Keeping the smoke in her lungs, the fairy raised her eyebrows and made several zigzag movements with the cigarette. “I know that it’s some little thing unpretentious in appearance… Soon I heard that diamond dust was allegedly discovered at the crime scene. Not waiting until they figured out it was me – and this is easier than easy to do by the magic superimposed on the dust – I hid. I spent several days with a witch I know, but then the old lady got scared, and I ran to the moronoid world,” the fairy said.

“And it was impossible to remain? Well, explain to these lads from Magciety: you know, the oath and all that?” Eddy asked.

Middlelina let out smoke through her nostrils. “Possible, not possible, what’s the difference!” she replied nervously. “They don’t need an explanation, but the missing artifact. You watch, they’ll send the Clay Hound after me!”

“Is it so terrible? What’s the Clay Hound?”

“Oh, necromagic! No more, no less. Quickly mould a piece of clay, and saturate it with human and canine blood in a ratio of one to three. It doesn’t know fatigue. Possesses amazing sense of smell. Until the blood dries, it’ll follow the trail and lead to the thief even in the event that he teleports. When the Hound is very near, teleportation even becomes impossible. The very possibility is crossed out at the root. In short, it’s horrendously difficult to hide from the Hound!”

“But how will it pick up the trail?” Eddy asked thoughtlessly. He was never especially interested in dogs and only knew that it is not worthwhile to swing your arms in particular when you pass them on the street.

“How can you ask that! It’s simpler than simple!” the fairy threw up her hands. “Diamond dust with magic superimposed on it? My magic! I’m sure it’s already on my trail. Cursed clay! Sit here and be afraid! Dammit, I hate it!”

Continuing to flutter around the room, Middlelina almost slammed into Methodius’ childhood photo. Depressiac’s collar, lying on the bed once occupied by Daph, also did not escape her gaze. “Wow!” she exclaimed. “I wasn’t mistaken! Fun place! They won’t figure out any time soon that I might be HERE…”

Eddy wanted to clarify what she had in mind by “here” and what was so special in his little room on the outskirts of town, but did not. Lately, their home had seemed to him a very strange place now and then. Khavron felt this with that acuteness of a child who has not grown up.

“By the way,” the fairy continued. “Since I’ve settled here, there’s something I must confess. Are you ready for it?”

“Depends,” Eddy replied carefully.

“This! If you notice that I’ve changed abruptly, stopped recognizing you, threaten or try to hex you, don’t be disturbed or angry. The thing is, it won’t be me.”

“Why not angry?” Khavron did not understand. “Then I also want to warn you. If at some point I launch a hammer at you, make a hole with a drill, or accidentally pour boiling milk on your head, don’t be disturbed or stand up for your rights! It won’t be me.”

“You see, here’s the thing… It’s an unpleasant family secret, almost a skeleton in the closet,” Middlelina continued with embarrassment in her voice. “I had a twin sister. As painful as it is to say this, she wasn’t a very pleasant person in every respect. Fairies usually serve Light, she served Gloom. The lifespan of dark fairies is usually not long. As for how she met her end, I won’t tell you. If she wants, she’ll tell you herself…”

“What will she do?” Khavron asked again with superstitious fear. He was not too drawn to dealing with dead fairies.

Middlelina ignored his rejoinder. She was suffering. Her small hands creased the rim of her straw hat.

“For better or worse, a sister is a sister. I let her – later regretted it a hundred times – settle in my body for any third of a day of her choice. So, she still uses this right. I don’t know exactly what happens in those hours, when she borrows my consciousness, but I guess that it’s nothing particularly good. The body is always returned to me gorged and tired. I need to sleep it off, spending a good half of my sixteen hours on it. It turns out that, although only a third of a day belongs to her, in reality we’re equal, since I still need a third to sleep it off and generally tidy myself up!”

“Is there really something not right with you?” Eddy carelessly said.

“OF COURSE NOT!” the fairy soared up. “See what this glutton has turned me into! I hate her! Sometimes, in order that she could no longer get into anything, I’d eat two crumbs of a nut roll and drink a thimble of milk to spite her! But really, how do you make an impression on this pig? With her, everything’s like water off a duck’s back!”

Middlelina’s indignant face turned purple. Eddy listened patiently. He was already used to the fact that as soon as it comes to relatives, especially brothers and sisters, the most decent-looking people would start to gnaw the finish with their teeth.

“And what she can do at all! No diligence, no curiosity! Doesn’t know how to braid sun rays! Or stitch dew on eucalyptus leaves! Or transform tears into sea pearls! She’s only capable of predicting the future! Oh, she also knows combat magic very well! But it’s bad taste! A fairy, and suddenly a combat wizard arranging brawls in pubs!”

Eddy squinted sweetly, imagining to himself the tiny fairy, smashing the Queen of the Beach club with drunken eyes. “Would be good to send her there… Kind of like working out with a straw from the bar,” he thought.

“I understand, I understand. You have a terrible sister! I commiserate. I have a sister of my own, so you don’t have to tell me,” he said, trying to end the outpouring of family issues.

“Sister? What, also a crazy sorceress?” the fairy sympathized.

“Worse. She constantly searches for a man who can be chained with a wedding band on the finger. I don’t envy this poor fellow in advance.”

“A ring of celibacy?” the fairy asked with interest. “Your sister didn’t quarrel with powerful wizards, did she?”

“How would I know? I don’t think so,” Eddy said.

“And has she been searching for long?”

“Yes, as soon as she was divorced from Methodius’ papa, she has been searching… About ten years already, probably…”

“That’s still tolerable,” the fairy said authoritatively.

Khavron, however, did not think so. “But not in the same room! To have an older sister is such a monstrosity. I was thirteen when all sorts of idiots began to come to Zoe! They hung around here all day, sat on my bed, broke my roller skates, neighed like horses… Now and then I wanted to borrow a gun from someone! And then she acquired this fair-haired little thing with a chipped tooth, and it became a hazard warning!” Khavron said, displeased.

“Well, well. Don’t complain. Still suffer for about ten years. When that small boy hanging in the frame comes into his own, you’ll have a little more room. How would you like to settle in the Kuskovo estate?[1] If you want, it’s possible to rename it Khavronovo village!” the fairy proposed.

Eddy blinked in bewilderment. He took the fairy’s words as a silly joke. “How’s that?”

“You think it’ll be rather small? Well then, you’ll relocate to Versailles!”

“I need it very much. Better that I kick everyone out of our entrance, break all the partition walls here, plant a palm forest, and I’ll swing in a hammock and eat bananas. I’ll place a sniper on the roof so that he will shoot everyone who at least resembles a groom from a distance!” Eddy said. Now and then he fantasized in this direction, so he had everything worked out to the smallest detail.

“As you say,” the fairy said obediently. “I could arrange all this for you, but, I fear, it’s not worthwhile for me to especially attract attention with magic. Now, my sister is another matter. Sometimes she gets carried away, and she starts doing stupid things.”

“Hmm… But how can I tell you apart? Well, you and your sister?” Eddy asked, interested.

“My sister and me? Oh, you won’t confuse us, don’t worry! I grow thin, but that pig is a glutton. It’s precisely because of her that my waist is nearly equal to my height. I smoke, but she hates tobacco. She gets my hair dirty! She uses nightmarish perfume! She quarrels with my friends! Well, and many, many other things! The only thing that comforts me is that lately we don’t communicate. When I’m here, she isn’t. When she’s here, I’m not,” Middlelina stated.

“She won’t finish me off?” Eddy asked doubtfully.

“Just let her try! I’ll draw a sign on you and she’ll understand that you’re a moronoid under my protection!” Middlelina said decisively.

She raised her fan and, before Khavron had time to figure out what she was going to do, quickly drew a sign in the air. It seemed to Eddy as if something burning touched his chest. He yelled and grasped his chest, but the strange sensation was already gone.

“No need to be startled! It’s my personal magic brand. We fairies mark unicorns this way, and not a single vampire dares to shoot an arrow at them… Don’t worry, in your case the mark is temporary. About three days, no more… But now my sister will recognize you.”

After looking under his T-shirt and detecting nothing on his chest except the usual hair, Eddy calmed down little by little. “All the same, you should have warned me… Also considered me a unicorn! And what’s your sister’s name?”

“Indexelina!”

“Well, that’s a name. But this… what’s her name… Thumbelina isn’t related to you?” Eddy asked and immediately paid for his innocent question. The magic field of the indignant fairy threw him a good half metre away.

Middlelina stomped her foot. “Who? Thumbelina? You’d even ask if I’m related to a rifle, as one self-taught wit asked me! Now deceased, I dare add!!! Thumbelina! Phew! That scandalous person! What is the unacceptable flirtation with a mole worth to her, and, by the way, it was not a mole at all originally! The nicest retired treasurer of the gnomes. A little boring and frugal, I agree, but not at all deserving of such a fate… And then, just between us, Thumbelina’s marriage with the elf king was too hasty. In our circle, unequal marriages aren’t recognized. And you know why? Because when love disappears, inequality remains! And then what do the poor people do? Gnaw their elbows and throw darts at the wedding pictures!”

“But in the fairy tale, everything’s different!” Eddy said, backing further away from the angry fairy just in case.

“Fairy tales, young man, are political ads of the magic world. Just that! The side that won immediately orders a fairy tale about itself. Take at least the fairy tales about Ivan the Fool! They were all ordered by his wife, Vasilisa, who was actually the one ruling the realm, after overthrowing Tsar Gorokh! Ivan, though, was anguishing till old age. Vasilisa had to invest huge funds, spinning him as an independent political figure. She bribed robbers, dragons, and giants, trumpeting everywhere that he beat them. She even forced her uncle Koshchei the Deathless to kidnap her, but Ivan foolishly, instead of finding her in six months, as dictated by the script, searched for a whole seven years… On the whole, an old and boring story! Look into any textbook of magic PR! Hey, aren’t you listening to me?”

“Aha. I mean, not aha!” Khavron corrected himself. He was actually not thinking about magic PR. A thought so brilliant and so bold suddenly dawned on him. It came to his mind that he could ask the fairy for money and pay off Felix.

However, he did not have time to bring himself to this, as something strange began to happen with Middlelina. Her face – not even the face but the expression – subtly changed. It became sarcastic and irritable. The fairy stared squeamishly at the cigarette in her fingers, threw it away, and began to wave the hat indignantly. “Disgusting smoke! That nitwit filled my lungs with smoke again!”

Then the fairy’s gaze paused on what she used to scatter the smoke. “And this hideous hat again! I wrote to that bore so that she wouldn’t dare wear it! Well, let’s see her reply,” she said and peeked at the inner part of the brim of the hat. “What? Where must I go? And she writes this to her own sister, whom she hasn’t seen for so long!” she said in outrage and, after tossing the hat, incinerated it with a stare.

Eddy squinted at his watch. The minute hand had barely crawled over the “12” mark. The hour hand was on four. “Any third of the day! So, this is Indexelina!” Eddy realized.

After finishing with the hat, the fairy deigned to notice Khavron. “And what’s this giant runt? Did the bore really get herself a new moronoid page? Oh, she even tagged him! Well, of course! She signed all her things even in childhood! Pencil cases, rulers, stockings, magic wands! Hey, creature, what’s your name, and where did my sister dig you up?”

Eddy introduced himself. He explained that he was not exactly dug up anywhere and that Middlelina was hiding in his apartment from persecutors from Bald Mountain.

“Of course! The bore ran to the moronoid world all the same and was ready to do something! I warned her not to make promises to anyone! Well, well, Khavron Eduardovich, or whatever your name is, tell more tales! What did my sister tell you about me? That I’m hysterical, a psychopath, a dark fairy who turns people into snakes, frogs, or drunk plumbers? Don’t be silent! Answer!” Indexelina ordered.

Khavron mumbled something out of caution, not going into details. Indexelina did not insist, quite satisfied with the mumbling. “Jumbo! March after me! Don’t look around! Don’t communicate telepathically with flies!” she ordered.

Having flown to the kitchen, she immediately, by some magic scent, saw clearly the bottle of cognac hidden in the cupboard behind the saucepans. Eddy did not even know about this bottle, part of Zozo’s secret strategic reserves. Khavron mentally butted his sister’s aura. “Hidden! From her own brother!” he thought with indignation.

After uncorking the bottle with one motion of the fan, the fairy forced it to soar up into the air and fill the little cup of dark opaque glass that appeared in her hand. It was no bigger than a thimble.

“Don’t fairies drink nectar? Ambrosia and all that?” Khavron asked politely.

“Fairies drink everything they don’t eat… And eat everything they don’t drink! Well, to our meeting!” Indexelina said.

The thimble was emptied in a flash. A second one followed the first. Then, pausing for a bit with the cognac, Indexelina busied herself with opening Vienna sausages. Where they had been taken from, Eddy would have difficulty saying, but, all things considered, Indexelina stole them from one of the small restaurants in the Centre. Taking into account the size of the sausages, the fairy had to shrink them two or three times. The hungry Eddy watched this blasphemy sadly.

“Don’t want to treat me, then don’t! I won’t ask. No sense in wasting time on trifles. Better to fire a shot at her for money…” Khavron thought. “Here, they threatened to kill me,” he began from a distance.

Indexelina nodded with her mouth full. “Good thought! I approve. If help is needed, let them whistle for me. You’re so huge and silly,” she muttered.

Khavron realized that it was useless to aim for pity. “I need a lot of money! I thought that you could…” he started.

“No need to continue further, jumbo. Item XII of the Book of Prohibitions,” the fairy interrupted.

“What?”

“I articulate: Under the threat of deprivation of magic, fairies and other magical beings are forbidden to create money and other media of exchange from air, mud, sea water, and others. To cast a spell on calculators and ATM, and to dupe servers and bank terminals. And they are especially forbidden to transfer to moronoids monetary funds obtained in the aforementioned manner. Everything was different in the Middle Ages. Although making gold from air, now, alas… Ne-ver!”

“But why? This is such nonsense!” Eddy exclaimed.

“What did you say? Don’t argue! Si-i-i-lenc-e-ee!” the fairy yelled.

Khavron quieted down uneasily. The angry fairy tried to fly over from the sink to the kitchen table, where she had left her cup; but she was too full and her dragonfly wings worked in vain. On noticing this, Eddy delicately placed his palm under the fairy and transferred her to the table.

“Abort the ‘silence’ command!” Indexelina relented. She, as any self-respecting fairy, had not seven but seventy-seven Fridays. Moreover, not even in one week, but on one Thursday.

“I’m beginning to like you, jumbo! You’re so roomy, not too bulky. I can send you for grub, when I’m too lazy to use the magic wand. Do you want to become my page, to spite my sister? I can imagine what she’ll say when she sees my mark instead of hers on you!”

Eddy immediately confirmed his readiness to become anyone’s page and again started to beg for money. “Please! It’s so simple!” he said with hope.

“It’s precisely because it’s simple that it’s forbidden. Were it otherwise, any batty wizard could pelt the moronoid world with packages of money no less real than real banknotes. Or even turn all the paper of the world into money. This would lead the moronoid world, which is holding on by a hair, to catastrophe,” the fairy said didactically and drained yet another thimble of cognac. Her small ears, slightly protruding as in all fairies, grew red.

“But can’t you go around this ban?” Khavron asked conspiratorially. “Well, instead of the money give me a small thingy of ten diamonds?”

“How many?” the fairy asked with a smile.

“Well, five…” Eddy unwillingly corrected himself.

“Won’t you burst?”

“At the very least… well, as a last resort… one,” Eddy uttered, crushed, and experiencing a strong desire to drop a saucepan on the all-knowing fairy.

“Of course it’s possible. Even very simple,” Indexelina assured glumly. “The whole problem is that you intend to turn the diamonds into money, and this I know… Even on condition that they on Bald Mountain don’t find out anything, this will become known to the Book of Prohibitions, and then I’ll be deprived of my magic. Every drop. The Book of Prohibitions, you see, isn’t simply a book. It’s a law that fulfills itself without knowing leniency.”

Convinced that he could not count on voluntary enthusiasm, Eddy decided to induce forced enthusiasm. After jumping onto a chair, he launched into a heartfelt tirade. In his speech he especially emphasized that fairies always helped people, and at the end, in an oratorical fit, he stated his readiness to turn to Middlelina for help and become her page for eternity. In spite of the want of rhetorical figures, the speech, especially its final part, had a sobering effect on Indexelina.

The fairy moved uneasily and expressed her readiness to help. “Only without money! Think of something else!” she stated.

Eddy jumped from the chair. He decided not to nickel and dime but to promptly ask a lot. “No money, no need! Then something else. Anything that will help me to get rich quick. Some brilliant find from the future. For example, a perpetual motion machine? No? Then the secret of transforming pencil lead to diamonds or tap water to gasoline? Huh?”

“Jumbo, you’re quite silly!” the fairy said softly. “You overestimate me. I’m a sorceress, not a techie. If necessary, I can make a horse appear right here and now, but ask me for the blueprint of a machine to make live horses, and I’ll twirl a finger at my temple…”

Eddy grabbed his head. He wanted to get on all fours and howl at the moon. Jumping up, he ran around the kitchen. Suddenly, an old newspaper tenderly encircled his foot. Khavron kicked it, but meanwhile, his gaze involuntarily caught a headline.

“Prophet! Here it is! Prophet! Here’s what will help me!” he shouted, kissing the newspaper.

“Oh, wild insanity! This is what happens when the proportion of one to nine isn’t maintained between the head and the body!” Indexelina said with knowledge of the matter.

Finally, Eddy calmed down and began to express himself more clearly. “Our gold mine is prophecy!” he explained. “Prophet is a popular TV show. The more predictions that come true, the bigger the prize. Of course, much depends on the global character of the predictions. Such trifles as rain in the middle of the evening or an increase in oil price aren’t quoted on Prophet. Striking, unusual, sensational predictions are necessary. You’ll manage! Your sister said that you are excellent at guessing!”

After ascertaining that the giant no longer jumped nor howled, the fairy asked if the prize was large.

“The sum triples each time. I believe three for one correct prediction, nine for two, and twenty-seven thousand for three…” Eddy recalled.

“Twenty-seven thousand what?”

“Dollars.”

“Oh!” Indexelina was surprised. “Are dollars really still worth something? In my opinion, after America abandoned the national currency…”

Eddy leaned forward. “Wait! America gave up the dollar?”

“Didn’t it? I somehow idly foretold this on coffee ground. Dollars and Euros will be no more. The entire world will move onto one common currency. Called homosap, derivative of homo sapiens. I won’t even hint what all sorts of stupid people will immediately nickname it… He-he! You can’t imagine how predictable the first circle of association is, even among seemingly sensible moronoids!”

“Are you sure about the dollar?” Eddy asked seriously.

“What? How dare you, jumbo! Coffee grounds are my favourite,” the fairy stated.

Sensing the sensational, Eddy grabbed a pencil. “What year will these homosaps be adopted?”

The fairy furrowed her brow. “2050, I think. No, I lie, in 2050 Russia will again become a monarchy… That means, sometime in 2045,” she hummed lightly.

After making a note on paper, Eddy twirled the pencil in his fingers. “Too long to wait,” he said dejectedly. “If this were to happen tomorrow, then it’s quite a different matter. Do we have anything else?”

Eddy gripped the pencil tighter and inspiration wandered along his face. About ten minutes later, he thoughtfully contemplated a column of predictions.

“A surge in birthrate – 2012. Three years in a row, everyone will only have twins. The secret of eternal life – 2018…” he muttered. “The timeless novel The Thirty-first Piece of Silver – 2019. Shifting the capital to Saratov – 2040. Moscow becomes a health resort city after the formation of a new shelf sea in Ramenki. Pineapple and banana plantations turn green around Moscow – roughly 2060. The Chukchi migrate south and give humanity seven geniuses one after the other – after 2065 and beyond. In the Urals a new mountain with a height of nine kilometres will appear – 2068. The creation of cerebral prostheses – around 2090… Oh, no! If I announce this, they’ll put me away in the loony bin; moreover, before 2034 all loony bins will be closed for business…”

Eddy again looked skeptically at the paper and crumpled it, though for some reason very carefully. “No good! Prophet won’t take these. Such crazy predictions it has a dime a dozen. To make them believe, we need to add some zing to it! The event that’ll happen in the very near future! Tomorrow! The day after tomorrow!” he stated.

Indexelina sighed. “Well, fine… All right… I’ll try to predict something from the nearest future. Just to annoy my sister. But consider, jumbo, just you dare become her page after this! If I see her mark on you again, the next mark will be on your coffin!” she warned.

The fairy wiped her lips and, standing up, squinted out the window. Eddy heard her mutter, “So, what do we have here? The moon’s on the wane. Venus is no longer visible… North-West wind at nine drafts per second. The third leaf has dried on the violet… First letter in the name of this blockhead’s great-grandfather is ‘V’… Well now, friend, pull out as much of your own hair as you want!” she suddenly demanded, raising her voice.

“What, just like that?” Eddy was alarmed.

“Yes, are you also a coward? Rip! Be brave! Magic needs sacrifice… How many did you pull out? Count! What, nine? Exactly nine? Well, all the worse for you…”

“Why worse? Did it not turn out?” Khavron was uneasy.

“On the contrary, everything turned out just superbly!” Indexelina assured him. “Listen, silly jumbo! Tomorrow, the picture Boy with a Sabre by an unknown artist will be stolen from the restoration workshop at the Pushkin Museum. It’ll vanish in broad daylight from the guarded premises, and nothing will be recorded by the around-the-clock video camera directed at it. Someone will put on it – on the video camera, that is! – a sock with the price tag left on.”

The low-hanging lamp swayed, caught by the back of Eddy’s head flying up. “When will they rob the workshop?” he shouted.

Indexelina raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Well, I believe I said tomorrow! And again I repeat: don’t even think about becoming my sister’s page. Do you understand, jumbo? Just you try to serve her and not me, and I’ll change your ears into those of pigs! Hey, where are you going? Who am I talking to?”

But Eddy was already rushing to the door, as if a swarm of wasps were after him.

“Oh, these jumbos! Ran away and didn’t even kiss my hand! Perhaps I’ll drink cognac? Let my sister’s head crack later!” Indexelina uttered dreamily.

* * *

An hour later, the glass door of the canteen in the main building of Stakankino reflected a rapidly rushing Eddy. By some miracle, he had snuck past the police post in the entrance below, clinging to the group of participants in the sports show Pull-Push. Barely slipping through the squeaking metal detector, which perceived a threatening weapon in the usual keys, he boldly fled from the sports show’s assistant and immediately lost his way in one of the hallways. Here, switching from a cross-country run to a jogging, he caught the elbow of a very young secretary, just finishing a piece of shortbread on the way.

“Where is Prophet?” Eddy shouted into the newcomer’s ear.

“Sixth floor. Third room from the elevator,” the secretary explained, timidly dropping crumbs.

Soon the former waiter pensively contemplated the identical iron doors. On the first was: NOT ACCOUNTING! OUTSIDERS DO NOT ENTER! On the second: ACCOUNTING! DO NOT ENTER! and on the third: RECEIVING PREDICTIONS STRICTLY BY PHONE! Besides the mentioned inscriptions, one of the doors flaunted a soiled shooting schedule, on which someone had added sarcastic question marks with a pencil.

“Let’s consider that I’m not an outsider! I’m the chicken who will create a sensation for them. They’ll accept me with open arms,” Eddy said to himself, with dread opening the first door.

The former waiter naively expected to find himself in a creative hell, where, by trial-and-error, in endless takes and directorial shouts, popular art is forged, but, alas, the room cluttered with tables was almost empty. Only by the window did some semblance of activity take place. At a table, with the back of his head to Eddy, a young man in a light T-shirt sat and, suffering in sweat, pounded the computer keyboard with two fingers.

“Good day! Have you seen Morzhuev? The anchor, in a sense?” Eddy shouted, addressing his question to the lonely back of the head.

The back of the head did not answer. Eddy made out the headphones adorning the man’s head. “All’s clear with this. He’s like the three little monkeys at once – sees nothing, hears nothing, says nothing to anyone,” Eddy commented, pushing the next door open.

But, alas, this room in no way made him happy either. Khavron found in it only a lone electrician, who, standing on a stepladder, was trying not to drop the plastic ceiling light onto his own head. In spite of the warm season, a long red scarf was wound around the electrician’s neck.

“Greetings! Do you know where…” Eddy started, contemplating this picture.

“Close the door! Draft! Didn’t they tell you I have a cold!” the electrician said hoarsely.

He turned to Eddy with such fury that the stepladder swayed dangerously. Florescent tubes scattered from its wooden, paint-splotched platform. Not waiting for the furious howl to overtake him, Eddy retreated and, rather puzzled, poked his head into the third room. A curly young person with very red lips immediately rushed towards him, gesturing threateningly.

“Dearie, don’t you know how to read? This is not accounting!” he groaned in a whining voice, trying to push Khavron out.

Eddy carefully unstuck the young person’s hands and extended them at attention. “Don’t panic! Where’s the fire? There is no fire! Is Morzhuev here?” he said sternly.

The red-lipped young person stared at Eddy apprehensively. “Andrew Richardovich is busy. He has a recording soon. And, actually, who are you to him?” he asked with sudden suspicion, looking askance at Eddy’s strong shoulders.

“I happen to be everything to him! Friend, comrade, and brother,” Khavron replied irritably.

“‘Comrade’ in what sense?” the curly hellhound asked uneasily.

“Don’t chatter, young man! In the universal sense. I must see him immediately. Before the broadcast. I have a sensation.”

“Dearie, everyone here has a sensation! If only some would be worthwhile!” the young person started to babble with relief. “You should phone and leave a message. How did you get in here, as a matter of fact? Who issued you a pass?”

“Julius Caesar,” Eddy blurted out.

“Julius Caesarevich? There’s no such person listed in our editorial staff!” the red-lipped one stated. “From this I conclude that you don’t have a pass… Leave, dearie, for good! Phone the secretary tomorrow strictly between ten and two and give him your predictions. They won’t take you any other time.”

“And who’s the secretary?” Eddy asked.

Mischievous dimples appeared on the curly hellhound’s cheeks. “I’m the secretary. Don’t interfere with work!” he said.

Eddy felt that he was beginning to get angry. Behind the red-lipped one’s back, he suddenly saw a door, gleaming with the gold placard A. Morzhuev. “I tell you, I have a sensation! I need your boss!” he repeated quietly, looking at the cherished glimmer, hypnotized.

“And I insist that he won’t receive you, dearie! Go away!”

Realizing that the negotiations had reached a deadlock, Eddy decisively moved the young person from his path and, like a tiger, rushed to the office. The hellhound leaped and tried to grab him by the pant leg, but, having missed, he tremblingly embraced a chair leg. Making use of this suddenly flaring passion, Eddy burst through the cherished door.

The work abode of the popular TV host more resembled the boudoir of an aged beauty. An Italian settee with an arched back lounged in the corner. A plaster boy on a small table surrounded by colognes and compacts was removing a splinter from the sole of his foot. The most amusing, however, was an enormous telephone with a handset in the form of two kissing lovebirds.

But, alas, these were only details. The main thing – its owner – was missing from the office. No matter how Eddy stared at the Italian settee and the leather swivel armchair, still preserving the imprint of the grandee who sat on it, he still failed to spot the precious flesh of Andrew Richardovich. The TV host was absent. The red-lipped bulldog was guarding an empty booth.

Eddy left the office and, walking past the hellhound, who was calling someone on the cell phone in a panic, went out into the hallway. After pondering a little, he went down one floor, approached the most solid-looking door and, making use of the secretary’s absence, pushed without hindrance into the commanding citadel.

The plainly furnished office was enormous, like a football field. A fierce-looking bald man was sitting at the table, on which it was possible to play billiards, and browsing papers. “Who are you?” he asked without raising his head.

“Simply a guy,” Khavron found it difficult to reply.

“That means, a nobody,” baldy summed up affirmatively. “Second question. Do you know how much my time is worth?”

Eddy shook his head honestly.

“Then I’ll tell you. I scratch my nose and it’s your monthly salary. All clear?”

“I’m unemployed. Turns out you scratched your nose for free,” Khavron parried.

Baldy chewed his lips and stretched a finger to a button; however, he did not press it but instead asked with sudden interest, “Who sent you?”

“I came myself. On my own feet.”

The bureaucrat tore himself from the papers with annoyance. “The answer is on the level of delirium. I ask: where were you before you came to me?”

“Well… ehh… the floor above. In the rooms of Prophet.”

“Last name?”

“Whose? Mine? Khavron!”

“I’m not interested in yours. The one who sent you!”

“I don’t know the last name. Red-lipped. White silk striped shirt. He’s their secretary,” Eddy snitched with relish.

The bureaucrat made a note on paper. “Clear… What do you need from me? Speak quickly and leave.”

“I’m looking for Morzhuev.”

Baldy chewed his lips. “For what purpose?”

“I brought him a prophecy.”

“That’s all? And they sent you to me for such nonsense?”

“Yes,” Eddy confirmed, visually sensing the clouds thickening over the hellhound.

Baldy glanced patiently at his watch, then at one of the numerous papers on his table. “I suspect that Prophet is now recording. Look in the dressing room. Second floor. First studio. Get out, please! I hope we’ll never see each other again!” he said almost amiably.

Satisfied with his own enterprise, Khavron hurried to leave.

* * *

The famous TV host Andrew Richardovich Morzhuev sat on a stool in front of the vanity table, allowing the makeup artist to powder his nose, which beamed to the whole of Russia. Morzhuev was of small stature, slightly bloated, and not as formidable in life as on the TV screen. Along his brow, enlarged at the expense of his hair loss, roamed skeptical wrinkles, an indicator that Morzhuev was soon getting ready to unleash on the spectators with their absurd predictions.

“You too? How many times can it be said: leave me alone! The broadcast script has already been written!” he started to reel off petulantly when Eddy squeezed into the dressing room. “What do you have there? Parade of the speaking skeletons? Legions of fly-bombers will invade Stakankino tomorrow? No?”

The TV host tore the towel from his shoulders and elegantly flung it at the mirror. Then he rose grandly from the chair and shot Eddy his authoritative incinerating gaze. “Oh, heaven, no peace for me!” he exclaimed in a tragic voice. “Yesterday some psycho ambushed me at the entrance and began to assert that the code of the universe was encoded on ant legs. And last week, another psycho prophesied that aliens will come flying and take away everyone who has their windows open. You’re not from their team by any chance? Is your window closed?”

“No,” said Eddy, “but I know precisely that…”

Morzhuev cut him off with a beautiful hand movement. “And really, who are you?” he rumbled. “Modern Nostradamus? Why should I believe you? And then, keep in mind, I have a weekly show. Viewers won’t wait two hundred years to verify whether the capital will be moved to Tynda. If you have imminent predictions, lay them out. But if not, the exit is over there!”

“The Prophet” extended a finger to show Eddy the door in another spectacular gesture, but the gesture was spoiled by the appearance of a familiar red-lipped face. Behind the secretary’s back loomed a detachment of on-duty police. “There he is, this maniac! He broke in and attacked me! I barely escaped!” the secretary hissed.

Two sergeants and one sergeant-major moved forward. The makeup artist fearfully dropped the brush. Andrew Richardovich Morzhuev crossed his arms majestically on his chest. To buy time, Eddy quickly shielded himself from the police with a chair and providently hung onto the lapels of Morzhuev’s studio suit. It turned out to be a fatal mistake.

“My suit! He’ll tear it!” Morzhuev unexpectedly began to squeal delicately.

The two sergeants and one sergeant-major, snorting with official zeal, moved in and detached Eddy’s feet from the floor. Khavron wisely did not resist the representatives of authority, but did not let go of the grandee’s suit. The red-lipped secretary smiled venomously.

“An imminent prediction, here it is. Tomorrow, the picture Boy with a Sabre will be stolen from the restoration workshop at the Pushkin Museum! It’ll vanish in broad daylight from the guarded premises. The video camera will record nothing. Someone will put a sock on it. A price tag will be on the sock!” Khavron shouted.

Morzhuev stopped straightening his suit and glanced at Eddy with interest. The sergeant-major and both sergeants paused. Eddy was about to cheer up, but Morzhuev’s gaze had already gone out. “Take the furniture away!” he said to the police, turning away.

“Don’t forget about my fee! The address… You didn’t write down the address! I need money!” Khavron shouted, transported carefully at best out the door.

“Everyone needs money! The address will be in the report!” the sergeant-major announced with maternal tenderness.

Chapter 2
A Spirit Pygmy

Eugeny Moshkin, Petruchio Chimodanov, and Nata Vikhrova were sitting in the fireplace hall in 13 Bolshaya Dmitrovka and waiting for the return of Daphne and Methodius, who had gone to the taxidermist for fresh skins for business correspondence. They were bored, and for something to do, Nata began to ask Moshkin and Chimodanov whether they had ever fallen in love.

“Love? For me it’s irrelevant! I haven’t yet achieved anything real. I emphasize! I simply have no time for it,” Petruchio snorted.

“Now you underscore it!” Nata chuckled and raised an eyebrow threateningly.

“BUT! I’m also not very afraid… If your magic works on me, then not for long!” Chimodanov stated.

“Why’s that?”

“I was born on the same day as you. I have primordial immunity to your magic. Julitta told me this… Sooner or later I’ll recover and take vengeance. I’ll send a whole bunch of plasticine killers to you! Thousands of them! They’ll climb out of all crevices and sewers, and each will have a poisoned pin in its hand!”

Nata shivered. “I have had enough of your Zuduka! It always hides in some corner and makes mischief! It recently filled my whole pocket with toothpaste!” she muttered conciliatorily.

Realizing that he had won this round and Nata’s magic would not threaten him, Chimodanov grinned contentedly. “Here’s what I think. The smarter and more complex the creature, the more time passes from the moment of birth to the moment it falls in love. Well, for example, the hamster. It’s all of three months old and it’s already a father. In six months, a grand-dad… But an elephant will have a family only after fifty years.”

“What are you, an elephant? Thanks for admitting it,” Nata remarked mercifully.

“It’s also the same with people,” Petruchio continued, not listening to her. “Some, well, like you, Vikhrova, have already stopped developing at thirteen. And what’s there for them to do next? Unwilling to learn. Too early to lie in a coffin. Still have time to work. The only thing remaining is to fall in love. Those who are smarter, first learn, get settled in life, and then fall in love at around thirty or thirty five. I don’t know why, but it’s always this way.”

Nata looked at Chimodanov through a hole in her fist. “Here’s what I suggest to you,” she purred maliciously. “When would you intend on falling in love? At thirty-five? Why so early? What if you don’t manage? Fall in love at seventy! In the meantime, take mama by the arm and install traffic lights with her.”

Chimodanov could not find an answer, and Nata had already turned to Moshkin, “And you, Gene? Were you ever in love?”

Eugeny moved his lips and glanced hesitantly at her. His answer sounded strange. “Do dreams count?” he asked.

Nata’s jaw dropped like the rating of a politician who accidentally ate a live kitten in front of the camera. “How’s that? You dreamt of someone? Or you were in love in a dream?”

“Why was? I still am,” Moshkin replied seriously and did not answer any more questions, despite all of Nata’s persuasion.

Vikhrova’s curiosity was never satisfied. She had no choice but to stroll around the hall, examining and twirling the occasional knickknacks and black magic protective talismans in her hands.

The hall, recently arranged from nothing in the literal sense by the efforts of Ares with Julitta helping him, was located on the second floor exactly between the student rooms. Four doors faced each other in pairs.

“It’ll be quite good for you here, my chicks! All kinds of trash eternally crowd in reception below. Not a single succubus will poke in here, and I don’t even talk about agents!” Julitta said.

“Shielding runes?” Moshkin asked, having had time to pick up superficial knowledge.

“Nope. Ask her over there!” Julitta said and somehow incomprehensibly looked at Daphne, either approvingly or, on the contrary, defiantly.

Daph smiled modestly. “Just a twig of an Eden beech… I accidentally had it in my backpack and I slipped it under the threshold. Spirits of Gloom can’t stand our plants.”

“And Ares? He allowed it?” Nata asked incredulously.

“Not enough power in a small branch to bother him particularly.”

“So, does he know or not?”

“Not that he knows, and at the same time not that he doesn’t know… Let’s say this: he closes his eyes to small things, because his office is downstairs, and Tukhlomon annoyed him badly…” Julitta announced with a smile.

The aforementioned conversation took place the previous night, and in the morning, Ares and Julitta took off in haste to Tartarus for some celebration connected with the hunchback Ligul. Methodius did not particularly get to the heart of it. Ares said that he would explain everything later. Soon, Methodius and Daph also left. As already said, to the taxidermist.

* * *

“I didn’t really have one sneaker, no? Well, this morning?” Moshkin suddenly asked. He had already sat for about three minutes with an unhappy face, gathering courage for this simple question.

“Not one,” Nata assured him.

“You’re sure? Hundred percent?”

“Over two hundred.”

“Then I’ve lost the second one! Did anyone see it anywhere?” Moshkin complained.

“Watch over your goulashes yourself, dearie! I’m not the sultan’s eighteenth wife to you, in charge of shoes,” Nata remarked.

“I did… Took them off for all of a minute, and then…” Eugeny, smiling guiltily and amiably, showed off a foot in a white sock.

“I love looking at other people’s socks! And if I throw up?” Nata asked.

Chimodanov chuckled. As recently as the morning before yesterday he had the opportunity to observe how Nata learned to read a rat’s innards. However, the divination did not go right from the very beginning, according to Julitta’s assertion, because Nata was chewing gum while gutting the dead rat.

“It’s disrespectful. Magic doesn’t like that,” Julitta remarked.

“You think… I don’t care…” Nata said.

Now she was sitting at the table, on which Marie de’ Medici[2] once kept the severed head of her favourite, and drinking tea, stirring the sugar in the cup with a silver spoon. This was the spoon of the famous pharmacist-poisoner, who lived in town N. of the Tula province in the middle of the XIX century. Next to it was a small sausage knife, with which Yashka the convict ambushed two merchants in the inn’s courtyard.

Yes, all the objects in the fireplace hall had just such gloomy history. Thus, taking from the table a random pencil stub, it was possible to assume with confidence that either it had been shoved into someone’s eye, or Lavrentii Beria,[3] sitting at home on a settee under a fig tree, had made notes with it on official papers.

At first, it was not too pleasant for Methodius and the rest to be among such objects; however, they soon got accustomed to it. Well, a chair is a chair, a table, a table, and a knife, a knife. Man was created such that nothing terrifies him infinitely. What is the difference who, when, and whom, if the firewood in the fireplace, which once warmed the great inquisitor, crackles so comfortably at home? Possibly, this was Gloom’s plan – to gradually, step by step, concession after concession, to erode the ability to wonder and be horrified and to push back the boundary of tolerance, until finally, permissiveness becomes all-encompassing.

Zuduka, the only one of Chimodanov’s artificial monsters he brought with him, jumped out from under the table. Hobbling, Zuduka made its way to Moshkin, dragging a sneaker by the lace.

“You found it! Smart boy! Good boy!” Eugeny was moved.

Zuduka hurriedly hobbled to him, for some reason continually looking back.

“Don’t! I don’t advise it!” Chimodanov said lazily, cutting a wafer cake with Yashka the convict’s knife.

“Why? It’s mine!” Eugeny was surprised. The sneaker was already in his hand.

Zuduka, which he was about to thank, fled with all possible haste, not waiting for a reward.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with your sneaker, but if I were you, I wouldn’t put it on…” Petruchio continued thoughtfully.

“Yes, but…”

“You don’t notice anything suspicious? That’s right! A smoldering fuse! Throw it, idiot!”

Moshkin obediently threw it. A white flash tossed the sneaker up and tore it to shreds. Tongues of flame danced on the curtains. Eugeny put them out with water left in the carafe the minute he glanced at it.

“Zudu-u-uka!” Chimodanov screamed, shaking his fist. “Zudu-u-ka! I’m going to kill you!”

The bald monster, giggling, hid under the sofa, on which the actor playing Othello, overdoing it, once strangled the actress playing Desdemona.[4] There was no possibility whatsoever to pull Zuduka out from there. After kicking the sofa several times for order, Chimodanov squatted down and picked an empty small box off the floor. Then another, and another…

“Everything’s clear. It stuffed the whole sneaker with match heads! It must have been planning a big bang!” he informed them.

“Why?” Moshkin asked.

“Just because. It’s a genius of malicious thoughts. You didn’t offend it?” Chimodanov asked.

“No. I didn’t even look at it!” Moshkin said, losing confidence with each following word.

Petruchio nodded. “Clear,” he said.

“What’s clear?”

“It’s angry that you didn’t pay it any attention. Zuduka is terribly self-centred.”

“And who would?” Nata chuckled. “His owner is solid ‘b-but!’ with double underscores.”

Nata got up and, having approached the mirror, began to examine herself attentively. She did not do this like teenage boys and their fathers, i.e. statically, without changing anything in himself and only visually evaluating the width of the shoulders and how the suit fits, but very actively, in a feminine way. Her hands flittered, now fixing her hair, now anxiously touching different parts of her skin, which must have seemed problematic to her.

“How do you like it here? This house in the centre and the other absurdities?” she asked languidly.

“It’s quite something… If we forget that we were recently nearly finished off,” said Chimodanov. “Besides, there’s no need to hide monsters from anyone! Even if Zuduka smashes all the walls here, Ares only grunts. At home, if you accidentally break the TV, you’ll be nagged to death… ‘Think about your behaviour! Do you need to put road signs in the hallway?’ And all that… What, is it my fault that Zuduka found a chainsaw? Huh?! Why did you saw the legs off the nightstand, scamp?” Petruchio kicked the sofa again. Something moved under the sofa.

“Do you miss your mother?” Moshkin asked.

Chimodanov shrugged his shoulders uncertainly. “I see her a couple of times a week. That’s enough for me. I didn’t think she would give in to me studying in some boarding school, but Glumovich charmed her terribly! He joined her in the civil commission! Counts traffic lights on Tverskaya Street, translates letters into English, and recently unscrewed a No Entry sign somewhere and presented it to her together with a bouquet,” he yawned.

“And if your mama has a fancy to appear unexpectedly at the school to visit you there?”

“Don’t think so. Ares swore that she wouldn’t even have such thoughts,” Petruchio said confidently.

“And you, Moshkin, how do you like it here?” Nata asked.

Eugeny honestly thought about it. “I don’t know. Still not used to it. Although Ares said that, in addition to water, I’ll possibly be able to control fire in a couple of years. It seems, I only need to grasp the essence… The main thing is primary magic and the gift of a guard. The rest is here!” he touched his forehead with a finger.

“And how do you like it here?” Chimodanov asked.

“It’s cool here,” Nata said. “Better than home. A massive room with an oak bolt. No one can poke his nose in.”

“Don’t you miss home?”

“Are you kidding? I don’t want to be home! I essentially didn’t have a home,” Nata stated.

“How’s that?”

“It’s like this. Mama has a new husband. All the time this ‘attention!’ Butts in telling me how to dress. ‘This is indecent! You’re running around with such hair?’ And all that. And then my older sister got married. If mother’s husband is a soldier, then this one is a bozo. He put a password on the computer. Takes my tapes without asking and writes some of his own nonsense on them.”

“How many rooms do you have?”

“Two,” Nata said.

“Oho. Fun for you! And you didn’t think to… well, you know?” Petruchio uttered.

“Zombify? Are you kidding? Then where would I go to get away from those two baboons? They so hate each other. Mama’s husband is this soldier all over, while Inka’s husband dodges the army.”

Nata said this so disdainfully, as if her mother and sister were married not to people but to some irksome cockroaches. Moshkin thought that it was better not to pity her now. You would only get it in the nose for pity.

Nata’s gaze stopped pensively at Methodius’ door. “By the way, who thinks what about Buslaev? In my opinion, he’s all right, a normal guy, although this girl that’s with him… pfff…”

“Are you talking about Daph?” Chimodanov asked dreamily.

“Yeah. Some walking absurdity! How she squints her eyes when she’s angry! I’m, you know, good and all that, but you got to me. The enthusiasm? The backpack? A cat with wings! And the balalaika in a holster?”

“I emphasize: it’s a flute,” Chimodanov said drily. Whatever Nata might say, he liked Daphne. But he liked Methodius considerably less. Although, it was not surprising. People are much more lenient to creatures of the opposite sex. They willingly forgive everything that, for which their own sex would have been smeared on the wall long ago.

Nata looked at Chimodanov very sourly. “You already emphasized. Imagine, I surmised…”

“Apparently, you’re provoking us to disapproval. Are you sure that it’s the correct way?” Moshkin said. Like the majority of timid people prone to reverie, he was very smart and observant.

“And you, cornstalk, jump on one leg and keep quiet! You’ll soil your nose!” Nata frowned.

Zuduka crawled out from under the sofa, holding in its teeth a kind of fly swatter on a long handle, the wide end of which was all studded with nails, and began to sneak up on Nata. Chimodanov discreetly showed it a fist. Pictorially playing bewilderment, Zuduka sat down on the floor and started to scratch its back with the fly swatter handle.

* * *

Methodius and Daphne returned at about ten in the evening. After disgustedly dumping about three dozen rat skins and two dog skins into the corner, Methodius washed his hands for a long time.

“We in Eden write on birch bark, effortless and pretty. Or on papyrus. Or on eucalyptus leaves. You write and you appreciate the fragrance!” Daph said, teasing him.

“Birch bark is the skin of birches. If so, then I prefer a well-skinned rat,” Methodius said and leaned over, pretending that he wanted to snatch a rat skin with his teeth.

Daphne recoiled in fear. Depressiac, having accidentally dozed off on her shoulder, fell down into the wine fountain and, after jumping out, sticky and disgusting, began to scamper around reception, toppling everything that could be overturned in theory and in practice.

On hearing the noise, Nata, Chimodanov, and Eugeny Moshkin went down.

* * *

About two hours later Julitta arrived. Alone. She was pale and exhausted. She looked bad. Her plump, usually rosy, full-of-life face resembled a balloon from yesterday’s party, which had already begun to deflate. There were blue shadows under her eyes. Having just teleported, she went up to the fireplace hall, went to an armchair, and collapsed into it, worn out.

Daph silently nudged Methodius with an elbow. “Ares!” she whispered. “Why is she alone?”

“I see,” Methodius replied. He was smart enough not to ask questions.

The curious Chimodanov walked around the armchair several times, trying to catch her attention. “Ahem! How was the trip? Got an account for the team? Will you present it?”

Julitta raised her head and looked at him blankly. It seemed, on the whole, that she vaguely understood who was before her.

“Something nasty, huh? I emphasize: I’m indeed also a guard now, huh?” Petruchio continued.

Zuduka’s dangling feet peeped out from under his thin sweater. In spite of its tendency to pull pranks, the monster feared to be left alone. Not possessing vocal cords, it sought other means to express its horror. For example, it located an empty saucepan and banged the walls until everyone in the neighbourhood, having the good fortune to hear it, began to bang their heads against the walls in turn. It also feared the dark, by the way, and spent the night in the same bed with Chimodanov. This gave Nata the excuse to declare that the demonic Petruchio slept with a plush bunny.

“So, where’s Ares? Why are you so utterly sickly?”

“Go away! I’ll get up, and you’ll lie down!” Julitta said through her teeth.

The persistent Chimodanov did not leave her alone. Then Julitta actually got up. And Chimodanov actually lay down, thrown several metres by an unknown force. Meanwhile, the witch – Methodius and Daph were ready to swear – did not even move a finger.

Having dealt with Chimodanov, Julitta laboriously approached the mirror and looked at herself. What she saw was the last straw. The witch again collapsed into the armchair and burst into tears – convulsively, with whines and whimpers. The walls trembled. One of them cracked. A sudden hurricane swept through Bolshaya Dmitrovka. It inflated ads, snatched several umbrellas, rummaged through the books on the second-hand bookseller’s table, shattered a dozen windows, showering the roadway with glass, and caused several minor accidents.

Met, Moshkin, and Chimodanov, no longer lying but sitting on the floor, immediately took a back seat. The witch’s intense emotions were not for their delicate nervous system. Daph and Nata instantly rushed to calm Julitta and give her something to drink. At such moments, girls, as Methodius had observed, act much more sensibly and with more experience. Someone else’s tears, even the most inconsolable, do not frighten them as much.

About ten minutes later, Julitta’s sobs began to subside. She got up, approached the wall, and tore the rug from the wall with a single movement of her hand. Methodius saw a large stone, polished to a shine, with one long and crooked crack cutting it from the top left corner to the lower right.

“Don’t you want to ask me what this is?” the witch asked dully.

“A tombstone,” Methodius answered without hesitation for everyone. He had already had time to become accustomed to the unique stylistics of their establishment.

“Precisely. Not just wizards have zoomers. Don’t you want to watch the news? They can’t not talk about this…” Julitta uttered and sobbed again. However, this sobbing, fortunately, did not develop into hysteria. Strength is needed in order to sob in full voice. Julitta no longer had strength.

The tombstone was wrapped in a dense greenish fog. A flabby face vaguely appeared through the fog.

“Did they smudge my teeth with soil? Put worms in my ears? No again? Away with the makeup technician! What! Yesterday again? It’s clear now why the soap was so terrible in the morning! I hope they’ve at least found the suicide who is going to lift my eyelids in the finale? How did she change her mind and run away? Oh, poor me! Doing everything myself again… What are you whispering over there? Shooting now? I beg your pardon, gentlemen! On air is Venny Vii and his analytical program Cadaveric Eye.”

At this point, Venny, as usual, paused and smiled into the camera, baring his terrible, green-tinged teeth. The acquaintance with those same teeth brought the life of many dentists closer to the end of the rope. Yes, those very dentists whom he loved to visit in his spare time.

“As is known, there are three kinds of news: sensational, simple, and bad,” Vii continued. “We’ll start with the bad. Nagiana Pripyatskaya again won the main prize as presenter of the year… Well, old age – ho, ho! – should be rewarded on merits. Personally I don’t envy Nagiana, especially as the prize was just an ordinary prophetic pharaoh’s mummy. In order that it doesn’t whither and continues to play the oracle, one has to feed it with an eyedropper and sleep with it under the same blanket at least once a week. And in general, Nagiana’s broadcast hasn’t been as successful recently as, say, Coffinia Cryptova’s program. I’m forced to admit this, although this girl also allowed herself to dominate me in spirit: ‘you’ll open your eyes, you’ll stretch out your legs!’ Very funny joke, girl, very funny! One eye specialist asked me roughly with the same zeal to open my eyes.”

Vii’s heavy eyelids trembled threateningly and lifted one-tenth of the way. Hundreds of spectators rushed screaming away from the screens; however, it did not go any further. The eyelids again descended under their own weight and the weight of the clinging earth.

“Other news: the search continues for the fairy Middlelina, suspected of the theft of an artifact from the depository. The raciness of the situation is enhanced by the fact that no one knows precisely what artifact was stolen and what unpleasantness this can cause. Taking into account that Middlelina was never found on Bald Mountain, they are searching for her from now on in the moronoid world. Our noble combat wizards, naturally, report that the circle of search has shrunk. Sure, the earth is round.

“And finally, the sensational! The recent events in the world of guards of Light and Gloom are followed with interest on Bald Mountain. After the definitive destruction of Kvodnon, there is only one individual who can theoretically take his place. This is the well-known to all heir of Gloom Methodius Buslaev. Taking into account that this gifted adolescent not so long ago gave up guns and cars, the high council of Gloom gathered this morning for decision making. And then, my untrue friends, keep your eyes open! You’ll be able to see how everything was… The footage, it goes without saying, was shot with a hidden camera. The operator subsequently… eh-h… was forced to stop the filming. Please!”

Venny Vii snapped his fingers. The tombstone rippled. Methodius saw a long, infinitely long table. The table ended with a short cross-beam like the top of the letter “T”. There, on an unprepossessing office chair, Ligul the hunchback sat in solitude and gnawed his nails. Then he raised his head, grinned, and shouted boomingly, “Summon everyone!”

His voice had not even fallen silent, when the spirit-courtiers started to flicker in the air like specks, in small ripples, like crumpled cigarette wrappers. And a minute had not gone by, when the pig snout of agents started to grunt along the corners of the room. They licked their faces, their black bulging eyes sparkled, the stubbles on their snouts stood on end, and rigid hair curled out of their ears. Attentive, they looked hard at each other. Their mouths were narrow, straight, like the slots of piggy banks. Their intrigue was considerable, the scumbags – there were not enough positions, and every year, the list from Tartarus was reduced. Here the agents were also spinning. Someone just opened his mouth and the rest already caught his words in a notebook. Even now, each pressed a leaflet to his chest, which he hurried to hand over to Ligul personally or at least place on the edge of his desk.

“Go with the denunciations! No time for you now!” the hunchback bellowed.

No sooner had the agents disappeared, when the succubi, rubbing each other, climbed out of windows, cabinets, and doors. They flirted, fluttered, giggled, sighed, and clambered to kiss. The succubi curtseyed on their hind legs and swooned quietly in front of Ligul, robed in ceremonial regalia.

Someone was inadvertently pressed down in the darkness and he yelped loudly. The yelp was immediately drowned in the dissatisfied grumbling of the crowd, seeing it as an attempt to draw attention to himself.

Suddenly all the lightweights fled. The bosses of Gloom – the heads of all the national divisions with their secretaries and entourages – had arrived. The long table was filled so that a pea had nowhere to fall. Ares with Julitta flickered for a moment among the crowd.

Methodius looked around at the witch. She sat white as a sheet. He touched her hand reassuringly. Julitta smiled weakly in thanks.

The camera again stopped at Ligul. Placing his thumbs in his belt, he wriggled the rest of his fingers precisely like the tentacles of an octopus. The division heads waited. A sucking silence filled the infernal Chancellery.

Finally, Ligul grunted and clapped his hands. At the same moment, an enormous silver cup filled with something thick, red, and frighteningly clear emerged on the table in front of him. After removing from his neck a large medal on a chain – a medal, on which someone’s face in relief was discernible, Ligul brought it to the cup, and, unclenching his hand, dropped it to the bottom. All eyes were directed to it. Having taken the cup with both hands, the chief of the Chancellery began to drink greedily. The blood flowed down his cheeks and neck, spilling onto his ceremonial suit.

At last, the cup was empty. Ligul retrieved the blood-stained medal and examined it, as it seemed to Methodius, anxiously. Then he suddenly jerked up the hand with the medal over his head and burst out laughing. And instantly, enthusiastic wild shouts, howls, and laughter, in which there could not be anything human, swept the entire hall.

The lens of the concealed camera, attempting to catch a close-up of the medal, suddenly tossed about. The image wavered and a short shriek was heard. The camera fell and lay on its side, filming feet. Shortly, a hand appeared in the frame, holding by the hair a severed head with a large wart on its nose.

“Well, smile into the camera! Yet another operator from Bald Mountain thought that an invisible cloak would save him!” a voice uttered contentedly. A boot stepped on the lens. Everything disappeared. Eternal night came for the concealed camera.

Venny Vii again appeared on the zoomer screen. A black hanky was clutched in his bluish chubby hand, with which he was wiping away from those closed eyelids tears existing only in his imagination.

“Death at work! How this touches the calloused hearts of the brasses! Now you understand what I had in mind, saying that the operator was forced to stop filming? Ahh! It was my best ghoul. A courageous and completely mindless staffer. Mindless, alas, already in the literal sense of the word.[5] Fortunately, everything that was shot was immediately transmitted through telepathic channels to our centre… And now, my friends, if you’re interested, Venny will report how the high council of the guards of Gloom ended and what it decided. First: Ligul the hunchback is now not only the head of the Chancellery, but also the temporarily acting sovereign of Gloom. Until now, this post was nominally occupied by Kvodnon, who is finally out of the game now.”

“How does he know all this?” Methodius asked.

“Probably enticed one of the agents. Wizards pay rather well for information they’re interested in,” Julitta said indifferently.

“Pay with what? Money?” Chimodanov asked.

“What’s money got to do with it?” Julitta replied with the deepest contempt.

On the screen, Venny Vii brushed away adhered dirt from his shirtfront with a learned gesture. “I’ll continue! The speed of Methodius Buslaev’s degradation has been declared by Gloom as insufficient. The presence of his self – the unsold and un-pawned eidos – has been declared scandalous. It has been decided to appoint him a new guardian until he comes of age. I suspect either Ligul himself or someone he’ll assign to this post. The old guardian, the swordsman Ares, has been indicted and exiled to Lower Tartarus. Ares refused the demand to return his sword. As a result of his arrest, a number of vacancies in some divisions of Gloom have become available.”

“Ares has been seized?” Methodius asked, in disbelief.

“He killed three guards, but then they disarmed him anyway! You should’ve seen how he left! A lion surrounded by mongrels! And they were all jumping and shouting, ‘Death to him!’” Julitta replied, sobbing.

“Yes, everything was neatly arranged! Ligul used the destruction of Kvodnon to appropriate power till Methodius’ maturity. Moreover, Ligul himself or one he sends will train Methodius!” Chimodanov estimated, having had time to delve into the basic power structure.

“But why didn’t they execute Ares?” Daphne asked. The mores of dark guards, very far from sentimentality, were well known to her.

“Ligul didn’t dare. I suspect he’s slightly afraid. Not now, but for the future, just in case. Everything might turn around! For this same reason he spared my life and even allowed me to leave Tartarus. I didn’t expect that!” Julitta said with contempt.

“Afraid of whom?” Daph clarified.

The witch did not answer, only squinted quickly at Methodius. Daphne sighed. She had managed to fall in love with the guy whom even the head of the Chancellery of Gloom fears! And not only fall in love, but tie her wings and her eternity together with him.

Strong blows shook the reception door.

“Who else is there? We aren’t expecting anyone!” Nata said with unease.

The blows did not subside. They did not become more violent, but rather nastier. The one banging this way knew that he was heard and sooner or later it would open. This was the knock of a master of the situation.

“Are we letting him in?” Daph asked.

Julitta shook her head slowly. “No.”

“Why?”

“If it’s a moronoid, the rune will stop him. If not, he’ll enter and…” the witch did not finish and waved her hand.

The sound of a door being opened was heard. Apparently, the one who knocked was tired of waiting for the grass to grow.

“No, not a moronoid…” Daph said quietly, observing how Depressiac’s back acquired the resemblance of a question mark and the short leathery nose cut through three deep folds.

Julitta kept silent. Everyone, including Depressiac and Zuduka, attentively listened as someone walked with a shuffling and unsteady gait in reception below. Now he pushed aside a chair, now he opened the door into Ares’ office and glanced casually in it. Now steps approached the inner staircase. The rickety oak rails began to creak. A gurgling cough was heard. It seemed something vile and repugnant was crawling up the stairs from below.

To Methodius’ surprise, it was not Eugeny Moshkin but Chimodanov who first lost his nerves. “Can you draw the rune of invisibility? Do something!” Chimodanov whispered to Daphne.

“It’s useless. He already knows that we’re here,” Daph remarked.

“Who is it?”

“I suspect the new guardian of our Mety! Speak of the devil!” Julitta said sullenly, after crossing her arms on her chest.

Chapter 3
Boy with a Sabre

Irka sat on a bench in that place beyond Tsvetnoy Boulevard where the Moscow avenues turned steeply up and thought about how to deal with her own immortality. The bench was the most uncomfortable. All the boards except two were completely missing, and Irka was constantly falling into the hole, if she, forgetting, leaned back slightly.

Certainly, it was possible to move, but there were already groups sitting on all the neighbouring benches, therefore, it was necessary to either remain on the uncomfortable bench or sacrifice solitude. Irka chose what seemed to her, as a special individual, the lesser of two evils.

And although before her lay a glorious new eternity, almost wrapped in wrapping paper, Irka’s thoughts were the saddest. She thought about Methodius, who loved another, about Granny, and about what Antigonus had said to her in the evening.

“The powers of the valkyries are enormous, or I’m not a vile monster!” he had stated, smugly examining his own reflection in the puddle. “Valkyries can do everything for others, but nothing for themselves. Having once used her abilities for her own interests, a valkyrie will lose them…”

“Just once?” Irka asked again with horror, keeping it in mind.

“Yes, ghastly valkyrie, that’s right. Won’t you comb my terrible sideburns? It’s so disgusting that I always wait for this moment with impatience!” Antigonus asked.

“I can do everything for others and nothing for myself. What would be better to restrain omnipotence? True, I have living legs, flight, and the possibility to run through the forest at night as a white wolf. In essence, it’s already a lot,” Irka reflected.

Suddenly, looking up, she discovered that her solitude was being disrupted. A young person, having broken away from one of the small groups, was hovering around her. Rather likeable, if compared to an Australopithecus[6] specimen, and slightly older than Irka. He had just finished examining her knees and face, and now first moved away, then approached. On the whole, he behaved like a dog to which meat was thrown directly from a frying pan. It wants to grab it, but fears getting burned.

“Well, earlier nobody cared about me!” Irka thought, perhaps, slightly flattered. She did not like the young person at all, but it was still interesting to listen to him. After all, it was the second time in her life that she was accosted on the street. The first time, two doltish fellows did this at the subway.

Seeing that his presence was noticed, the young person got up the courage and informed Irka that her lace was untied.

“It wasn’t possible to think up something better?” Irka muttered, but still looked down automatically and discovered that her lace was actually untied. “Thanks!” she said.

The pleased young person immediately began to cultivate his success and asked what she thought about love at first sight. Irka said that she thought absolutely nothing about it.

“What music do you prefer?”

Irka, not going into details, assured him that she mostly liked soft music.

The young person, who had already wasted two excellent lines, became shy and hastily resorted to a third, “Are you by chance waiting for me here?”

Irka assured him that he was amazingly shrewd. She was not by chance waiting for him.

“Ahhh!” the young person drawled in confusion. Not knowing what else to say, he informed her that his name was Roma, and asked how old Irka was.

“I’m as old as the world!” Irka said, thinking about the age of the valkyries.

“You tell fairy tales… Then I’m as old as two worlds!” Roma exclaimed.

“Do you have in mind this world and the parallel one? On the whole you look about sixteen…” Irka remarked.

“Seventeen!” Roma corrected resentfully. “And you’re some kind of… you know… not that…”

“Some kind of what?” Irka asked. She was curious to hear something new about herself. After all, the only person you are not capable of assessing sensibly is yourself.

“Well, in short, some kind of not that…”

Irka frowned. “I’m already familiar with this thesis. From here, please, with complex two-part proposals with many secondary terms! And what am I?”

“Well, you say all kinds of words… a brainiac!”

Irka sighed. Alas, this was not news to her. “You guessed it. No point in using a hackneyed cliché. I’m precisely that! And, by the way, if I were you, I’d slip away right now.”

“Why?”

“Because. My older brother is walking towards us!” Irka said, smiling sweetly.

“Yes indeed. And is your grandpa coming towards us by any chance?” Roma mockingly asked.

“Well, as you wish. I warned you,” Irka sighed.

Vaguely sensing something special in her tone, Roma condescendingly turned his head. Behind him, arms crossed on his chest, Essiorh stood and examined him with the dour curiosity of a scientist setting up experiments on guinea pigs. For the first time, the keeper was not in a leather jacket but a white tight-fitting T-shirt, which nicely showed off his sculpted muscles. The belt buckle in the form of a skeleton’s hand gleamed dimly, but meaningfully.

Roma issued a sound that could have been made by a pug, which suddenly discovered that an elephant, having lost patience completely, was running after it with a chainsaw in its trunk. The novice womanizer leaped over the bench with a howl and disappeared into the three and a half trees of the boulevard as successfully as if it was a forest.

Essiorh, it goes without saying, did not pursue him. He looked anxiously at the motorcycle standing at some distance right on the grass of the boulevard and dropped onto the bench next to Irka. “Hello!” he said.

“Hello!” Irka replied.

They had not seen each other for about three weeks. Not since that very night when the keeper had rushed with her on the motorcycle across Moscow. But, in spite of the short duration of their past acquaintance, both now suddenly felt like old friends and were very glad to meet.

“How are you?” Essiorh asked.

“Okay.”

Essiorh looked attentively at her. “Accustomed?” he asked as if casually.

“Accustomed.”

“Wolf and swan?”

“We have full mutual understanding,” said Irka.

Here she was being slightly dishonest. She had a mutual understanding only with the swan. With the wolf, it was more about armed neutrality. Now and then, especially during a full moon, the wolf persistently tried to seize power, and only the will of man restrained it.

“And how’s your terrible monster with the sideburns?” Essiorh asked with a smile.

“Antigonus? Hmmm… In short, he’s now robbing a little shop,” Irka said sheepishly.

“WHAT?” Essiorh was amazed.

“I think the shopkeeper will survive this! In reality, he infiltrated the storage room and is now eating jam somewhere behind the boxes,” Irka explained, smiling.

Not so long ago, the house-kikimor revealed a weakness. The weakness was excusable, but at the same time insurmountable. He experienced an enormous craving for fruit preserves and jam. He was still able to restrain himself for about five or six days, but later could not stand it and disappeared for several hours in some store room, where he ate two, three, or four jars at once. Then he sang songs, slept for half a day, and only then, guiltily sniffling his porous nose similar to a small lemon, reported to Irka. It was completely useless to call him on this drunken day. Antigonus would not appear even in the event that Irka were to be executed.

“Funny,” said Essiorh. “These are all earthly passions! You can’t get away from them. The moronoid world knows how to attract and hold. It entangles with attachments, like a spider’s web. You try to think about eternity and suddenly catch yourself with thoughts constantly straying to a new muffler or that at least the rear tires need to be changed.”

“Nightmare,” Irka sympathized. She understood little about motorcycles, but Essiorh’s tone convinced her that this was something important.

Her attention encouraged the keeper. “You bet! If only you knew how rare it is to come across an unlucky tire and especially unlucky gasoline!” he complained.

Both became silent. Essiorh thought about wheels and tires, and Irka – it seemed she was not thinking about anything – simply looked at the sun, which hung directly above the roofs.

“Have I told you yet? I rented a room here the day before yesterday!” the keeper suddenly said. “Strange that I talk to you about this first and not Daph. Must be because I received a strict order not to meet with Daphne until further notice.”

“Why?”

“Ares has been seized and exiled again, Methodius has a new guardian, and in general, the house on Bolshaya Dmitrovka is now surrounded by this mass of darkness that it’s not worth trying to get closer. Any outside contact will be noticed. I hope Daph will turn out to have enough Light inside,” Essiorh said anxiously.

Irka was flattered by his confidence. This meant that for the omniscient keeper, keenly observing any changes in a person, Irka and Light were inseparable.

“What guardian does Met have?”

Essiorh guided a thumb along his neck, showing that he would die and not get up. It could not be worse.

“Clear… So you said that you rented a room…” Irka said. She suddenly recalled that Methodius loved another, and resentment forced her to change the subject. Let him deal with his guardians. What does it matter to her now?

“The room isn’t bad. In the Centre. Next to Clean Ponds. True, the window opens into the courtyard and nothing is visible, but if one concentrates a little and imagines that directly behind this wall is an excellent landscape, the soul becomes easy… Again not a bad place to park the motorcycle,” Essiorh said not without pride.

“But where do you get the money to pay for the room?” Irka asked. She already managed to grasp that creatures of Light did not have the right to possess money, unless it falls from the sky itself, which happened extremely rarely.

Essiorh sighed. “You see,” he said with some doubt in his voice. “This is a special case. The owner of the room is such a person that to give him money would be a misfortune. Especially for himself. He would immediately turn it into liquid of a certain kind.”

“A wino, perhaps?” Irka specified.

“No need to speak badly about people. Light can’t allow itself to criticize anyone. He’s simply a weak person,” the keeper said reproachfully.

“How did you wiggle out of it? Don’t be modest! I know that you came up with something! Admit it!”

“W-ell…” Essiorh drawled with an easy smile. “I readjusted his organism a little and taught him to obtain pleasure from tears! He cries and has the same experience as when he drank a glass or two. Now he cries all day, even at night, but sooner or later the tears will wash the dependence on alcohol out of his system, and he’ll be healed!”

“And while he cries, you live in his room?”

Essiorh nodded. “Something like that. If you want, drop in to visit me. There’s something I need to show you… If something happens to me, someone else from Light should know…” the keeper said, examining his powerful hand with traces of machine oil under the nails.

“Can something happen to you?” Irka tensed up.

“Yes and no. To speak about this now is premature,” Essiorh replied mysteriously. “And in general, we can put off the conversation about business for a while. For a start, I’ll introduce you to my housemate.”

“Will I like him?” Irka asked.

“I don’t doubt it. His name is Fatiaitsev. Versatile personality. Former circus clown. Former juggler. Former administrator. Former balloon seller. Part poet. By the way, not former, as this is the only status which doesn’t fear time. And simply a good person.”

“Then let’s go. A good person is the most understandable of all professions,” Irka agreed.

Essiorh started his motorcycle. This time it did not rumble so intensely, because he had managed to acquire a muffler and even a license plate. Irka felt a slight disappointment. Earlier, Essiorh’s motorcycle was not so respectable.

True, a minute later it was clear that Essiorh still rode like a kamikaze, and Irka calmed down. Soon the motorcycle flew into a courtyard and stopped by a low three-storey building of ancient construction. The building, once probably yellow, was now multi-coloured and was distinguished only by a couple of air conditioners on the first floor, which on this decrepit mastodon looked like new fashionable glasses on a cave dweller’s face.

Essiorh went up to the third floor and stopped at the door upholstered with black artificial leather and with a wire stretched tightly across on the outside. Such doors were very trendy about forty years ago. It was believed that the sheathing would not let sounds and malicious drafts into the apartment. However, for Essiorh, accustomed to thinking of more round numbers, forty years were like the Tuesday before last.

After looking pensively at the door, the keeper started slapping his pockets. “Well, I forgot the key again!” he said. “Okay! For the very last time! You saw nothing! This isn’t an ordinary break-in, but a necessity!”

He lightly touched the keyhole with a finger. Irka heard the click of the lock. After stepping over the threshold, they found themselves in a long dark hallway. A spot of light was visible at its other end.

“Oh, Fatiaitsev is home! Furthermore, he’s in the kitchen! This is a very valuable addition!” Essiorh said with enthusiasm and, grabbing Irka’s hand, pulled her after himself.

Essiorh’s housemate was indeed home. He was sitting at the table, holding a ball-point pen in his right hand and a fork in his left. He was eating with the left and doing a crossword puzzle with the right. Moreover, the hands were moving easily and independently, without any strain. It showed a lot of experience.

Irka stared at him with curiosity and admiration. Actually, Fatiaitsev presented a picturesque figure – small, chubby, with a splendid unruly head of hair. His fat cheeks made one think of a St. Bernard.

Feeling that he was being watched, Fatiaitsev looked up. “Oh, what a wonderful child! Did a stork bring it?” he exclaimed.

“Who, me?” Irka asked, offended. She was, as is known, at that age when the word “child” made her want to throw hand grenades. However, Essiorh’s housemate looked so amusing that it was impossible to be angry at him for long.

“Wonderful child, didn’t I invite you to the circus last year?” Fatiaitsev continued. “Remember! I even asked for your phone number, and you gave it to me, but, alas, it turned out to be bogus. I phoned, and the Society of Fans of Mediterranean Turtles answered.”

“Was I in a wheelchair?” Irka asked naively.

“In a stroller?”[7] Fatiaitsev was surprised. “Do you think you were so small last year? Don’t be coy!”

Recollecting suddenly, Irka bit her lip. She realized that she should not have mentioned the wheelchair. With the careless word, she almost brought the valkyrie curse down on the former clown. “No, it wasn’t me,” she muttered.

“It was you!” Fatiaitsev persisted. “I remember exactly! You had on a white dress of dandelion fluff!”

Irka chuckled. “Anyway, it wasn’t me!”

“How was it not you? Really, it was not you! Oh, no! I’m dead! I dream of that girl every day!” Fatiaitsev said and, sobbing, covered his face with his hands.

He was sobbing so credibly, with splashes and even streams of tears, that Irka even got scared and nudged Essiorh with an elbow. In response, Essiorh silently pointed a finger at Fatiaitsev’s ears. It turned out, the former clown, sobbing, did not forget to move his ears comically.

“Enough clowning around! You’re frightening the girl!” Essiorh said with displeasure.

Fatiaitsev lifted a red indignant face to the ceiling. “I’m not clowning around! I’m truly suffering! I’m a clown mime! The eternal Pierrot! And you’re the shameless Harlequin![8] No more than that!” he rumbled.

True, Fatiaitsev did not make a noise for long. He stopped playing the fool after only half a minute and invited Irka and Essiorh to dine with him. “Do you know how I live now, where this wine, smoked sausage, grapes, and other elements of aristocratic degradation come from?” he asked, nodding proudly at the table.

“You wander along Arbat in a red wig, with a red round nose on an elastic band, and sell balloons?” Essiorh smiled, knowing the correct answer but having decided to play along.

“Balloons? Nothing of the sort,” Fatiaitsev protested violently. “That phase of my life is over. Now I write speeches.”

“For the government?” Irka asked in surprise.

Fatiaitsev shook his head. “I haven’t fallen so low yet. They have their own clowns there. I compose confessions of love for romantics devoid of eloquence; tragic epitaphs to brothers lost prematurely, when those who blew them up crowded around with tears in their eyes – sincere tears, mind you!; wedding invitations; and other things. There are the unexpected orders. Recently, for example, I wrote a speech for a modest employee who wanted to ask his boss for a raise.”

“So, did he get the raise?”

“Alas, no. The boss turned out to be a tough redneck. But then my charge, in the process of studying the speech – and the speech turned out heartfelt! – started an affair with a colleague. For half a year before that, they sat almost desk to desk but didn’t even look at each other. The affair has gone quite far, and now I write excuses for the wretch, since he’s married. His wife is a rather clever woman, not easy to deceive, and now and then I rack my brain for hours concocting something fresh. Where he was and why he stayed late at work.”

Essiorh shook his head reproachfully. Fatiaitsev was on fire and shot amusing stories one after another. Already at the end of the meal, he mentioned in passing that soon he would be in hospital for surgery.

“What surgery?” Irka asked.

“Well that, no big deal. A matter of several days,” Fatiaitsev replied.

“Serious?”

The clown shook his head. “What is serious, a little thing… I had a granny, smart old woman, but thoroughly sick. I won’t tell you how many times she was under the knife, but she lived carefree the whole time. ‘Eh, Alec!’ she said. ‘Will you really protect yourself? A person dies only once, arms and legs not worn out as they should be, eyes not ruined. Isn’t it a shame? He lies in the coffin, legs are whole, arms aren’t wasted, but where’s the person – gone! Better to leave this world in pieces, but live longer!’ Well, please don’t think badly of me!”

Fatiaitsev inflated his cheeks and smacked them, making a shot louder than a pistol. Then he looked anxiously at the clock and, shouting, “Business! Business! The heart begs for peace!”[9] dashed away somewhere.

“Well, what do you think of Fatiaitsev? Isn’t he great?” Essiorh asked.

“Your friend is a very sad person,” said Irka.

“Who’s sad, him?” the keeper asked incredulously.

“Yes. Even when he jokes, he has sad eyes.”

“It’s probably because he’s a former clown. All clowns have sad eyes. They make others laugh, but they are not funny to themselves at all,” Essiorh said after thinking.

* * *

The room, which the keeper was proud of, turned out to be tiny. A small semicircular balcony – approximately about two steps – was attached to the window. However, according to Essiorh, it was dangerous to step out onto the balcony – it was in an unsafe state. But then the pigeons loved to visit it. Here they cooed, pecked bread, and left white autographic smudges.

“Well, here we are, home!” Essiorh said with obvious satisfaction.

On each of the four walls, the floor, and the ceiling, Irka saw a shielding rune of Light, remote like the sea, the kind drawn by small children. Irka had never seen a small room guarded with such magical care.

After shutting the door behind himself, Essiorh stuck his ear to it and listened attentively to something for a while. Then he approached the window and looked outside for a long time. He breathed on the glass and with the long nail of his little finger drew a line of strange signs on it. Some of them immediately melted, others were imprinted on the glass, as if burnt on it forever.

Essiorh must have been satisfied with the result. He relaxed and turned to Irka. “And now we can talk business! I’m sure that Gloom would very much want to acquire this…” the keeper said, nodding to a small rectangular object resting against the wall and covered with a blanket. Before pulling off the blanket, Essiorh quickly glanced at all the runes. Then he leaned over, pulled the blanket by the edge, and stepped back.

Irka realized that before her was a portrait. She saw the face of a boy of about eight. His dark hair was naturally curly. Dressed in a white shirt with an unbuttoned collar, he looked calmly from the portrait, leaning on a sabre in its scabbard. For the aforementioned age, the boy’s face was rather too clever and mocking. It was noticeable that he was tired of posing, bored of holding the sabre, and secretly wanted to stick his tongue out at the artist. The portrait must have been painted not on the best canvas and with poor paint. A network of small cracks had already managed to cover its outside.

“Who’s this?” Irka asked.

“Matvei Bagrov, son of the Orlovsky landowner Theodore Bagrov,” Essiorh replied.

“Is this portrait magical?” Irka asked.

The keeper shook his head. “Ordinary. Until the invention of photography, many artists travelled to estates of the gentry, ready to paint everything that was ordered. Portraits of masters, romantic mills, favourite horses, dogs… Then photography ruined everything, and the craft gradually disappeared.”

“Where did you get this portrait?” Irka asked.

Essiorh smiled. “You’ll be surprised. I stole it today from the restoration studio!” he said.

“YOU STOLE IT?”

“Well, why repeat? I told you: I stole it. Everything was done cleanly, with minimal use of magic. I teleported, making use of the absence of the restorers, covered the video camera with a sock, took the portrait together with its frame, and that was it. A matter of two minutes. I spent much more time destroying all the reproductions of this picture and the images stored in the catalogs. Fortunately, there turned out to be not too many of them. The portrait isn’t the most well-known and the majority of the time it was gathering dust in storage.”

“But why did you steal it?”

Essiorh looked at Irka patiently. “Two options. Select one. First: in order to sell it on the flea market and purchase an idiot’s pink dream – a Kawasaki Ninja ZX-R motorcycle. Second: so that Gloom or dark wizards wouldn’t get it.”

“The second,” said Irka.

“I would choose the first. Indeed, awfully attractive. Unfortunately, you’re right, the second,” Essiorh confirmed with disappointment.

“But why is it so important that Gloom doesn’t know what the boy looks like? The portrait is old, and the one in it is long gone,” Irka said, looking with regret at the clever and lively face in the portrait.

The keeper glanced at her with polite surprise. “I wouldn’t rush to conclusions. Do you know for sure that he’s dead? Do you have proof? Is there something that I don’t know?” he asked greedily.

“No, but if one simply estimates the date, then…” Irka began.

“So I thought, you don’t have proof,” Essiorh interrupted her severely. “When a moronoid (let it even be a former one) goes into a standoff, he immediately begins to refer to arithmetic… It’s a well-known practice! Perhaps you’ll even say that three plus three is six?”

“How much?”

“This rule is correct only if you count bricks. But if we, for example, take three kindnesses and three tomatoes and add them up, will this also be six?”

“Excuse me. You’re probably right. I’m a bad valkyrie,” said Irka.

“Well, well…” Essiorh instantly thawed. “I’m not a good keeper, crazy about motorcycles and renting a room in a communal dwelling with payment of euphoric tears! On the whole, the reason I showed you the portrait is that all this is terribly important. But now listen to me. I’ll tell you everything I know about Matvei Bagrov…”

The keeper squatted and slowly passed his open palm several centimetres from the portrait. Then he lightly tapped the boy’s face with his finger. A golden wave ran from his finger along the portrait.

“Do you want to bring the portrait to life?” Irka asked.

Essiorh shook his head. “It’s impossible. The artist was neither a guard nor even a wizard,” he said.

“But you did something nevertheless?”

“Something,” Essiorh replied briefly. “But very little… The portrait won’t be able to come to life, but some minimal changes will happen to it. Possibly – I emphasize! – possibly, in several days the portrait will grow up and we’ll see the face of today’s Bagrov… The way he has become.”

“Even if it’s a skull?” Irka asked.

“Even if it’s a skull. The question is whether we have these several days. I fear not,” Essiorh confirmed stiffly.

After removing his finger from the portrait, he got up. The paint, Irka noticed, had become much brighter. It seemed the artist had just finished it all of a few moments ago.

“What you’ll hear now are only speculations. I rely only on meager information that the Transparent Spheres possess, and my own intuition, which we, keepers, have developed better than the usual guards of Light. Personally, I’ve never seen Matvei Bagrov, not counting this portrait, of course,” Essiorh continued, rather boringly, in his usual verbose manner.

Irka listened attentively.

“However, I’m still almost certain that what I’ll say now will turn out to be close to the truth. One thing I fear is that this would be no closer to the truth than the truth itself, because then it’ll be a lie. Do you understand?”

“Yes. That is, more or less,” Irka corrected herself.

“Matvei Bagrov is about eight in the portrait here. When he disappeared, in the sense of finally disappeared – and he disappeared twice! – he was no more than fourteen. Between eight and fourteen is all of six years – about two thousand days! – but what years and what days! The boy was very energetic. He was raised by his father. Lightning killed his mother when he was around one year old. The father, a retired hussar Colonel, a bully and a petty tyrant, educated the son himself and brought him up very strictly. He got up at five in the morning, and they ran four versts along the forest to the spring. In order to get breakfast, the boy had to fire a pistol and hit a coin hung on a string suspended from a pole. Each day the coin rose a little higher. They hacked with real sabres, only a little blunted. No training weapons. They rode horses without saddles. At the age of seven, the boy was already breaking in the most skittish horses. They say that even steppe stallions became manageable when he looked into their eyes. He hunted not only together with his father, but on a par with his father. An important point, mind you, especially if we recall how old he was then. They say he had bruises all over his shoulder from the recoil of the rifle, but the boy nevertheless continued to shoot and hit… In addition, there were also foreign languages, arithmetic, geography, ancient history, domestic literature, and much more. Such a childhood! At the age of twelve, Matvei Bagrov ran away from home with the gipsies. Someone claimed that he had been stolen, but, knowing his nature, I’m certain that he ran away himself.”

“Didn’t his father try to find him?”

“His father was no longer alive. He perished when the kid was eleven. He rushed out in a fierce frost to drag out a peasant’s old horse that had fallen through ice, caught a cold and died. Matvei’s uncle became his guardian till he came of age, but the young Bagrov could not stand him, although the uncle seemed to be a good-natured man. In any case, he didn’t even raise his voice. Here’s another riddle!” Essiorh said.

Irka, not tearing her gaze from the portrait, felt that the teenager’s face grimaced at the mention of his uncle. “No. Simply a trick of the light! Essiorh said that the portrait can’t come to life…” she thought.

“You said the flight with the gipsies was his first disappearance,” Irka reminded him.

“Yes, the first. Sometime later, the boy found himself on Bald Mountain. More precisely, next to Bald Mountain, since a moronoid can never ascend Bald Mountain. He – this is important! – was twelve and a half. He was wearing peasant clothes. Over his shoulders was a sack. In the sack were a sabre and a pair of pistols, covered with rags so they wouldn’t be seen. By that time, Matvei had already left the gipsies and led a vagrant lifestyle. He slept where he had to, either in a shed or a haystack, and in winter he would ask to spend the night in a warm hut. An outstanding hunter, he easily obtained game and either exchanged it for food or sold it. Now and then herdsmen treated him to potatoes and bread. There were only two things he would never do: steal and beg. Both were beneath him. Indeed he was gentry after all.”

“Didn’t the uncle search for him?” Irka was surprised.

Essiorh smiled. “Perhaps he did, but it was more for formality. Indeed in the case of death or disappearance of the boy, he would acquire the estate. And who could recognize the wellborn son Matvei Bagrov in the peasant boy, and even far from his native place? Well, a boy is a boy. He walked and walked along the road. ‘Where are you going?’ ‘Yeah, to my aunt in the city. Father and mother died, and aunt’s in service at a master’s. Perhaps with her I’ll earn a living somehow…’ Besides, Matvei undoubtedly had acting talent. He imitated peasant speech as if he had never read Homer in the original and did not speak three European languages. Now and then, getting carried away, he made up stories, more plausible than truth itself. Truer than the truth, phonier than lies. Only on this basis was it possible to distinguish them.”

“Truer than the truth, phonier than lies….” Irka uttered mentally in order to memorize it. She looked at the portrait again. The facial expression had in no way changed. But the hands on the hilt… Had they really been resting like that?

“You interrupted me! Having accidentally turned up near Bald Mountain, about which he knew absolutely nothing, Bagrov decided to spend the night. The day was already ending. It was summer and he wasn’t afraid of freezing. Before sunset, he came to a stream, across which was a decrepit bridge of a couple of logs thrown together. On the opposite side of the stream was an old cemetery fence, while on this side was a hovel. Not pondering for long, Matvei crawled into the hovel, slipped the sack under his head, and slept as only a person having spent the entire day on the road can. In the middle of the night, he suddenly wanted to drink, and so strongly that he woke up. This desire also saved his life. He saw that a ghoulish green hand had pushed through into the hovel and was reaching for him. Matvei pulled the pistol out of the sack, set the trigger, and fired. He did not miss – and how could he miss! – only the bullet inflicted no harm to the one attempting to grab him. The hand fished for his leg, grabbed it, and dragged it towards itself. Matvei clung to the sack, groped for the hilt of the sabre, snatched it out, got tangled with the webbing of the sack, and with a short downward blow chopped off the hand up to the elbow. In the darkness he heard someone moan, gnash his teeth, and leave.”

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Примечания

1

Kuskovo, built in the mid-18th century, was one of the first great summer country estates of the Russian nobility and one of the few near Moscow still preserved. The estate is now a museum and the park is a favourite of Muscovites.

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2

Mrie de’ Medici (1575–1642) was Queen of France and second wife of Henry IV of France. She was known for political intrigues at the French court.

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3

Lavrentii Pavlovich Beria (1899–1953) was a Soviet security administrator under Joseph Stalin. He was Stalin’s longest-lived and most influential secret police chief.

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4

The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice (1603) is a Shakespearean play. Othello, having been manipulated, smothered his innocent wife Desdemona out of jealousy.

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5

The original Russian text used the word bezbashennyi for mindless, referring to the severed head.

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6

Australopithecus – from Latin australis (southern) and Greek pithekos (ape) – is a genus of hominins that existed millions of years ago and from which modern humans are considered to be descended.

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7

The Russian word for stroller is the same word for wheelchair.

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8

Pierrot and Harlequin are both stock characters of pantomime, Pierrot being the sad clown and Harlequin the nimble and witty servant, both pursuing the same love interest – Columbine.

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9

This is an adaptation of It’s time, my friend (1834), a poem by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin (1799–1837), the greatest Russian poet.

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