Irina Syromyatnikova - My Path to Magic

He was taken aback. “I’ve never…”

“To Milos the day before yesterday? Why did you lie to him that his cat would be with him forever? As if you do not know that animals and humans have different life span!”

He was surprised; maybe he thought that I was blind and deaf to everything around me.

“Would you have had me say that his pet would die in his hands?” Fox softly smiled having recovered from the surprise.

“You should have said that the kitten was not invented for his entertainment. The kitten wants to walk on roofs, make love with she-cats, and piss to mark its territory. Wanting from the kitten something that does not conform to its nature is selfishness, and to demand its immortality is pure necromancy. Do you expect to raise a necromancer from Milos?”

Fox went pale. “The zombie is more up your alley,” he almost hissed.

I did not argue: “Yes, I make them, but I can destroy them. But Milos will manage only the first part, at best. What will the guy do when he realizes that the animated corpse is not his pet?”

I sensed growing attention on me with all my skin; I was looked at from all sides, and I felt like making a speech. “The world must be loved for what it is; we must not pick out the most delicious parts of it, like raisins from a bread loaf. Not all of what we like is good, and not everything that hurts us is evil. Among your pupils there are girls—how will you explain to them what childbirth is?”

He even turned green at that.

“Don’t you like babies?” I purred softly. “Don’t you know where they come from?”

Fox turned and fled. I showed him us —the dark! All the white minnows in the park ran to the side with a soft shur-shur-shur. I beat Fox with means specific to the white—I gave a different explanation—and now kids would not calm down until they determined which of us was right. Poor teachers! To be honest, the phrase about the bread loaf was prepared ahead of time; I came up with it when tried to get rid of the nightmares caused by visions of White Halak.

The dark, having nightmares! If I said that to anybody, I would be laughed at.

“If you decide to stay here,” I told Lyuchik, “never trust to what that guy says. He is crazy!”

“I thought so too,” the kid nodded very seriously, “but I do not know why.”

God knows how sick I was of their gooing!

“Don’t be puzzled about ‘why’,” I chuckled. “Teachers must understand more than students, not just talk convincingly. He is a theoretician on life, damn it.”

So, I finally got two days off. Now I had plenty of time to wander around and visit Mihandrov’s barely any sightseeing spots. Still, the town itself was quite interesting. It was in the condition of “antiquity without decrepitude”. I didn’t mean miserable huts hanging onto each other in clusters. This condition is laid with the first stone of the foundation, ripens for centuries, and is lost if the ancient brew is diluted with even a drop of contemporary design. So, Mihandrov was soaked in the antiquity so strongly that its age was nearly impossible to determine. I was sure that the town was like that before the deadly spell, and it would maintain the same appearance many, many years later: white walls, slate roofs, low stone fences—like the pictures of ancient towns in school textbooks.

Vines did not grow in the neighborhood of Mihandrov (Alfred had said something to that effect, but I did not save it in my memory); however, there was a man living on the lakefront who regularly supplied the town with fresh beer. I knew the road to his pub, a stylish basement with huge barrels, wooden tables, and indispensable bundles of garlic. Compared to the best Redstone restaurants, it differed only by the absence of a fireplace (the latter was not needed here) and by a shorter menu list (mostly fish was present). I seriously considered buying a house in Mihandrov, although it will be scorching heat here in the middle of summer…

I know it sounds selfish, but I vitally needed a break in communication with the white. In the end, a mage’s physical state depends on the condition of his soul, and my contacts with the white drove me crazy lately. Besides, the “cleaners” from Artrom were expected to come to town any minute now, and a sharp transition to communication with the combat mages could be harmful to my health. Who would need me then as a cripple?

I did not manage to get drunk on light beer, and stronger drinks were unavailable in Mihandrov at all. I was too lazy to drag to the train station for liquor and went back to the mansion to swing in a wicker chair, take a nap, and think how nasty Satal felt in Redstone now (it was freezing cold there). Clarence didn’t bother me. Twilight began to darken, dinner was getting closer, and the smell of fried fish wafted from the windows of the kitchen. Fish was everywhere in Mihandrov.

And then it struck.

No, there was no sound; it just felt as if a big toothy saw touched the nerves of Max and me. The dog that had been soaking in a tub with some preservative since morning howled hoarsely. I told it to shut up and stay in the bath, clicked the “whistle” in my pocket, and ran to pick up my traveling kit. The unforgettable feeling that mauled my nerves could mean only one thing: the supernatural was hovering nearby.

With the staff and the suitcase in hands (just like in a fairy tale), I rushed to where my intuition strictly forbade me to go. In a hurry, I burst straight in, cutting corners on the slopes where one wrong move would make you fly headfirst to the lake below. Yet I was glad that I wasn’t running in the direction of the school. Somewhere halfway up hill, I caught up with Fox, who wheezed on the rise. I wondered where the man was going to. Pulling up my socks, I overtook him, and while the white climbed the slope, I made a loop and broke into the overgrown park from the other side (first!). There it was! A large open space covered before with grass and bushes was now filled with ash-gray dust.

“ Witch’s baldness !” Fox breathed out, having made his way up through the thickets of the wild rose.

I wondered how come he knew what that was. Witch’s baldness was a rare type of supernatural phenomenon, surprisingly difficult to get rid of: the source of the supernatural was deep underground. That is, a normal pentagram won’t decimate the bald unless you draw it after removing the top five feet of dirt, standing right in the centre of contamination. I had to move backwards - the border of the baldness shifted significantly closer to me.

“I have never seen them growing so quickly!” I gasped in shock.

“What should we do?” Fox screamed in panic.

That was a good demonstration of his self-control.

“I will take care of it, and you run and tell people to get out of their homes. They are too close!”

“Close” was not the right word: roofs were already visible at the bottom of the hill slope. They were within a stone’s throw! The NZAMIPS’ “whistle” was of no use—they were too far to help. Alfred, sent as a courier to Artrom, wouldn’t be able to come back earlier than in twenty-four hours, and I didn’t need another white here. The lieutenant would be a burden.

The bad news was that I could not kill such a huge otherworldly creature alone, and at the speed it grew (thirty feet in diameter for half an hour that we took to reach the place) very soon the power of the combat mages of the whole Ingernika wouldn’t be enough to cope with it. When the “cleaners” arrived at the place (if they hurried up), only one remedy would be left: the armory curse. It required five to seven victims - people who did not manage to get away from Mihandrov in time. Theoretically, one experienced dark mage would be enough to kill the supernatural with the armory curse. But I wasn’t taught at the university on how to perform it.