Читать книгу Pegasus, Lion, and Centaur - Дмитрий Емец - Страница 3

At five in the morning Ul got up to guide Yara. He climbed up, then again descended and, taking a shortcut, went through the gallery. His steps resounded far along the long empty corridors of HDive. In the dining room there was not a soul – not even the angry old lady Supovna, who, unceasingly grumbling and complaining that no one helped her, allowed no one to approach within ten metres of the stove. However, even without Supovna in person, her presence was felt. The infallible remedy for sleep stood on the centre table: three mugs of strong tea, pickles, and a plate with heavily salted black bread. One mug was empty.

“It means Dennis is already in the stable,” said Yara, appearing soon after Ul. She was eternally late, but late in a civilized manner: about five minutes. Ul nodded and salted a pickle. “I love everything salted!” he said to himself. “Although what can one think about the man who salts pickles? Lacking some mineral!” Sitting in the semi-darkness, Yara bit off black bread in large mouthfuls, sipped her tea, and examined a thick stack of photographs, small and hard as playing cards. The photographs were taken in part with a hidden camera, in part with the help of a telescopic lens.

“This is only in the last week. What do a system administrator, a gym teacher, a theatre lighting technician, a student, a boiler room attendant, and a deaf fellow, a former musician, have in common?” she asked, hiding the photographs from Ul. “The same as the elderly astrologer, the gloomy unsociable person with an umbrella, and the respected-by-law criminal with fingers like sausages. But earlier we didn’t deal with these. It means they’re recruiting new warlocks. Expanding the reserves of the forts,” Ul instantly answered. Yara stopped chewing. “What? You knew?” “It was simple to guess. Athanasius took the picture of the lighting guy. Then showed me the scratch on his jacket. He maintains: they fired at him from a schnepper,”2 said Ul.

“I wish they were vampires,” Yara sighed. “In your dreams. If they were vampires, the problem would be solved in a week with the strength of forty-fifty people. Or could appeal to the Vends.3 But they aren’t vampires, and there’s nothing more to say,” Ul cut her off.

He went out first and stopped on the porch to wait for Yara. Suddenly huge hands grabbed him and lifted him up off the floor. Ul was dangling with his head down and contemplating the wide-mouthed essence in an unbuttoned sheepskin coat. By the porch, a giant of three-and-a-half meters in height was standing unsteadily. This was a living attraction, an incident, animated by one of the founding fathers of HDive. In the daytime it hid in the Green Labyrinth, at night it trampled around HDive. Several times girls that had disappeared were found in its stomach, once even Kuzepych himself.

“I am Gorshenya, clay head, hungry belly! I’ll eat you!” the giant informed him. He pronounced the words slowly and thoughtfully. “You’ll choke! Let me run up and jump!” proposed Ul. Gorshenya chewed on this thought for a while and then unclenched its hands. Ul’s head stuck in a snowdrift. Gorshenya took a step back and trustingly opened its enormous mouth. Four hundred years in a row it had fallen for one and the same trick.

The snow thawed in the night and shaped well. Ul rolled a snowball and threw it into Gorshenya’s mouth. When Gorshenya was standing with mouth open it saw nothing, because the two amber buttons, which served as its eyes, were thrown back together with the upper half of the head. Gorshenya slammed shut its mouth. “Perhaps I did not eat you?” “You ate my brother. And you’re not supposed to eat two brothers in one day.” said Ul. Gorshenya was saddened.

Yara came out onto the porch. Gorshenya stretched its hand out to her, but Ul slapped it on the fingers. “She doesn’t taste good,” he whispered, “but she has a tasty sister. She went that a way!” Gorshenya, waddling, limped off to search for the sister. “Poor dear! It believes everything,” Ul leniently said. “We’re the poor ones, believing nothing,” remarked Yara. “They say it buried treasure somewhere, and now it’s guarding it,” recalled Ul. The body warmed in the night was lazy. Ul generously scooped up snow and, snorting, washed himself. Melted water flowed down his collar. After understanding that whining would only make it worse, his body put up with it and agreed to be cheerful.

The scattering of stars drew a path to Moscow. From here, the vicinities of Moscow, the city was not discernible, but on a clear day it was possible to climb up the high pine tree and, from the “robber’s lookout” hammered together from boards, see a bright flat spot. That was Moscow. The path was covered. It could only be surmised by the lantern posts and the long snowdrifts, from which projected the humps of park benches. In the huge hdiver jacket, Yara seemed deceptively plump. Ul teasingly called her Winnie the Pooh. Staying on the main path, they reached the place where old oaks outlined a proper oval shape. Yara extracted a boot from the snowdrift and… placed it already on green grass.

Edged with stones, slender straight cypresses stretched to the sky. A climbing rose weaved itself around the iron arches. The lower part of its stem was the thickness of a kid’s hand. Stripping the petals, the wind carried them beyond the invisible boundary and dropped them onto the snow. It seemed to Ul that the snow was stained by blood, but to Yara the snow had been kissed. Yara looked around. The boundary of snow and grass was designated very clearly. Two distant oaks dozed in the snow, but a third, finding itself inside the boundary, did not even know that winter was somewhere beside it.

This oak was Yara’s favourite. She embraced the warm tree and pressed her cheek to it. Ul had noticed long ago how much skin and hands could tell Yara. Now she caressed the bark. Felt it not only with her palms, but also the back of her hand, her nails, and her wrists. She took in the tree with all its bends with the greediness of the blind, gaining a new sense instead of sight. Somehow she acknowledged to Ul that she would want to scratch her hand down to the nerves so that the sensations would intensify. “It happens,” said Ul.

Now he was standing beside her, chewing on a blade of grass and admiring Yara like a technician admiring a female humanist who does not remember what an integral is but willingly discusses the historical fates of peoples. The difference between Yara and Ul was approximately the same as that between a two-handed sword and a nervous foil. He respected her mind and sensitivity; she respected his determination and the ability to grasp the essence of anything without being distracted by details.

“You want to hide the newest tank from the female spy, place a nest with chickens on its motor,” remarked Ul. Practical things interested Ul greatly. He knew that somewhere here the most powerful marker was hidden from the day of the founding of HDive. This was what warmed the earth thoroughly and gave trees the life force. Now Ul for the umpteenth time gauged where the marker was hidden and what would be its size. Its power was colossal. Not a single one of those markers that Ul himself extracted could melt snow for more than five-six steps.

In front of Ul, creaking slightly from time to time, a huge pine tree, similar to a sail and with a flat top, was swinging from the wind. Among its roots was a blue beehive, along the roof of which lazily crept morning bees yet not thoroughly warmed by the sun. From the pine tree began the extensive Green Labyrinth – a carefully pruned mix of acacia, laurel, juniper, and boxwood. In the centre of the Labyrinth was the fountain – an enormous split stone with a whimsical crack, along which water flowed.

All around chrysanthemums grew wildly. Yara usually fell on her knees and felt the flowers with impatient fingers. Ul, though, was amused by the names. “How many rounds of hookah must one smoke in order to name chrysanthemums ‘Ping pong pink’? And ‘A spring dawn on the dam of essence’?” he was interested. Yara would visit the chrysanthemums even now, but this was impossible. After going around the Labyrinth, they crossed one more invisible boundary and again snow began to creak under their feet.

* * *

Dennis was waiting for them by the winged-horse stable. He sat on the planted-in tire and reproachfully froze. Frail, his face was pale. His nose was similar to a radish. He looked a year or two younger than his sixteen years of age. His hdiver jacket was zipped all the way to the top. His eyes were like that of a hamster: like beads. His right shoulder was lower than the left.

“He’s nervous!” said Ul. “And you weren’t nervous before your first dive?” “Four hundred times more… Well, I lied: three hundred and ninety-nine!” Ul corrected himself. Yara laughed. It is a miracle what a person can now and then fit into some infinitesimal thing: a short phrase, an action, a look. Here Yara also by mysterious means fit into her two-second laughter: energy, spontaneity, affection without coyness. “I remember how you swaggered into the dining room after your first dive. Turned up at breakfast in the jacket. Everybody’s jacket was new but yours was chafed. And so mysterious! Simply a super hdiver!” she said, still splashing her delightful laughter. “I was pretending,” Ul explained, embarrassed. “I scratched the jacket with a brick. Later I really got it from Kuzepych.”

After seeing Yara and Ul, Dennis jumped from the tire. He moved like a lizard. Quick fits and jerks. “Why Delta for me? It’s unfair! I’m best in the subgroup. I held my ground in flight on Caesar!” he shouted. “Flight is a different matter. For the first dive a steady horse is better,” Yara patiently explained. Dennis outright called Delta a stool. “Now that’s wonderful. You won’t fall off a stool,” Yara praised and, having left Dennis in the company of Ul and Delta, dived into the stable.

Everybody’s mama Delta was bored. It shifted from foot to foot and snorted into the snowdrift. An elderly, somewhat short-legged mare, ash-grey, “mousy” coloured, with a black stripe on the back and a thick tail to the ground. Wing feathers the size of a human arm. The feathers themselves were brownish with dark ends. There were no foals beside it, and there was nobody for Delta “to cheresh,” according to Ul’s expression.

After noticing Ul, Delta made off in a business-like manner towards him to beg. “You’ll manage without! I’m a cruel and greedy animal hater!” warned Ul. It did not move away. Ul’s action now and then did not match his words. Moreover, it was well-known to clever Delta that the pockets of his jacket were never empty. After feeding it half a rusk, Ul appraisingly shook the saddle and loosened the girths a little. The saddle was slight, stretched forward. The front pommel was turned down, girding the muscular bases of the wings in those parts where the feathers had not yet begun.

Ul approached Dennis and in a friendly way slapped him on the shoulder. “Checked the pockets? Combs, ball-point pens, cosmetic fillings on the teeth?” Dennis shook his head. “Well, look, otherwise will think of something,” promised Ul.

“More briefing. First of all, understandably, is your ride. When you’ve gained height, you take the horse into the dive. It happens, a novice is nervous, pulls on the rein, and attempts to turn it around. You’ll only confuse the horse with this. At the moment before the dive, the speed is such that it can no longer take off. But if it foolishly stretches them out, all its bones will turn into corkscrews. In short, you panic, you’ll destroy yourself and the horse.”

“Dispersion?” Dennis prompted. Ul clicked his tongue. “Nuh-uh! Way off base, as the saying goes… Dispersion is when the horse crosses over but you don’t. Usually this happens when a hdiver doesn’t trust the horse. Then the horse disappears and the hdiver is pressed into the asphalt.” Dennis turned pale and Ul was sorry that he said too much. “In short, trust Delta. It has already been diving for ten years. The main thing, you don’t interfere with it: it’ll do everything itself,” he said in haste. Dennis looked with doubt at Delta, which, after dropping its lower lip, was begging for another rusk.

“Next, the crossing! Here everything is so instant that you don’t have time to be aware of anything. A hundredth of a second and you’re in the swamp. This is the most unpleasant phase. What’s the main principle of passing the swamp?” “The principle of the three little monkeys,” Dennis’ answer was learnt by heart. “Correct. ‘Hear nothing, see nothing, and say nothing.’ The most important rules, the first two. Don’t listen to anything excessive, keep eyes closed or look at the horse’s mane.”

“But if…” Dennis began carefully. “No ‘ifs’!” Ul cut him off. “Can never believe anything in the swamp, however plausible it may seem. I personally knew an outstanding fellow who, after the swamp, tried to wave my head off with the trowel.” Dennis cautiously looked at Ul’s head. It was on the spot. “Why?” “It seemed to him that I stole his head and replaced it with mine. Here he decided to put things right,” Ul willingly explained.

“And why am I not diving with Athanasius?” Dennis asked suddenly. Ul tensed up, because the fellow who attempted to change heads with him was Athanasius. And now Ul was considering: whether Dennis surmised something or this was an accidental shot. “Yaroslava is an experienced hdiver. She has more than a hundred dives,” Ul said, accentuated with his on-duty voice, and removed a straw stuck on Dennis’ shoulder. “Well, break a leg! Pass the swamp, and in Duoka your guide will show you everything.”

* * *

Yara went along the stable. In the semi-darkness a snorting was heard, a friendly puffing. Icarus was playing with a plastic bottle. Ficus was chewing something. Münnich, a calm old gelding with a white-yellow stripe on its head, was licking the grid. Its tongue was frozen to the metal, and Münnich was surprised by the new sensation.

But here was also Eric, a powerful, broad-chested stallion, so high in the withers that once Yara was scared of it. Yara slid attentive fingers along Eric’s wings, beginning from the base and ending with the feathers. She had to ascertain that everything was in order. It happened that the horses got frightened at night, began to thrash about in the tight stalls, and incurred injuries. Eric watchfully squinted and pressed down its ears. Winged horses do not love having their wings touched. “So, I can’t touch you but it’s okay for you to roll around?” Yara asked, pulling out hay stuck between the feathers.

Yesterday Eric was taken out till snowfall and now, having stuck its snout out of the stable and scared by the prickly whiteness everywhere, it snorted, started, and attempted to take off. Its wings were the shade of straw. Each was about four metres. Huge, of oppressively perfect shape. Yara held it with difficulty. She let it study and smell the snow, and little by little Eric calmed down.

Dennis was fighting with Delta, persuading it to straighten its wings. Otherwise he could not sit down on the horse. Sly Delta was being obstinate. The stable was just fine for it.

“The mission!” Ul reminded them in an undertone. Yara, having completely forgotten about this, looked gratefully at him and touched Dennis’ clms with her own. Bluish smoky letters flowed out into the air. After waiting until they faded, Yara scattered them with a hand. “A three-month-old girl’s heart is developing incorrectly. The operation is today. Chances are small. Need a marker. The girl’s name is Lyuba,” she said.

Dennis loosened Delta’s cheek strap. “This isn’t a training legend?” “Training jump to Duoka?” Ul evaded the question, and Dennis, confused, began to pull the strap again. “And if we get a marker, the operation will still take place?” he asked after a time. “Most likely. But then who knows? A marker creates development…” Yara said honestly.

She took Eric’s left wing aside and jumped into the saddle. Eric itself had already raised the right wing, saving it from a foot. The steadiness, with which Yara, timid and shy in everyday things, steered a horse, always amazed Ul. It seemed that an entirely different person was sitting in the saddle. She sat down, tossed back her hair, and became a hdiver. Here and now precisely this transformation took place in front of his eyes. “Eric first, Delta behind!” Yara shouted to Dennis. Ul hemmed, appreciating how craftily she said this. Not “After me!” but “Eric first.” Female management has its special features.

Ul walked beside her and led Eric. There were yellowish circles under his eyes. “You promised yesterday that you would sleep!” Yara with reproach reminded him. “Well, somehow…” Ul said guilty, and it was not clear what formidable Somehow prevented him from lying down. “Go lie down now.” Ul looked at the snow, expressing by the look that it was impossible to lie down right here and now. “Can’t. I’ll hang around the stable and wait for you. Aza’s foot must be looked at. Bunt kicked her. HOLY! Dang! Call themselves gentlemen! Really kicked a mare? Although Bunt, of course, knows nothing on the subject.” “Who’s dearer to you: Aza or me?” Yara asked jealously.

Ul looked cautiously at Dennis. That one was sitting like a statue on Delta. Occasionally, he jerked his hand and with such energy seized the red nose as if he wanted to tear it off. “Last night our people saw warlocks… You’ll take this?” Ul thrust his hand inside his jacket and pulled out a small crossbow with a pistol handle: a schnepper. Yara shook her head. “I rely on Eric,” she said, in order not to say something else. A single-shot crossbow is not all-powerful.

* * *

Yara and Dennis walked the horses in a circle and then two more in a light trot. Only then did Yara permit Eric to get into a gallop. It was only waiting for this. It rushed, out of mischievousness dashed off to the fence, flapped its wings dangerously, and took off from the ground. Yara heard a quiet hit: kicked with a hoof after all, snake! Already in the sky she turned in the saddle in order to see Ul. A small, beloved point next to the brick quadrangle of the stable.

Delta attempted to be sly and slowed down, but Dennis raised his voice at it, pushed it on with his legs, and made it take off. Having swung the lazy mare around – it was striving unnoticeably to turn in the direction of the stable – he sent it after Eric. Eric wanted to gain height sharply, but for the time being Yara held it back, forcing it to do this gradually. It would be spent, it would be covered with sweat, but its strength must last a long time.

The horse’s back under her shook slightly. The sensations of flight and gallop were different. She could distinguish them even with eyes closed. Yara bent down to the horse’s neck. When the wings were flapping and, slowly scooping up air, swept back, she saw a sparse forest. Further were warehouses and a large field connected to the highway by a winding road.

Yara muffled her face with a scarf. The head wind burned her cheekbones, brought tears to her eyes. Yara knew that a little longer and she would feel like a piece of ice, which was set crookedly on the horse. Everything would fuse into a frozen mass: thoughts, happiness, love for Ul, and even fear. Only the desire for warmth would remain. Dennis overtook and flew beside her. Delta’s “mousy” fur began to turn white, covered with hoar frost. The hair below the snout iced up, as if the old mare had grown a rare white beard.

The sky in the east was crimson-striped like a treacherously killed zebra. Yara kept the course directly to these stripes, anxiously examining them. Suddenly something changed in the sky, and above them hung a large cloud, dazzling-white on the edges and rather soiled in the centre. Wisps separated from the cloud. Imagine a cat hidden inside ripping it up with its paws. Yara looked down and estimated. Still low. Must get higher for the dive. She waved to Dennis and directed Eric into the cloud. About ten seconds later it shot up out of the other side. Now the cloud was lying below, more like a loose pile of snow. Above, as far as the eyes could see, more clouds were drifting. One overhead, fiery, resembling a hippopotamus, swallowed the sun and slowly digested it.

Dennis appeared only after a minute. He pointed at Delta with indignation and threatened it with the whip. The mare had a devious look. Yara understood: Delta pretended that the cloud scared it, using this as a pretext in order to return. Its tricks were well known to Yara. In her time she also started with Delta.

Knowing how much energy a horse needed to gain altitude, Yara let Eric fly to the south, keeping it along the dark edge of the lower cloud. The sky here had no clear boundaries. A large cloud dropped off like a mountain. At the base of the mountain smaller clouds were joined by limp beards. From where the sun’s rays got tangled in the beards, four points, like hay in the horse’s wings, suddenly appeared. With each second the points became larger. Soon Yara distinguished dense, leathery wings exactly like that of a dragon. These were hyeons. Tiny figures pressed onto their backs. “Hell! Trouble!” thought Yara.

At this moment four winged points broke apart into two teams of two. One team stayed circling below, the other dived for the cloud. “Look! Warlocks!” she shouted to Dennis, pulling down the scarf. He started to toss about and began to jerk the rein, confusing Delta. “Don’t! We have the advantage up high! They can’t gain height fast! Will be more dangerous on the way back!”

Yara did not pack much power into this second shout, knowing that the wind would nevertheless carry away three quarters of it. After ascertaining that Dennis no longer tried to turn Delta around, she gathered her fingers into a duck beak and poked downward. This was the signal to dive.

She hardly touched its neck with the reins and Eric responded. It leaned forward, pointed its snout to the ground and, accelerating, flapped its wings vigorously several times. After the fifth or sixth stroke it folded up its wings; however, because of Yara and the saddle it could not do this as in the stable. It turned out that it held her with the base of its wings at their widest part. Yara found herself between two shields protecting her all the way to her chest. Now and then it came to her mind that only this makes it possible to dive. Just have to understand: either by chance or deep thought-out regularity.

The horse gained speed. Gravitational force drew it to the ground. Yara leaned down, trying to take cover behind the horse’s neck. The wind was whistling keener and shriller all the time. The free end of the scarf whipped the back of her head painfully.

Yara attempted to look around in order to determine where Dennis was now. He turned out to be unexpectedly close. Frightened but not panicking. He seized Delta’s mane so as not to pull the reins. Also a variant. His face was white-red with clearly marked spots. The eyebrows were like two iced caterpillars. His ski cap had been torn away. The hair was standing on end like white peaks. “It means I also have the same eyebrows! That’s why it’s so painful to pucker up! Clever Delta! Didn’t lag behind Eric!” Two different thoughts collided in Yara’s consciousness.

Making use of the fact that Yara carelessly turned her body and removed it from under the protection of the wings, the wind hit her chest and cheek, almost knocking her off the saddle. Yara clung to the front pommel, perceiving herself not simply as a pitiful teapot but also a grotesque samovar. Likely trivial, but she lost several valuable seconds. When Yara again saw the ground, it was abruptly close. The silvery box of a trailer crawled on the grey loops of the highway. Yara understood that Eric could no longer lift up with its wings: the speed was too great. But Eric also did not intend to do so.

For a brief moment next to her flickered a dark side in stripes, a flat snout with protruding lower jaw, and closely planted eyes. The person pressed himself so close to the hyeon that they seemed like a two-headed essence. Yara understood that she had run into one of those two warlocks that dived for the cloud. The rider did not manage to turn the hyeon around: the speed of a taking-off hyeon was too incomparable to that of a winged horse almost going into a dive. Understanding this very well, the warlock on the off chance jerked up a hand with the dim half-moon of a crossbow. Eric twitched from the pain. Its elongated neck oozed a long ribbon of blood, as if the horse had been cut by a razor. “He thought that he couldn’t hit me and fired at the horse so that we would crash together,” Yara determined.

The horse rushed towards the ground, acquiring impossible strength with each instant. It was impossible to look at its wings. They did not become white or radiant, but they were blinding all the same and stinging the eyes, becoming too bright for them.

As Eric was transforming, everything around it paled. The hills, the pine trees, the highway were covered by a haze, watered down. At the same time Yara realized that the world remained the same as it was: completely substantial and not spectral. Simply Eric no longer belonged to this world, in which it was nevertheless a guest, although it was old and born here. Repeatedly Yara and other hdivers tried to describe the crossing to novices, but words were insufficient to explain how it was possible to become more real than reality itself despite that it would remain unchanged also.

Yara looked askance at her own hands. This was the dispersion test well-known to hdivers. Next to Eric’s mane the hands seemed flat, cardboard-like. Much less real than Eric. Because of this annoying attack of the wind Yara had remained a part of her own world, whereas the horse no longer belonged to it. In a second or two Eric would pierce right through her world, and Yara, if she were unable to merge with it, would be stuck somewhere between the highway and a brush of pine trees on the small hill.

Yara acted instinctively. After realizing that it would be hopeless if left behind, she leaned down and clung to Eric’s neck as tightly as she could. Her cheek was buried in the stiff brush of mane. “Don’t leave me behind! All the same I won’t let go of you!” she whispered soundlessly, knowing that even if Eric heard, it would not be in words nevertheless.

And it did not leave her behind. It closed up base and changed the incline, after wrapping Yara up with its wings like dense sails. Time stopped. The small hill, no more than fifty metres away from Yara, blurred, as if water was splashed from a jar onto fresh watercolour. It did not make room, did not disappear, remained where it was, but Eric and Yara pierced it like a soap bubble, which closed up after them. Yara felt the tension of her own world sliding down along the horse’s wings shielding her. She took a risk and again looked around. Her world slowly floated back, screened off by invisible glass. Somewhere there the trailer was moving and birches grew. Ul also remained there. “Thank you!” Yara whispered. It became clear to her that at the last minute Eric dragged her, the perpetual latecomer, through to become the same as it.

But in front something messy, the colour of meat scum, was already moving up to Yara. A disgusting formless mass. It was impossible to pass over it or fly around it, only right through it. There was neither sky nor earth nor constellations here, only this mass. Swiftly revolving in the centre, it was lying motionless along the edges and forming a quiet little stagnant mass. Most of all it very much resembled dirty water with food scraps pulled into the drain with a squelch. And there, in this terrible centre, everything was boiling and seething.

Something flickered on Yara’s left hand side. After a hard look, she understood that this was Delta. Dropping behind a little bit in the dive, the mare quickly caught up. Yara did not immediately realize whether Dennis was on its back and experienced several unpleasant seconds. “But indeed he dived! Didn’t break up! Now if only he doesn’t start panicking in the swamp!” she decided.

Yara was shaken in the saddle. A wing, pulling back, touched her shoulder. Eric accelerated. Instead of flying into the calm and outwardly safe foam, it, after extending the snout, rushed straight into the revolving centre of “the sink.” Delta followed it. The spiral of the drain now thickened and calmed down, now coiled up into a thread, and then began to toss her from side to side. Yara knew, according to her own experience, that this was more terrible for a novice than falling together with the horse’s folded wings and waiting to hit the ground.

Before throwing itself into the seething volcano, Eric folded its wings. The wind plucked Yara off the saddle. The scum on her hdiver jacket broke off, hung on it, and ran off as if alive. Yara lost orientation for several seconds and thought only of one thing – not to lose the stirrup, not to let go of the rein.

Sensing that the hurricane was losing strength, Yara hurriedly sucked in air. She sucked in fiercely till it hurt in her chest, knowing that soon any breath would be a luxury. And indeed: Yara breathed out already in the swamp.

As in “the drain,” everything here was the colour of meat scum. A compressed, disgusting, still space supporting neither hope nor happiness nor motion. A world locked in itself and starting to reek as a nestling dead in an egg. Yara breathed out slowly, in small portions, with regret, trying to keep from pulling in what substituted as air here. The air in the swamp was inconceivably musty. It stuck to the cheeks like slush. It crawled into the nostrils and stung the eyes. The filthy toilet in a station would seem in comparison like the dream of an epicure. But all the same it was necessary to breathe. Yara opened her mouth and felt how she pulled into herself all this trash together with the air. Recently Yara had been hit by the wind. Here the wind was absent altogether. She flew and pushed with her tongue the prickly scarf climbing into her mouth.

Eric no longer kept its wings folded. It was flying but incredibly slowly. The wing feathers began to break off from the stress. It seemed it was forcing its way through glue. Each stroke of the wings moved them forward, but monstrously slowly. It seemed to Yara that they were not flying but crawling. Without a winged horse she could not cover even a centimetre here, though she would be raking up the sticky air with her palms over the centuries.

Eric and Delta made their way along a narrow tunnel. It was drilled by the hurricane and had clear sticky walls, which sucked in everything but let nothing out. Yara was amazed by the wisdom compelling the horses to rush to the centre of the hurricane. It would be unrealistic to fly through the quagmire in all the other places. Here the hurricane opened a breach.

Something brightened hazily in front, although it was a dense, sucking darkness to the right and left. Yara stubbornly tried to look only at the horse’s mane, knowing that it was mortally dangerous to avert her eyes from it. She understood the melancholy of those who once got stuck in the swamp. To sit eternally in the sticky scum, which held on such that you would be unable to blink or stir a finger. And all this time guessing at the something close by, something completely different – bright, real, flamboyant.

In the dense darkness drifted sluggish grey shadows, similar to clay-covered dwarfs with googly eyes. These were elbes. The shadows were shifting and approaching the walls of the tunnel. When the dwarfs touched the walls, they fired off something not unlike gossamers. A piece of gossamer touched Yara’s jacket and immediately burst.

Yara felt the short probing twinges almost continuously and surmised that there were lots more elbes than she was capable of discerning in those two-three seconds that she had the courage to look. At the moment of the touch of prickly little gossamers Yara experienced sometimes a wolf hunger, annoyance, greediness, sometimes sluggish sleepiness and indifference. But again and again Eric’s wings traced a semicircle and tore up the gossamer.

After ascertaining that their attacks were futile, the elbes changed tactics. They upped the stakes. Now instead of hunger and melancholy they proposed pleasures of the most different kinds to Yara. All this time they were probing Yara, attempting to find a flaw in her. So, you do not want to put your arms up to your elbows in the gold coins of an Indian rajah or stroke the fur of a tame tiger? How about running with cheetahs or standing under the rainbow jet of a waterfall? Shashlik with hot mulled wine? Again no? Maybe, sinorita prefers furs, a long car and a taciturn chauffeur, who will slowly transport her along the streets at night to the sound of cocaine jazz?

The imageries were so distinct, so visible that Yara no longer distinguished them from reality. She could scarcely determine where she was in reality – under the waterfall, at a noisy eastern market, or in the thick swamp shaking like a jellied dish. Dreams, hardening, were transformed into reality. She wanted to doze off, to relax, and to give herself up to their lulling power.

Say “yes,” little one! My little, beloved, warm little one!

Say “yes,” essence!

Say “yes,” trash!

Yara knew: all these juiced up imageries, which they stuffed her consciousness with, were nothing to the elbes themselves. Elbes were cold as ice. They did not sleep and did not grieve. Their enjoyment was in another realm, which was impossible for her to comprehend. Gold, food, romance had no greater value to them than a fat worm moving on a hook did to a fisherman.

Yara knew that if she would be friendly now and give internal agreement, it would be impossible to break the fetters later. She would be stuck here and would remain forever in the swamp. It had happened many times that hdivers, even the most experienced and hardened, indifferent to pain and easily putting off hunger, jumped off the saddle, after becoming prisoners of a cherished mirage. And they would hardly find their mountain streams, their smile of a beauty, or fantastic cities there, in the thick fumes of the swamp.

Wanting to warm herself with something warm and important, Yara began to think about Ul, but suddenly realized that she completely did not love him. A boor, a brute, a barbarian! Hid flowers in attics and she chased after them only to get dirty all over in pigeon crap! If he would at least be a handsome man, but his teeth are uneven, his legs short! Neither apartment nor distinct future. And even counts each kopeck in a cafe! Minor little offences crawled like agile cockroaches along all the cracks in her mind.

Yara understood that Ul never needed her. He simply wanted a girl, any who would agree to endure his tricks. The other girls do not give a hoot about him of course, and likely, the whole HDive is laughing at her! If Ul would turn out to be here now, Yara would pounce on him as a cat would, begin to scratch and bite. She wanted to turn the horse around in order to sort it out finally with this freak. The hatred was so strong that Yara even saw black spots with her open eyes. She no longer kept her eyes closed. Why? Damn the swamp! Her chief enemy is Ul!!!

Eric started to neigh sorrowfully. She did not hear its neigh, but guessed it from the impatient movement of the head and the snout covered with a cap of foam by the nostrils. After a second, the horse began to heel over and tip sideways. They were no longer advancing but hovering over one spot. Something that could not be broken off caught Eric’s right wing. The left wing was convulsively scooping up the sticky air. Yara saw that the horse would now overturn, and she herself would hit against the wall of the tunnel. The grey dwarfs also considered this and, pressing against each other, they quickly crawled together into one place.

Not understanding what was happening to Eric and why he was falling, Yara lowered her eyes and saw how above her boots, a gossamer, thickened into a fat white root, had quickly entered her leg. Small beads rolled along the gossamer from an elbe to Yara. At the moment when the beads touched her leg, she experienced new jabs of hatred towards Ul. True, now it was technically complicated to hate. Her knees slid along the saddle, the left stirrup was dangling, the saddle girth loosened, and any minute now the saddle itself must turn out to be under the horse’s belly. Good that the bent front pommel held on behind the base of the wings.

“I… love… Ul. It’s… all… the elbe!” Yara thought, forcing her way through the quagmire of hatred. The next bead could not infiltrate under the skin. It rolled away and collided with the one following. The gossamer swelled, could not maintain the tension and broke. Its strength turned out to be deceptive. Eric scooped the thick stinky air with the freed wing. The elastic bones bent. The stallion neighed from the pain and, wing feathers almost broken, straightened itself. Yara managed to reach the muscular base of its wing and returned to the saddle. “Relaxed! Believed that I can do anything! Called myself a guide!” Yara berated herself. Delta had long since passed ahead and Yara even could not imagine approximately where and when she would meet up with Dennis.

Eric gained speed slowly, with effort. For the first twenty-thirty strokes it barely advanced. Now and then it needed several jolts with the wings in order to remain simply on the spot. Then it jerked its head and briefly neighed reproachfully. Yara touched its back. It was slick and sweaty. The fur shone like it was greased with fat. It was not possible to stop in the swamp. It mattered not that Eric was an enormous, strong stallion, it would get stuck here forever.

Everything blunted in Yara: her love for Ul, pity for the horse, uneasiness about the tiny girl. She remembered only one thing: never let new roots enter her, because this would be death. The hatred for Ul had drained her spirit. She even did not feel the jabs. She dully looked at the mane and tried not to open her eyes.

Yara did not know how much time had passed here. Time in the swamp flew according to its own laws. With the utmost internal concentration on a good horse it would be possible to cross the swamp in ten minutes. Possible in half-an-hour, an hour, and also possible not to break through at all. The number of divers stuck in the swamp was in the dozens and hundreds. More often it was not even known whether a diver got stuck on the way there or was intercepted on the way back. And intercepted by whom. The elbes? The warlocks? Maybe his horse broke a wing, he flew off the saddle or, listening to the whisperings of the swamp, he was unable to break the gossamer and is still languishing somewhere in the sucking gloom, where a lie is like the truth and where you believe in hatred more than love. Twice in the history of HDive it happened that a diver, solidly convinced that he had spent no more than twenty-four hours in the swamp, dived back into the human world after several decades.

Now Yara was also not thinking about this. She chased all thoughts away without exception, including the most innocent, knowing with what ease the swamp would distort, substitute, and secretly connect them, using any thought as a bridge to itself.

Suddenly Yara felt a light push. An unknown elastic force touched her entire body at one go and then parted, after recognizing and letting her through. She felt heat warming her face frozen in the dive. Something showed pink beyond the closed eyelids. She pulled back the scarf and then even tore it off completely. The dull stench had disappeared. Yara opened her eyes. Eric was flying above the ground easily, without the least effort. The remains of the swamp melted on its sides sunken from fatigue. Above ground and not in the narrow tunnel in the swamp.

It was much brighter here; however, the light seemed pale, as if predawn. A forest was discernible below. Beyond the forest began a field with a sluggish and frequently looping creek. “DUOKA!” exclaimed Yara, although this was only its beginning.

Something burned her forehead. This was a big melted plastic hairpin, which Yara had forgotten about. Yara quickly got rid of the soft mass sticking to her fingers, until it no longer spread over her head. This was what Ul warned Dennis about. Here, on Duoka, nothing secondary or derived could exist. No synthetics or polymers. Only skin, cotton, iron. Everybody remembered the story of the new girl, who attempted unnoticed to use plastic girths. Crossing the swamp on her return she had to break through without a saddle, after tying herself to the horse’s neck. Yara recalled how often she got caught by this and wondered that she did not become more careful. Several successful dives and you automatically become arrogant. You stop checking pockets, thinking about hairpins, and boldly open your eyes in the swamp. The only way to regain the sense of reality is to get it on the forehead.

The further Eric flew, the brighter it became. If earlier Yara only discerned a forest below, now she distinguished separate trees. If in her first minutes here Duoka was almost colourless, dark, and only somewhat outlined, now, with each new stroke of Eric’s wings, it became more detailed. An invisible hand unhurriedly threw paint on the trees and generously poured out sounds and smells from a warm palm.

Yara’s forehead was covered with sweat. She wiped it with the back of a hand and thought that today everything began somewhat early. The delay in the swamp had affected her. She had swallowed too much filth there.

Eric listened and took off more to the left. Yara trusted it, although it seemed to her that they were not flying there. Soon, after taking a good look, she distinguished on the meadow a spot, which turned out to be Delta grazing. She saw Dennis only when Eric had descended beside him. He was lying in the shadow of the bushes, in his unbuttoned hdiver jacket, and seemed barely alive. His face was soaked and streaked. Yara had never seen people sweating in stripes. Sections of the skin were red, white, red, white. And all with clear boundaries. Only the nose had no boundaries and jutted out like the usual pierced radish.

Dennis was pulling air in slowly, and breathing out just as carefully. “It’s always so at first. Suffer. Soon it’ll be easier,” said Yara. Dennis opened his eyes and attempted to smile. “I saw how Eric got stuck… But didn’t notice you at all. It seemed the saddle was empty. I pulled the rein, fat chance! It didn’t listen! And later I clung to the mane altogether, such nonsense crawled into my head. That I was always a burden to mother, and sister stole money from the piggy bank. And I was thinking: where have they disappeared to? Then I understood I was only in the swamp.” This did not surprise Yara. The swamp was the eternal place of such insights.

“Did you try to stop Delta in the swamp???” she asked again. “Of course! You’re my guide. I thought: it must be so. But the cursed stool wouldn’t obey! It misinterpreted me!” Continuing to lie on his back, Dennis folded up his hands like a scoop and passed them along his face from top to bottom. It seemed he was not wiping off sweat but washing. “You’re the stool! If Delta had stopped…” Yara did not finish talking.

Dennis looked at his hands. The sweat was flowing from his fingers even now. His wrists were covered with indecent beads. “It pinches. Gets into the wounds and pinches…” he complained. “Strange!” “What?” “Huh? The burning heat, but the water in the stream is cold. But what’s killing me more is the dew. Why didn’t it evaporate?” Yara laughed. Every hdiver poses this question during his first dive.

“It isn’t hot here.” He looked at her with bewilderment. “How isn’t it hot? Do you see me?” “I see you, but all the same it isn’t hot. Look at Eric, look at Delta. Look at me, although today I’m a poor example.” Dennis sat up on the grass, distrustfully looking at her face closely. “Didn’t even unbutton the jacket,” he said with envy. “Everyone goes through this. The main thing, Duoka let you in. It happens that a novice passes the entire way through the swamp and is forced to turn the horse around. And the heat… It seems to me filth comes out of us.” “Cursed swamp! It was the end of me!”

Dennis staggered forward and got up. A branch got him in the eyes. He brushed it aside. “Likely no longer so scabby… Let’s search for markers! Where are they?” he said decisively. Yara glanced over at the meadow. She was holding Eric by the rein, afraid that it would enter the stream and, excited, would begin to drink. “No markers here. Too close to the swamp. Must fly further.”

“Perhaps we can wait till dawn?” Dennis with hope proposed. “Nothing to wait for.” “How nothing? Already any minute now!” “Here ‘any minute now’ stretches to eternity,” said Yara and, feeling that Dennis understood nothing, added, “It’s always cloudy dawn in this meadow and nothing else. In order for it to become brighter, we must fly further. Or remain and be satisfied by what is. But then, no markers.”

“It’s illogical,” objected Dennis. “Illogical for us but logical for Duoka. We have a world of cyclic variations. Morning, day, evening, night. Spring, summer, fall, winter. Sit by the window, pick your nose, and life will revolve around you. The Duoka world though is three-dimensionally constant. Here everything has unfolded.”

“How’s this?” Dennis did not understand. “Like this. The source of light and heat is somewhere in the centre of Duoka; it nevertheless must exist, although none of us has seen it. You haven’t noticed that all the trees lean a little to one side? On the edge, nearer to the swamp, it’s always night and cold. Here it’s always early dawn. Further is morning. They don’t come by themselves. In order to change something, one must move constantly.”

Dennis pulled his jacket zipper. “But if indeed so, then it’ll be hotter nearer to the centre!” Yara nodded, not seeing any sense to deny this. “Here everything is this way. When it’s difficult and painful, it means you’re moving in the right direction. But today we won’t find ourselves in the centre really.” “And you?” “Me neither. Each hdiver has his personal boundary. It moves back a little with each successful dive. Not so much that they wouldn’t let us in. Simply doesn’t turn out otherwise.”

Dennis again began to torture the zipper. “And if I’m unable to dive to a marker at all?” he asked suspiciously. “Possible to dive to some, but you’ll do it on your own. It’s not too deep. Otherwise you wouldn’t have gotten this job.” “And if we force ourselves and whip off to the centre? Simple drive the horse and all?” Dennis obstinately asked. Yara thought that what happened with her hairpin would happen to him then; however, she kept the thought to herself and only muttered, “It’s impossible. An icicle can’t fly to the sun and remain an icicle.”

Dennis walked the five metres to Delta as if they were five metres to the gallows. Having seen out of the corner of an eye where he was heading, sly Delta moved aside several steps. It did not run away, but moved away imperceptibly, each time managing to maintain the same distance. “Look at what I have!” Dennis shouted plaintively, trying to pretend that he had a piece of rusk in his pocket. Delta looked around and at his pocket with an explicit sneer.

Yara knew that Delta was capable of pushing him around this way till eternity. Horses, of course, are good essences, but not enough to pity a tired rider. Without letting go of Eric’s rein, Yara overtook Delta in several leaps, jumped with her stomach onto its back and, after slapping its rump with her hand, drove the mare to Dennis. “Don’t let go of horses on Duoka. If you really must leave them, then tie or hobble them,” she reminded him.

At this point the horses were not getting up high but racing above the ground. Eric was considerably ahead of Delta and Yara had to hold it back so that it would not rush off completely. The plain over which they were flying became stony. Chains of boulders similar to the spikes on the back of a petrified dragon looked out of the earth. Yara clearly distinguished in front a long rocky ridge resembling a horseshoe.

It was already light here, but somehow inconclusive, as if early in the morning. The air became dryer. It seemed to Yara that she was bouncing towards a fiery wind; however, to her, weakened and drained by the swamp, this thought was not scary but cheerful. Now she already had to wipe off sweat continually. Dennis sat in the saddle only because it was not clear to him in which direction to fall.

Yara slowed Eric down, letting it cool down. After recalling that they had shot at it from a schnepper, she looked over the wound and with relief discovered that it was not dangerous. The blood had dried and here, on Duoka, the scratch would skin over in an hour or two.

After flying up closer to the rocks, Yara hobbled the horse’s front legs and with a short belt bound the base of its wings. Eric was Eric. The pine tree, to which she tied it, was young. Yara did not trust it too much. “Rest! You already worked. Now it’s my turn!” she said and, after loosening the girths, unfastened the trowel from the saddle. A sandy slope began in front of Yara. Gradually becoming steeper, it abutted against a cliff with many cracks.

Delta appeared to have fallen behind. The sly old mare did not fly but dragged itself along the last length. It knew from experience that they would now tie it up.

“The first ridge. The Horseshoe Cliff. This is our mine. There are others here, but we would have to cross the ridge,” Yara shouted to Dennis. Dennis slipped down from Delta. His face covered with sweat became less streaky. The boundaries blurred, the red spots were changing to pink. “Don’t fall asleep, else can’t even rouse yourself with kicks later!” she warned.

Dennis reached for his trowel. His turned out to be collapsible, with initials, which he, as the malicious owner, had burnt on the handle. He attempted to pull the retainer ring down from it, but dropped it. He leaned over, grabbed it with the other hand, and clutched it between his knees, hoping to finish the struggle with the ring. The ring was mocking him. It willingly turned over but remained in place.

“What happened?” Yara was surprised. Dennis raised his right hand. She saw that two knuckles on the edge were broken and the fingers were shuddering continuously. “How did you manage that?” she was amazed. It turned out, against the front pommel. Dennis was leaning back carelessly and when Delta abruptly touched the cliff with its hooves, his pelvis was thrown onto his own hand. “I’ll dig with the left,” he said, convincing himself. Yara silently took his trowel, unfolded it and began to walk along the slope.

Their clmses were radiant, sensing the proximity of markers. The reddish sand did not sink under her feet, but produced a narrow crack in the shape of a toe. Occasionally there were areas with white sand, which drifted in front of large stones. Yara and Dennis got up quickly along the gentle slope; however, soon the incline became noticeably steeper. It was necessary to climb, using their hands.

Yara was clambering, looking out for hdiver signs on the rocks and the stones. She met few signs today. Only scratches on a piece of bark cut with a trowel, warning, “Do not tie horses!” Maybe, the ground is slipping away? Who knows? An experienced hdiver always trusts a warning and will not tempt fate.

Dennis frequently stopped, squatted down and rested. He was no longer pulling air in through his nose but swallowing it with his mouth like a fish. “How are you doing? Quite poorly?” asked Yara. Dennis wheezed that he had never felt better and she understood that it was worthwhile to restrain from further questions. It is better not to pity people in this state. There are moments when even a friendly hand, sympathetically placed on a shoulder, is capable of breaking one’s back. “The overhang in five minutes. Almost there!” she said to the side, as if to herself. Dennis nodded, pretending that it was unimportant to him.

“The overhang” turned out to be a narrow, about twenty steps, ledge under the vertical cliff. Detached rocks and formations sliding down whole spoke of frequent landslides. The cliff was fragile, heterogeneous. Compressed sand and cockleshells were discernible in it. Many pieces broke off easily and crumbled in the fingers.

After estimating where best to begin, Yara walked several steps along the ledge. She stopped and, showing that they had reached it, dropped the trowel. The blade went in, but shallowly, and, having splashed sand, tumbled down. Dennis slid wistful eyes along the endless ledge. “And where are the markers here?” “Everywhere. Sometimes directly under your feet. But most of them are waist deep, chest deep. Don’t know why. Maybe, the cliff crumbled more at that time?”

Yara wiped her nose with a boyish gesture and, after getting down on her knees, stuck the trowel into the sand. They dug for a long time. The sand was revealed as layers, but under it began caked clay. Every now and then the trowels caught something and tinkled, producing dry sparks. It was necessary to stop and look, after clearing the clay. In the majority of cases this turned out to be a stone.

It had to be harder for Dennis than for Yara. He had to dig with one hand. “Let me dig and you drive the trowel in the cracks and enlarge them!” she proposed, having forgotten whom she was dealing with. “Leave me alone! I’m not tired!” Demonstrating that he was managing very well, Dennis struck the trowel with such force that a splintered off stone cut his upper lip, almost knocking out a tooth.

In the first hour Dennis attacked the clay with impatience, rejoicing with each tinkling of the blade. However, the happiness of expectation was dulled after many failures. He was short of breath. Instead of a heart, a stone with sharp edges was turning in his chest. Now he was rather annoyed when he heard the next tinkling sound. His back had gone numb. He often stopped and jerked up his head. His gaze was lost in the endless vertical cliff, either rather rusty, or yellow, or almost white. How much he thought about Duoka! What he had not imagined when he was going through preparation in HDive! But here only clay, sand, and stone.

Yara was standing chest-deep in the pit, which she had dug out in the past two hours and, not going deeper, enlarged it with short strokes. There were no blisters on her palms yet, but a special sensation and redness were detected on the skin, which would only go away with the white bubbles.

Dennis drove in the trowel at random about three steps from the base pit and dragged it towards himself. In the peeled-off layer of earth something was scattering light. He leaned over and picked up a hand-sized piece of rock covered with clay. One side was cleaned by the impact of the trowel. He swung his arm, intending on throwing the stone down along the slope. “Stop!” Yara yelled, crawling out of the pit on her stomach. She took the stone away from a confused Dennis and started to scrape the clay off carefully. He fussed around first on one side, then on the other. He squatted, got in the way, and caught the handle of her trowel with his forehead. “Get out of here! You wanted to throw it away!” she shouted merrily to him. “Don’t fuss around a hdiver when he’s holding a marker!”

The radiance became bright, persistent. Yara squinted. She shaded her eyes. A dark-blue flower, woven from a live, timid fire, blazed up inside the rock. Small, like a bluebell. How it had fallen into the rock and grown there was a riddle. Yara no longer scraped off the clay. She held the stone in her hand and was continuously tossing it up, as if it was very hot.

“A good marker. Strong… Only it’s blue,” added Yara with regret. “And what’s so bad about blue?” Dennis tensed up. “Nothing. But today we need another one. Blue markers are for talent and ability. For example, the owner of this will be busy with his favourite work for twenty-four hours right through without getting tired. And he’ll never be disappointed, never droop, never let down, although there will only be obstacles around.” “How do you know?” Dennis asked suspiciously. “It told me.” “With words?” “Of course not. But while you’re holding a marker, you feel that it is so.”

Yara leaned over and lowered the marker onto a flat fragment of rock etched with brown cracks. Dennis looked at her interrogatively. “I put it down so it wouldn’t begin the merge. And tossing it up for the same reason. I don’t want to tease myself. If I keep it, Duoka will never let me in again.” “Why?” “One can never take for oneself. Only for the job,” she explained. Dennis’ questions did not surprise her. Earlier he knew everything in theory. But what is theory? A cardboard folder with training inside. “And if you for me, and I for you?” proposed Dennis. “No go. Either you’re a hdiver or you’re not,” she said with confidence.

Dennis squatted, lovingly looking at the marker. The flower had piped down. It was burning, but no longer as vividly as in Yara’s hands. It was resting. “Are you going to leave it here?” “Let’s say this: it’s in reserve. If we don’t find what they sent us here for, we’ll take it with us so as not to return empty-handed,” said Yara, wavering. She was wavering because she was trying to recall the regulations: does the guide have the right to take a marker when accompanied by a beginner? She had had several dives, but till now, she had always acted strictly on the job.

“But two of us today!” said Dennis. “Finding a marker is a little thing. Still have to smuggle it through the swamp. The most failsafe is to leave with the marker you’re sent for. It’ll give you strength. If a marker is more than your performance capabilities, better not ask for it,” Yara explained seriously. “Do you mean to say that the elbes know which marker I’ll be carrying?” Dennis asked suspiciously. Yara did not answer. She only looked at him.

“How many years before this flower formed?” Dennis suddenly asked. Yara shrugged her shoulders. Such a thing never occupied her. “Many.” “To what degree, at least?” he tried to find out. “A hundred million… A billion. I don’t know,” she answered carelessly. Dennis became round-eyed. Yara had forgotten what significance numbers have in a man’s mind. “It’s not exactly a flower. Well, that is, not like pine trees, grass. They disappear, they replace each other, but this is eternal,” she added, as if justifying herself.

The marker, which no one was touching, almost faded. But Yara knew that if she would take the stone and, not letting go, hold it, then the flower would burn so vividly it would melt the rock. Then the marker would merge with her and would hand over its gift to her.

“Is it always a flower in a marker?” asked Dennis. “Depends. A blue one is most often a plant: a mushroom, moss, a branch. Sometimes a hardened fruit. I found a peach, a plum. A scarlet marker, and we’re searching for it now, has something like wild strawberries inside the stone. I like the scarlet ones more. They always fit. For a blue one though, you have to dive ten times to find a suitable one…” With her need to feel everything, Yara ran her hand upwards along the cliff. The cliff was rough as a tree, but no life could be perceived in it.

“Markers – they’re like a separate world flowing independently inside Duoka. Once Ul saw an ant,” said Yara. “And what did it do?” “The ant? What all ants do. It was crawling.” “Crawling?” Dennis again asked suspiciously. “Simply crawling along the stone. Throughout. Very simply and businesslike. Maybe, already five thousand years. Or a hundred thousand years. Or more. And sometimes it’ll crawl out of it. A real live ant, shining like a small sun.” “Did Ul take it?” “He had another job. And when he returned for the ant after several days, he no longer found it.” “But what could this ant be?” “Anything you like. A live marker is always a riddle.”

Yara picked up her trowel and, having climbed down into the pit, started to enlarge it with short strokes. She knew from experience that it would progress faster this way. When she came across stones, she cleaned them, quickly inspected and rejected them. She tried to move in the same direction, where Dennis had found the nugget.

Hoping for a repetition of his success with the flower, Dennis stuck the trowel in wherever. Yara shook her head. Dennis reminded her of a person biting off bread in different places from a loaf. “Why is it mandatory to dig? If we fly along the cliff and look out for markers directly in the thick layer? What if they’re somewhere on the outside?” he suddenly proposed. Yara smiled. Novice hdivers loved to generate ideas. And she did too. Dynamite, a shaft, a mine. Only what bright thoughts have not visited a person tired of working with a trowel! Up on her knees, she swung the trowel evenly, controlling the narrow flow of earth escaping from the crack and clay. “Can’t see in the thick layer. A marker has to answer. And it answers to touch. Otherwise, a rock is just a rock,” she muttered. Dennis turned away.

For a long time they worked in silence. To the right of the pit a whole pile of rejected stones was already scattered around. Yara managed to drive a fragment of one of them in under her nail. She tied up the finger with a handkerchief and, listening to the pulsation of pain, continued the search. The pain disrupted her rhythm. A jab of the trowel gave a shot of pain. She remembered Dennis none too soon. That one was moving like a sleep-walker. He had dropped the trowel and was groping for it on the ground. Yara started to pity him.

“I hurt a nail. Let’s rest a little,” Yara proposed, knowing that he would not agree otherwise. Dennis stopped groping for the trowel and turned his head to her. She felt like saying to him, “I have flattened fingers, but you some nail!” She crawled out of the pit and lay on her back. A rock lumped over her. From below it was similar to a crumpled piece of paper with watercolour. A small stone ran along the rock and fell onto the overhang.

“There beyond the ridge is a huge valley. Transparent trees of live glass grow on the water. A flying fern. It attaches itself onto a horse’s tail and drifts together with it,” Yara said dreamily. “Have you seen it yourself?” Dennis echoed suspiciously. He was not lying down but sitting, nursing a hurt hand. “Ul described it. I haven’t dived there. The eyes water, the ears begin to feel pressure. Too much light there. Both smells and sounds, everything is solid, tangible. It seems that both sound and smell can be felt. Imagine: touching sound with your hands! And the colours! Such red that it burns the eyes. Or such green that you can’t tear yourself away at all. And the blue indeed knocks you over… And in the distance, mountains – white with snowy caps.” “More mountains? And has anyone been beyond those mountains?” asked Dennis.

Yara got up and jumped into the pit. Now the pain was gnawing her finger slowly, with enjoyment. Dennis, tardily trying to start his own pit, quickly wore himself out and, after jumping down, worked beside her. He held the trowel like a sword and was swinging it in such a way that Yara feared for her head.

After four hours Yara felt a metallic aftertaste in her throat. She touched her nose with the back of a hand and saw a speck of blood. “Time to go! The time of a dive is over,” she wanted to say, but at this moment Dennis yelled. At first Yara decided that he had hit his hand, which he had put far in front for equilibrium, with the trowel. With his adroitness this would have been the logical outcome. But no. After dropping the trowel, Dennis, shaking it loose, freed an average sized stone. Half cleaned by slanting strokes of the trowel, the stone was burning so that its crimson flashes were everywhere: both on Yara’s trowel polished to a shine and on Dennis’ sweaty face. It was hard to believe that these flashes originated from just three small berries inside. “Three ‘strawberries’! You’re lucky today! First dive and two markers!” Yara was happy for him. That she had dug out the enormous pit and, in essence, done all the preparatory work, had no importance for her. The main thing was to deliver the marker to HDive.

Dennis greedily felt the stone with his good hand. He looked stunned. The marker was talking to him in the nonverbal language of being. “Hide the marker in the knapsack!” ordered Yara. He looked at her without understanding. “Huh? What?” he echoed. She understood that he had not even heard her. “Don’t hold the marker! We’re returning! Job’s done,” she pulled him by the sleeve. “Yes! That’s it! Already!” As if coming to, he said.

Entangled in the straps, Dennis hastily pulled a small leather knapsack off his shoulder and thrust his hand inside. Yara, from her own experience knowing how difficult it was to part with the first marker, took a breath with relief. She began to crawl out of the pit, but here he took his hand out of the knapsack and… she again saw the stone. The three red berries could not be made out. Now it seemed that the entire stone was one enormous blazing berry. “Okay. I’ll put it in the knapsack. Then what?” asked Dennis. Yara froze, anxiously looking at him. “You’ll save the girl,” she reminded him. “Yes, I know,” he said impatiently. “But describe in greater detail!”

“Duoka is a world of deeper bedding,”4 Yara was speaking hastily. “Do you remember that before the dive we seemed to ourselves less real than the horses? It’s because the pressure of our world is less. Our world still hasn’t hardened, hasn’t taken shape. It’s seething, there’re waves, but here everything has calmed down in the depth. What happens when you get down to the bottom and disturb an air bubble?” “It floats.” “And a marker will float, though not alone, but together with you. You’ll guide it through the swamp. There, in the dead world, they’ll try to take it away from you. If the marker doesn’t give you strength, you pass the swamp slowly. The elbes report to the warlocks your exit point, and those wait on hyeons for you. But, I hope, everything will be managed. In HDive you’ll give the marker to Kavaleria. And… honestly speaking, I don’t know what then. I know that the marker itself will arrange everything.”

The crimson flashes were reflected in Dennis’ pupils. They irritated Yara’s eyes and she could not understand how the novice could look at the marker without blinking.

“And what about me?” Dennis asked brusquely. “You’ll become a hdiver. Possibly, for several hours you’ll have a headache. Nausea, sharp pain in the eyes, a cough. For bringing the marker and not keeping it for yourself, you have to pay. But this is also part of the path of a hdiver,” Yara was talking rapidly, choking with words. Each second was precious. Dennis looked first at the stone, then at Yara. His fingers began to unclench, but suddenly they closed again.

“Give it to me!” asked Yara. “It’ll be easier for you. The first time is always hard and painful.” Dennis started to laugh nervously. “I’ll give it. Certainly, I will! Do you think I’ll keep it?”“I don’t think so,” she assured him in a hurry. She was feeling sorry already that she had begun to talk about this. “Why did you say it at all?” muttered Dennis. “You think I’m only saying that I’ll give it but I won’t? In your opinion, I don’t want the girl to be healthy?” “Yes, I believe, I believe. Only unclench your fingers!” Yara rushed him. “I can put it in the knapsack myself.”

Dennis licked his lips. His fingers were shaking. He almost let go, but suspicion flickered on his face in the last second. “Why do you want to take away my marker? How do I know that you’ll return it to HDive? Maybe there isn’t even a girl? I broke my fingers, they nearly finished me off in the swamp!” his voice broke. “What guarantees that Kavaleria won’t keep my marker for herself? That she hasn’t kept all the markers for herself?” Yara kept silent. It was pointless to answer.

Dennis’ face was distorted. He jerked a hand up and decisively, as if trying to tear off his own face, ran it over the skin. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I don’t want to be someone evil! I’ll give it, but a little later,” he said in a sick voice. “Give it now! Please!” Yara repeated persistently. “Business isn’t decided in a few minutes, is it? Do you think I can’t deliver the marker to HDive myself? You all can, but I alone can’t?” he again began to get irritated. “Of course you can. But the longer it remains with you, the…” “Nonsense! This was my job! They sent me for it! ME! Naturally it’s easy for you, but not for me! How do you know that it’s so? You have a heart like a young mare!”

Yara realized that this would go on forever. And the longer, the worse it would be. She no longer looked at Dennis’ face, which sometimes brightened up, sometimes became obstinate, but at his fingers. The stone gradually faded. The scarlet radiance was creeping over onto his wrist. His nails were glowing as if enveloped in fire. Pretending to tie her laces, she squatted and then jumped him like a cat would. She succeeded in grabbing Dennis by the hand, but he hit her chin with the base of his right palm. Yara fell.

“Did you want to cheat me? YES? YES???” Yara sat on the sand and looked at the marker in his hand. “Excuse me for hitting you… Earlier I never raised a hand to… Why did you jump me?” Dennis, coming to his senses, muttered guilty. Yara got up silently and, reeling, walked to the horses. He overtook her, pushed her in the shoulder, and easily brought her down to the ground. She felt that he had become much stronger. The awkwardness and chaos of movements had disappeared. “Wait! I’ll give it! But why, say why?” shouted Dennis. “We must,” Yara responded frigidly. After the hit she was in a fog. “Whom do we owe this? We’re the ones who dived here! By our own efforts! Like condemned men!”

Yara stood up and again walked to her horses. Dennis did not upend her again, he only barred her path. The radiance enveloped his entire hand and rose in thin streams to his elbow. His chicken-like chest was filled with strength. The right sagging shoulder rose. He even became taller, a little bit but nevertheless perceptible. Yara understood that she could not take away the marker by force. It was too late.

“You stop! I only want to understand!” Dennis shouted with desperation. “This marker will only help…” “Lyuba,” Yara cut him off. “What Lyuba?” “What, you’ve forgotten? The girl has a name.” He stumbled over the name and grimaced. “Ah, yes! Clear. Only her and no one else?” “Yes.” “But that’s not enough! How many sick children are in the world? And we’ll help only one! It’s unfair! It’s settled! I’ll quickly dive deeper, for rocks! There I’ll find another marker, ten times stronger than this! I’ll cure dozens of people of heart disease, hundreds!” He was talking feverishly, with passion, all the time believing more in his own words.

“Listen,” Yara said tiredly. “We mustn’t heal all of mankind! I don’t know why, but we mustn’t. It’s not in our power. Our job is a specific girl, who is now three months… If you keep the marker for yourself, you’ll never end up in Duoka anymore. Not just for the rocks, but not even here.” Dennis both believed and disbelieved her.

“Lots you don’t know!” he continued, justifying himself. “I never told anyone this… I had three heart surgeries in childhood. Three! Loads of things are never for me. If you would only know how much it cost me to learn to ride! I cover ten metres and I’m already gasping for breath… And here as if taunting me, they send me for a marker for the heart!” “Clear,” Yara said quietly. “What’s clear to you? What?” Dennis exploded. “Why they charged precisely you to get this marker. The first time a hdiver is always tested for maximum pain. It was so with Ul, also with me.”

“It’s unfair!” Dennis obstinately repeated. “I could dive doubly better, if I were healthy. But if we do this… I’ll give this to the girl and keep another for myself? Which I’ll find next time? Eh?” “There won’t be a next time,” said Yara, at once cutting off all his hopes. “But if…” Dennis began carefully. “No ‘ifs’,” Yara said bitterly. “What don’t you understand? There are no ‘ifs’. This is Duoka.”

Dennis took a step towards her, hoping to explain something, but suddenly stopped and, after inclining his head, stared at himself. “Indeed I’m now agitated? But when I’m agitated, I gasp for breath,” he recalled belatedly. Having bent his arm at the elbow, Dennis with surprise clenched and unclenched his right hand. The pain from the bones had left. Ready coordinated strength filled his fingers. He rushed to the small puddle, got down on all fours and began to look. “You’ll never gasp for breath anymore,” said Yara. Dennis rose. Clay stains remained on his knees. “They always looked at me like at a freak! Everybody and always! Girls, whom I would like to meet, smiled at me like they were smiling at old men or sick cats!” he muttered, justifying himself.

Yara touched her nose with a closed hand. A red ball trembled on the back of the hand. “Excuse me! I must get to the horses,” she said. Dennis did not detain her. He ran beside her. He passed her, stopped, and turned around. “Is this marker indeed in me now, huh?” he repeated. “It turns out I now possess a gift! I’ll finish medical school, become a surgeon! And I’ll return this marker, I will! Don’t look at me this way!” Yara was also not looking at him. Only once in passing did she look at the hand with the marker. The stone was dim. It was possible to drop it safely. But Dennis certainly would not believe her and would drag this useless cobblestone with him.

Yara reached the horses. Eric neighed impatiently and caught the sleeve of her jacket with its teeth. She climbed into the saddle with difficulty, feeling her legs turning into cotton. Dennis, on the contrary, jumped onto Delta easily, like a grasshopper. He did not even recall the existence of stirrups. Now he again argued that there was no Lyuba and he simply would not let himself be fooled. Yara heard this already. Self-justifications always go in a circle until they stop at some argument, which seems maximally convincing to the one defending himself. In a day Dennis would even believe himself. He simply had no other way out.

Yara turned Eric around towards the Horseshoe Cliff. “Where are you going?” Dennis was surprised. “To that side. I’ll try to find a red marker. Ul says there are many more of them there. They won’t send another hdiver. The operation is today.” “Of course there isn’t any little idiot! Don’t you understand? They use us!” “Good-bye!”

Yara picked up the trowel and, scraping off a piece of bark the size of her palm from the pine tree, with the sharp edge of the shovel drew the hdiver sign: a circle and a cross. The circle came out uneven, only an outline, but this was unimportant. Whoever needs it would understand.

“Are you abandoning me? You’re my guide!” Dennis was alarmed. “You no longer need a guide. Delta knows the way back, and you’ll pass through the swamp easily. It’s only possible to take away a marker not merged with the person. The elbes know this and they won’t report your point of exit to the warlocks.”

Another red drop fell onto Yara’s jacket. It was time to hurry. No one knew when strength would finally leave her. She shouted at the grown-lazy Eric and immediately urged it to a gallop. After galloping about thirty metres along the increasingly steep slope, Eric took to its wings. It gained altitude slowly. Yara sat in the saddle unsteadily, jolting from one wing to the other. She was in pain, suffocating, miserable, but already through the weariness appeared something new, for the time being unclear to her.

She heard how behind her Dennis was shouting at Delta, kicking it with his heels, beating it with the whip. The old mare strained, attempted to skip; however, it could not move even a metre to the rocks. Something invisible retained the horse by the pine tree. “Good,” thought Yara. “The blue marker, which we found first, is no longer for him to take. And that, perhaps, would do.”

Yara looked around no more. She knew that neither on a horse nor on foot nor crawling would Duoka allow Dennis to the rocks. Possibly, it would still be a considerable time before Dennis finally realized that there was only one direction of motion for him now – to the swamp. And he understood this. He lowered the whip and, after turning the tormented Delta around, flew to where dawn, in spite of the customary flow of things, switched over to the cold dull twilight. He flew and, cursing everything in the world, recalled against his will the small figure moving away in the direction of the Horseshoe Cliff.

Five months later