The Twilight Watch (24 page)

Serving in the Inquisition definitely had a strange effect on
Others. It made them take a nihilistic view of life. And spout
meaningless phrases.

'Good luck,' I repeated and set off down the hill. Edgar lay
down on the grass, mercilessly creasing his suit, and gazed up at
the sky.

H
ALFWAY BACK TO
the house I met Ksyusha and Romka, striding
briskly along the dusty street, holding hands. I waved to them and
Ksyusha immediately shouted out:

'Your Nadiushka's gone for a walk to the river with her granny!'

I laughed. Ludmila Ivanovna didn't very often hear herself called
'granny' – and like any other fifty-year-old Moscow woman, she
hated the very sound of it.

'Well, I hope they enjoy it,' I said.

'Have you found the wolves yet?' Romka shouted.

'No, your wolves have run away,' I answered.

Maybe, for strictly psychotherapeutic purposes, I ought to have
said that I'd caught the wolves and handed them over to the zoo?
But then, the little boy didn't seem to be suffering from any
lingering fears after his encounter with the werewolves. Arina had
done a good job there.

Greeting the small number of villagers I met along the way, I
walked to our house. Svetlana had occupied my hammock – with
a bottle of beer and the book
Fuaran: fact or fiction
open at the
final pages.

'Interesting?' I asked.

'Uhuh,' Svetlana said with a nod. She was drinking the beer
rustic fashion, straight from the bottle. 'It's more fun that Tove
Jansson's
Moominpappa at Sea
. Now I understand why they didn't
print all the stories about the Moomintrolls before. The last ones
aren't for children at all. Tove Jansson was obviously suffering from
depression when she wrote them.'

'An author has the right to get depressed too,' I said.

'Not if she writes children's books, she doesn't!' Svetlana
exclaimed sternly. 'Children's books should be heart-warming.
Otherwise it's just like a tractor driver ploughing a field crookedly
and then saying: "Ah, I was feeling depressed, it was more interesting
to drive round in circles". Or a doctor who prescribes a
patient a combined laxative and sleeping draft and then ex-plains:
"I'm feeling a bit low, I thought it would cheer me up a bit".'

She reached out to the table and put down the fake
Fuaran
.

'You're very strict, Mother,' I said with a shake of my head.

'That's why I'm strict – because I'm a mother,' Svetlana replied
in the same tone. 'I was only joking. The books are still wonderful
anyway. Only the last ones are very sad.'

'Nadiushka and your mother have gone for a walk to the river,'
I said.

'Did you see them?'

'No Ksyusha said: "Your Nadia and her granny have gone for
a walk . . .".'

Svetlana tittered. But then she pulled a frightened face.

'Don't tell my mother that! She'll be upset.'

'Do you think I'm tired of living?'

'Why don't you tell me how your hike went?'

'The witch got away,' I said. 'We chased her down to the fourth
level of the Twilight, but she still got away.'

'The fourth?' Svetlana's eyes flashed. 'Are you serious?'

I sat down beside her – the hammock swayed indignantly and
the trees creaked, but they held. I gave her a short account of our
adventures.

'And I've never been to the fourth level . . .' Svetlana said
thoughtfully. 'How interesting . . . The colours come back?'

'I even thought there were some smells.'

Svetlana nodded absent-mindedly:

'Yes, I've heard rumours about that . . .Very interesting.'

I kept quiet for a few seconds. And then I said:

'Svetlana, you ought to go back to the Watch.'

She didn't object as usual. She didn't say anything at all.
Encouraged, I went on:

'You can't live at half-power. Sooner or later you . . .'

'Let's not talk about it, Anton. I don't want to be a Great
Enchantress,' Svetlana explained with a wry grin. 'A little bit of
domestic magic, that's all I need.'

The gate slammed shut – Ludmila Ivanovna had come back. I
glanced quickly at her and was about to look away – then I stared
at her, puzzled.

My mother-in-law was glowing. Anybody might have thought
that she'd just put some uppity salesgirl in a shop firmly in her
place, found a hundred roubles in the street and shaken hands with
her beloved TV host Leonid Yakubovich.

She was even walking differently – with light steps, her shoulders
held straight and her chin held high. She was smiling blissfully
and singing in a soft voice:

We were born to make a fairy tale come true . . .

I shook my head hard to clear it. My mother-in-law smiled
sweetly at us, waved her hand and in two strides she was past us
and heading for the house.

'Mum!' Svetlana shouted to her, jumping up. 'Mum!'

My mother-in-law stopped and looked at her – with that same
blissful smile.

'Are you feeling all right, Mum?' Svetlana asked.

'Wonderful!' Ludmila Ivanovna replied affectionately.

'Mum, where's Nadiushka?' Svetlana asked, raising her voice slightly.

'She's gone for a walk with a friend,' she answered, unmoved.

I shuddered. Svetlana exclaimed:

'What do you mean? It's evening already . . . children can't go
walking on their own . . . with what friend?'

'With a friend of mine,' my mother-in-law explained, still smiling.
'Don't worry. You don't think I'm so stupid as to let our little girl
go off on her own, do you?'

'What friend of yours?' Svetlana screamed. 'Mum! What's wrong
with you? Who's Nadia with?'

The smile on my mother-in-law's face began slowly dissolving,
giving way to an uncertain expression.

'With that . . . that . . .' She frowned. 'With Arina. My friend
. . . Arina . . . my friend?'

I was too slow to catch exactly what Svetlana did – I just felt
a chill tremor run over my skin as the Twilight was parted. Svetlana
leaned towards her mother, who froze with her mouth open, swallowing
air in small gulps.

Reading people's thoughts is pretty difficult, it's much easier to
make them speak. But we can take an instant snapshot of thought
information from close relatives in exactly the same way as we do
between ourselves for the sake of speed.

But then, I didn't need the information anyway.

I understood everything already.

And I didn't even feel afraid – just empty. As if the entire world
had frozen over and stopped dead.

'Go to bed!' Svetlana shouted at her mother. Ludmila Ivanovna
turned and walked towards the house like a zombie.

Svetlana looked at me. Her expression was very calm, which
made it hard for me to pull myself together. After all, a man feels
a lot stronger when his woman is frightened.

'Arina just came up and blew on her. Took Nadienka by the
hand and went off into the forest,' Svetlana blurted out. 'And
my mother's been walking around for the past hour, the stupid
fool!'

That was when I realised Svetlana was on the verge of hysterics.

I managed to pull myself together.

'What could she do against the witch?' I grabbed Svetlana by
the shoulders and shook her. 'Your mother's only a human
being!'

Tears welled up briefly in Svetlana's eyes and then immediately
disappeared. Suddenly she gently pushed me away and said:

'Stand back, Anton, or you'll get caught . . . you can hardly stay
on your feet as it is . . .'

I didn't try to argue. After my adventures with Edgar I wasn't
going to be any help. There was hardly any power left in me, I
had nothing left to share with Svetlana.

I stepped back and put my arms round the trunk of the stunted
apple tree that had given up fruiting years ago. I closed my eyes.

The world around me shuddered.

And I felt the Twilight shift and stir.

Svetlana didn't gather power from people around her, as I would
have done. She had enough of her own – obstinately neglected,
unused . . . and constantly accumulating. They say that after giving
birth female Others experience a colossal influx of power, but I
hadn't noticed any changes in Svetlana at the time. It had all
seemed to vanish; it was being hidden, saved up – as it turned out
– for a rainy day.

The world was losing its colours. I realised I was falling into
the Twilight, the first level: the intensity of the magic was so great
that nothing even slightly magical could remain in human reality.
The book
Fuaran: fact or fiction
fell through the rough board table
and hit the ground with a thump. Three houses away clumps of
blue moss, the emotional parasite that lives in the Twilight, flared
up on the roof and were instantly consumed by flames.

Svetlana was enveloped in a white glow. She was moving her
hands quickly, as if she were knitting with invisible yarn. A moment
later, the yarn became visible, as threads as fine as gossamer streamed
away from her hands and spread out, driven by a non-existent
wind. A storm began raging around her, and then subsided as the
thousands of glittering threads flew off into the distance in all
directions.

'What?' I shouted. 'Sveta!'

I knew the spell she had just used. I could even have cast
a 'snowy web' myself – maybe not so efficiently or rapidly, but
still . . .

Svetlana didn't answer. She raised her hands to the sky, as if she
was praying. But we don't believe in any gods, or in God. We are
our own gods and our own demons.

A rainbow sphere, like an oversize soap bubble, parted from
Svetlana's hands and drifted majestically up into the sky. The bubble
expanded, rotating slowly on its axis. A dark red spot on the
translucent rainbow film reminded me of Jupiter. When the red
spot rotated to face me, I felt a cold, searing touch, like a breath
of icy wind.

Svetlana had created the 'eye of the magician'. First grade again
. . . but to create it immediately after the 'snowy web'!

The third spell followed with no perceptible pause, and I realised
Svetlana had been holding it in readiness for a long time, for occasions
precisely like this. She released a flock of ghostly matt-white
birds from her hands. You could have called them doves, except
that their beaks were too large and sharp, too rapacious.

I didn't know this spell at all.

Svetlana lowered her hands. And the Twilight settled back down.
It came creeping back to us, touching our skin with its cautious,
predatory chill.

I emerged into the ordinary world.

Followed by Svetlana.

Here nothing had changed. The open cover of the book lying
on the ground hadn't even slammed shut yet.

But all the dogs in the village were yapping, howling and
barking.

'Sveta, what?' I asked, dashing towards her.

She turned to me, and her eyes were clouded. Her invisible
magical envoys were still dispersing. And then, as they dematerialised
tens and hundreds of kilometres away from us, they sent
back their final reports.

I knew what they said.

'Nothing . . .' Svetlana whispered. 'Nothing anywhere. No
Nadiushka . . . no witch . . .'

Her eyes came back to life. That meant the magical cobweb
had decayed, the white birds had fallen to earth and dissolved, the
rainbow sphere had burst in the sky.

'Nothing anywhere,' Svetlana repeated. 'Anton . . .We need to
calm down.'

'She couldn't have gone far,' I said. 'And she hasn't done anything
bad to Nadya, believe me!'

'A hostage?' Svetlana asked. I read hope in her face.

'The Inquisition have the district sealed off. They have their
own methods, even Arina won't get past the cordons.'

'Yes . . .' Svetlana whispered. 'I see.'

'To get away, she needs outside help,' I said, unsure whether I
was trying to convince Sveta or myself. 'She's not going to get it
voluntarily. So she's decided to blackmail us.'

'Will we be able to satisfy her demands?' Svetlana, taking the
bull by the horns straight away, without bothering to ask if we
would want to satisfy them . . . What else could we do? We'd do
anything . . . if we could.

'We have to wait for the demands.'

Svetlana nodded.

'Yes . . . wait. But what for, exactly? A call?'

Immediately she flung her hand up and looked at the window
of the bedroom.

An instant later the comb that Arina had given her broke the
glass as it came flying through the window. Svetlana caught it in
her hand as if it was some insect. She looked at the comb for
several seconds, then grimaced and ran it through her hair.

I heard a low, good-humoured laugh. And somewhere inside
my head Arina's voice said:

'Hello there, sweetheart. So we meet at last. Did my present
come in handy?'

'Remember, you old wretch . . .' Svetlana began, holding the
comb out in front of her.

'I know, I know, my darling. I know everything, and I shan't
forget. If I harm a single little hair on Nadienka's head, you'll
follow me to the ends of the earth, drag me back up from the
fifth level of the Twilight, tear me asunder, chop me into little
pieces and feed me to the pigs. I know everything you want to
say. And I believe you'd do it too.'

Arina's voice was serious. She wasn't mocking us, but explaining
perfectly calmly what she wanted us to do. And Svetlana waited
silently keeping the comb in her hand. When the witch had finished,
she said:

'All right. Then let's not waste any time. I want to speak to
Nadiushka.'

'Nadienka, say hello to Mummy,' Arina said.

We heard a perfectly cheerful voice say:

'Hello!'

'Nadiushka, is everything all right?' Svetlana asked cautiously.

'Uhuh . . .' Nadya replied.

Then Arina immediately started speaking again:

'Enchantress, I won't do your daughter any harm, just as long
as you don't do anything stupid. I don't want much from you –
lead me out of the encirclement and you'll get your daughter
back.'

'Arina,' I said, taking Svetlana by the hand, 'the district is
cordoned off by the Inquisition. Do you understand that?'

'I wouldn't have asked for help otherwise,' Arina replied coolly.
'Think, sorcerer! There's a weak board in every fence and a tear
in every net. Lead me through, and I'll return your daughter.'