The Twilight Watch:

  'Where are you going?' Nadiushka asked, clutching my hand tightly.

  'Did I say I was going anywhere?' I asked in surprise.

  'No, you didn't say . . .' she admitted and ruffled her hair with her hand. 'But you are going?'

  'Yes, I am,' I confessed.

  That's the way things are, if a child is a potential Other so powerful that she has the ability to foresee the future from birth. A year earlier Nadya had started crying a week before she actually started teething.

  'La-la-la . . .' Nadya sang, looking at the fence. 'But the fence needs painting!'

  'Did Grandma say that?' I asked.

  'Yes. If we had a real man, he'd paint the fence,' Nadiushka repeated laboriously. 'But we haven't got a real man, so Grandma's going to have to paint it.'

  I sighed.

  Oh these terrible dacha fanatics! When people got old, why did they always develop a passion for gardening, scrabbling in the earth? Were they trying to get used to it?

  'Grandma's joking,' I said, and thumped my chest. 'We do have a real man here, and he'll paint the fence! If necessary, he'll paint all the fences in the village!'

  'A real man,' Nadya repeated, laughing.

  I buried my face in her fine hair and blew. Nadiushka started giggling and kicking out at the same time. I winked at Svetlana as she came out of the house, and lowered my daughter to the ground.

  'Run to Mummy.'

  'No, better go to Grandma,' said Svetlana, sweeping Nadya up in her arms. 'For a drink of milk.'

  'I don't want milk!'

  'You have to,' Svetlana retorted.

  And Nadiushka didn't argue any more, she set off meekly to the kitchen. Even ordinary human mothers and children have a strange, unspoken understanding with each other. So what could you expect from our family? Nadya could sense perfectly well when she could play up, and when it wasn't even worth trying.

  'What did Gesar say?' Svetlana asked, sitting down beside me. The hammock started to sway.

  'He gave me a choice. I can look for the witch on my own, or I can call in assistance. Will you help me decide?'

  'Look at the future for you?' Svetlana asked.

  'Yes.'

  Svetlana closed her eyes and lay back in the hammock. I pulled up her legs and put them across my knees. From the outside it looked perfectly idyllic. An attractive woman lying in a hammock, resting. Her husband sitting beside her, playfully stroking her thigh.

  I can look into the future too, but not nearly as well as Svetlana. It's not my speciality, so would have taken me a lot longer to do. And my forecast would have been unreliable.

  Svetlana opened her eyes and looked at me.

  'Well?' I asked impatiently.

  'Don't stop, keep stroking,' she said with a smile. 'You're in the clear. I don't see any danger at all.'

  'The witch is evidently weary of her evildoing,' I laughed. 'All right, then. I'll issue her a verbal warning for not being registered.'

  'It's her library that bothers me,' Svetlana confessed. 'Why would she hide away in the back of beyond, with books like that?'

  'Maybe she just doesn't like the city?' I suggested. 'She needs the forest, fresh air . . .'

  'Then why just outside Moscow? She should go away to Siberia, where the environment's less polluted and the rarest herbs grow. Or to the Far East.'

  'She's local,' I laughed. 'Patriotic about her own little homeland.'

  'Something's not right,' Svetlana said peevishly. 'I still can't get over that business with Gesar . . . and then suddenly this witch!'

  'What's so strange about the Gesar business?' I asked with a shrug. 'He wanted to make his son into a Light One. I for one don't blame him. Imagine how guilty he must feel. He thought the child had died . . .'

  Svetlana smiled ironically:

  'At this moment Nadiushka's sitting on a stool, dangling her legs and saying she wants the skin taken off her milk.'

  'So . . . ?' I asked, puzzled.

  'I can sense where she is and what's happening to her,' Svetlana explained. 'Because she's my daughter. And I'm not as powerful as Gesar or Olga . . .'

  'They thought the boy had died . . .' I muttered.

  'That could never happen,' Svetlana said firmly. 'Gesar's not a block of stone, he's got feelings. He would have sensed that the boy was alive. Olga certainly would have. He's her flesh and blood . . . she couldn't have believed that her child had died. And if they knew he was alive, the rest was straightforward enough. Gesar has the power, and he had it fifty years ago, to turn the entire country upside down in order to find his son.'

  'You mean they deliberately didn't look for him?' I asked, but Svetlana didn't answer. 'Or . . .'

  'Or,' Svetlana agreed, 'the boy really was an ordinary human being. In that case everything fits. They could have believed he was dead and found him entirely by chance.'

  'The Fuaran,' I said. 'Maybe this witch is somehow connected with what happened at the Assol complex?'

  Svetlana shrugged and sighed:

  'Anton, I want desperately to go into the forest with you, find this kind botanist lady and subject her to intensive interrogation.'

  'But you're not going to,' I said.

  'No, I'm not. I swore I wouldn't get involved in Night Watch operations.'

  I understood everything. I shared the resentment Svetlana felt towards Gesar. And in any case I preferred not to take Svetlana with me . . . it wasn't her job, to go traipsing through the forest looking for witches.

  But how much simpler and easier it would have been to work together.

  I sighed and stood up.

  'Right then, I won't put it off any longer. The heat's eased off, so it's time I took a stroll in the forest.'

  'It's almost evening,' Svetlana remarked.

  'I won't be far away. The children said the hut was really near.'

  Svetlana nodded.

  'All right. Just wait a minute and I'll make you some sandwiches. And fill a flask with compote.'

  While I was waiting, I took a cautious peep into the barn. And I almost flipped. Not only had Kolya taken half the diesel engine apart and laid the pieces out on the floor, he now had another local drunk, Andryukha or Seryoga, rummaging away beside him. They were so absorbed in their confrontation with German technology that the 'little bottle' soft-hearted Svetlana had brought for them was still standing there unopened. Kolya was crooning an old folk ditty to himself:

  My very best friend and I

  Worked on a diesel engine . . .

  I tiptoed away from the shed.

  To hell with the car anyway . . .

  Svetlana kitted me out as if I wasn't just going for a walk along the edge of the forest, but was about to be parachuted into the middle of the Siberian taiga.

  Sandwiches in a plastic bag, a flask of compote, a sturdy penknife, matches, a box of salt, two apples and a torch.

  And she'd also checked that my mobile phone was charged. Bearing in mind the forest's minuscule dimensions, that wasn't a bad idea. In an emergency I could always climb a tree – then the signal would be bound to reach the network.

  It was my idea to take the minidisc player. And as I strolled towards the forest, I listened to The Hibernation of the Beasts:

  The medieval city sleeps, the worn-out granite trembles,

  The night maintains its silence out of fear of death.

  The medieval city sleeps, the dull and washed-out colours

  Speak to you like some distant echo – but don't trust it.

  In libraries books sleep, storehouses are bloated with barrels,

  And geniuses lose their minds on the night watch,

  And darkness averages, levels everything: bridges, canals and houses,

  Capitols and prisons, all in a single pattern . . .

  I wasn't really expecting to find the witch that evening. I ought to have gone in the morning, and with a team. But I really wanted to locate the suspect myself!

  And to take a look at that book, the Fuaran.
br />   I stood at the edge of the forest for a while, looking at the world through the Twilight. Nothing out of the ordinary. Not the slightest trace of magic. Except that in the distance, above our house, there was a bright white glow. A first-grade enchantress can be seen from a long way off . . .

  Okay, let's go in deeper.

  I raised my shadow from the ground and stepped into the Twilight.

  The forest was transformed into an eddying haze, a phantom. Only the very largest of the trees were represented in the Twilight world.

  Now, where had the kids come out of the forest?

  I found their tracks fairly quickly. A couple of days later and the faint footprints would have faded away, but they were still visible. Children leave clear tracks, they have a lot of power in them. Only pregnant women leave tracks that are clearer.

  There were no tracks from the 'female botanist'. They could have faded already. But it was more likely that this witch had long been in the habit of not leaving any tracks.

  Yet she hadn't erased the children's tracks. Why not? An oversight? That traditional Russian sloppiness? Or was it deliberate?

  Well, I wasn't going to guess.

  I recorded the children's footprints in my memory and left the Twilight. I couldn't see the tracks any more, but I could sense which way they were leading. Now I was ready to set off.

  First I disguised myself thoroughly. Of course, the disguise was no match for the shell that Gesar had encased me in, but a magician less powerful than me would take me for a human being. Maybe we were overestimating the witch's abilities?

  I spent the first half-hour vigilantly surveying the area, inspecting every suspicious bush through the Twilight, sometimes pronouncing simple search spells. In general working by the book, a disciplined Other conducting a search.

  Then I got bored of that. I was in a forest – only a small one, and maybe not one that was in great shape, but it was at least unspoiled by tourists. Maybe the forest was unspoiled because it was only fifty square kilometres. There were all kinds of small forest wildlife here, like squirrels, hares and foxes. There weren't any wolves at all, of course – real ones, that is, rather than werewolves. Fine – we could get along without wolves. There was plenty of free food around – I stopped by some wild raspberry bushes and spent ten minutes picking the slightly withered, sweet berries. Then I came across an entire colony of white cep mushrooms. More than a colony – it was a genuine mushroom megalopolis. Huge white mushrooms, not worm-eaten, no rubbishy little ones or different kinds. I'd had no idea there was treasure like that to be found only a couple of kilometres from the village.

  I hesitated. If I picked all those mushrooms, I could take them home and dump them on the table, to my mother-in-law's amazement and Svetlana's delight. How Nadya would squeal in ecstasy and boast to the neighbours' kids about her clever dad!

  Then I thought that I couldn't sneak a haul like that back to the house without being seen, which would mean the whole village would go dashing off, hunting for mushrooms. Including the local drunks, who would be happy to sell them on the side of the main road and buy vodka with the earnings. And the grannies, who mostly supported themselves by gathering wild food. And all the local kids.

  But somewhere in this forest there were werewolves on the prowl . . .

  'They'll never believe me,' I said miserably, looking at the mushroom patch.

  I felt a craving for fried white mushrooms. I swallowed hard and carried on following the track.

  And five minutes later I came out at a small log-built house.

  Everything was just as the children had described it. A little house, tiny windows, no fence, no outbuildings, no vegetable patches. Nobody ever builds houses like that in the forest. Even the dingiest little watchman's hut has to have a lean-to shed for firewood.

  'Hey, anybody home?' I shouted. 'Hello?'

  Nobody answered.

  'Little hut, little hut,' I muttered, citing the fairy tale. 'Turn your back to the forest and your front to me . . .'

  The hut as it was stayed. But then, it was already facing me anyway. I suddenly felt very foolish.

  It was time to stop playing stupid games. I'd go in and wait for the mistress of the house, if she wasn't home . . .

  I walked up to the door and touched the rusty iron handle – and at that very moment, as if someone had been waiting for that touch, the door opened.

  'Good day,' said a woman about thirty years old.

  A very beautiful woman . . .

  Somehow, from what Romka and Ksyusha had told me, I'd expected her to be older. They hadn't really said anything about her appearance, and I'd pictured some average image of 'just a woman'. That was stupid of me . . . of course, for children as young as them, 'beautiful' meant 'wearing a bright-coloured dress'. In another year or two, Ksyusha would probably have said with delight and admiration in her voice: 'The lady was so beautiful!' and compared her with the latest teenage girl's idol.

  But she was wearing a check shirt, the kind that men and women can wear.

  Tall – but not so tall as to make a man of average height feel insecure. Slim – but not at all skinny. Legs so long and straight I felt like shouting: 'Why the hell did you put jeans on, you fool, get into a miniskirt!' Breasts – well, no doubt some men prefer to see two huge silicone melons, and some take delight in chests as flat as a boy's. But in this particular matter any normal man should go for the golden mean. Hands . . . well, I don't know exactly how hands can be erotic. But hers certainly were. Somehow they made you think that just one touch from those slender fingers and . . .

  With a figure like that, a beautiful face is an optional extra. But she was lovely. Hair as black as pitch, large eyes that smiled and enticed. All her features were regular, with just some tiny deviation from perfection that was invisible to the eye, but nonetheless allowed you to see her as a living woman and not a work of art.

  'Er . . . h-hello,' I whispered.

  What was wrong with me? Anyone would think I'd been raised on an uninhabited island and never seen a woman before.

  She beamed at me.

  'You're Romka's dad, are you?'

  'What?' I asked, confused.

  The woman was slightly embarrassed.

  'I'm sorry. The other day a little boy got lost in the forest, I showed him the way back to the village. He stammered too . . . a little bit. So I thought . . .'

  'I don't usually stammer,' I mumbled. 'I'm usually always spouting all sorts of nonsense. But I wasn't expecting to meet such a beautiful woman in the forest, and I just choked up.'

  The 'beautiful woman' laughed:

  'Oh, and are those words nonsense too? Or the truth?'

  'The truth,' I confessed.

  'Won't you come in?' She stepped back into the house. 'And thank you very much. Round here compliments are hard to come by . . .'

  'Well, you won't meet people here very often,' I observed, walking into the house and looking around.