© Ruso V, 2026

That night, nobody in the house on the embankment was properly asleep.

At least, that was how it seemed to Domino, lying on the windowsill with his eyes mostly shut and one ear turned to the world. Out by the river, the streetlamps were trembling. Not in the ordinary way, when the wind worried them or a car sent light sliding across the glass. This was different. It was as if the lamps had suddenly become doubtful, and were no longer sure whether shining was really their business.

Domino would not have put it like that, of course. He was a cat, not a philosopher. Still, he knew when a thing was wrong. And tonight, something was.

For one thing, the hall clock had stopped.

It was an old clock, and usually it ticked with a faint, put-upon effort, as if counting time was work it had never properly agreed to. Now it was silent. Its hands stood fixed at half past eleven, and nobody had noticed. Not even Vera, who normally heard every creak and whisper in the flat, chiefly because suspicious noises gave her an excellent reason for not going to sleep. Tonight she had gone off at once, as neatly as a lamp being switched out.

On the bedside table, her phone lay face-up in the dark. Domino watched the little bright shapes on the screen fade, one by one. First the messages disappeared. Then the apps. Then there was nothing left but a black pane of glass with the moon in it.

Domino dropped from the sill without a sound. Cats can do that when they choose, especially if they have decided the floor ought not to be told they are there.

He padded over and sniffed the phone.

It smelled as it should: warm plastic, smooth glass, the faint familiar trace of Vera’s hand cream. And under that was something else. Something thin and cold, like the draught from a window that looks shut until you go near it.

Domino’s eyes narrowed.

In the dark mirror of the screen, where there had been only moonlight a moment ago, something moved.

Not his reflection.

This thing had no tail. No ears. It was too smooth altogether – blank and pale, like a sheet of paper waiting for words that had never been written.

One of Domino’s ears flicked back. Behind him, from the bed, came the soft sound of Vera breathing.

Only it was too soft. Too even. Too peaceful. As if her lungs were taking orders from somewhere else.

Very slowly, Domino turned his head.

In the corner where the wardrobe shadow joined the shadow on the wall, the air had gone thick. Not dark, exactly. Dense. As though the room had folded there, and hidden something in the crease. And inside that thickness was a tiny pulsing, so faint that he might almost have imagined it – like a heart trying very hard not to be heard.

He ought to wake Vera.

That was simple enough. He had done it dozens of times before: jump on the pillow, push his nose against her cheek, tread once or twice on her shoulder if she was being particularly difficult. But now he found he could not move.

It was not fear. Domino knew fear, and this was not it. It was the certainty that if he broke the silence, something would answer. And whatever answered would not use a voice.

«Mrr,» he said under his breath.

The quilt seemed to swallow the sound.

The silence quivered.

And for one brief second Domino saw it plainly: a colourless shape standing in the corner, faceless and still, turned towards the bed where Vera slept.

Then it was gone.

At once the room came right again. The hall clock began ticking. Vera’s phone blinked back into its ordinary lock screen. Vera herself rolled over and muttered something sleepy about faceless things.

For a long while Domino stayed where he was, staring at the empty corner.

Then he sprang on to the bed and curled himself behind Vera’s knees, tucked close as a guard posted in a nest.

That night Vera dreamed that a cat was defending a girl from a pale, faceless shadow.

Domino did not sleep until dawn. He lay listening while the world outside slowly filled up again with its usual noises: the river shifting in the dark, a train far away, and at last the first tram grumbling into morning.

Morning in the house on the embankment usually began not with sunshine, and not with an alarm clock, but with somebody’s disaster.

Sometimes the kettle boiled over with such outraged energy that it sounded ready to hand in its notice. Sometimes somebody failed to find a second sock and announced it as if a matter of national security had gone missing. Domino, for his part, considered this the proper state of the world. A house ought to sound like a house. Otherwise what was the point of having one?

But this morning everything was somehow… muffled.

Not silent. There were noises. A spoon clinked in the kitchen. A cupboard banged in the bathroom. Outside, the first tram went rattling past, old and arthritic, like a bad-tempered grandmother’s stool. Only all of it sounded as if the morning had been wrapped in a wool blanket.

Domino sat on the windowsill and frowned down into the yard.

Two crows were quarrelling over a piece of bread with the usual crowish lack of manners – that is to say, with commitment, with eloquence, and every intention of turning the matter into a brawl. This was a comfort of sorts. A world where crows still knew how to abuse one another was not entirely beyond saving.

«Ve-e-ra!» called a voice from the kitchen. «If you don’t get up this minute, I’m eating your casserole!»

It was Vadim. He was not shouting. He was merely stating a fact, in the tone of someone whose conscience had long ago gone off to live its own life.

Vera emerged from under the blankets like a person dragged out of an extremely important and probably heroic dream.

«Don’t you dare,» she croaked, and sat up at once. «I was saving that.»

Domino turned a yellow stare on her.

At first glance Vera looked perfectly ordinary: hair in all directions, sleepy face, one cheek marked with the pattern of the pillow, as if the pillow had won some overnight argument. But she had woken too quickly. No grumbling. No bargaining for five more minutes. It was as if sleep had simply been switched off.

Domino did not like that at all.

He jumped down to the floor and planted one paw firmly on the phone beside the bed.

The screen lit up.

For a moment the message icons shimmered – and then one name blurred, as if something had rubbed it from the inside with an eraser. Domino’s ears flattened. The name came back at once, but unwillingly.

«Domino, move,» said Vera automatically, dragging on her jumper. «Have you decided again that technology was invented specially for you to sit on?»

Domino had indeed decided exactly that. But at present the question was not one of ownership. He lashed her ankle with his tail and looked pointedly at the screen.

Vera looked too, and saw nothing.

«Exactly. Nothing interesting,» she said, in the tone of someone answering not the cat but life in general. Then she added, more quietly, «Not one message from Mum.»

Mum was away on a work trip, and without her the household had not exactly collapsed – everyone was managing quite bravely – but it had come a little undone. Like an old jumper still perfectly wearable, except that one thread had slipped free and gone wandering off to lead a separate existence. Their father had long since moved out and was somewhere in Argentina, so for the time being their small domestic republic was governed by the children, Domino, and chaos, each within its proper sphere.

In the kitchen, her brother was sitting at the table with the air of a man who had lived alone for years and had already had ample time to be disappointed in humanity.

Vadim, though he was Vera’s twin, was nothing like her. He had his chin propped on one hand and was scrolling through his phone with his thumb without really seeing it. Beside him stood a mug of tea, cold and untouched, which meant either deep thought or a small-scale calamity.

«Is the casserole still alive?» Vera asked suspiciously from the doorway.

«For the moment,» said Vadim, without looking up. «But I can promise it neither a long life nor a happy one.»

«Greedy pig.»

«Strategist.»

She sat down opposite him, rescued the plate, and only then looked at him properly.

«What’s wrong with you?»

Vadim shrugged. It was his preferred answer to any question he did not feel like dealing with, including, quite possibly, the design of the universe.

«Nothing.»

«You look like someone who dreamed about an algebra test and woke up in a maths olympiad.»

That got half a smile out of him, though only just. Vadim never wasted more amusement than necessary.

«There’s something odd in my phone,» he said.

«What kind of odd?»

He turned the screen towards her. Vera saw a list of notes. One of them was titled:

Don’t for…

And that was all.

«Did you write it like that for atmosphere?» she asked.

«I wrote more.»

«How much more?»

«I don’t remember.»

They looked at each other.

The tap dripped in the kitchen.

From the hall came a thump. Domino, naturally, had knocked something over that had not in the least needed knocking over.

«Wonderful,» said Vera. «The cat’s decided we aren’t awake enough.»

She got up, and at that exact moment Vadim’s phone gave a soft chime.

They both looked down.

A message from Mum.

Good morning, my dears. How are you?

And then, right in front of them, the second line quivered and changed to:

Good morning. How are you.

«Did you see that?» Vera asked at once.

«See what?»

«It just – » She stopped.

The message now looked entirely ordinary. More ordinary than it had any right to.

Vadim frowned. Not nervously – he disliked looking frightened – but with the expression he wore when something offended his sense of order and he had not yet decided whether it was worth discussing.

«Maybe the signal,» he said at last.

«Yes, obviously. The signal ate my dears because it was embarrassed by affection.»

«There are worse things.»

«Such as?»

«Such as Danya arriving again without knocking.»

As if summoned by name, the front door crashed open.

Danya burst in as though he were being chased by velocity itself. Ilya came behind him at a more civilised pace, and last of all Natan squeezed through – small, round-eyed, and wearing the expression of someone who had already had an idea and was still deciding whether it was merely good or absolutely brilliant.

«We’re here,» Danya announced with the satisfaction of a conqueror reporting a captured fortress. «And we’ve got news.»

«You always have news,» said Vera.

«That is because I pay attention to the world.»

«No,» said Ilya, shutting the door behind them. «It’s because you stick your nose into everything.»

«That,» said Danya, «is what paying attention means.»

Natan was already trying to stroke Domino. Domino endured this with the martyred dignity only very beloved cats can produce.

«What news?» Vadim asked.

Danya sat down on a stool without first asking permission from either the stool or reality.

«First of all, Auntie Zina at the bakery asked me my name twice in a row.»

«That’s because she knows you as Oi, boy, stop touching the pastries,» said Vera.

«Very funny. Secondly, in school, Ilya’s history teacher forgot what he was saying halfway through a sentence.»

Ilya nodded, gloomy but not especially surprised. He generally looked as though he had accepted long ago that life was peculiar and not open to correction.

«He said, «And now a crucial turn in the fate of – «» Ilya lifted his eyebrows. «And stopped. Just stood there staring out of the window. Then he said, «Right. Open your books to the chapter.» Didn’t even say which one.»

«And in mine,» Natan put in importantly, «the sound disappeared from a cartoon. Only for one character. Everybody else was talking, and he was just opening his mouth.»

For a second nobody laughed.

This was so unusual among them that even Domino turned his head.

Then Danya gave a short snort. «Maybe he was tired.»

«The cartoon character?» Vera asked.

«Why not? Everyone has a difficult life.»

But the laugh that followed was oddly brief. It flashed and went out at once.

Vera thought of Mum’s message and turned it over in her mind. The muffled morning. Vadim’s note that had forgotten itself. Auntie Zina forgetting Danya. A history teacher betraying history. And all the while there was that dull grey lump of unease under her ribs, pretending very hard not to exist.

«Maybe the adults are just tired,» she said, though the words sounded to her like a poor excuse arriving late.

«Maybe,» said Danya lightly. «Or maybe something interesting is starting.»

That was why people liked him.

Not just because he was always the first to charge at anything odd. Not because he often spoke before thinking. But because around Danya, strangeness stopped being simply unpleasant and became, at once, an invitation.

«If something is starting,» Vadim said slowly, «the first thing is to work out what it is.»

«There,» said Danya, pointing at him. «I always said you were a hidden genius.»

«You never said that.»

«No, but I thought it.»

Meanwhile Ilya had gone to the window.

«Look.»

In the yard, a neighbour was walking towards the gate with her dog. Everything looked ordinary – except that it didn’t, quite. The dog’s shadow was running slightly to one side, half a step too far left.

Only for a second.

Then it slipped back where it belonged.

«You saw that too?» Vera asked quickly.

Ilya nodded.

Vadim was already beside him. Danya too. Natan rose on tiptoe and gripped the sill with both hands like a very small sailor in rough weather.

«Is it the sun?» he asked.

«There isn’t any sun,» said Vadim.

And there wasn’t. The sky was pale and flat, with not a trace of sunlight anywhere. Only the river beyond the houses was shining, as if no one had told it the morning was not in the mood.

Domino leapt lightly up on to the sill and sat down between them with the air of someone who had been warning everybody all along and, naturally, had been ignored.

He was not looking into the yard.

He was looking at the window glass.

At the reflection.

And if any of the children had known how to read cat just then, they would have understood at once that Domino was deeply displeased by the thing standing behind them and not reflecting as it ought.

But they did not know how. Not yet.

They only felt – all five of them, each in a different way – that something in the ordinary morning had given a tiny crack. Only a tiny one. Like ice at the river’s edge that still bears your weight, but already knows the dark water underneath is beginning to move.

«Right,» said Vera, dragging her eyes away from the window first. «After school, here. Before any adults get involved. We tell everything properly. In order. No lying, no I probably imagined it, no I don’t know exactly.»

«And with food,» said Danya.

«And with food,» Vera agreed.

«And Domino’s in it too,» said Natan, leaning his cheek against the cat’s side.

Domino half-closed his eyes with the expression of someone condemned to organise incompetence.

Then, for no reason anyone could see, the doorbell rang.

It was loud in the hallway. Much too loud.

They all jumped and stared at one another, as if one of them might somehow turn out to be responsible. Then Vera went to open the door, with the others trailing after her in a cluster and Domino streaking past everybody’s legs.

The moment the door opened, every one of them started.

Because outside the door stood silence.

Not ordinary stairwell silence, dusty and faintly echoing, with smells of paint and boiled cabbage and somebody else’s soup drifting through it. This was something else. A flat, level sort of silence. An empty one.

Domino sprang up at once.

And this time even Vera understood that he was not simply being a cat in an inconveniently dramatic mood.

He was warning them.

She stood on the threshold for a second longer than was sensible for anyone who did not want to look absurd.

«Well?» said Danya behind her. «Is it a murderer, a ghost, or the electricity bill?»

«Worse,» said Vera. «Nobody.»

For some reason, nobody was always worse. If it was a murderer, or a ghost, or even a bill, at least you had some idea what category of trouble you were in. But try doing anything sensible with nobody.

Domino slipped past Vera’s leg, stopped on the threshold, stretched out his neck, and stared hard into the empty stairwell. Then he gave a snort.

Not a frightened snort. An insulted one.

It was the sort of sound a cat makes when someone has rung his bell and then had the bad manners to disappear before he could decide whether they were worth seeing.

«All right,» said Vadim after a moment. In that pause, for some reason, they had all been listening not for sounds but for the place where sounds ought to be. «I have to get to school.»

«We all have to get to school,» Vera said.

«I mean I have to get to school urgently. As for the rest of you – manage somehow.»

«Very funny.»

«I am as serious as a physics textbook.»

After that they all began getting ready, with the particular kind of chaos found only in large groups of children: one person hunting for a hat already in their hand, another remembering a notebook only after putting their shoes on, and someone – Natan, naturally – asking whether he ought to bring a magnifying glass, just in case.

«To school?» said Vera, startled.

«It might be useful.»

«For what?»

«For the investigation.»

He said this with such complete seriousness that no one even argued.

At school, everything at first was offensively ordinary.

The cloakroom smelled of damp coats and mittens that had clearly lived difficult but interesting lives. Downstairs somebody was already running, although running was forbidden, and upstairs somebody was already shouting that running was forbidden, although this had never yet made the slightest difference. By the window, a cluster of girls were discussing something with the grave absorption seen only in people deciding the fate of the world during morning break. The world, if asked, generally knows nothing about these decisions, but that is its own affair.

Vera almost calmed down.

Almost.

That is to say, exactly until literature, when the maths teacher began taking the register.

She was one of those teachers who remembered everything. Not only surnames and first names, but who had forgotten a planner in October, who had lied about a dog eating homework despite never having owned any such dog, and who had once misspelled extraordinary and was probably still ashamed of it in private. In a person like that, memory was not simply memory. It was a branch of internal security.

So when she reached the K’s, Vera did not even look up. She was drawing a tiny crown over the word Domino in the margin of her exercise book and reflecting that the cat would certainly approve.

«Va – » said the teacher, and stopped.

Something in the classroom seemed to give a faint wobble. Nothing dramatic. It was simply that Vera realised she could no longer hear the scrape of the desk beside her.

«Varya Kotova?» the teacher said at last.

The whole class turned as one.

Vera blinked.

«I’m Vera,» she said.

The teacher looked up from the register. She looked at Vera as if seeing her for the first time. Not crossly. Not kindly either. Simply with the puzzled expression of someone who has found one small part of the world quietly replaced.

«Are you?» she said. «How odd.»

Then she looked back down at the page.

For a long time.

Far too long.

With the air of a person to whom the register itself had become suspicious, and the new version written in a language she had once known in another life and then, through sheer bad luck, forgotten.

«Hm,» she said. «Of course. Vera.»

And she made a note.

At that exact moment, something happened.

Nothing visible. The lights did not flicker. The floor did not vanish. The ceiling did not turn into a cloud, though that might at least have been clearer.

It was only that, for one dreadful instant, Vera’s own name felt strange to her.

As if someone had just tried it on.

Like a jumper in a shop changing room – pulled over a stranger’s head, inspected, then taken off again with a slight grimace.

Vera sat up so sharply that the girl next to her whispered, «What’s wrong with you?»

«Nothing.»

But there was no nothing left inside her. In its place sat a horrid feeling, as though someone had opened the door of her room, stood there quietly counting her things, and gone away again without touching anything.

Not yet.

The maths teacher went on with the register as if nothing had happened. By the next name her voice was perfectly normal again, even faintly annoyed in the usual way, as if half the class were absent not in body but only in mind.

Vera stared at the margin of her exercise book.

It said: Vera.

She went over it again quickly.

Vera.

Then once more.

Vera.

Until at least it looked like hers again.

At break she caught up with Vadim outside the biology room.

He was standing by the window with his hands in his pockets, staring at his phone with the expression people wear when they already suspect the news is bad but are still hoping it belongs to somebody else.

«Something strange happened to me,» Vera said at once.

«To me too,» he said, just as quickly.

That was almost comforting. Not comforting, exactly – nobody sensible is pleased by shared weirdness – but at least it made the thing look less like private madness.

«The maths teacher called me Varya,» said Vera. «Then stared at the register as if it had betrayed her.»

Vadim frowned.

«My signature disappeared off my test paper.»

«What do you mean, disappeared?»

He showed her the sheet. The corner where his name ought to have been was blank. Not accidentally blank either. Deliberately blank. The sort of blankness you got in snow when someone had clearly been standing there and had somehow managed to leave before you looked.

«I signed it,» said Vadim. «I remember exactly. I even crossed it out once because I wrote it crooked.»

«And?»

«And now there’s nothing.»

The same chill that had been sitting under Vera’s ribs all morning, pretending to be ordinary air, shifted properly into place.

«This isn’t coincidence any more, is it?»

«No,» said Vadim. «This is work.»

He said it quietly, but it made Vera feel much colder.

«What sort of work?»

Vadim slipped the paper back into his folder.

«I don’t know. But if someone’s doing it on purpose, they’ll start small.»

«Thank you,» said Vera. «As usual, you know exactly how to make a person feel better.»

«I’m not trying to make you feel better. I’m trying not to waste time.»

That was exactly like Vadim. Somebody else would have lowered their voice, glanced over their shoulder, or begun constructing theories on the spot. Vadim spoke as if they were discussing a leaking tap. Unpleasant, yes. But first you had to find out where the leak was.

At that moment Danya arrived at speed.

Ordinary people approached. Danya always seemed to spring into existence half a second before colliding with you.

«I’ve got news,» he announced. «Two bad bits and one interesting one.»

«Start with the interesting one,» said Vera.

«The interesting one is that the bad bits are the same.»

They stared at him.

Danya lowered his voice – not because he was frightened, but because he enjoyed mystery as a process.

«In history,» he said, «the teacher called Ilya Igor three times.»

«People get names wrong,» said Vera.

«Yes, but today Ilya said, „I’m not Igor,“ and she said, „Really?“ and looked at him as if he’d changed identity without submitting the proper forms.»

«And the second bad bit?»

«In the canteen Auntie Zina gave me the wrong tray.»

«That’s your tragedy of the century?»

«No. The tragedy is that on the tray it said not Danya but Boy.»

«What?» Vera actually laughed. «Just Boy?»

«Just Boy,» Danya said darkly. «I happen to be a person with a name.»

He sounded funny, but his eyes were too sharp. Much too sharp for someone who ordinarily said things first and considered them afterwards.

After lessons, their band assembled behind the school near the old sports ground, where the goal net was still hanging on by the memory of better times. It was a good place for important conversations. Adults passing by assumed children there were engaged in nonsense, and children, as everyone knows, do their most serious business under cover of nonsense.

Ilya turned up silently, as usual, as if he did not so much walk as materialise in places where he had already noticed everything. Natan came charging in a few minutes later, schoolbag over one shoulder and excitement all over his face.

«It happened to me too!» he burst out before he had quite reached them. «Teacher called me… that… little.»

«You are little,» said Danya.

«But not in the register!»

This was a strong point.

They went round in a circle telling everything, interrupting each other, arguing over details, doubling back to the important parts. And gradually something nastier than the strangeness itself began to emerge.

The glitches were happening at nearly the same time.

«Mine was at ten to three,» said Vadim.

«Half past two, more or less,» said Vera.

«In the canteen at two-forty,» said Danya. «I checked on purpose. After they turned me into Boy.»

«Ours in history was about then too,» said Ilya.

Natan, who had not thought to look at the time, said honestly, «Mine was after compote.»

«Exceptionally valuable scientific data,» said Vera.

«I do my best.»

They fell silent.

A car went by on the far side of the fence. Down on the river someone shouted something heartfelt and completely useless at the gulls. On an ordinary day all this would have been background. Today every stranger’s voice seemed to remind Vera that one might lose one’s own.

«Right,» she said, because somebody had to speak, and she had developed a particular dislike of silence. «Tomorrow, between two and three, everybody watches. We write everything down. What happened, where, when, and to whom.»

«An experiment!» said Danya, delighted.

«Yes.»

«A real one?»

«Almost.»

«Then I’m bringing a notebook.»

«I’ll bring a watch,» said Vadim.

«And I’ll bring a magnifying glass,» said Natan at once.

«What for?» Vera asked.

«In case somebody’s name goes small.»

No one had an answer to that, which was perhaps the worst thing of all.

The next day, the hour between two and three stretched like chewing gum stuck to the sole of a shoe. You went on moving, but all the while it felt as if something was quietly holding you back.

By second lesson Vera was looking at the clock more than at her exercise book. By third, more than at the teacher. By fourth she had begun to feel that the hands themselves were moving more slowly than usual. Though by then that may not have been magic at all, merely ordinary nerves, which are unpleasant enough on their own.

At two twenty-seven she was sent to carry the register to the staff room.

Of course she was.

The moment anything strange enters your life, fate immediately decides that for completeness you ought to be left alone in a long school corridor.

The corridor was empty. Not absolutely empty: somewhere far off a door banged, downstairs somebody laughed, and from the craft room came the smell of glue and wood shavings. But this stretch of it was still. Even Vera’s footsteps sounded wrong – duller than they ought to, as if the floor under her feet was listening and had no wish to answer back.

She walked past the timetable board, past the photographs of prize pupils, past a list pinned up for some school event.

Then she stopped.

The list had shifted.

No – not the sheet itself.

Her name.

Her name.

There it was in the middle: Vera Kotova, ordinary and black and flat, like all names on all school lists. Then the letters seemed to ripple. They did not vanish at once. First they faded, as though she were looking at them through water. Then they flickered.

And disappeared.

For one tiny, impossible, freezing second.

Everything inside Vera dropped, the way it does in a lift when it suddenly changes its mind about being reliable.

She stepped closer.

The name came back.

But something came with it.

Something was calling her.

Not in a voice.

Not in a whisper.

Not in any sound at all.

It was as if one small piece had been cut out of the silence of the world, and the hole left behind was exactly the shape of her name. And that hollow was reaching for her.

Ve—

No. Not even that. No letters. No breath. No sound. Only the absence of everything else, and somehow it knew perfectly well who she was.

Vera stood frozen, clutching the register against her chest.

The corridor seemed to lengthen. The light on the walls grew thinner and paler. At the far end, a door handle twitched, though nobody had touched it.

«No,» said Vera out loud, without any idea whom she was answering.

The word rang far too loudly.

At once the world came back together.

A cough sounded in the classroom to her left. Somewhere downstairs children thundered past. The list hung on the board, and her name was there exactly where it belonged, looking innocent enough to have been there all day.

But Vera’s fingers were trembling as if they had only just let go of the edge of something very deep.

She walked home quickly.

Not running – that would have looked too much like panic, and Vera was not prepared to admit to panic, if only on principle. But she walked in such a way that the wind kept tugging at her sleeves and only just managed to keep up.

At home Vadim and Danya were already there. Ilya arrived five minutes later. Natan seven minutes after that, with the expression of a person very much inclined to say everything at once.

Domino was stretched along the back of the sofa pretending to have no interest whatever in human affairs. But his left ear was tilted towards the door, which gave him away completely.

Vera told them everything in order.

The register. The list. The way her name had vanished. The call that was not a sound at all, only a hole where sound ought to be.

When she had finished, the room went quiet.

Not frighteningly quiet. Simply truly quiet – the sort of quiet that happens only when several people have all understood the same thing at the same time, and none of them likes it.

Vadim spoke first.

«It’s a test,» he said.

«Whose?» Danya asked.

«I don’t know. But if first teachers make mistakes, then signatures disappear, and then a name drops off a list…» He looked at Vera. «Something is learning. It’s trying at the edges.»

«Learning to erase?» Natan asked very softly.

Vadim looked at him and, to his credit, did not lie.

«Yes.»

Danya sat down cross-legged on the floor.

«Splendid,» he said. «So what we have is something practising how to make people… without the people.»

«That is a very crooked way of putting it,» said Vera.

«But accurate.»

Ilya, who had said nothing until then, spoke up.

«If it’s learning, then it can’t do it properly yet.»

They all looked at him.

He shrugged.

«Otherwise it wouldn’t miss. It wouldn’t muddle names. It wouldn’t only work for a second.»

It was sensible. And like most sensible thoughts, it was comforting.

A little.

«So we have time,» said Vera.

«Or it wants us to think we have time,» said Vadim.

«Thank you,» she said. «Anxiety absolutely flowers in your company.»

«I try to be useful.»

«You succeed.»

Domino jumped down from the back of the sofa, came over to Vera, and pressed his forehead firmly against her knee.

Not affectionately.

Definitively.

As if he were setting his seal on her there.

Vera stroked him without thinking.

That night, sleep came softly into Vera’s room.

Streetlamp shadows lay across the ceiling and made long, uncertain shapes on the walls. Vera had just settled herself comfortably and was almost asleep when she felt a small movement beside her. Domino, dignified and fluffy, climbed on to her pillow and, after turning round twice in cross little circles, arranged himself against her head with one warm side pressed firmly to hers.

And that night Vera dreamed.

At first it was only an ordinary sort of dream. A pale yard, too bright and too empty. A house with no windows. Trees blacker than trees ought to be. Air that made you want to look over your shoulder before you even knew what might be there.

Then Domino appeared.

He was sitting on the fence with his tail wrapped tidily round his paws, looking at Vera in the exact way teachers look at a child who has finally opened the correct page after wasting most of the lesson.

«At last,» he said.

Vera stopped dead.

She had not quite had time either to be astonished or to be frightened. In dreams one is nearly always a little late with the proper feelings.

«You…» she began.

«Yes, yes, you’re dreaming and I’m talking,» said Domino, flicking this aside with his tail. «Don’t behave as if it were a national event. We have better things to do than admire your amazement.»

«Cats don’t talk.»

«First, that is hurtful. Second, they certainly do. They merely do not often stoop to it. Third, pay attention.»

He jumped down from the fence. In the dream he moved differently from the way he did by day: not just softly, but as if the air under him knew beforehand where it ought to be.

«The things that touch names are still weak,» said Domino. «But they are learning. And anything that is learning generally becomes less well-behaved, not more.»

«Who are they?»

Domino twitched one ear.

«They, he, she, it – I am not informed about the finer points. That, however, is what you are going to discover. Assuming, of course, that you have the sense not to dash headlong into the first disaster you come across.»

«Thank you for your confidence.»

«I am a cat,» said Domino. «Not a charitable foundation.»

He came nearer. His eyes were yellow and clear and not properly catlike at all – too understanding by half.

«If you want to make sense of this,» he said more quietly, «you will have to see their world.»

All around them, everything seemed to grow lighter. Or darker. In dreams of this kind one can never be entirely certain.

«What world?» Vera whispered.

Domino looked over her shoulder.

And in the empty air, where a moment ago there had been absolutely nothing, something stirred like snow.

Only this snow did not fall.

It hung in the middle of the yard: neither white nor grey, but shining faintly from inside itself, as though each flake had swallowed a tiny star and was trying not to make a fuss about it. It did not whirl like ordinary snow. It did not drift down. It simply stayed there.

Which was much worse.

«Is that their world?» Vera asked in a whisper.

«Only the edge of it, so far,» said Domino. «Worlds, like respectable cats, do not fling themselves upon one all at once. One has to know how to look.»

«And if I don’t know how?»

«Then you learn. Human beings are surprisingly tenacious creatures. Especially when cornered.»

He walked forward, and Vera followed, because in dreams there is no point arguing with a talking cat any more than there is arguing with a train that has already started moving. It will always turn out to be more right than you, chiefly because it is heavier.

The yard began to stretch in a peculiar way. The fence Domino had been sitting on slid sideways. The trees drew back, making room for something larger. The air trembled, like heat above stones, and through that trembling everything familiar began to look not foreign exactly, but unfinished.

«Listen carefully,» said Domino, without turning round. «I dislike explaining things twice, and a third time I refuse on principle.»

«How comforting.»

«I am not comforting you. I am warning you. To enter the World of Meanings, there are three things you must do.»

«What things?»

Domino stopped.

He turned and looked at her with that terribly serious expression cats very seldom wear, which makes it all the more alarming when they do.

«First, you must remember your name.»

«That I can manage.»

«Do not boast too soon. Most people are perfectly sure they know how to remember themselves until they are required to do it properly.»

Vera was just going to object, but Domino went on at once.

«Second, you must find a door where there is no door.»

«How convenient.»

«Worlds are under no obligation to be convenient. They put up with people far more than people deserve already.»

«And third?»

Domino narrowed his eyes.

«You must not give yourself to fear before you step through.»

It did not sound like a riddle.

It sounded like a rule.

Which made Vera dislike it much more.

«That’s all?» she asked, in the careful tone children use at exactly the moments when they are very far from indifferent.

«For a beginning, yes,» said Domino. «Afterwards it gets worse.»

«Thank you. You have a remarkable gift for encouragement.»

«It is one of humanity’s more exhausting habits,» said Domino, «to expect compliments from the truth.»

He moved on. The snowy light was brighter now, and Vera suddenly noticed that under her feet there was no path any more, and no old paving stones from the yard either. There was something smooth and shifting, like thin ice over very deep water.

Then she heard a rustling.

Not behind her. Not to either side.

Everywhere at once.

She spun round – and her heart clenched into something cold and hard.

Figures were standing at the edge of the yard.

At first Vera thought they were people. Then she thought they were shadows. Then she decided it would be wisest not to decide anything, because the truth was almost certain to be worse.

There were three of them. Or five. Or seven. The eye slid over them the way it slides over rain on a window: you could count them, perhaps, but not quite believe in them. They were like people whose faces had been forgotten before they were finished. Smooth, blank heads. No eyes. No mouths. Tilted slightly, as if listening to something inside her.

«Domino,» Vera said very quietly. «Who are they?»

«The Faceless Ones,» said Domino so matter-of-factly that the answer was all the more dreadful. «Do not speak to them. They may not bite, but I do not believe you would care for their embraces.»

«I wasn’t going to!»

«Excellent. One sensible thought all night.»

The Faceless Ones came nearer.

Not quickly. But that is the way of dreams. Sometimes a thing does not run or leap or lunge. It is simply closer than it was a moment ago. And that makes you want not to scream, but to wake up. Unfortunately, dreams of this sort know perfectly well that you want to wake, and have no respect for the wish.

Vera stepped back.

«What do they want?»

«The same thing empty creatures always want,» said Domino, his tail puffing out. «Somebody else’s name. Somebody else’s shape. Somebody else’s life. Poor wretches. They possess nothing of their own.»

One of the figures lifted a hand.

There were no nails on the fingers. Indeed, the fingers themselves looked as if the hand had not fully decided whether it wished to be a hand or merely a bad idea.

«Vera…» said someone.

But it was not a voice.

It was the idea of a voice.

As if her name were being half-remembered in a room where nobody had called anybody for a very long time.

Cold crept under Vera’s skin.

«They know my name?»

«They are only sniffing at it so far,» said Domino sharply. «Now remember.»

«Remember what?»

«Yourself, naturally. Not Pythagoras.»

He sprang in front of her and hissed at the Faceless Ones in a way that made the air crackle. Not literally. Dreamily. Which in some circumstances is worse.

«Your name, Vera!» he flung over his shoulder. «Hold on to it! Not as a word. As yourself!»

It was a thoroughly inconvenient instruction.

When things are calm, remembering yourself is easy. You are you, thank you very much. But add faceless shadows, impossible snow, and a cat giving orders like a general with delicate nerves, and one discovers that one’s own name is not tucked tidily into a pocket on a useful little card.

«I… I’m Vera,» she said.

One of the figures shuddered.

«Louder,» snapped Domino.

«I’m Vera!»

This time all the Faceless Ones flinched, as if her words had stung them. But they did not retreat.

What did move was the snow in front of her.

In that shining stillness, something straight began to appear. Vertical. One thin bright line, then another. As if someone were carefully drawing the outline of a door on empty air.

«I can see it!» Vera breathed.

«Seeing is not enough,» said Domino, never taking his eyes off the shadows. «You must believe it is yours.»

«It is mine!»

«You are doubting.»

«I’m not!»

«You are already doubting that you are not doubting.»

«You are atrocious at being helpful!»

«Effective, though.»

The Faceless Ones came nearer again.

This time faster.

They had no need to run. Emptiness knows how to approach with perfect economy.

Vera darted for the door. The bright handle flashed as her fingers touched it – cold, smooth, solid. That was the strangest thing of all. In a dream crowded with impossible things, this one impossible thing had become more real than anything else.

She pulled.

The door did not open.

Behind her came a rustle that turned everything inside her over.

«Domino!»

«It won’t open?» the cat barked, still hissing at the Faceless Ones.

«I don’t know!»

«You do know. You’re afraid.»

And worst of all, he was right.

She was not afraid of the door. Not of the unknown. Not even of the Faceless Ones. She was afraid of stepping through and not being herself on the other side. Of leaving her name behind. Of finding a place where no one knew her, including herself.

The Faceless Ones were very close now.

She could not see their faces – because there were none – but she could feel their hungry attention as clearly as if every blank head were an outstretched hand.

Then Vera shut her eyes.

And began to remember.

Not the letters.

Not a line on the cover of an exercise book.

But the things that made her Vera.

The way Dad had once called her stubborn, and somehow made it sound like praise.

The way Mum laughed when she was so tired she no longer knew whether to scold or hug.

The way Vadim pretended not to care and was always the first to help.

The way Danya lied with enormous inspiration, but never for long, because he always ended by laughing himself.

The way Natan discussed the great secrets of the universe like a man personally responsible for creation – at least until supper.

The way Domino came to her pillow when she was frightened and always behaved as if he had only happened to be passing.

Her name grew warm.

Real.

Hers.

Vera opened her eyes and turned the handle again.

The door swung open.

There was no room behind it.

No corridor. No staircase. No sensible and respectable thing of any sort.

There was snow behind it, as if she had opened a door straight into the middle of a blizzard.

Endless.

Shining.

Alive.

And she stepped into the beautiful glowing storm.

«Domino!» Vera cried, already pitching forwards, because in dreams doors do not always open properly. Sometimes they simply vanish under one out of pure bad behaviour.

«Don’t concern yourself about me!» came Domino’s voice, already growing distant. «I’m a cat! I always land on my feet! Just don’t forget yourself!»

And she fell.

At first she thought it was flying.

Then she understood it was not flying at all, but changing.

Her hands grew lighter than air. Her hair broke into light. Her fingers came apart into thousands of tiny cold sparks.

And instead of being frightened, Vera suddenly knew that every one of those sparks was still her.

She became snow.

Not dead snow. Not winter pavement snow. Not the sort that melts on mittens into a damp grey sulk.

A different kind.

Bright.

Living.

Endlessly falling, and at the same time simply existing.

She was every snowflake at once.

And every snowflake knew her.

Below, a world was opening.

Not all at once. Slowly, the way a secret box opens when someone very clever has decided to torment you with beauty first and explanations later.

At first Vera saw only light.

There was no sun. The sky above her was deep as space, but not black. It shone instead with shifting colour, as if stars and northern lights and the coloured glass of old Christmas baubles had all been melted together and poured overhead. The light came from the snow itself. Billions of glittering particles drifted and spun and settled, each carrying its own faint colour – blue, gold, lilac, pink, green – so pure and delicate that it made her chest ache.

Then the shape of the land began to appear.

Though it was not exactly land.

Beneath her lay shining stretches where the snow gathered itself into soft, luminous dunes. Between them ran rivers of light – not water, but something clear and living, as if light had been taught how to flow. Along the banks stood trees made of the finest frost, and on every branch tiny lights chimed like bells.

Farther off there were cities.

They were nothing like her city on the embankment, and yet they were oddly familiar too, as if they were made of its dreams and memories and secret reflections. Their towers were high and slender and looked fragile, though one felt at once that they were not. They seemed not to have been built, but thought into being. Each one had a bright outline, thin and sharp as lightning. Bridges of light stretched between them, with arches and hanging galleries and terraces, all trembling and shifting and shining without ever once falling apart.

In one place the snow was coming down especially thickly, and there the city blazed as if a thousand holidays had all decided to happen together. Elsewhere the light thinned, and the streets looked quiet and thoughtful and almost transparent. Farther still were whole regions where only a little snow settled, and everything there looked older and dimmer, like a song half forgotten but still waiting to be remembered.

None of it was like the ordinary world.

And yet it was like it in a way that hurt.

Because here too there were squares and paths and gardens and towers and bridges and shadows and lamps.

Only everything was more beautiful.

As if the real world had once fallen asleep and dreamed itself as it had always meant to be.

Vera kept falling, and had not the faintest idea how long she had been doing it.

A second.

An hour.

A hundred years.

In that light, time behaved in a thoroughly improper manner. It neither moved nor stood still. It simply did not think it necessary to explain itself.

She drifted over a valley where the snow glowed with soft amber light, and it seemed to her that laughter was rising from it. Over a silver forest where tiny constellations flared and faded in the branches. Over a dark gulf where there was hardly any light at all, only a few cold sparks – and because of that she longed to get past it as fast as possible.

Then the wind – or whatever passed for wind here – began to draw her together.

The snowflakes that were Vera came nearer one another.

At first reluctantly.

Then more quickly.

As if every little part of her had suddenly remembered that it was not alone, that there were other parts close by, and that together they were not merely snow at all, but somebody.

She knew then, with perfect clarity, that the world below was vast and beautiful and dazzling – but if she forgot who she was, it would be perfectly content to leave her drifting in it forever.

That thought was beautiful too.

And terrifying.

Below her, a bright surface was rising to meet her now – soft and snowy and gently pulsing with light.

Vera thought she was about to hit it.

Then she thought that snow had no bones and therefore very little in particular available for injury.

Then she thought it was really much too late for foolish thoughts.

And in the next instant she landed, smoothly and all at once, in every snowflake.

Not as a girl.

As a shining drift of snow spread across the luminous ground.

For some time Vera lay there trying to work out three things at once.

First, whether she was alive.

Second, where her hands had gone.

And third, how long one could reasonably remain a heap of snow before becoming seriously alarmed.

The answer to the first question was, fortunately, much more yes than no. The second was distressingly unclear. And the third appeared not to interest the local laws of nature in the slightest.

She was everywhere, if one wanted to put it beautifully and unhelpfully.

And nowhere in particular, if one preferred the truth.

She could feel every snowflake in the shining heap as herself, and this might have been fascinating if it had not also been extremely awkward.

«Very funny,» said Vera.

What came out was a faint shiver of light.

Not a voice. Not even a whisper. Merely a few snowflakes trembling with such indignation that, apparently, the meaning was obvious even to the air.

Above her stretched the strange sky – deep and endless, with neither sun nor moon. Light did not fall from above, as it did at home, where it generally preferred lampshades and, occasionally, the refrigerator. Here it was born everywhere at once: in each flake, each hill, each thin tower on the horizon. The whole world shone as if someone absurdly generous had scattered coloured secrets over everything.

Ordinarily Vera would have stared herself silly.

But just now she was in no mood for wonder.

Because somewhere back there were Mum and Vadim and Danya and Dad…

And the more sharply she remembered them, the more strongly something inside her began to pull itself together. Not metaphorically. Quite literally. The snowflakes stirred, reached for one another, and packed themselves closer.

Mum, thought Vera.

Something to her left glowed softly.

Vadim.

Several more sparks lifted and joined.

Ilya. Natan. Dad. Domino, you horrid, tailed traitor…

The shining heap shivered. Somewhere inside it came the feeling of shoulders. Then a head. Then something still rather vague, but unmistakably familiar:

I am me.

And this is only a dream.

That was encouraging.

And extremely odd.

A minute later – or an hour later – or whatever counted here as a minute – Vera no longer looked so much like a drift of snow as a very badly made snowman who had grand plans for becoming human. The top half had come together reasonably well. She had arms. She had a head. Her hair, admittedly, still resembled a glowing snowbank that had considered the idea of a hairstyle and then not pursued it.

She had no legs.

Or rather, she seemed to have them somewhere a very long way below, as if the world had decided to store them away until conditions improved.

«Help!» Vera shouted.

This time it came out properly human.

Her voice spread through the air in bright rings, the way ripples spread on water when you throw in a stone. Only here the water was snow, and the stone was panic.

«Help!» she shouted again. «Anybody! I’m stuck here! And for the record, this is not a metaphor!»

Nobody answered.

Far away, towers shimmered silver. Over the low hills darted things of light – bright creatures rather like birds, or else thoughts in a desperate hurry to be somewhere else. But near Vera there was nothing.

She had already drawn breath for a third call – possibly the most dramatic of her life – when a voice directly above her said,

«She’s making a noise.»

Another voice replied,

«She is not making a noise. She is declaring distress. That is different.»

Vera craned her head back.

Two creatures were hanging above her.

They were not large. They were not frightening.

But they were so very peculiar that for the first three seconds all one wanted to do was blink and wait for the world to correct itself.

The first was long and fine and softly lit from within, as if it had been made from morning frost and one careful breath. Its outline kept shifting a little, growing sharper and then blurring again, like a sketch on misted glass. Its eyes – if they were eyes – were dark and round and mildly astonished.

The second was brighter, sharper, and altogether more angular. Sparks kept racing over its golden-orange body, as if it did not stand or hover or even exist in peace, but was perpetually having a mild disagreement with its own edges. It wore the expression of a being who had managed in a single day to become involved in five conversations, three quarrels, and one misunderstanding, and saw no reason to stop there.

«Who are you?» Vera asked.

«She asks!» cried the bright one, delighted. «That means she’s thinking. Good sign. Or bad. I haven’t decided.»

«Answer first,» said the pale one gently. Then it turned to Vera. «We are Yin and Yang.»

«I’m Yang,» said the golden one at once. «And that’s Yin. She thinks slowly, but much too much.»

«And Yang thinks quickly,» said Yin, «which means not always with the appropriate part of himself.»

«Splendid,» said Vera. «Delighted to meet you. I’m Vera. Now perhaps one of you could explain why I appear to be an unfinished snow accident?»

Both of them bent lower.

Yang flew a quick circle round her.

«Because you haven’t finished assembling.»

«What a remarkably helpful observation.»

«I do what I can.»

Yin settled herself in the air – if one can settle oneself without possessing a chair, a floor, or apparently any very fixed ideas about anatomy.

«You fell fresh,» she said. «New arrivals always come apart. Especially if they fall for a long time and think too much on the way down.»

«And if they don’t think?»

«Then they fall faster,» said Yang brightly. «But get lost more often. You’re doing rather well for a puddle, actually.»

«Thank you,» said Vera through her teeth. «I have always longed to hear that.»

Yang peered at her.

«She’s sarcastic.»

«Then she is certainly alive,» said Yin with a nod.

This was said so matter-of-factly that Vera did not at once have time to be offended.

«Of course I’m alive!»

«That,» said Yang, «is rather a philosophical question. A great many things here are alive while they are remembered. And some are extremely lively whenever anyone is looking at them.»

«Where is here?» Vera asked quickly. «What is this place? Why did I fall as snow? Why didn’t I have any legs? Why is everything glowing? Why are you like this?»

«That,» said Yin, «is several questions.»

«I like them that way,» said Yang. «Only just arrived and already wants the whole structure of the universe in three sentences, preferably before lunch.»

«We do not have lunch,» Yin reminded him.

«That explains why everyone’s so highly strung.»

Vera stared at them.

«Could you answer like human beings?»

«We could,» said Yang. «Sometimes we choose not to.»

Yin gave a small sigh, with the air of someone accustomed, and likely to remain accustomed, to another person’s restlessness.

«This is the Snow World of Meanings,» she said. «Everything that has ever been named, thought, spoken, or felt leaves a trace here. It gathers. It falls as snow. It settles in layers. And it becomes part of the world.»

Vera was silent.

The words were simple enough. But inside them was something far too large.

She looked round again.

Now that the fright had drawn back a little, the world did indeed look like that – a place made not of stone and wood, but of something finer and tougher. Memory. Thought. Speech. All the things people insist are invisible until they begin disappearing.

«Why snow?» she asked.

«Because falling out of your world is the most honest way to arrive,» said Yin.

«And because it’s prettier,» added Yang. «Worlds do like dressing up, you know.»

«Fresh snow falls from above,» Yin went on. «Light, bright, newly made. Old snow sinks lower. There it grows denser, heavier, quieter.»

«At the top everything is quick,» said Yang. «Noisy, shining, forever changing. Cities flare up and alter so often that nobody ever quite gets used to them. Deeper down, things slow. They grow older. More stubborn.»

«Like school and a library?» said Vera, not quite sure why that was what came into her head.

«A little,» said Yin. «Though not exactly. Nothing here copies your world directly. It is your world reflected in dream. Or in water. Or in the memory of someone who loved it very much and got some of it wrong.»

Vera looked into the distance.

Now she could see that one cluster of towers was pale and airy, all swift bridges and bright lines. In another place there were darker hills, calmer somehow, as if the snow there had lain a very long time and become serious. And farther still something glimmered so faintly that it looked either like a city or the memory of one.

«And who lives here?» she asked.

«Oh, all sorts,» said Yang, brightening at once. «Simple ones. Complicated ones. Old ones. New ones. Things said a thousand times. Things remembered by only two people, but properly. Things born yesterday. Things almost forgotten. Things that had no business existing at all, but made a determined effort.»

«We are simples,» Yin explained. «The smallest stable kind. We gather. We join. We help hold shape together, provided the shape is not too wilful.»

«And you,» said Yang, poking a glowing finger in Vera’s direction, «are currently an extremely wilful shape.»

«I had no legs.»

«That does tend to sour the temper.»

Vera gave an unwilling snort.

And instantly took advantage of it.

«Then put me together.»

Yin and Yang exchanged a glance.

«Just like that?» said Yang.

«What, do you take bookings on Thursdays?»

«As a matter of fact,» said Yang, «we are under no obligation – »

«But we can,» said Yin gently.

«But we are under no obligation,» he repeated.

«But we can.»

«But – »

Yin merely looked at him.

Yang subsided. He hovered there radiating the expression of someone to whom the worst injustice in history had just been done.

«All right,» he muttered. «We’ll put her together. But if she turns out to have a dreadful character, that’s on you.»

«I already have a dreadful character,» said Vera. «I manage it quite well.»

«I like her,» said Yang unexpectedly.

«Don’t get attached,» said Vera.

Yin stretched out her hands.

From her fingers came thin pale threads – not ropes, not beams, but something between movement and intention. They touched the snowy light at Vera’s sides, gathered it, and drew it upward. Yang joined in at once. His threads were brighter and sharper and worked with the brisk competence of someone catching a falling saucepan – not because it is elegant, but because if no one does, there will be a mess.

Vera felt something forming beneath her.

At first vaguely.

Then unmistakably.

Knees. Calves. Feet.

It was not painful. It was simply unpleasant. As if her legs were having to remember they were legs after a long and unsuccessful attempt at being weather.

«Ow,» said Vera.

«Excellent sign,» said Yang. «The material is returning to a healthy disagreeableness.»

«Gently,» said Yin. «She is not fully fastened yet.»

«I can hear you,» Vera informed them.

«That also is a good sign,» said Yang.

A little later – or what may locally have been half a year – Vera was standing. Not very steadily. Somewhat glowy. But definitely standing.

It felt so marvellous that she immediately wanted to run somewhere at once while asking at least ten more questions as she went.

She settled for exactly ten.

«So if somebody is forgotten, they disappear?»

«Not at once,» said Yin.

«First they fade,» said Yang. «Then weaken. Then sink lower. Or come apart. Or become a shadow of themselves.»

«And if they’re remembered?»

«Then they hold,» said Yin. «Sometimes very strongly. Stronger than you would expect.»

«Is a name really that important?» Vera asked.

This time both of them answered together.

«Yes.»

Then Yin said, «A name is what gathers you into one thing. Here, without a name, it is difficult to stay whole. You may be bright, strong, ancient – but once the name begins to go, the shape starts quarrelling with itself.»

«And a shape quarrelling with itself is never attractive,» Yang added. «Sometimes it is even explosive.»

«And you?» Vera asked. «Are you made of names too?»

«We are simples,» said Yin. «We are named by what we do. That is enough for us.»

«I should prefer something grander,» said Yang. «Lord of Brilliant Decisions, for instance.»

«You cannot make decisions,» Yin pointed out.

«That is why it sounds grand. Nobody would suspect a thing.»

Vera laughed.

And while she laughed, she felt the world around her again: shining, deep, strange, unlike anything she had ever seen and yet horribly familiar too.

The Snow World breathed round her in quiet coloured light. Far off, cities shimmered. Above one hill a long creature drifted by like a ribbon of brightness. The sunless sky glittered as if every star had decided to come and see for itself.

And everything might almost have been wonderful, if Vera had not suddenly remembered the most important thing.

«Wait,» she said. «How do I get home?»

Yin and Yang looked at one another.

And Vera immediately disliked how long they were silent.

They had the look of beings who know the answer perfectly well and would much rather not be the ones to spoil matters with it.

«What?» said Vera quickly. «Why are you being silent in that dreadful way?»

«We are not being dreadfully silent,» said Yang, offended. «We are making a meaningful pause.»

«That is almost always a bad sign,» said Vera.

«Not always,» Yin said gently. «Sometimes a pause is necessary in order not to say all the most unpleasant things at once.»

«Wonderful,» said Vera. «That is extremely reassuring.»

Vera had just opened her mouth to demand an explanation at once when Yin suddenly lifted her head.

Yang stopped crackling in his usual distracted way and seemed, somehow, to gather into himself.

And the air around them – that marvellous, shining, snowy air – grew heavier.

Vera felt it at once.

Not as a sound.

Not as movement.

More like someone else’s attention.

As if into a splendid hall full of music and lights there had suddenly walked someone who could not hear music at all, but was extremely good at counting other people’s spoons.

«What?» Vera whispered.

Yang turned to her slowly.

«And there,» he said, «is your answer to why you ought not to have shouted like that.»

«I wasn’t shouting! I was calling for help!»

«For local hunters,» said Yang grimly, «that amounts to much the same thing.»

At first Vera saw nothing.

Then on the far slope the glittering snow suddenly seemed wrong. Like fur lifting along the spine of a frightened animal. A shadow twitched there – long, swift, and much too smooth to be anything good. Then another.

And another.

They slid out of the radiance the way some thoughts arrive in the middle of the night: noiselessly, badly, and at entirely the wrong moment.

«Who are those?» Vera asked, already quite certain she was not going to like the answer.

«Rustlers,» said Yin quietly.

And one had to admit that the name suited them.

They were like wolves only in the sense that a nightmare is like a dog. The general arrangement was there, but the soul flatly refused to acknowledge the relationship. Long and supple and blue-silver, they skimmed over the snow as if they were not stepping on it at all, but drawing light out of it. Their fur neither bristled nor lay flat. It streamed, like smoke on water. Their muzzles were too narrow, too drawn out, and where their eyes ought to have been there were only dark hollows in which pale glints kept flashing – as if other people’s forgotten names were still trapped there, fluttering and unable to get free.

But the worst thing was not their faces.

It was the way they listened.

The Rustlers stopped in a half-circle, and all at once Vera understood. They were not looking at her.

They were listening to her.

To the way she was put together.

To the way her name held inside her.

Like hungry creatures that do not want meat, or blood, or bone.

They want meaning.

«Why are they staring at me like that?» Vera asked very softly.

«Because you’re fresh,» said Yang.

«And whole,» said Yin.

«And noisy,» Yang finished. «Which, if you will forgive me, was not a strategic triumph.»

One of the Rustlers moved forward.

The snow under its paws did not crush.

It dulled.

Wherever the creature passed, the coloured sparks went out for a moment, as though someone had drawn a wet grey hand across the world.

«What do they want?» Vera asked.

«To bite off a piece,» said Yang with disgusting calm.

«A piece of what?»

«Oh, a memory, perhaps. Or a name. Or a feeling. They generally begin with the tastiest bits.»

«And what is the tastiest bit about me?»

«Judging by the way they’re behaving,» said Yang, «all of it.»

«Yang,» said Yin.

«I’m being honest!»

The Rustlers came nearer.

Now Vera could hear them properly. They did not growl. They did not pant. They did not show any decent wolfish teeth.

They rustled.

Softly, dryly, steadily – like pages turning in an empty room when nobody is there. At the sound of it, the skin on Vera’s back prickled so fast it was as if it had been rehearsing.

She took a step back.

Then another.

«Can we run?» she asked.

«We can,» said Yang.

«Will we get away?»

«No,» said Yang.

«Wonderful.»

«I have a gift for clarity,» he observed.

Yin moved forward.

Or rather, she did not exactly move. She simply found herself a little farther ahead, the way water somehow gets between a bank and a falling stone.

«Behind me,» she said to Vera.

«And behind me too, if you prefer your survival with a little more excitement,» Yang added.

Both of them flung up their hands.

The light around them shivered.

The Snow World of Meanings, quiet and beautiful a moment ago, suddenly began rearranging itself before Vera’s eyes. The hill to the left bent and grew higher. Behind them a shining ridge reared up. Thin silver trees shot instantly into a thick glittering wood. A distant tower broke apart into misty radiance and reappeared somewhere else entirely.

«What are you doing?» Vera gasped.

«Confusing the trail,» said Yin shortly.

«We’re simples!» Yang shouted, and golden sparks flew from his hands into the air. «But useful ones! I can muddle the near things, she can hold a shape steady. Between us we are pure bureaucracy for any pursuit!»

The first Rustler sprang.

Vera did not even have time to scream.

Right in front of her face a thin white arc flashed into being, and the creature struck it with a dry, horrible sound – not like an animal hitting a wall, but like a knife striking ice. The Rustler recoiled. Grey sparks spilled from its hollow eye-sockets.

«Run!» Yang bellowed.

They fled down the slope.

Or rather, Vera fled down the slope, trying not to look behind her and at the same time wanting desperately to look behind her, which, as is well known, is very bad for dignified running. Yin and Yang skimmed beside her, not so much running as directing the landscape itself. Bright tracks flashed beneath her feet. Stones shifted aside. Drifts opened into passages.

Behind them the pack rustled on.

The Rustlers came without growls, without howls, without any respectable warning at all. Only that dry hungry shh-shh-shh over the snow, which made the throat feel suddenly hollow.

One burst out on the right so fast that Vera did not see it until the grey shape was already reaching for her shoulder.

«Look out!» cried Yin.

But Yang was quicker.

He clapped his hands – sharp and furious, with an accuracy one would not have expected from so fidgety a creature. A golden ring flared in the air. The space in front of the Rustler jerked and folded like a sheet of paper, and the beast struck not Vera but its own shadow.

Vera had never seen a shadow scream before.

It was deeply unpleasant.

«Good heavens!» she gasped, still running.

«I told you I was useful!» Yang shouted, sounding absurdly gratified.

«You can boast later!» Yin snapped.

They shot out into an open stretch between two high shining cliffs.

Here the snow was falling more thickly. More brightly. The air was so crowded with radiance that everything looked as though it had been sketched in lightning.

And that was bad.

Because the Rustlers could see them perfectly too.

They were circling fast, skilfully, with that dreadful patience peculiar to creatures that have been doing the same thing far too long.

«They’re cutting us off from the path,» said Yang.

«I can see that,» said Yin.

«What does cutting us off from the path mean?» Vera demanded, breathless.

«It means exactly what it sounds like,» said Yang. «We are about to be divided into convenient parts.»

«That is a horrible way to explain things!»

«But a clear one!»

One of the Rustlers crouched to spring.

And then Vera saw that in one of its hollow eye-sockets something familiar flashed for an instant.

Not a face.

Not a word.

A feeling.

Warm summer. Laughter. Someone’s hand in hers.

Gone.

Vera went cold.

«Have they… already eaten things?»

«A great many things,» said Yin quietly.

And at that moment the Rustler sprang.

Vera flung up her arms over her head, though she knew perfectly well that elbows were poor defence against creatures that ate memories.

But no blow came.

Instead the world split with thunder.

Not metaphorical thunder.

Not beautiful thunder.

Actual thunder.

The sky – that deep strange sky with no sun in it – blazed with a white-gold crack. A shock rolled across the snow that flattened every Rustler to the ground at once, and inside Vera’s chest everything jumped as if her heart had suddenly decided it was leaving on its own.

A shadow fell across the clearing from above.

Huge.

Cat-shaped.

«Just try,» said a voice that made the air itself remember discipline, «touching my girl again.»

Vera looked up.

And for a second forgot how to breathe.

Domino was there.

And not merely there, either – for standing was a word for ordinary cats, the sort that slept on radiators and despised humanity in comfort. This Domino towered over the clearing like a thunderstorm that had taken the shape of a cat out of convenience and personal preference. His fur was blacker than water at midnight and whiter than fresh snow all at once. Thin lightnings ran along his sides. His whiskers shone like silver wires.

And above his head – whether one believed it or not – there gleamed a crown.

A real one.

Slightly crooked, because otherwise it would not have been Domino at all, but something much too official.

His tail moved once, slowly.

And light rippled over the snow.

The Rustlers fell back.

«Domino?» Vera breathed.

The enormous cat turned one yellow eye on her.

«And whom, precisely, were you expecting?» he thundered. «A committee for public safety with apologies?»

One of the Rustlers, evidently, was either exceptionally hungry or exceptionally stupid. Unfortunately those qualities often travel together. It launched itself straight at Domino’s chest.

Domino did not move.

He merely looked.

The creature came apart in mid-air into strips of dull grey smoke, which the wind whipped away into the darkness between the hills.

«I did warn you,» said Domino almost lazily.

The others sprang back farther still.

The lightning in his fur burned brighter. The crown trembled and grew a little taller.

«Listen carefully, you rustling scraps,» he said, and there was so much cold dignity in his voice that even the snow seemed to lie flatter. «Human beings may be confused. Human beings may be tiresome. Human beings may even be mildly educated. But only by cats. To touch one of my subjects without permission is simple impertinence.»

In spite of everything, Vera nearly snorted.

Even as a thunderous cat-deity Domino somehow sounded like a householder lodging a complaint about an empty food bowl.

The Rustlers circled the edge of the clearing. They did not attack. They did not retreat. They waited.

For fear to weaken.

And Domino saw that.

He took one step forward.

One step – and the snow beneath his paw burst into white fire.

«Out,» he said.

A second step – and a jagged bolt of lightning tore between him and the pack, lighting the clearing so fiercely that Vera had to screw her eyes shut.

«Of here.»

He did not take a third step.

He simply fluffed up his fur, and over the clearing rolled such a crack of thunder that at last the Rustlers lost their nerve – if creatures of that sort can be said to possess anything so respectable.

The pack broke and scattered over the slopes, melting into the bright snow. Within seconds there was only their dry, affronted rustling, fading farther and farther away.

Then that vanished too.

Silence.

Only the snow still glowed faintly. Only the air still smelled of storm – if storm can smell of ice and ringing and slightly singed dignity.

The storm-cat stood with his head high until everything around them had fallen still. Only then did he turn to Vera.

She was sitting in the snow, trembling, looking at him with an expression that caused a small, awkward sensation somewhere inside him.

«You… came,» she whispered.

Domino snorted. Looked away. Looked back. Came over. Sat down beside her. For a moment he said nothing.

«Of course I came,» he muttered at last. «Who else was supposed to save you?»

She threw her arms round one enormous thunderous paw.

Properly.

He went absolutely still, as if struck.

«Now then,» he said quietly. «No crying on the fur. It isn’t waterproof.»

«I was frightened,» she whispered. «I thought I’d never see them again. Mum, or Dad, or the boys…»

«Nonsense,» said the cat.

Quietly. Not grumpily. Almost kindly.

«I always find my own. Even if they have forgotten who they are. Even if they have forgotten who owns them.»

He got up, shook the snow off one ear, resumed his ordinary cat shape, and turned as if to go.

Then stopped.

Domino let out a long breath.

And began to grow smaller.

Not all at once, not with some vulgar magical snap, but with the strange natural dignity of a great wave going back into the sea. One moment he was huge, taller than a cliff, more alarming than a storm. The next he was merely a very large cat. Then just a large one. Then ordinary Domino.

Or ordinary for Domino, at any rate.

The crown remained.

He shook his head crossly. It slid over one ear.

«I detest this thing,» he muttered.

Vera flung herself at him and, before she had time to remember that he was still a cat with the temperament of a vindictive war god, hugged him.

She gave a short laugh through the last of her fright, clutching the black-and-white bundle with the crooked crown.

Then she looked at him – at the crown, at the whiskers still trembling faintly from thunder – and asked with pure, childlike astonishment,

«Domino… what are you, exactly?»

Domino gave her the look of a being who had been caught doing something altogether too solemn and was now expected to explain it in a domestic tone.

«That,» he said, adjusting the crown with one paw, «is an unreasonably large question for a girl who was, ten minutes ago, lying here as a puddle.»

«I was not lying here as a puddle,» Vera said automatically.

«You were. Snow notices everything while it is falling. A highly expressive puddle, admittedly. But that is not the point.»

Yin gave a delicate cough. If snowy light had ever chosen to become a librarian, it would have coughed exactly like that.

«As a matter of fact,» she said, «we ought to go.»

«Go where?» Vera asked.

Yang threw up his hands.

«Where indeed? To the Mirror City, naturally! We have to show you something. Something very odd is happening there, and you are also very odd, so I feel certain the two are connected.»

Domino jumped down from the rock he had somehow contrived to get on top of with the air of a victorious commander, and landed softly beside them.

He was ordinary-sized again now. Only his eyes still shone a little more brightly than any domestic cat’s had a proper right to, and the crown – small, silver-white, and crooked to one side, as though it too possessed a personality – sat between his ears with perfect seriousness.

Vera stared at it.

«Is it real?»

«Unfortunately, yes,» Domino muttered. «A great many things here become real simply because too many people have thought about them.»

«And what does that make you? A king?»

Domino stopped.

«First of all, not king, but His Unpredictable Feline Majesty, if we are to preserve standards.»

«And secondly?» said Yang with obvious enjoyment.

«And secondly – not now. We are going to the city. I do not care to linger here waiting for Rustler reinforcements. We may discuss my peculiarities on the way.»

And with that, the crowned cat set off in front, making it perfectly plain that certain subjects were suitable for discussion only after a respectful supper – which, as had already been established, did not exist here.

The road to the Mirror City was not, in any ordinary sense, a road at all.

Indeed, a great many things here were making a most determined effort not to be ordinary. The path appeared, vanished, decided it would much rather be a bridge of light, then spread itself obligingly under their feet as a broad snowy slope. Once it rose straight upwards in the form of a staircase, although there was no hill ahead, no house, and not the least excuse for behaving architecturally.

«Is it always like this?» Vera asked, stepping cautiously on to a shining stair that had been air a moment before.

«No,» said Yang. «Sometimes it is stranger.»

«This world dislikes standing still,» Yin explained. «There is no time here in your sense. No before and after. No yesterday or tomorrow in the way you mean them.»

«Then how is there?»

Yin considered.

«Like memory,» she said at last. «You can remember summer and yesterday’s breakfast and what it felt like to be six all at once, can’t you? None of them has to wait politely for the others.»

«Only here it’s all… outside?» Vera said slowly.

«Exactly,» said Yang, pleased. «Extremely inconvenient for admirers of timetables, and extremely useful for oddities.»

«And for trouble,» said Domino.

«Trouble,» said Yang, «is wonderfully resourceful in every world.»

Vera walked on in silence for a while, trying to digest this. Snow glowed underfoot. Endless sky shimmered overhead. Far away, cities sharpened into view and faded again, as if someone were sketching them on frosted glass and changing their mind.

«If there isn’t any time here,» she said at last, «does that mean I could stay a long while, and only a minute would pass at home?»

«Perhaps,» said Yin.

«Or the other way round,» said Yang cheerfully. «You go back and discover it’s summer, everyone has retired, and they’ve redone the stairwell.»

«Yang,» said Yin wearily.

«What? I am broadening her grasp of possibilities.»

Vera cast a nervous look at Domino.

«Is he joking?»

«In part,» said the cat. «Which is the most disagreeable kind of joke. In the World of Meanings, the farther you go, the faster time moves in the human world. But if you stand still, time stands still too. You could remain here for an eternity, if that happened to suit you.»

By now they had been walking for quite a long time, though quite a long time was not a very reliable expression here, and possibly a little impolite.

In a world with no time, there were still such things as tiredness, curiosity, unease, and that peculiar sensation belonging to journeys: the feeling that one has come a very great distance, although on turning round one still sees the same slope, the same river of light, the same row of thin towers on the horizon. Vera looked back several times, and each time had the same strange impression. The landscape did not repeat itself, exactly, but neither did it quite change. It was as if it remembered what it had been a moment ago and did not want to lose it.

The path beneath their feet was pale and steady now – not fragile, as it had seemed at first, but firm, with a muted inward glow, as if the snow there had lain for a long time and had become not simply snow but something rather like habit.

«Why doesn’t it melt?» Vera asked, looking down.

«What exactly?» said Domino lazily.

«Well, for one thing it’s glowing. And where I come from, anything glowing is usually either blinking or broken.»

«A very human observation,» said Yang.

Yin, drifting a little ahead, answered, «Because it is not snow in your sense. Not matter, but meaning. Information. What has fallen out of the stream and held.»

«The meaning of what?»

«Everything,» said Yang. «Traces. What was named. What was lived. What was passed on. Anything that didn’t vanish immediately.»

«And all of that falls from above?» Vera tipped back her head.

The sky over them was deep and iridescent, with no sun, no moon, and no familiar source of light. It offered no explanation at all. It behaved as all truly large things do: existing with such calm assurance that a human being beside it becomes embarrassed by her own fuss.

«From above comes the new,» said Yin. «Not all of it. But much. In the upper layers the snow falls more often, and more brightly. There things are born faster, alter faster, forget their old shapes faster.»

«And lower down?»

Yin turned her head slightly, as if listening not to Vera’s question but to the world itself.

«Lower down is what has held. What has passed through many people and not come apart. Old ideas. Obstinate forms. Long meanings. Things that no longer shine very brightly, but carry weight.»

«And lower still,» said Domino, «is somewhere you have no need to go. Not yet.»

He said it in such a tone that to ask any more would have been either brave or silly. And Vera, though she was exactly at the age when bravery and silliness often arrive together, remained quiet.

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