“But what if one is needed?” I asked. “The document in the archives is dated 1215. And someone signed it in the name of the Light. If it suddenly becomes necessary to make some very important decisions . . .”
“It already is necessary,” said Gesar. “And I’ve informed all the regional assemblies about it in a letter that was signed by myself and Zabulon and certified with the oath of the Light and the oath of the Darkness.”
“And then what happens?” I asked tensely.
“Then things will happen as they already have several times in history. Zabulon and I will be granted the right to make a decision in the name of the Light and the Darkness. Formally speaking, we shall be the leaders. In the resolution of this matter.”
“It’s that simple?” I exclaimed.
“Democracy in its very highest manifestation,” Gesar said, chuckling. “Although no, it’s probably more like that communism we once wanted to build. Two rational and responsible human . . . hmm . . . former human beings who possess enough knowledge and experience of life and who happen to find themselves in the right place at the right time, are invested with the right to make a decision for everyone.”
“Yefremov,” I said.
“He was a good fellow, pity he was human,” said Gesar, nodding. “But it’s actually pure, simple practicality.”
“So we’ve found two of the Parties,” I said. “That’s a pretty good start. Now for the witches, the shape-shifters, vampires, and whatever else.”
“Provided, of course, that we have understood everything correctly,” Gesar said skeptically. “The witches—yes. I’m not sure about all the rest of it.”
“We’re already working on it,” Olga said. “Everyone’s been briefed on the new information.”
“What should I do?” I asked.
“Visit your family,” Gesar advised me.
“I’ll wait awhile,” I replied. “Let them miss me.”
“Then work,” said Gesar. “Olga, what have we got on Ms. Yulia Khokhlenko?”
“We haven’t got anything,” Olga replied sourly. “Three pages of orientation material. She was born in 1890, in Little Russia. Later she lived in Kiev, Odessa, St. Petersburg, and Moscow. She settled here. And she was elected Grandmother twenty-five years ago.”
“She’s very young for a Grandmother.” Gesar laughed. “It’s a shame Arina left us. Now, she was good. Or Lemesheva. But this Khokhlova . . .”
“Khokhlenko,” Olga corrected him.
Gesar just waved that aside.
“It’s not important. That’s not necessarily her real name. Probably a sobriquet from her place of birth. What’s happening with that Herman of hers?”
“We were obliged to sanction another rejuvenation.” Olga sighed. “I’ll tell you about it later. Look, I was just about to send her the permit.”
“She’s not in the Watch?” asked Gesar, narrowing his eyes. “Look sharp then, Anton. You can take it, and have a word with her.”
“What can I tell her?” I asked.
“Everything, within reason.”
“What do we want?”
Gesar snorted.
“You should realize that yourself. The present Universal Grandmother. The head of the Conclave.”
“And if she doesn’t want to tell me?” I asked, getting up.
“Don’t attempt to use force, that’s for sure,” said Gesar. “In that case, I’ll go myself. But try to manage it somehow. And I’ll go to see Hena right now.”
“And I’ll go to see the Moscow Master of Vampires,” said Olga. “We still have some time, but there’s no point in wasting it.”
Yulia Khokhlenko, the head of Moscow’s witches, the “Grandmother” in their terminology, didn’t try too hard to look young. Maybe because of her position. Or maybe for some other reason.
Of course, she didn’t look 125 years old. Sixty at most. She was lean and charming, with thick black hair; no doubt people thought she dyed it.
Granny Yulia worked in an ordinary municipal kindergarten called Little Sunshine in the southeast district of Moscow. As a simple teacher, not even the director.
The parents and the children all absolutely adored her.
At the entrance to the kindergarten I hung a simple, but very convenient spell on myself: Our Guy. After that I didn’t have to worry about how to get past the security guard, or what the teachers and nurses I ran into would think—every one of them saw me as someone familiar, someone they knew, who had a right to be here. The security man shook my hand heartily, the teachers smiled, even the dour, tipsy electrician, standing on a ladder and fiddling with a fluorescent light tube, forced out a mangled greeting.
In the orientation information that Olga had given me, it said that Yulia Tarasovna Khokhlenko was now working as the class teacher of the preschool group. It was a small kindergarten. In the 1990s, when Muscovites almost stopped having children, half of it had been walled off and made into a private lycée. But times had changed, the lycée had been thrown out of the other half of the kindergarten, and now the Tajik gastarbeiters were working away in there, plastering, painting, and laying floors. All simultaneously, or so it seemed. The Little Sunshine kindergarten was about to expand.
I walked up a stairway with funny double banisters—one at the level of an adult hand and the other lower down, for the kids. I pushed open a door with a colored drawing cut out of some children’s book hanging on it—Baba Yaga in her mortar, clutching her broom—and walked into the preschool group’s classroom.
Thirty pairs of eyes stared at me. The senior group had just gotten back from a walk. Some of them had already removed their outdoor clothing, some were still tangled up in half-removed jumpsuits and trousers, some hadn’t even taken their woolly hats off yet.
A moment later I was engulfed by a tidal wave of yelling, clamoring children.
If you think that a six-year-old child is nothing compared to an adult, then you’ve never been assaulted by thirty preschool children.
“What are you doing?” I howled as they toppled me over onto the floor, forcing my head down painfully against the shoe-drying rack. A wet felt boot tumbled onto my face. Thirty pairs of hands clutched at me.
Had the crazy old Grandmother turned her wards into security guards?
“Uncle Dima!” a little kid with light hair howled joyfully as he flung himself onto me.
“Uncle Pasha Uncle Pasha Uncle Pasha,” chirruped a red-haired little girl.
“Daddy! Daddy!” howled a freckle-faced boy, so excited that he almost had tears in his eyes.
“Right, shoo, all of you!” a voice exclaimed somewhere above me, and the children retreated. Yulia Tarasovna had made her entrance—there’s no other way to put it—from one of the other rooms that her group inhabited.
The children ran off, laughing.
“Everyone get changed, have a pee, and wash your hands!” Yulia Tarasovna commanded. And she held out her hand to help me up. I, however, disdained an old woman’s help and got up myself, glancing warily at the children.
“Hello, Yulia Tarasovna,” I said.
The witch was wearing a brightly colored dress and an abundance of beads, bracelets, and rings that could have rivaled any Gypsy. Well, what can I say—witches use the magic of artifacts . . .
“And hello to you, Anton Gorodetsky, Light Magician,” Khokhlenko said in a low voice. “What were you thinking, Great One, hanging a ‘charmer’ on yourself on the way into a kindergarten? Don’t you know that children react twelve times more powerfully to magic?”
“I never got around to testing that somehow,” I confessed. “Are they your security guards?”
“Oh, come now, Anton!” said Yulia Tarasovna, offended. “How can you talk about little children like that? But even if they are guards, what’s so bad about that? In a confined space thirty preschoolers are capable of cornering, maiming, and even killing an adult.”
“You crack strange jokes, Grandmother,” I said. “Where can we have a ta
lk?”
“Come in.” The witch sighed. “But take your shoes off. I observe sanitary and hygiene rules in here. They’re children, after all!”
I had to wait about ten minutes for Khokhlenko to drive all her wards into the sleeping room, pack them into the beds, and come back out into the playroom. As she came out she did something, I felt a faint breath of Power, and a moment later the emotional atmosphere suddenly changed. The children fell asleep. All of them at once.
“Oh, tut-tut,” I said.
“I don’t usually do that,” Yulia Tarasovna replied severely. “But you wanted to have a talk.”
I nodded. To my delight the playroom contained a pair of normal, human-sized chairs. Otherwise I would have had to hunch up in a child’s one or stand.
And the playroom also contained a cat.
Until the children went to bed, he sat on a cupboard, washing himself. A huge, orange tomcat, with such a good-natured face that it looked suspicious. This cat kept casting cute, welcoming glances my way.
When the children had gone out, the cat jumped down, walked across to me, and jumped up onto my knees. Then he immediately tumbled over onto his back and exposed his belly.
“What a rascal,” I said.
But I scratched his belly anyway.
“Do you like animals?” asked Yulia Tarasovna, taking a seat facing me.
“I adore them,” I said. I took a sheet of paper folded in four out of my pocket and held it out to the witch. “This is the official permission from the Night Watch for you to use magic to prolong the cat Herman’s life.”
“Oh, thank you,” the witch said delightedly, carefully unfolding the document, smoothing it out, and examining it, then folding it and putting it away. “What joy for an old woman, what happiness!”
“Is the cat a German breed?” I asked, sitting Herman down on the floor and brushing the fine orange hairs off my trousers.
“No, no, he’s ours, Russian, a mongrel. But he was named after the second cosmonaut of our planet, Herman Titov!”
I almost choked.
“I really liked him a lot,” Yulia Tarasovna informed me confidentially. “Yuri Gagarin was charming of course; his smile alone was priceless! But I liked Herman more. A real man. A hero! And as well as that, he was second. Can you imagine how hard it is to be second, Light One? The same heroic feat, but you’re the second one to do it. And you’ll be second forever. It’s not so hard to be the fifth. Or the tenth. But being second is a heavy burden forever.”
“Mmm, yes,” I mumbled. “Fascinating. Doesn’t the director of the kindergarten object to the cat? Sanitary and hygiene rules . . .”
Khokhlenko trilled with laughter. The cat jumped onto her knees and curled up into a tight ball in habitual fashion. And the witch stroked him with a habitual movement.
“Oh, Anton, oh, that’s hilarious . . . Who’s ever going to object to me?”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” I said dourly. “Yulia Tarasovna, I haven’t come to see you about this piece of paper.”
“Yes, I understand that Higher Ones don’t work as couriers,” said Khokhlenko, immediately turning serious. “Allow me to guess? Is your visit connected with that Prophecy? Do you need the Grandmother of Grandmothers, the head of the Conclave?”
“I see that you earn a bit on the side from fortune-telling too,” I said.
“No fortune-telling is required here, Anton. Only a head on your shoulders.”
I nodded.
“By the way, Zabulon keeps me informed of how things are going,” Khokhlenko said pensively. “So I do know . . . a thing or two.”
I didn’t ask if she knew about the archive and the way I had been duped.
“I need to meet with the head of the Conclave,” I said. “With the Witch of Witches, the Grandmother of Grandmothers, the Great Grandmother, call her what you will. I know you don’t give out that information to anyone, especially to Light Ones. But, as you understand, there’s no evil intention involved here.”
“Your good intentions are no great joy to us either,” Yulia Tarasovna growled disdainfully.
“We could all die,” I said. “The entire world. All the Others. All the people.”
“Perhaps it’s high time?” Khokhlenko asked in a quiet voice. “We all deserve it, to be quite honest. We absolutely deserve it. The humans and the Others.”
She paused for a moment, then looked up at me with a grave, intent expression.
I wouldn’t like to come face-to-face with her at night in a dark forest.
And not on a bright day in a bustling city either. If she decided I was her enemy.
“I understand,” I said. “You’re Ukrainian, aren’t you? Yes, these days down there . . .”
“I’m a Little Russian,” said the witch. “A khokhlushka. Don’t call me Ukrainian, you’ll offend me.”
I nodded.
“I understand.”
“What’s going on down there now stinks, and in 1919 under Petlyura things were even worse,” said Khokhlenko. “But where is it any better? Russian pigheadedness and drunkenness? American chauvinism and hypocrisy? European self-righteousness? Asiatic cruelty?”
“They’re all people,” I said.
“And are we any better?” asked the witch. “Our side or your side . . . Perhaps we should just let it happen, eh?”
I turned my eyes toward the half-open door of the sleeping room, where the children were lying in their beds. Little arms and legs dangling out from under blankets, socks and sandals lying on the floor.
“Are they guilty too?” I asked. “Do they have to die too?”
“Everyone has to die sometime,” the witch replied. “They might not be guilty of anything, but that’s only for now . . . It will all happen sooner or later. A hundred years ago I’d definitely have turned a couple of them into piglets, to keep them out of mischief.”
I permitted myself a smile.
“Can you really do that, Yulia Tarasovna?”
“Who knows?” she said, stroking the cat. “I don’t have a good answer for your request, Light One.”
“Yulia Tarasovna, Gesar will ask the Inquisition,” I threw out on the off chance.
“He can ask until he’s blue in the face,” the witch snorted. “It’s our women’s business. The Inquisition doesn’t know anything about that.”
“I’ll find out anyway,” I said. “One way or another.”
“Ah, phoo!” the old woman exclaimed, flapping her hand. “Why are you such a great fool, eh? You already know anyway. The Grandmother of Grandmothers is an old friend of yours!”
“What?” I exclaimed in confusion. “But how . . . she changed her color!”
“A witch doesn’t have to be a Dark One,” Khokhlenko snapped. “So she changed her color; that’s her business, as long as she didn’t break any laws.”
“But she . . .”
“I know. You shut her in the Sarcophagus of Time. Until the end of the universe.”
“She might as well not exist,” I said. “You could say she’s dead.”
“You could, but you can’t really! She isn’t dead. She’s in prison. The fact that the prison is eternal and magical doesn’t change a thing. We Grandmothers convened in the Conclave. We discussed. It’s absolutely impossible to elect another Grandmother of Grandmothers as long as Arina is alive.”
“She’ll live for all eternity.”
“So there’ll be an eternal head of the Conclave.”
“That’s stupid!” I exclaimed. “Stupid! You have to change the rules in a situation like this. If we don’t have the head of the Conclave with us, there’ll be nothing we can do.”
Khokhlenko looked at me severely for a while before she spoke.
“Go home, Light One. Search for what you’re seeking—I don’t think all your problems come down to one old witch. Tonight we Grandmothers will gather to talk and thrash things out.”
“And choose a new head?” I asked hopefully
Khokhlenk
o shrugged.
“Do you have a chance?” I asked for some reason.
“What’s that to you?” the witch exclaimed in surprise, her eyes glinting with long-standing resentment. “No, it’s not our custom to draw twice from the same region. Protectionism exists among witches too, you know, though nobody likes it. Go, Anton. I’ll give you a call tomorrow morning.”
“My number—”
“I know your number.” She sighed. “Go on. You’ve tramped dirt around the place, and I have to wash the floor now. There aren’t enough nurses, there aren’t enough cleaners, they don’t pay much in a kindergarten. You won’t set to work with a mop, will you? You’ve got to save the world. So go and save it.”
Halfway back to the office, I stopped and parked the car under a No Parking sign. The sign made absolutely no sense; I wasn’t in anyone’s way here.
I turned on the emergency lights, rummaged in the glove compartment, found a pack of cigarettes, and lit one. I turned the radio up louder.
Arina . . .
How much simpler everything would be if I had her on my side. The old witch knew such a lot, she could do such a lot, and she had such a steely determination to reach her goal.
But I had shut her up in the Sarcophagus of Time. Then it had seemed like the only rational solution. So elegant . . . And self-sacrificing.
Only the Tiger had pulled me out. He was afraid Nadya would blow a fuse and rush into a mutually fatal duel with him. Arina had been left in the Sarcophagus.
But would it really be easier for me with her here? How did I know that she wouldn’t find some positive meaning in the death of all living things, like her colleague and, apparently, onetime rival, Yulia Tarasovna?
Witches—there’s no way to understand them. Dark ones or Light ones. They think differently anyway. Women . . .
I suddenly realized how much I wanted to see Svetlana and Nadya. To touch them. Or at least call and talk to them for a minute. Their cell phones were switched off and the batteries had been removed, all in the finest traditions of secret conspiracy. But I knew the number of the ordinary landline. And I had a SIM card that no one knew about, for a phone bought beside the Moscow mosque from a Tajik street trader (nothing really criminal, it was just that the SIM card was convenient for calls to Central Asia, and I didn’t have to present any documents).
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