“Pfft. A couple of scratches,” I said, heaving a sigh of relief. My nose and chin were covered in the thick web of superficial scratches that I had received when I was rolling downhill. That wicked Loiso didn’t have to push me, I thought. I could have walked down by myself.
“Enough for one night, I suppose,” said Tekki, covering my face in some transparent stinky gel. “In thirty minutes, you can go outside. What happened to you?”
“A lot of things,” I said, sighing. I was in no mood for making up believable excuses, lying, or—Magicians forbid!—telling the truth. But Tekki seemed to have been satisfied with my answer.
“Get ready for receiving your numerous friends any minute now,” she said. “Our rotund poet just sent me a call. He wanted to know if you had opened your pretty eyes yet. I think it’s just the beginning.”
“Gosh, I have no personal life,” I said. “How can you still stand me?”
“I wish I knew myself,” she said. “Maybe I’m just very patient.”
The door slammed behind me. I turned around and saw my friend Anday Pu, a brilliant poet and a most unhappy person. His appearance was very timely. I was just about to stick my scratched nose into his business. After all, he had been asking me to do it for a long time.
The descendant of Ukumbian pirates said hello, climbed atop a barstool, and began chatting with Tekki. He must have decided that after his performance in the Three-Horned Moon his status had grown in my eyes and he could do anything now.
“You know, Blackbeard Junior, if you really want to move to Tasher, I think I can arrange that,” I said. “Go to the Port Quarter right now. Find the house of Captain Giatta and tell him I sent you. Also tell him . . . No, don’t tell him anything—I’ll tell him myself. Just ask him when he’s going back home to Tasher. He’ll take you with him and help you settle there—that is, unless you’ve changed your mind.”
“Changed my mind! Are you joking? How can I change my mind! Now you catch, Max. That’s so great! Thank you so much. I’m going to see the captain right now,” said Anday like a machine gun. “Why did you decide to help me? Was it my poetry? Did you catch?”
“Exactly,” I said. “It was your poetry.”
Of course the poetry of this haughty wordsmith—which sounded so much like my own youthful experiments, full of open self-admiration and melancholy—didn’t have anything to do with it. At least not directly. I had the opportunity to let Captain Giatta go home and to prove to Anday, using his own example, that a dream fulfilled didn’t always equal happiness. That hypocrite Loiso Pondoxo could see right through me. I did like to “set free anyone I came across.” Maybe just so they didn’t get in the way.
Fortunately, Anday couldn’t read my mind. He said goodbye and rushed out of the tavern to the Port Quarter, his feet barely touching the ground. I followed his figure with my eyes and sent a call to Captain Giatta.
I finally thought of a way you can pay me back, Giatta. A really funny fellow is on his way to see you. He’s my old friend, and he’s been dreaming of moving to Tasher. If you take him there and help him settle in the new place, consider your debt to me paid. But don’t rush with your departure this time. First finish up your business here.
Sir Max, is this really what you want? Or are you just trying to get rid of me after such a long wait?
I really want this, I said very sincerely. I don’t quite know why, but I desperately want this.
All right, I’ll do it for you. Can your friend wait until the Last Day of the Year? I need to pay my assistants and get a new crew. This will take time.
Of course. There’s no rush. In any case, he won’t be waiting long. The winter is coming to an end, and the Last Day of the Year is just around the corner. He will wait all right. He has no choice—you’re his only chance.
I said goodbye and, relieved, poured myself another cup of kamra.
“What’s going on, honey?” said Tekki. “Are you into settling other people’s lives now? It’s a thankless business, and not the most original one.”
“I know,” I said, smiling. “But that pretty boy Anday was flirting with you so openly that I thought it would be better to send him off someplace far way before it’s too late.”
“Phew!” said Tekki. “What a relief. I was afraid he’d sweep me off my feet with his poetry. He’s really sweet. And those almond-shaped eyes of his . . .”
I made a face and shook my fist at her. Tekki took my fist into her hands, pulled it close to her face, admired it for a few seconds, and then laughed.
We spent two more hours of our lives in the greatest of spirits, but then I felt a desire to go to the House by the Bridge that was stronger than I was. As the years went by, the fire under my backside wasn’t getting any cooler.
“If you were going to pour out the story of Kofa’s and your adventures, I have to tell you that I already saw Kofa himself, as well as the great avenger Nennurex Kiexla—and No-Nose Misa, to top it off,” said Juffin. He tried to assume an air of suffering but failed miserably.
“All right then, I’ll pretend that I’ve already told you everything and shut up,” I said. “How’s our Master Eavesdropper-Gobbler feeling?”
“Great, as usual, I think. Oh, you mean his foot? He’s already forgotten that anything ever happened to it. By the way, you should lift off the spell from your victims. I’ve been trying to send them to Xolomi since morning, but they’re so enchanted that it pains me to look at them,” said Juffin.
“I’ll get right down to it,” I said. “In theory, I’m supposed to feel immense pleasure when I do. A mutual friend of ours believes that I have a hypertrophied desire to set people free. He doesn’t put it as eloquently as I just did, though.”
I looked into the detention cells housing the victims of my Lethal Spheres and issued them my last command: to rid themselves of the irresistible desire to follow my commands. I didn’t feel any “immense pleasure” doing this, of course. Perhaps a sense of mild relief, akin to what you feel when you bid good riddance to bad rubbish.
“Beautiful,” said Juffin when I returned. “Baguda Maldaxan’s people will come pick them up in a few minutes. Then I’m going to abuse my exalted position as boss and go to the Street of Old Coins.”
“Will you take my girlfriend to the movies?” I said. “I have a feeling she’s too shy to bother you. From time to time, she thinks my former bedroom has turned into an extension of your office.”
“And she’s right,” said Juffin. “Okay, I’ll send her an invitation since she’s so tactful and all. I hope you won’t ask me to invite her daddy, too?”
“And all her sixteen ghost brothers to boot,” I said. “By the way, what did you watch last night? More cartoons?”
“More cartoons and a pretty good movie about some crazy Magician. After he died, he got into the habit of visiting people in their dreams. And he didn’t just scare people; he actually murdered them—just like that Phetan that almost spoiled your housewarming party a little over two years ago. Do you remember him?”
“Do I!” I said.
“See? Our worlds are not that dissimilar,” said Juffin. I realized that Juffin thought A Nightmare on Elm Street belonged to the genre of neorealism, but I wasn’t in the mood to disabuse him of the notion. Then again, who knows where screenwriters get their stories from?
Lonli-Lokli appeared in my office an hour later. He looked like a man who was beset by sudden and urgent personal problems.
“Max, I finished your book,” he said, sitting down across from me.
“And judging by your tone, you’re dissatisfied with it. Mind you, though: I didn’t write it.”
“‘Dissatisfied’ is not the term I would use here,” he said. “But I am confused and do not understand the World you were born in. Answer me this: Are all your compatriots so hopelessly horrible?”
“Well . . .” I grinned crookedly as I remembered my new friend Loiso Pondoxo, the charming misanthrope, as well as my own recent adventures on a certain
sandy beach. Sir Shurf couldn’t have found a better person to turn to. “There were times in my life when that was exactly what I thought,” I said finally. “Then there were times when I thought the opposite. I think my feelings toward humanity depended solely on the state of my personal affairs. Don’t lose any sleep over the book, though. I told you it was science fiction, which means the contents of the book have very little to do with the way things really are. How did it end, by the way? Yesterday you only told me the beginning.”
“I am afraid I have not understood much myself. I do not know where to begin. You see, the powerful beings from another World, which I told you about yesterday, gave a few select people the ability to save the rest. They gave their chosen ones time and almost unlimited strength so they could help the rest of the people become perfect and occupy a higher rank in that strange classification of living beings that the aliens had come up with. Granted, their system of values is mostly in line with my own.”
“Sounds great,” I said. “Maybe I should read this strange book myself, just to familiarize myself with that value system. So how did it end?”
“Initially, the chosen ones were happy with the outcome,” said Shurf. “They tried numerous ways of changing their compatriots. In particular, they established a system of birth control that was somehow connected with your horoscopes. As far as I can judge, they achieved impressive results. Then they got bored with it. Well, not bored, but they were disappointed in their fellow earthlings. And they destroyed everyone before their powerful masters from another World got the chance. The aliens, however, approved of their decision. The book left a bad taste in my mouth. There is something shatteringly hopeless in it. I should very much like to look the person who wrote it in the eye and ask him how he can live with it.”
“Aw, Shurf. It’s just another dystopia. Forget about it. The author would be surprised to know that someone took his story so much to heart. In my World, people read this nonsense when they’re bored and then forget it as soon as they close the book. I highly recommend that you do the same.”
“Your people have nerves of steel,” said Shurf. “Or they have no imagination whatsoever.”
“Perhaps. But I tend to think we were just brought up differently. It’s simply unpleasant to get so emotional about a book. I suspect I owe you a good dinner. If one of my compatriots ruined your day, I simply must put things right.”
Lonli-Lokli didn’t mind. Our dinner at the Juffin’s Dozen marked another period that I put at the end of the apocalyptic chapter that my life had been opening up over and over again recently. Enough is enough, I told myself.
The remaining two dozen days before the Last Day of the Year went by quickly and pleasantly. I felt no urge to have another meeting with Sir Loiso Pondoxo. I put off this social visit until some indeterminate “later.” Occasionally my life enters phases of wonderful, sweet laziness, which, unfortunately, don’t last long.
I spent the First Night of the New Year in my office, as I was supposed to. My colleagues were sleeping after the mind-boggling frenzy that engulfed all living creatures on the eve of that notorious event. Only Sir Juffin Hully went to the Street of Old Coins. He finally had time to relax and watch a movie. I could have afforded the luxury of keeping him company—the city was dead calm—but I preferred to nap in the armchair because the activities of the night before had worn me out.
Soon after midnight, I was awoken by the soft creaking of the door.
“Max, will it kill you to open your eyes if I come in?” said the descendant of Ukumbian pirates, also known as a would-be citizen of sunny Tasher.
“How nice,” I said. “Finally you’ve come without announcing your presence to a dozen junior employees.”
“That’s because I didn’t see a single rodent downstairs or in the hallway,” said Anday. He produced a dusty clay bottle from under his looxi and put it on the desk. “It’s from grandpa’s old stock,” he said. “Not some sickly sweet potion that they make in local taverns, but a real two-hundred-year-old Ukumbian bomborokka. I came to say goodbye. Your Tasherian friend Giatta says we’re casting off at dawn.”
“Are you happy?” I said, fumbling for the bottle of Elixir of Kaxar in the drawer. Without it, I would’ve been lousy company.
“Me? Uh, sure. I suppose.” He said it in such a sad voice that I got worried.
“If you don’t want to go, don’t,” I said. “You don’t have to do it, buddy.”
“No, no, no. I do want to go! Really. I’m just scared, Max. Sound the alarm.”
“Well, that’s normal. Of course it’s scary to leave everything behind and set off for who-knows-where, even if there isn’t much to leave behind,” I said.
“Max, I don’t catch. What am I going to do there?” said Anday.
“Publish a newspaper,” I said, laughing. “You’ve got the experience. I’m sure in Tasher they have no clue that people need to read newspapers.”
“A newspaper? That’s great, but your friend says his fellow countrymen mostly don’t know how to read,” said Anday.
And then it dawned on me. “You know what?” I said. “If they can’t read, you can publish comic books. You know, stories in pictures! They can have short captions that even half-literate people can make out.”
“In pictures?” said Anday, cheering up. “Well, I’ll be, Max!”
The night flew by. I tried to explain to Anday (and to myself) what a newspaper for illiterate Tasherians might look like. Anday, praise be the Magicians, had artistic talent. Excited, I overindulged in “real two-hundred-year-old Ukumbian bomborokka,” which I hadn’t done in a long time. I ended up dozing off in the armchair. Anday realized that his farewell party was over and began intoning his sad goodbyes.
“Don’t make such a doleful face, buddy,” I said in a sleepy voice. “Or I’ll think that I’m sending you into exile rather than to the wonderful country of your dreams. You can send me a call anytime you want, several times a day. Plus, you’re not going away forever. You can come back whenever you want to. ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here’ is a stupid motto. No door in the world closes forever.”
“You don’t catch, Max,” said Anday. “I’m leaving forever. Everyone always leaves forever. You can’t come back. Whoever comes back is not us. It’s someone else, but nobody catches that. How did you say it, ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here’? Is this from a poem?”
“It is,” I said. “A very old one. And not mine.”
“It’s very good,” said Anday and left.
I was still sitting in my armchair, stunned. That funny fellow managed to really nail it. What did he say? “Whoever comes back is not us; it’s someone else”? Oh, boy.
I got up and left the office. I was wide-awake and needed to go for a walk. The soft orange light of the street lamps; the piercing, cold wind from the Xuron; the colorful cobblestones of the streets; and the greenish disk of the moon in the velvety black night—they were all lucky charms protecting me from the desperation of loneliness. In a sense, they, too, were “ordinary magical things.”
Maybe it was someone else who returned to the House by the Bridge an hour later, but whoever he was, that guy, he was calm and happy. At least for a while.
Also by Max Frei from Gollancz:
The Stranger
The Stranger’s Woes
A Gollancz eBook
Original text Copyright © 2005 Max Frei
English translation Copyright © 2012 Polly Gannon and Ast A. Moore
All rights reserved.
The right of Max Frei to be identified as the author of the original Russian edition of this work, and the right of Polly Gannon and Ast A. Moore to be identified as the translators of this work , has been asserted by them in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in the USA by The Overlook Press, 2012
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publi
shing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
This eBook first published in 2012 by Gollancz.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 08986 0
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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Max Frei, The Stranger's Magic: The Labyrinths of Echo: Book Three
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