Chapter 3: The Grave and the Pound

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Even before sundown, Elena found the house, the grave, and then the pound.

The house was very old, at least it seemed so. The gray stone was almost entirely hidden by a thick layer of greenish moss. It had once been a sturdy, solid building on good foundations. The first floor was of stone, the second of wood. Now all the wood is gone. Only a "box" of strong boulders, held together by something like porous concrete mixed with lots of small roundish pebbles was left. In one corner, a hole was gaping - a descent to the basement without a ladder (it must have been wooden, too). Lena cautiously peered into it, but that was all she could do. It was reasonable to assume that everything useful had been taken out long ago, and who knows if she could ever get out again. The basement seemed very deep, and staying down there without light was not a good idea.

In general, from the size and remnants of the layout of the walls, the house seemed more like a "guest house". A kind of hotel at a crossroads. The ground around the building had been tilled to such an extent that only the stubbornest and toughest grass was growing through it to this day. Lena climbed the wall to look around from a higher vantage point. It didn't turn out so well - the twilight smoothed out the details and diminished her view. Still, the girl made sure there was complete silence and no people around, and that was something.

She wanted to stay here for the night. The old ruined structure seemed a little more comfortable than the bare wasteland. However, the jaw of the basement's gouged-out stones was ... unnerving. Besides, there was no water here. So Lena went on, trying not to lose the landmark - the mountains in the conditional "south".

It was unclear how far she had walked. Lena could not keep track of landmarks, her watch remained "at home". According to her subjective sense of time, she had walked for about twenty minutes to half an hour, maybe more. The house turned into a gray patch behind her, which could be closed with a thumbnail. And then Lena met the grave.

A very ordinary one, as if it came straight out of some story about good old England. It was not a very wide stone slab with incomprehensible symbols. It was impossible to make them out, as time and bad weather had thoroughly eaten away all the chiseled lines. Other things were more interesting: the grave was caged. A real lattice shell covered the stone slab like a sarcophagus lid. Lena touched the lattice and gingerly kicked it with the toe of her sneaker. It was well-made, the iron strips a finger thick were riveted together with copper (copper, she think) rivets, and the frame that held the entire structure was deep in the ground.

Lena remembered that so far she had not encountered a single metal object here. Not in the looted caravan, not in the ruined house. Not even a lousy nail. Either iron was not used here, or it was very valuable in any form. So someone had spent a great deal of labor and precious material on a grave lattice in the wasteland. This unknown "someone" apparently tried very, very hard not to let anyone get to the tombstone.

Or vice versa...

The thought was silly. On the other hand, Lena had seen so many things in the past day that couldn't be why shouldn't there be another delusional incongruity. The next thought ran a cold shadow down her back. Okay, let's say there was an eccentric man who kept the grave peace in this exotic way. But no one had tampered with that lattice in a place where the dead had left their clothes, but all the buttons had been cut off.

Lena walked on, hurrying and glancing around every moment. It was uncomfortable to leave the iron sarcophagus behind. However, the tomb was getting farther and farther away with each step. The girl tried to estimate how far she had walked. She estimated three or four kilometers, and it was easy enough to walk, because stone "tongues" and intergrown bushes were not too common, so it was easy to walk around them.

Twilight was drawing in. It was a bit like a "white night" in St. Petersburg, only darker. The lighting was strange, unlike anything I had seen in my previous life. The sun was gone, but a ghostly light, reflected by an invisible cloth, poured out from behind the horizon. The light was changing as if it were weaker, but it literally dissolved the shadows. So, despite the semi-darkness, it was possible to keep a decent rhythm and speed of walking. In fact, she could have walked even faster, but Lena was afraid of hurting her leg. She could repair her own dislocation, but she could forget about hiking after that.

And the water was still not met.

Her legs ached a little in her left knee, which had been more severely banged this morning. The weakness came in fits as if turning her legs into jelly. The breeze was no longer fresh but a palpable chill that crawled under her jacket and the old Manowar T-shirt. The silence pressed on her ears with the absence of the usual city sounds. The excited subconscious did not feel the usual background and filled it with fantasies. Every now and then, Lena thought of rustling behind her, rustling in the grass, the flapping of leathery wings above her head. It knocked her off her rhythm, and she was exhausted.

And it was scary, too. To the point of trembling in her hands and feet. Because a paper clip and a handful of coins were still the most formidable weapons a girl could wield. Meanwhile, the moon was finally rising out of the black horizon line. It didn't roll out, it didn't rise, it "came up," and it made Lena want to burst into tears again, so she sobbed as she went, choking on a convulsive hiccup.

Such a moon is often shown in movies, but it is impossible to see it in real life because it does not happen. A huge silver disk twice the size of the sun, with clearly visible shaggy spots and a halo. Just looking at the luminary sent shivers down her spine. It also blew away all hope that this was some kind of practical joke or a coincidence.

"I guess we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto," Lena whispered, shoving her hands deep into her pockets and hunched over. It seemed a little warmer that way.

It occurred to her - if normal physics works here, then what should the tides be from such a moon? From physics, the thought bounced on. If time "here" flows at the same or similar speed as "home," then she is gone for almost twenty-four hours. But her parents won't be back until the next day. Though no, they'll probably be calling; they probably already have. And since the phone was left in the apartment, no one answered. So the alarm was already raised to the top of its game, looking for her through friends and acquaintances, near and far. And they won't find her. Because Elena Klimova walks under a wild moon in an unknown wasteland, trying to get away from murdered people and locked graves...

We're not in Kansas anymore.

We're not in Kansas anymore.

The repetition was well within the rhythm of the steps. It was easier to walk in time with it. Just a little. And it distracted her from thinking about how wrong and impossible everything was. Her hair was finally tangled and greasy. As luck would have it, the wind blew against her back, dropping the unruly strands onto my face. It was disturbing and irritating, and the cap and bandana were just for such cases, again remained "there". She could have pulled the shoelace out of her sneaker, but her hair hadn't grown back enough after another haircut to get it into a normal ponytail yet. Unless, she could tie a shoelace around her head, like the witch in the book.

God, it's a dream. It's supposed to be just a horrible dream...

A pebble that hit her foot inadvertently stung even through the soles of her feet, reminding her that this was no dream. And then Lena went straight to the pound.

It must have been something else, actually, judging by precise definitions. It was a small lake, almost perfectly round, or just a big hole in the ground with gentle slopes. But still, a pond is a pond. Mysterious and dangerous even in appearance. On the edge opposite from Lena grew two trees that looked like the same willows, only even more miserable and twisted-looking. The water was pitch black without a single wave, like a lens of polished obsidian. She didn't want to go near it, and she didn't want to drink. But her dehydrated body demanded its own, and her tongue scratched the dry sky like a grater of sand.

Lena cautiously walked closer to the shore. Cautiously crouched down. Listened.

Silence. That is the usual quiet background without any signs of life. Only the breeze rippled the grass, tugging at the stiff, dry stems. The girl fumbled for a smaller coin from her pocket. Inappropriately, she remembered the liter bottle her father used to place on his imitation fireplace every first of September and painstakingly fill it with metal nickels. "For vacation." By summer, the bottle held seven or eight thousand, a really good help for vacation expenses.

The coin went into the dark abyss almost silently. It went down like a fog. So that Lena even thought for a moment - whether it was water at all? Then it splashed very quietly, almost imperceptibly, but Lena's sharpened ears picked up the outside sound. The mirror-like surface of the pond trembled and rolled in a low rounded wave from the center straight to the shore. The girl stepped back just in case, clenching her fists, ready to run.

Five meters from the shore, the water was illuminated by a distant gleam of light. Lena involuntarily shuddered - it turned out that the pond was very deep indeed. The yellowish spot of light pulsed as if a real, living fire had been lit far below. And something was moving... Dark against the ghostly light background, sliding, moving. The dark water parted, and Lena saw the last thing she expected to encounter here.

A mermaid rose above the wave. Or not really a mermaid... She suppose it would be more accurate to say that the creature looked a lot like a mermaid. Everything below her waist was hidden under the water, and above her was a naked girl with a mop of long, incredibly thick, "pink sherbet" shade hair. Lena looked silently and stupidly at the mermaid. The mermaid looked at Lena just as silently but with a slight half-smile.

The purple mane fell in a luminous waterfall over the small chest and beyond, disappearing into the water. The individual strands seemed to take on a life of their own, wrapping thin tentacles around their necks, but it didn't look repulsive. It looked attractive, just like in the anime, where characters' hair regularly began to flutter beautifully in the calm.

The mouth was very small, but the nose seemed quite human, a little snubby and thin, on the border between graceful sculpture and "Michaeljacksonian". In comparison, her very large eyes seemed enormous, disproportionate to her face. The inner corners of the eyes were suspended relative to the bridge of the nose. The outer corners, on the contrary, lifted. The irregularly shaped pupils glowed, changing shape like greenish-lilac clouds. But there was nothing human about the ears. The huge, needle-shaped membranes on the long cartilages, larger than a human hand, moved constantly as if they were scanning their surroundings with sonic pulses. The face was covered with a scattering of tiny freckle-like spots.

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The pinkish abdomen did not have a dimpled navel. So, despite its outward resemblance, this living curiosity had nothing to do with the human species. In general, the aquatic creature's appearance in some features suggested the prefix "ichthyo," but altogether, it seemed not repulsive and even ... attractive. The mermaid had no scales on her smooth skin, and she did not glisten with slime and water as a fish should. On the contrary, it was as if her body glowed pinkish white from within, with the same purplish hue as her hair, only softer. And the skin was velvet, smooth, but not plastic and glossy. The hand reached out to touch it, to caress it, to feel it with the fingertips.

The creature bowed its head and smiled, keeping its wide, well-defined lips with tiny vertical wrinkles. The webbed ears opened even more, framing its head in a luminous halo. Surprisingly, it was the smile that sobered the girl from the other world. At once, the scene from Pirates of the Caribbean with the mermaids' sweet-voiced song came to mind. Lena took another step back. The creature bowed her head even more, and a soft greenish light flashed in her lively hair, a lily-like flower with dense intersecting petals. Her eyebrows, thin as if drawn with a calligraphic pen, drew together at the bridge of her nose, giving her charming face a look of mild bewilderment. It was as if the mermaid was waiting for something, but the expected didn't happen, and it was not that she was angry, but rather puzzled the aquatic creature.

The water splashed in the distance from the glowing body, too far for a tail of the usual "fairy" proportions of mermaids. Either there was a different inhabitant, or the underwater part of the mermaid was much, much bigger and longer than the humanoid form. This was even more sobering. Another step away from the pond. The mermaid blinked, not her eyelids moving, but a vertical half-moon crease, like a cat's. Her pupils dilated even more, casting an even greenish glow over her eye sockets.

"Who are you?" asked Elena. It sounded hoarse and slurred, mostly from a dry throat. "Who are you," she repeated, and added the same thing in English, just in case. It was highly doubtful that English was used here, but I don't know...

Definitely not. The language barrier was solid. The mermaid frowned with even more puzzlement. Cutting through the dark surface of the water like a figure on the bow of a sailing ship, she swam almost to the very shore. She smiled invitingly and held out her hand to Lena. The hand seemed the most ordinary and even without webbing. With short or neatly trimmed fingernails of such a deep milky-pearl hue that, despite hunger and thirst and leaden fatigue, the girl felt a subtle prick of distant echoes of envy.

"Found a fool," Lena whispered, backing away even further.

The mermaid grimaced, now with a look of obvious displeasure that was still perplexing. Her ears were folded into thin "umbrellas," which went to the back of her head, under her thick hair. The creature covered its eyes with membranes, folded its arms across its chest, and without a splash, with its back to the water, sank into the dark. It was, and it wasn't. Only a blaze deep below, in the deep blackness, as if a bright flashlight had blinked there and gone completely out. Silence and semi-darkness reigned again.

Lena took a breath and sat down. Her legs were trembling and needed rest, and her heart was beating frantically. And in general, her body felt as if it had just escaped a forest fire or some other comparable danger. And the mind felt nothing of the sort. The strange creature came, then left ... and that was it. There was no inviting chant, no hidden claws, and fangs, no sudden attack.

Still, she didn't want to go near the pond. Her legs were getting padded at the thought of approaching the dark line, behind which was an unknown depth. But there was water... Lena sat some more, thinking. As Grandpa had taught her on, she tried to break the problem down into simple inputs with a search of simple options.

"We're not in Kansas anymore," Lena repeats.

She can go further, or she can stay and try to get water, despite the possible danger. Going further is a risk of worsening dehydration. There is a high probability that she will still have to go back but in worse conditions. Trying to get drunk is dangerous. She can still take a risk. She can try to minimize the risk as much as possible.

Thoughts dragged slower and sluggishly, like chilled condensed milk behind a spoon. She just wanted to sit and wait until, maybe, something would change for the better. It was getting cold; her jacket and Manowar T-shirt were not designed for nights in the bare field and didn't keep her warm. Every movement seemed to send a bit of heat into the cold void. Lena crouched down, pulling her knees up to her chin, pressing her hands to her sides, and wrapping her jacket tightly around her.

Wait until morning... When it's light, at least it won't be so scary. And something will probably come up ... or happen ...

She slowly slipped into the state familiar to many travelers experience when fatigue makes her sleepy, but the cold does not allow her to get a good night's sleep. Consciousness floated on a thin line between sleep and reality, trying to fill the cold emptiness with vague visions, a substitute for a full-fledged dream.

Home. Heat. A familiar apartment. Rapiers on the wall. Elena had been practicing fencing for a year or so to improve her posture and coordination. It went no further. Other hobbies, other sports. If only there had been a foil, even a sports one... The search was already going on for sure. Her parents took the first flight, leaving everything behind. Her mother had alerted the police. And she was very good at making people do things they didn't want to do... Something touched her leg, and Lena shuddered, tearing away blindly, crawling back on all fours, still stuck between two worlds. A large shiver pounded every muscle, her fingers went numb, and bright circles swirled before her eyes. Her mind wrenched out of the heavy slumber in jerks, perceiving reality in chunks, in steps.

Nothing... It was the same as it had been. Only the moon, huge and eerie, rose even higher. And the wind picked up. A blade of grass had moved and must have jabbed her leg between her toe and the back of her pant leg. The pond was splashing - the wind had shifted the surface of the shallow wave that was now splashing against the smooth, low shore. Her back was aching, and her muscles felt like they were made of wood. It was very appropriate to remember the stories of Grandpa that one can earn a lifelong disability just by sitting for a couple of hours on the cold ground. The kidneys are a sensitive organ that does not like the cold, even indirectly, through sciatica.

Lena felt a little (a little) ashamed. Her grandfather would not praise her for her weakness and dodging problems. There is a task - to get water, and we must either admit it is impossible or solve the problem. But the first option does not categorically get rid of the need to act. It is only necessary to make an effort for something else.

Lena rubbed her arms through her sleeves and patted herself on the sides to get the blood flowing. She hopped on the spot, sat down, and stood up. She looked out over the plain, where nothing had changed, the same dull landscape of sparse vegetation and overhanging rock outcrops. No one would help. No one would come to help. Her parents, her friends, and the police (whom her father, out of his old habit, continued to call the militia, he had always been a very quiet and conservative man). All of them are far away, and it is unlikely that the distance can be measured in kilometers. For now, let's consider all the old life left... yes. On the very moon that floods the wasteland with unnaturally bright, dead-silver light.

What would Grandpa have done in her place? Without a knife, a bottle, a rope, with his bare hands?

It was easier to think this way. The detachment from the process, the thought of "what would someone else do?" seemed to lighten the load of responsibility, to lighten the burden. Just a little, but enough for her thoughts to begin to make more or less sense.

She can't go near the pond. So she had to draw water from a distance. There is no rope, not even the smallest cord, and even if there was, there is nothing to fill it in. But if there is no rope, can anything replace it? The length of one sneaker shoelace is about a meter. If she ties them together minus the knots and the reserve - more than a half. Not much, but it's something. Is it possible to lengthen it even longer?

It didn't take long to get to the other side of the sinkhole. As she traveled, Lena thought about the fact that it was not just a deep hole in the ground but most likely an exit to the surface of something large and probably branched out. A deep underground network originating from a large river or sea. If there is a sea here.

It took as long to break the "willow" branch as it did to go around the pond - the branch, which seemed old and brittle, was, in fact, springy and bendy, and there was nothing to cut it with. But, visibly warmed up, Lena did find a piece of wood as thick as a finger or two and a little longer than her arm, that is, about a meter more. She got a fishing rod. The main problem remained - finding a container. Lena also had time to think about it, simplifying the problem to the level of "something containing water. In this formulation, the solution was simple.

The sock after a day's wear, to put it bluntly, did not smell like roses, nor did it serve as an advertisement for unsanitary and healthy living. But it could easily be caught in a knot, and it absorbed water. Having constructed the structure, which Lena called to herself a "schizophrenic fishing rod," the girl took another critical look at it just in case, now trying to assess it from the perspective of someone damnably evil and strong underwater. After thinking for a while, she loosened the knot on the toe and between the laces, just in case this evil "someone" grabbed and yanked forcefully. So he'd only get a piece of the fishing line.

The hardest part was left - the practical tests.

The first test of strength was successful and quiet. Lena took a position behind the trunk of the nearest "willow tree" to the water and, wrapping one arm around the thin knobby trunk for security, threw the "fishing rod" with the other. The sock gained quite a lot of water, she could not quench her thirst with this improvised sponge, but she could at least partially compensate for the loss of water. Like the Roman legionnaires, who used sponges with posca on their journeys. Lena had forgotten what a posca was, but imagining herself a legionary with a sponge was more pleasant than an "isekai" of who knows where greedily sucking moisture from a dirty sock. Which, in addition, had accumulated a lot of silt or fine sand with a taste of sludge. But it was water and not even particularly disgusting to the taste. It was the first drink she had had in a day of grueling adventures.

The second cast went even better. She managed to avoid the silt. On the third, an unknown force, without warning or outward signs, grabbed the sock under the water, pulling it off the string. Running away, Lena decided that the venture could be considered a success. Not without loss, not as well as she would have liked, but the thirst receded a little, losing its former severity.

Life was not that much more fun, but a little more optimistic.

"Only movement brings victory," she told herself. The author was also oblivious, but the words were just right. One cannot sit down. Much less lie down at night in the cold. She must keep going, thanks to the dead moon with its light.

After some doubt, Lena unscrewed a button from the sleeve of her jacket, rubbed it on her shirt for cleanliness, and put it in her mouth. Also, an old soldier's trick called "bite the bullet!" Her father told her, recalling his favorite books with descriptions of long passages of Russian troops across the arid steppes. If you suck and roll a pebble or a bullet in your mouth, you provoke salivation, and thirst is not perceived as acutely. There is no water in the body, but it will be possible to deceive your senses for some time. There was no bullet. She did not want to put local stones in her mouth, and she absolutely did not want to think about what interesting ways of developing the local microflora could take. Lena sincerely hoped that vaccinations would protect her from cholera and other vibrios, which probably had already entered her body with water and through a few scratches, from which she had not escaped. Living even without iodine proved difficult and dangerous.

Thank you, she thought, imagining Grandpa and her father. And she felt a little warmer inside. Her family was no longer with her, but their advice continued to help her, gave her clues, and kept her safe from danger. Finally, Elena did something she should have done a long time ago. She broke off another branch bigger and thicker so that she now had two sticks (counting the "schizophrenic rod"). The weapon was so bad, honestly, there was no way to make a normal sharp break with such flexible and softwood. There was nothing to sharpen it on. But it was already better than a paper clip and a coin.

Walking without a sock was uncomfortable but bearable. She tied the shoelace around her neck and waved the sticks in time with her walk. She walked without stopping, toward the morning and the southern mountains.

We ... not... in Kansas ... We ... not ... in Kansas.

The button rolled over in her mouth, and her tongue really wasn't scratching the palate anymore.

Toward morning she switched to "Winnie the Pooh Lives Well in the World," then repeated to herself "Dust, dust, we're walking through Africa."

And just before dawn, when the girl was exhausted to the limit, but convinced herself that she could overcome any adversity, Lena met her death.

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