The Twilight Watch:

  Not a trace of magic. A rather strange interior for a house in a forest, but then you come across all sorts of things. True, there was a bookcase with old volumes in it . . . But there were no indications that my hostess was an Other.

  'There are two villages near here,' the woman explained. 'The one I took the children back to and another, a bit larger. I go there to buy groceries, the shop's always open. But it's still not a good place for compliments.'

  She smiled again.

  'My name's Arina. Not Irina – Arina.'

  'Anton,' I replied. And then I showed off my schoolboy literary erudition. 'Arina, like Pushkin's nanny?'

  'Precisely, I was named after her,' the woman said, still smiling. 'My father was Alexander Sergeevich, like Pushkin, and naturally my mother was crazy about the poet. You could say she was a fanatic. So that's where I got my name . . .'

  'But why not Anna, after Anna Kern? Or Natalya, after Natalya Goncharova?'

  Arina shook her head.

  'Oh, that wouldn't do . . . My mother believed all those women played a disastrous role in Pushkin's life. Yes, they served as a source of inspiration, but he suffered greatly as a man . . . But the nanny . . . she made no claims on her Sasha, she loved him devotedly.'

  'Are you a literary specialist?' I asked, putting out a feeler.

  'What would a literary specialist be doing here?' Arina laughed. 'Have a seat, I'll make some tea, it's really good, with herbs. Everyone's gone crazy just recently about maté and rooibosch and those other foreign teas. But we Russians don't need all those exotic brews. We have enough herbs of our own. Or just ordinary black tea – we're not Chinese, why should we drink green water? Or forest herbs. Here, try this . . .'

  'You're a botanist,' I said dejectedly.

  'Correct!' Arina laughed. 'Are you sure you're not Romka's dad?'

  'No, I'm . . .' I hesitated for a moment, and then said the most convenient thing that came to mind, 'I'm a friend of his mother's. Thank you very much for saving the children.'

  'Oh, sure, I really saved them!' Arina said and smiled again. She was standing with her back to me, sprinkling dry herbs into a teapot – a pinch of one, a tiny bit of another, a spoonful of a third . . . my gaze automatically came to rest on the section of those worn jeans that outlined her firm backside. And somehow it was immediately clear that it was taut, without any sign of that favourite city lady's ailment, cellulite. 'Ksyusha's a bright girl, they'd have found their own way out.'

  'What about the wolves?' I asked.

  'What wolves, Anton?' Arina looked at me in amazement. 'I explained that to them – it was a stray dog. Where would wolves come from in a small forest like this?'

  'A stray dog with puppies is dangerous too,' I observed.

  'Well, maybe you're right.' Arina sighed. 'But even so, I don't think it would have attacked the children; an animal has to go completely mad to do something like that. People are far more dangerous than animals.'

  I couldn't argue with that.

  'Don't you find it boring out here in the wilderness?' I asked, changing the subject.

  'I'm not stuck here all the time,' Arina laughed. 'I come for the summer, I'm writing a dissertation: "The ethnogenesis of certain species of crucifers in the central region of Russia".'

  'For a doctorate?' I asked, feeling rather envious. I was still disappointed that I'd never finished writing mine, because I'd become an Other, and all those scholarly games had suddenly seemed boring. They were boring – but even so I felt sad.

  'Post-doctoral,' Arina replied with understandable pride. 'I'm thinking of presenting it this winter.'

  'Is that your research library you have with you?' I asked, nodding at the bookshelf.

  'Yes,' said Arina, nodding in reply. 'It was a stupid thing to do, of course, to drag all the books here. But I got a lift from . . . a friend. In a jeep. So I took the opportunity and brought along my whole library.'

  I tried to imagine whether a jeep could get through this forest. It looked as though there was a fairly wide track starting just at the back of the house . . . maybe it could get through . . .

  I went over to the bookcase and inspected the books closely.

  It really was a rich library for a botanical scholar. There were some old volumes from the early part of the last century, with forewords singing the praises of the Party, and Comrade Stalin in particular. And some even older ones, pre-revolutionary. And lots of simple well-thumbed volumes published twenty or thirty years earlier.

  'A lot of them are just lumber,' Arina said without turning round. 'The only place for them is in some bibliophile's collection. But somehow I can't bring myself to sell them.'

  I nodded gloomily, glancing at the bookcase through the Twilight. Nothing suspicious. No magic. Old books on botany.

  Or an illusion created so artfully that I couldn't see through it.

  'Sit down, the tea's ready,' said Arina.

  I sat down on a squeaky Viennese chair, picked up my cup of tea and sniffed at it.

  The smell was glorious. It smelt like ordinary good-quality tea, with a bit of citrus, and a bit of mint. But I would have bet my life that the brew didn't contain any tea leaves, or citron, or plain ordinary mint.

  'Well,' Arina said with a smile. 'Why don't you try it?'

  She sat down facing me and leaned forward slightly. My gaze involuntarily slipped down to the open collar revealing her suntanned cleavage. I wondered if 'the friend with a jeep' was her lover? Or simply a colleague, another botanist? Oh sure! A botanist with a jeep . . .

  What was wrong with me?

  'It's hot,' I said, holding the cup in my hands. 'I'll let it cool off a bit.'

  Arina nodded.

  'It's handy to have an electric kettle,' I added. 'It boils quickly. But where do you get your power from? I didn't notice any wires round the house.'

  Arina flinched.

  'An underground cable?' she suggested plaintively.

  'Oh no,' I said, holding the cup at a distance and carefully pouring the brew onto the floor. 'That answer won't do. Think again.'

  Arina tossed her head in annoyance:

  'What a disaster! And over such a little thing . . .'

  'It's always the little things that give you away,' I said sympathetically. I stood up. 'Night Watch of the City of Moscow, Anton Gorodetsky. I demand that you immediately remove the illusion!'

  Arina didn't answer.

  'Your refusal to co-operate will be interpreted as a violation of the Treaty,' I reminded her.

  Arina blinked. And disappeared.

  So that was the way it was going to be . . .

  I raised my shadow with a glance, reached towards it, and the cool Twilight embraced me.

  The little house hadn't changed at all.

  Except that Arina wasn't there.

  I concentrated hard. It was too dim and grey to find my shadow. But I finally managed to find it and stepped down to the second level of the Twilight.

  The grey mist thickened and the air was filled with a heady, distant drone. A cold shudder ran across my skin. This time the little house had changed – and radically. It had turned into an old peasant hut; the walls were bare logs, overgrown with moss. Instead of glass, there were sheets of semi-transparent mica in the windows. The furniture was cruder and older, the Viennese chair I was sitting in had become a sawn-off log. Only the distinguished scholarly bookcase hadn't changed. However, the books in it were rapidly changing their appearance, the false letters were dropping to the floor, the leatherette spines were changing to real leather . . .

  I still couldn't see Arina. There was only a vague, dim silhouette hovering somewhere close to the bookcase, a fleeting, transparent shadow . . . the witch had retreated to the third level of the Twilight.

  In theory I could go there too.

  Only in practice, I'd never tried. For a second-grade magician, that meant straining his powers to the absolute extreme.

  Right now I was too angry with the cunning witch
to care. She had tried to enchant me, to put a love spell on me . . . the old hag!

  I stood by the darkened window, catching the faint droplets of light that penetrated to the second level of the Twilight. And I found, or at least I thought I found, the faintest of shadows on the floor . . .

  The hardest thing was spotting it. When I did, the shadow behaved as I wanted, swirling up towards me and opening the way through.

  I stepped down to the third level of the Twilight.

  Into a strange sort of house, woven together out of the branches and thick trunks of trees.

  There were no more books, and no furniture. Just a nest of branches.

  And Arina, standing there facing me.

  How old she was!

  She wasn't hunched and crooked, like Baba-Yaga in the fairy tale. She was still tall and upright. But her skin was wrinkled like the bark of a tree and her eyes had sunk deep into her head. The only garment she was wearing was a dirty, shapeless sackcloth smock, and her shrivelled breasts dangled like empty pouches behind its deep neckline. She was bald, with just a single tress of hair jutting out from the crown of her head like a Red Indian forelock.

  'Night Watch!' I repeated, the words emerging slowly and reluctantly from my mouth. 'Leave the Twilight! This is your final warning!'

  What could I have done, considering that she could dive to the third level of the Twilight so easily? I don't know. Maybe nothing . . .

  She didn't offer any more resistance, but took a step forward – and disappeared.

  It cost me a significant effort to move back up to the second level. It was usually easier to leave the Twilight, but the third level had drawn Power out of me as if I was some ignorant novice.

  Arina was waiting for me on the second level. She had already assumed her former appearance. She nodded, and moved on – to the normal, calm and cosy human world . . .

  I had to try twice, streaming with cold sweat, before managing to raise my shadow.

  CHAPTER 3

  ARINA WAS SITTING on a chair, with her hands resting modestly on her knees. She wasn't smiling any more, and in general she was as meek as a lamb.

  'Can we manage without any more hocus-pocus from now on?' I asked as I emerged into the real world. My back was wet and my legs were trembling slightly.

  'Can I stay in this form, watchman?' Arina asked in a low voice.

  'What for?' I replied, unable to resist taking petty revenge. 'I've already seen the real you.'

  'Who's to say what's real in this world?' Arina said pensively. 'It all depends on your point of view . . . Regard my request as simple female caprice, Light One.'

  'And the attempt to enchant me – was that caprice too?'

  Arina shot a bright, defiant glance at me and said:

  'Yes. I realise that my Twilight appearance . . . but here and now, this is what I am! And I have all the human feelings. Including the desire to please.'

  'All right, stay like that,' I growled. 'I can't say I'm exactly dreaming of a repeat performance . . . Remove the illusion from the magical objects.'

  'As you wish, Light One.' Arina ran her hand over her hair, adjusting the style.

  And the little house changed just a bit.

  Now instead of the teapot, there was a small birch-wood tub standing on the table, with steam still rising from it. The TV was still there, but the wire no longer ran to an illusory power socket; instead it was stuck into a large brownish tomato.

  'Clever,' I remarked, nodding at the TV. 'How often do you have to change the vegetables?'

  'Tomatoes – every day,' the witch said with a shrug. 'A head of cabbage works for two or three days.'

  I'd never seen such an ingenious way of producing electricity before. Sure, it's possible in theory, but in practice . . .

  But I was more interested in the books in the bookcase. I walked over and took out the first small volume that came to hand, a slim one in a paper cover.

  Hawthorn and Its Practical Use in Everyday Witchcraft.

  The book had been printed on something like a rotary printer. Published the previous year. It gave the print run – two hundred copies. It even had an ISBN. But the publishing house was unfamiliar, TP Ltd.

  'A genuine botanical text . . . Do you people really print your own books?' I asked admiringly.

  'Sometimes,' the witch said modestly. 'You can't copy everything out by hand.'

  'Copying by hand isn't the worst of it,' I remarked. 'Sometimes things are written in blood . . .'

  I took Kassagar Garsarra down from the shelf.

  'In my own blood, mind,' Arina said laconically. 'No abominations.'

  'This book itself is an abomination,' I remarked. 'Well well . . . "Setting people against each other without excessive effort" . . .'

  'Why are you trying to incriminate me?' Arina asked, irritated now. 'Those are all academic editions. Antiques. I haven't stirred up trouble for anybody.'

  'Really?' I said, leafing through the book. '"Soothing kidney ailments, driving out dropsy . . ." Okay, we'll let you have that.'

  'You wouldn't accuse someone who was reading De Sade of planning torture, would you?' Arina snapped. 'That's our history. All sorts of different spells. Not divided into destructive and positive ones.'

  I cleared my throat. Basically she was right. The fact that there were all sorts of different magical recipes collected together in the book didn't constitute a crime in itself. There were things like . . . 'How to relieve the pain of a woman in childbirth without harming the child'. But then right beside that was 'Killing the foetus without harming the woman' and 'Killing the foetus together with the woman'.

  Everything the way it always was with the Dark Ones.

  Despite these foul recipes and the attempt to enchant me, there was something I liked about Arina. In the first place, there was the way she'd dealt with the children. There was no doubt that a smart old witch could easily have found some monstrous use for them. And then . . . there was something melancholy and lonely about her – despite all her power, despite her valuable library and attractive human form.

  'What have I done wrong?' Arina asked peevishly. 'Come on, don't string it out, sorcerer!'

  'Are you registered?' I asked.

  'Why, am I a vampire or a werewolf?' Arina asked in reply. 'Now he wants to put a seal on me . . . the very idea . . .'

  'No one's talking about a seal,' I reassured her. 'It's just that all magicians of the first-grade and higher are obliged to inform the district centre of their place of residence. So that their movements will not be interpreted as hostile actions . . .'

  'I'm not an enchantress, I'm a witch!'

  'Magicians, enchantresses and Others of equivalent power . . .' I recited wearily. 'You are on the territory of the Moscow Watch. You were obliged to inform us.'

  'There was never any of that before,' the witch muttered. 'The foremost sorcerers told each other about themselves, the vampires and werewolves were registered . . . and everybody left us alone.'