“Max, now you’re really going too far,” said Tekki. “First you bring me your cats. Then you offload your numerous wives on me, putting me in charge of their upbringing. Now you’re going to make me take care of this beast?”
The aforementioned cats, furry Ella and Armstrong, stared scornfully at their enormous fellow pet from the height of an old cupboard. They were in no hurry to climb down and introduce themselves to Droopy. One could understand that.
“Dream on,” I said, climbing onto the bar and pecking Tekki on her nose. “I’m not going to part with him yet.”
“It’s the ‘yet’ part that worries me!” she said. “In a dozen days, you’re going to leave him here, saying you’re attending an audience at the Royal Palace and that dogs aren’t allowed in. Then you’re going to say that Droopy looks fantastic, and that I’m taking much better care of him than the inhabitants of the Furry House, and that his fur looks great against the color of my hair and the pattern on the carpet in the bedroom, and that means that the dog should stay here. I won’t object, you’ll kiss me, and by the time I come to my senses, this dog will have taken me for his new master. Max, I know you too well, and I’m freaking out in advance.”
“Oh, no. I’ve had enough today of beautiful ladies who fear looking into their future,” I said, sitting down on my favorite barstool. “Trust me, a personal bedroom and a couple dozen servants all longing to fill his food bowl await this beautiful dog back home. They don’t have anything else to do anyway. As for my ‘wives,’ you could have put them to good use. The trio would look fantastic behind the bar, and you and I could go on a well-deserved vacation somewhere. You could also up the prices. As far as I know, the inhabitants of the Capital have never before been waited on by three beautiful identical foreign queens at the same time.”
“Great idea, but it reeks of international conflict a mile away,” said Tekki. “Besides, they are too serious to fill the glasses of drunken Echoers, if you haven’t noticed.”
“When would I have the time to notice anything?” I said. “I’ve seen them three times tops.”
“It’s your own fault. Also, who’s the ‘beautiful lady who fears looking into her future’?”
“You have three guesses.”
“I see,” said Tekki. She smiled, came out from behind the bar, and sat down beside me. “You had the pleasure of listening to Melamori’s dramatic reading of the story of the distant and beautiful Arvarox and her alleged cowardice.”
“She only covered the latter,” I said. “I tried to explain to her that her problems are not unique, and that the inhabitants of all the Worlds—known and unknown to me—face them on a daily basis. I only mentioned in passing, however, the fact that very few of them are actually capable of dealing with and overcoming said problems, and only barely.”
“Ah, so you can be wise sometimes, too,” said Tekki. Then she buried her nose in my shoulder and added in a quiet voice, “To leave or to stay: I’d give anything to have that kind of problem on my mind.”
“How so? Can’t imagine your life without wild anxieties?” I said.
“I could do away with wild anxieties, Max. You don’t understand. I simply have no choice. And I’ll never have one. I can’t leave Uguland unless I want to continue my existence as a ghost, you know.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I can’t get too far away from the Heart of the World, or I’ll die. I’ll expire like any other miracle that’s been slapped together in a hurry. That’s just my nature, honey. Or did you think the children of Loiso Pondoxo were ordinary people?”
“I didn’t think about any such thing at all. Plus, I still don’t quite understand what you’re trying to say. I guess I don’t want to understand.”
“There isn’t much to understand. We—my dead brothers and I—are not ordinary people. I think our prankster of a father simply couldn’t have normal children. We are the products of his strange magic and his . . . dark humor. On the one hand, it’s not that bad. In a sense, we are immortal. I have no reasons to doubt it since my brothers, after dying during the Troubled Times, became functional beings rather than apparitions. On the other hand, we’re not completely free. Forget about traveling between Worlds or to Arvarox—I can’t even leave Uguland. My best option is to stay in Echo until the day I die. It’s only then that the true life of strange creatures like us really begins. Is this too shocking for you, Max?Maybe I shouldn’t have started this conversation. I’m sorry.”
“No, no, no. Please don’t be sorry. It’s good that you’ve told me. It just makes me a little sad. I had hoped to show you my favorite dreamworld, the little town in the mountains near Kettari. And then maybe some other place worthy of your beautiful eyes. But it’s okay. I’ll gradually get accustomed to the fact that you’re a stay-at-home Tekki and that you’re revolted by the thought of someone willingly swapping his favorite bedroom for a room in a cheap inn.”
“Well, if I were you, I wouldn’t paint it all black. Everything changes. I don’t know how, but sometimes ‘everything’ just up and changes.” Tekki laughed. “Who knows, maybe someday you and I will have our chance to take a long walk there.”
I had nothing left to do but kiss her. The tavern was still empty, and kissing was much more pleasant than processing the information she had just let loose on me.
I felt someone’s heavy stare drilling into the back of my head and turned around. In the doorway stood Sir Shurf Lonli-Lokli. He was absolutely calm. Then again, I’d be surprised to learn that such a trivial spectacle as a kiss could shock this guy. I think that even if Tekki and I had decided to move right along to the next stage he would have simply sat down at the farthest table, taken out some interesting book from the folds of his snow-white looxi, and waited until we were done.
Tekki didn’t know Shurf as well as I did, so she hurried to retreat behind the bar. There she gave a big sigh of relief, as though this change of location had invalidated all the actions she had committed on the other side of the bar.
Droopy recognized in our visitor an old friend but restricted his excitement to wagging his ears. He was smart enough to know which of my friends were okay with him jumping on them, and which he should keep a polite distance from.
“I’m always glad to see you, Shurf, especially here,” I said. “Why are you standing in the doorway? Come over here.”
“I am not standing in the doorway,” said Shurf. “I am trying to close the door. It is cold outside. The wind is blowing in from the Xuron. I have read a great deal on the positive effects of conditioning oneself to the cold, but I do not think drafts are a particularly good source of health. Lady Tekki, I believe it is imperative that you have this door handle repaired as soon as possible. I have reason to believe that it will never keep the door latched as it should without a good spell.”
“You’re right, Shurf,” said Tekki. “I’ve been meaning to take care of it, to call someone to have it fixed, or whatever it is one’s supposed to do in such cases. Then I tell myself that it’s much easier to cast some spell to keep the damn thing closed. Please don’t frown: the second degree of Black Magic does the job nicely. Even your beloved Code of Krember or Magician Nuflin the Terrible himself could have nothing against it.”
Lonli-Lokli shook his head and sat down beside me. “I have come to ask you for a favor, Max,” he said, taking a sip of the best kamra in Echo.
“Anything,” I said.
“You told me you would someday try to obtain another book from your World,” he said.
“And completely forgot about it,” I said. “No worries, though. I’ll get to it right away.”
“Right away?” said Lonli-Lokli.
“Sure, why wait? I’ll forget again, and then, a couple dozen days from now, you’ll remind me about it politely, and I’ll be ashamed. Why go through all this?”
“Sometimes you can be very rational,” said Lonli-Lokli. I thought I spotted the shadow of a smile in the corners of his mouth.
“First I need to relocate,” I said, looking around. “There’s no place to hide my hand here.”
I walked around behind the bar, where, admittedly, I wasn’t supposed to go. Nor was I supposed to crawl on all fours behind it. In this place, however, I could get away with far worse things. Tekki either enjoyed my intruding on her turf or mistook me for the dog—I don’t know which. In any event, she patted my head and even scratched behind my ear.
Here I had to rack my brains over where I could hide my hand, which was absolutely necessary. Even experienced magicians, not to mention some novice like me, couldn’t fumble in the Chink between Worlds in plain sight. I gave up and just stuck my hand under an old floor mat. I couldn’t find anything more appropriate.
My hand got numb right away, as though it had been longing for this job and was now making up for what it had missed. First I got hold of yet another umbrella, a ladies’ model: it was yellow with little flowers. The Chink had always been very generous in presenting me with umbrellas. I think it had to do with the fact that people lost umbrellas more often than anything else. But I am not a collector by nature and had no intention of augmenting my collection of multicolored umbrellas with another specimen. Instead, I stuck my hand under the mat again and tried to focus: I thought of a library, its bookshelves filled with hundreds of thousands of good books.
For a few moments, I didn’t get anywhere. My head was crammed with unrelated thoughts: about my unfinished kamra, for example. Then it occurred to me that I wouldn’t mind smoking a cigarette. Also, Tekki was hanging around all the time, and I couldn’t get rid of the idea of grabbing her leg. It took an enormous amount of concentration to shoo away these fragments of useless thoughts and get hold of the only necessary one: The Library.
My hand got numb again. I tried my best to imagine myself climbing a ladder to reach a book with a bright-red cover on the top shelf. The next thing I knew, a red paperback book was falling out of my numb fingers onto the floor. Lonli-Lokli was on a streak with cheap editions. Both the book, Big Earth in Small Space, and its author, Steve Harris, were unknown to me.
“What the heck!” I said. “Why can’t I fetch something I know and love? It shouldn’t be that hard. I used to be such a bookworm in my day.”
“Are you unhappy with the book you got for me?” said Shurf.
“I’m not unhappy. I just got another unknown title by another unknown author, just like before. I think it’s our fate, Shurf, to read different books. I’m warning you, though: you’re going to have to tell me what it’s about again. I doubt I’m ever going to read it, but I might easily die of curiosity.”
I gave my haul to Shurf and returned to my spot at the bar. Tekki, true to form, ignored everything that was going on. She was tactful enough to bury herself in yesterday’s Echo Hustle and Bustle, though I suspected that she was more interested in the contents of the newspaper than Shurf’s and my bibliophile issues anyway.
“Why are you so surprised that you landed an unfamiliar book? Or do you think that during your lifetime you have read everything that has been written?” said Lonli-Lokli.
“Well, not everything, of course,” I said, smiling, “but you’d be surprised by how much I have read. I used to be quite a reader, I’ll have you know. That was basically all I used to do. It wasn’t the worst pastime, frankly.”
“It seems you do not read as much now,” said Shurf.
“No, not a whole lot,” I said. “Basically I don’t read at all nowadays. But everything changes, especially when one life ends and a totally new one begins, right?”
“You are quite correct. I should have taken into account the fact that your present life might seem very rich and eventful to you.”
“You can say that again,” I said.
The door opened, then shut with a bang again.
“You are in high demand today, Max,” said Tekki.
I looked at her. She had taken her eyes off the newspaper and was looking at someone behind me. I looked around and shook my head. It was none other than Mr. Anday Pu—practically sober and, therefore, very gloomy.
Droopy lifted one ear and gave a single, indecisive, but very impressive bark. Anday took an instinctive step backward, trying to give the dog a menacing stare in return. It wasn’t impressive, but I had to admire the attempt. I can give you a list of people who would rush back outside upon hearing such an unfriendly hello coming from the mouth of such a monster. My name, by the way, would be on the top of that list.
“Wrong tree,” I said to Droopy. “He’s a friend, silly.”
“Thanks, Max. Your dog has the manners of some flea-ridden village mutt. I don’t catch why you decided to keep him in the first place. Dogs belong on a farm, not in an urban apartment,” said Anday. His French accent was stronger than usual. Was that because he was frightened?
I decided that he deserved the right to show off as compensation for the stress he had endured, so I refrained from lecturing him on Droopy’s numerous virtues. Instead, I slapped a friendly grin on my face. Few people would dare call my bared teeth a smile, but Anday was happy.
Lonli-Lokli put his heavy hand on my shoulder. I jumped up in panic, then broke into a laugh: of course Shurf was wearing his protective gloves. If he hadn’t been, there would be no one there to panic in the first place.
Lonli-Lokli shook his head. I mentally prepared for a lecture on the benefits of breathing exercises, which one should practice daily and not once every dozen days—something I totally agree with, in theory—but Shurf was magnanimous enough not to say anything. Perhaps my face expressed a most convincing repentance.
“Thank you for the book, Max,” he said. “I hope you will not be offended if I take off for home now. I have great plans for tonight.” He waved his present in the air.
“Have you ever seen me take offense?” I said.
“No, I do not recall such an occasion,” said Shurf. He bowed to Tekki and then turned to Anday. “Will you be at the Three-Horned Moon tomorrow?”
“Of course,” Anday said with a nod.
“Then I will see you there, provided nothing interferes with our plans,” said Shurf and left.
I gave Anday a meaningful stare. “What’s between you and Sir Shurf, mister? What’s the Three-Horned Moon? And how come I don’t know anything about it?”
“The Three-Horned Moon is where all great poetry happens here in the part of the Xonxona continent called the Unified Kingdom,” said Anday. “It is the only place in this untidy World where respect is given to poets who are still alive, and not just to those for whom the dinner is already over.”
“Oh, a poetry club? How come you never told me about it?”
“Are you interested, Max? I figured you didn’t give a damn about poets, dead or alive. Now your colleague Sir Lonli-Lokli, he really knows the price of words well aligned and rhymed. Or are you saying I’ve been looking at you from the wrong window all along?”
“The wrong window? What?” I was confused.
Tekki laughed her tinkling laughter and dropped her newspaper on the floor. “Oh, Max, it’s an expression. Anday wanted to say that his opinion of you does not match reality.”
“One heck of an expression,” I said. “Very graphic. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you how many windows you should look at me from, buddy. And at other people, too. I’ve made the same mistake myself.”
“So I didn’t catch then,” said Anday. “It’s all right. It happens. I can take you to the Three-Horned Moon if you’re interested.”
“I’m interested in everything. A little. Especially poets societies.” At this phrase I cut myself short. This was the second time today I had almost admitted I had once been a poet. That was two times too many.
“Just admit that you learned that your friends frequent a tavern you’ve never heard of and don’t invite you,” said Tekki. “Now you don’t know whether to burst with curiosity or tear everything to pieces. Poor, poor Sir Max.”
I laughed, nodding. ?
??Precisely.” I then turned to Anday. “Whether you want it or not, I’m going to dog your footsteps tomorrow.”
“I didn’t catch that. You’re going to what me?” he said.
I smiled a wicked smile. The presence of Anday Pu invariably provoked me to dig through the baggage of my passive vocabulary, looking for some odd colloquialisms that would throw off that poor scribe. Tekki also raised her eyebrows in surprise.
“To dog someone’s footsteps means to follow someone who thinks he can easily do without me. But, at the same time, it means that no one will dare slap me in the face and say, ‘Get away from me!’ Now am I making sense?”
They nodded: Tekki with enthusiasm and Anday with a hint of embarrassment, or so it seemed.
“You know, Max, I actually came to you with something . . .”
I never thought Anday was capable of speaking in such a hesitant tone. Maybe I had just never seen him before he got his hands (or, rather, his mouth) full of a pitcher of the local firewater.
“‘With something’? Sounds like you mean business. Did you and Sir Rogro have a misunderstanding?”
“No, Sir Rogro has been behaving quite decently,” said Anday in an arrogant tone.
I smirked. If only the chief editor of the Royal Voice had heard him, although he probably wouldn’t have been surprised. Long before he became the sovereign of the press in the Capital, Sir Rogro Jiil had been an astrologist. So now he had an excellent flashlight with which to peer into the darkest corners of the souls of his numerous subordinates.
“Okay, who’s not behaving decently then? One of your colleagues? I’m curious,” I said.
“What do I care for those peasants of the paper!” Anday demonstrated to Tekki and me an excellent peevish fold at the corner of his mouth, a contemptuous squint, and an arrogant profile, in that order. Having played with his facial muscles like a bodybuilder plays with his biceps, he continued. “Max, I was robbed eight days ago.”