Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

She worked at the eatery. At least she had enough food, and it was fairly decent. She washed dishes because she could swear at the dishes all day long and they wouldn't mind. Objects are better than people that way. So she washed dishes, and the rest of the time she prowled around looking for a guide. Except she didn't quite know what he was supposed to look like. Unfortunately.

Which was how she stumbled upon the Grayfaces.

That's what everybody called them. Total creeps. They bleached their hair, wore mascara, and painted leaf-like patterns on their cheeks. The patterns were supposed to be green. Or maybe blue. Whatever, their creations looked like filth from a distance, so the name stuck. They dressed in the whitest shirts, black leather jackets, and blue jeans, horribly expensive, with buckles of their belts made, as some said, of platinum, but at the same time went around barefoot, and their feet were always dirty. They called themselves Forest Folk. Imagine that, those goblins and the Forest!

But she shouldn't have laughed at them. Grayfaces never forgave. They caught her, beat her up, and took her with them. They lived in one of the old mansions on the outskirts of town. The basement they made into a bowling alley. There was supposed to be billiards somewhere higher up too, and above that probably living space, but they never let her see it. Only the other girls were allowed there. Their own. The fake platinum blondes with prickly leaves on their cheeks.

She didn't like to recall the days she'd spent there. Very soon she started to doubt that she'd ever been brave or foolish enough to scoff at one of them to his face. Grayfaces made her forget how to scoff, how to swear. How to talk at all. But the most horrible thing they did was make her forget how to Jump. She was no longer a Jumper. She was robbed of the only thing she was ever proud of in her life, because a Jumper who retains memories is a rare beast indeed, and she was that beast until she ended up with the Grayfaces, who broke something inside her. It had been known to happen before. She'd heard the stories when she was still very little, scary tales of those who did not return, not because they didn't want to but because they couldn’t, but once she herself became a Jumper she stopped believing in them. It was simply too easy when you knew how. Might as well believe that you could forget how to talk. Grayfaces made her wiser. She saw now that it was at any rate possible, either of those things and both of them. All she could do now was wait. Wait and clean up their puke for them. They threw up constantly, because the dope they were doing made their stomachs reject normal food. She would have most probably died there, because they didn't give her much food either, but it so happened that one of their painted girlfriends decided to torch the house along with everyone in it. There was no damage to the basement, but the whole thing was distracting and Grayfaces let down their guard that night, so she was able to give them the slip.

She went into hiding for ten days, until her face healed up. Then she stole some clothes. In a sheepskin vest, a flower-patterned skirt, and an idiotic wide-brimmed sun hat she looked like her grandmother. It was just what she needed, to look like someone else. She dyed her hair and went around in huge sunglasses, rounding out the disguise. Now all she required was money, and then she could get out of town.

And that's when she saw him. He was raking the sand on the beach in front of the diner. At seven in the morning. When she saw him she was speechless for a while. Not because he was so unbelievably beautiful; it's just that he reminded her of Grayfaces. Or rather, the other way around. In that instant she understood who it was they were trying to emulate. And also how lousy they were at it. It came as a shock. The fact that they would use eye shadow and makeup pencils in hopes of becoming this . It was a point of particular glee for her that his hair wasn't even white. And, of course, no leaves or flowers on his cheeks. But she did understand what they so desperately wanted when bleaching their hair and drawing the patterns. For the first time she did understand. When she saw a live elf.

She was sitting on the jetty, her skirt fanned around her, feet in the water. He walked by, picking up debris left on the sand by the bathers. He only looked at her once. Violet eyes. They weren't human. She knew then that those eyes could change color, from light gray to deep indigo.

She froze, afraid that she might spook him, and her heart was beating like crazy until he moved far enough away to not feel her burning stare anymore. He had this strange walk. It was as if walking was unfamiliar or uncomfortable for him. Or maybe it even hurt his feet. He was wearing flip-flops and dragging the trash bag after him along the sand.

Here he is. The guide, she thought. And trailed after him at a distance, afraid to lose sight of him.

After a week of living in the Roach Motel next to him she learned that he didn't remember who he was, wasn't aware of any secret passages, and generally knew nothing about anything. He didn't even notice that people were shunning him. She kept a tireless watch, but nothing came of it.

His room smelled of forest. His mattress was stained by blobs of squashed berries. There was no dust in the corners, only dried leaves. Where he washed his face in the morning edible mushrooms sprouted by the afternoon, his windowsill was encrusted in a thick layer of guano. The entire Roach Motel sustained itself on mushroom soup, and still he didn't notice.

She would smile at him when they met. He would greet her politely. Sometimes he smiled back. His teeth were on the sharpish side, but that didn't make him any less beautiful. She wasn't exactly pretty even before donning the rags that made her look like an old hag, so she never tried to talk to him. People like him did not talk to people like her. That would be unnatural.

One time she came to him while he was asleep. He slept alone, even though the Roach Motel usually packed them six to the room. She tried not to make any sound as she entered, and sat for a long time looking at the fireflies hovering over the edges of his mattress in a luminous rectangle. That night she decided that she had had enough. She was almost ready to kill him. She fought with herself and, exhausted by the fight, fell asleep right there in the corner. When she woke up she was in the Forest. He helped her go there without even realizing it. Because wherever he was, the Forest was always nearby. Oh, how she hated him for that.

In the Forest she spent no more than ten minutes, but that was enough. She knew she was going to dream of going back there for the rest of her life. But she still remained just a Jumper. And an unstable, touchy Jumper at that. In the time since all of this happened, she learned that she'd gotten incredibly, fantastically lucky. To actually find a guide was an almost impossible task. Especially a guide like this. Unless he himself wanted it, that is. But there was still one thing she was proud of: she never asked him for anything. Not then, and not since. And she never would.

Vulture's story was the first. It was about a witch. An old and disgusting witch, and all she dreamed of was dancing on the graves of all her relatives. Only a brief dance like this, performed once every few years at best, would make her happy. Nothing else ever brought joy to her life. But in order to be able to do her dance and be joyful even for a moment the witch needed to take great pains, because people didn't just drop dead all by themselves, and unless they were helped along she herself might not live long enough to celebrate the dance she yearned for. With time, the witch accumulated so many exquisite ways of sending her closest relatives to a better world that she easily could have published a bestselling book on the subject. As the years went by and the witch grew older there were fewer and fewer relatives left, until finally it all came down to one single grandson. With him she had to work really hard. He was hiding underground, in the caves of the dwarves, and it was a very dangerous place, so dangerous that even witches never risked going there. But this one did, so strong was her desire to do one last dance on a fresh grave. And so she followed her grandson into the dwarf caves, but got lost there. Dwarves lured her under the magic hill, where time flowed backward, and the evil hag turned into a small girl.