Twilight Watch

Story Two Chapter 2

  GESAR LISTENED TO ME VERY CAREFULLY. HE ASKED A COUPLE OF QUES-tions to clarify a few things and then said nothing, just sighed and groaned. I lounged in the hammock with the phone in my hands, telling him all the details. . . the only thing I didn't tell him was that the witch had the book Fuaran.

  "Good work, Anton," Gesar told me eventually. "Well done. I see you remain vigilant. "

  "What shall 1 do?" I asked.

  "The witch must be found," said Gesar. "She hasn't done any harm, but she has to be registered. You know, just. . . the usual procedure. "

  "And the werewolves?" I asked.

  "Most likely a group from Moscow," Gesar commented dryly. "I'll give the order to check all werewolves with three or more werewolf children. "

  "There were only three cubs," I reminded him.

  "The werewolf might only have taken the older ones hunting," Gesar explained. "They usually have large families. . . Are there any suspicious vacationers in the village at the moment? An adult with three or more children?"

  "No," I replied regretfully. "Sveta and I thought of that right away. . . Anna Viktorovna is the only one who came with two, and all the rest either have no children or just one. The birth rate's critically low in Russia. . . "

  "I am aware of the demographic situation, thank you," Gesar interrupted me sardonically. "What about the locals?"

  "There are some large families, but then Svetlana knows all the local people well. Nothing suspicious, just ordinary people. "

  "So they're outsiders," Gesar concluded. "As I understand it, no one has disappeared in the village. Are there any holiday hotels or rest homes nearby?"

  "Yes," I confirmed. "On the far side of the river, about five kilometers away, there's a Young Pioneers' camp, or whatever it is they call them now. . . I've already checked¡ªeverything's in order, the children are all in place. And they wouldn't let them come across the river¡ªit's a military-style camp, very strict. Lights out, reveille, five minutes to dress. Don't worry about that. "

  Gesar grunted in dissatisfaction and asked me, "Do you need any help, Anton?"

  I thought about it. It was the most important question that I hadn't been able to answer so far.

  "I don't know. It looks as though the witch is more powerful than me. But I'm not going there to kill her. . . and she must sense that. "

  Somewhere far, far away in Moscow, Gesar pondered something. Then he declared: "Have Svetlana check the probability lines. If the danger to you is only slight, well, then try on your own. If it's more than ten or twelve percent. . . then. . . " He hesitated for a moment, but went on to finish quite briskly. "Then Ilya and Semyon will come. Or Danila and Farid. Three of you will be able to manage. "

  I smiled. You're thinking about something else, Gesar. About something completely different. You're hoping that if anything goes wrong, Svetlana will back me up. And then maybe come back to the Night Watch. . .

  "And then, you've got Svetlana," Gesar concluded. "You understand the whole business. So get on with it and report back as necessary. "

  "Yes sir, mon general," I rapped. Gesar had told me to report back in a very commanding tone of voice.

  "In terms of military rank, lieutenant colonel, my title would be at least generalissimus. Now get on with the job. "

  I put my phone away and took a minute to classify levels of Power in terms of military ranks. Seventh level¡ªprivate. . . sixth¡ªsergeant. . . fifth¡ªlieutenant. . . fourth¡ªcaptain. . . third¡ªmajor. . . second¡ªlieutenant-colonel. . . first¡ªcolonel.

  That was right. If you didn't introduce unnecessary differentiations or divide ranks into junior and senior, then I would be a lieutenant colonel. And a general would be an ordinary magician beyond classification.

  But Gesar was no ordinary magician.

  The gate slammed shut and Ludmila Ivanovna came into the garden. My mother-in-law, with Nadiushka skeetering restlessly around her. The moment she was in the garden, she came dashing across to the hammock.

  No, my daughter wasn't initiated, but she could sense her parents. And there were plenty of other things she could do that ordinary two-year-old little girls couldn't. For instance, she wasn't afraid of any animals, and animals loved her. Dogs and cats simply fawned on her. . .

  And mosquitoes didn't bite her.

  "Daddy," Nadya said, scrambling up on top of me. "We went for a walk. "

  "Hello, Ludmila Ivanovna," I said to my mother-in-law, just to be on the safe side. We'd already exchanged greetings that morning.

  "Taking a rest?" my mother-in-law asked dubiously. No, we got along fine. Not like in the old jokes. But somehow I had the feeling that she always suspected me of something or other. Of being an Other, for instance. . . if there was any way she could know about the Others.

  "Just a little bit," I said cheerfully. "Did you go far, Nadya?"

  "Yes, very far. "

  "Are you tired?"

  "Yes," Nadka said. "But granny's more tired than me!"

  Ludmila Ivanovna stood there for a second, apparently wondering whether a blockhead like me could be trusted with his own daughter. She evidently decided to risk it, and went into the house.

  "And 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. . . " Nadka admitted and ruffled up her hair with her little hand. "But you are going?"

  "Yes, I am," I confessed.

  That's the way things are, if a child is a potential Other, and so powerful that she demonstrates the ability to foresee the future from birth. A year earlier Nadka had started crying a week before she actually started cutting her teeth.

  "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 paint it. "

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

  "Grandma's joking," I said, and thumped myself on the 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," Nadka repeated and laughed.

  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 mommy. "

  "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 anymore. 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 help. Will you help me decide?"

  "Take a look at the future for you?" Svetlana asked.

  "Uh huh. "

  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 stoking her thigh. . .

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

  Svetlana opened her eyes and looked at me.

  "Well?" I asked impa
tiently.

  "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 chuckled. "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 middle of nowhere, 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. "A patriot of 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. And I for one don't blame him. Imagine how guilty he must feel about his son. . . 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. "

  "Well, and . . ?" 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¡ªhe's got feelings. He would have sensed that the boy was alive. Do you understand? And Olga certainly would. 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. "Or the boy really was an ordinary human being. In that case everything fits. In that case they could have believed he was dead and found him entirely by chance. "

  "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 for Gesar. And in any case I preferred not to take Svetlana with me. . . it wasn't her job to go trailing 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, so I'll take a stroll in the forest. "

  "It's almost evening," Svetlana remarked.

  "I won't be far away. The kids said the hut was really close. "

  Svetlana nodded. "All right. Just hang on a minute and I'll make you some sandwiches. And fill a thermos with compote. "

  While I was waiting for Svetlana, I took a cautious peep into the barn. I almost flipped. Not only had Uncle Kolya taken half the diesel engine apart and laid the pieces out on the floor, he had another local alcoholic, Andryukha or Seryoga, rummaging furiously in the engine beside him. And they were so absorbed in their confrontation with German technology that the "little bottle" softhearted 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 outfitted me as if I weren't just going for a walk along the edge of the forest, but about to be parachuted into the middle of the taiga.

  Sandwiches in a plastic bag, a thermos of compote, a sturdy penknife, matches, a box of salt, two apples, and a little flashlight.

  And she also checked that my cell 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¡ªthen the signal would be bound to reach the network.

  But it was my idea to take the disk player. And as I strolled toward the forest, I listened to 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 colors Speak to you like some distant echo¡ªbut 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 meet the witch that evening. I really ought to have gone in the morning, and with a team. But I wanted really badly to locate the suspect myself.

  And to take a look at that book, Fuaran.

  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-level 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 had twins 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 the faint line of footprints would already have faded away, but now it was still visible. Children leave clear tracks¡ªthey have a lot of power in them. Only pregnant women leave tracks that are clearer.

  There were no tracks from the "female botanist. " Well, they could have faded already, but it was more likely this witch had been careful not to leave any tracks for a long time.

  But 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 anymore, but I could sense which way they were leading. Now I could set off.

  But 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, like a disciplined Other conducting a search.

  Then I got bored with that. I was in a forest¡ªonly a little one, and maybe not in great shape, but at least it was unspoiled by tourists. And maybe the forest was unspoiled because it was only thirty miles long by thirty miles wide? But there were all sorts of small forest wildlife here, like squirrels, hares, and foxes. Only, of course, there weren't any wolves at all¡ªno real ones, that is, who weren't werewolves. Fine¡ªwe could get along without wolves. But there was plenty of free food around¡ªonce 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 porcini mushrooms. More than a settlement¡ªit 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 miles from the village.

  I hesitated for a while.
If I picked all those white mushrooms, I could bring them home and dump them on the table, to my mother-in-law's amazement and Svetlana's delight! And how Nadka would squeal in ecstasy and boast to the neighbors' kids about her clever dad.

  Then I thought that I couldn't sneak a haul like that back to the house without being seen and the whole village would go dashing off, hunting for mushrooms. Including the local drunks, who would be happy to sell the mushrooms on the side of the highway and buy vodka. 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 literally 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 fairytale. "Turn your back to the forest and your front to me. . . "

  The hut didn't move. But then, it was already facing me anyway. I suddenly felt about as clever as the Soviet spy Stirlitz in the old jokes.

  Okay, 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¡ª and at that very moment, as if someone had been waiting for that movement, the door opened.

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

  A very beautiful woman. . .

  Somehow, from what Roma and Ksyusha had told me, I'd expected her to be older. They hadn't really said anything about her appearance, and in my mind 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 "in a bright-colored 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 young girl's idol.

  But she was wearing jeans and one of those checkered shirts that men and women can both wear.

  Tall¡ªbut not so tall as to make a man of average height feel insecure. Slim¡ªbut not skinny at all. Legs so long and straight I felt like shouting, "Why the hell did you put jeans on, you fool, get into a miniskirt!" Breasts¡ªwell, 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 medium. 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 slim fingers and. . .

  With a figure like that, having a beautiful face is an optional luxury. 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 the perfection that was invisible to the eye, but 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 women before.

  The woman beamed at me. "You're Roman'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 out to the village. He stammered too. . . a little bit. So I thought. . . "

  That was it¡ªput out the lights.

  "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, so I 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. "Thank you very much. Around 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.

  Not a trace of magic. A rather strange interior for a house in a forest, but 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, but Arina. "

  "Anton," I replied. And then I showed off my first-grade 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 the 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, of course, 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 mate and rooi-bos and those other foreign teas. But let me tell you, we Russians don't need all those exotic brews. We have enough herbs of our own. Or just ordinary tea, black. We're not Chinese¡ªwhy should we drink green water? Or forest herbs. Here, try this. . . "

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

  "Correct!" Arina laughed. "Listen, are you sure you're not Roman'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¡ªa pinch of one, a tiny bit of another, a spoonful of a third. . . somehow my gaze automatically came to rest on the section of those worn jeans that outlined her firm butt. It was immediately clear that the butt was firm, without any sign of that favorite city lady's ailment¡ªcellulite. "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¡ªit was a stray dog. Where would wolves come from in a little forest like this?"

  "A stray dog, and with pups, is dangerous too," I observed.

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

  Well, 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 rather enviously. For some reason I still felt sad that I'd never finished writing mine. . . and I hadn't finished it because I'd become an Other, and all those scholarly games had suddenly seemed boring. The games were boring¡ªbut even so I felt sad about i
t.

  "Postdoctoral," 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, noddng in reply. "It was a dumb thing to do, of course, drag all the books here. But I got a lift from. . . a friend. In a Jeep. So I took the opportunity and piled in 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 early last century, with forewords singing the praises of the Party, and Comrade Stalin in particular. And some even older ones, prerevolutionary. And lots of simple well-thumbed volumes published twenty or thirty years earlier.

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

  I nodded dejectedly, 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 was a bit like ordinary good-quality tea, and a bit like citrus, and a little bit minty. But I could have bet my life 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 breasts. 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? Acting like I was just back from an uninhabited island and hadn't seen a woman for the last ten years.

  "It's hot," I said, holding the cup in my hands. "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, Arina? I didn't notice any wires around the house. "

  Arina flinched.

  "Maybe an underground cable?" she said plaintively.

  "Oh no," I said, holding the hand with the cup away from me and carefully pouring the brew out 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 cooperate 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 toward it, and the cool Twilight embraced me.

  The little house hadn't changed at all.

  But Arina wasn't there.

  I concentrated hard. It was too dim and gray in there to see my shadow, but I managed to find it. I stepped down to the second level of the Twilight.

  The gray mist thickened and space was filled with a heady, distant drone. A cold shudder ran across my skin. This time the little house had changed¡ªand 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 on had turned into 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 genuine leather. . .

  Arina wasn't there. 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-level magician, that meant straining his powers to the absolute extreme.

  But 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. After that, the shadow did as I wanted, swirling up toward 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 fairytale. 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 dried-out breasts dangled like empty little pouches behind its deep neckline. She was also bald, with just a single tress of hair jutting out from the crown of her head like an American 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 to her, if she could dive to the third level of the Twilight so easily? I don't know. Maybe nothing. . .

  But she didn't offer any more resistance. She took a step forward¡ªand 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 were some ignorant novice.

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

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