The third trip through the worlds in one night didn't seem so fantastic anymore. Though the sai's amulets gave me strength, I was too exhausted by the adventure and the anxiety that I didn't look around.
When we reached the sorcerer's world, we didn't go back to the tavern. We walked through the archway of the city wall again, crossed the small river with a stone bed, and through the labyrinth of streets reached the wide river that divided the city into two parts. The last time I had been here, it was early in the morning, but now the day was nearing its midpoint, and the air was getting warm. I wanted to take off my sweater, but a top would look weird. At least the sweater was shaped like a blouse, and the jeans were like the tight pants that some of the inhabitants of this world wore.
Most of the passersby weren't walking along with us. I had to maneuver my way through people in colorful clothes walking toward us. Apparently, after years of imprisonment, Jay didn't feel comfortable in crowds. For me, though, it was getting more and more interesting. I stared at the woman on the bicycle, as the pedestrians habitually made their way out of her path. Wow! Perhaps this wasn't the dark medieval world, as I'd first thought. The bike was three-wheeled, with one medium-sized wheel in the front and two smaller ones in the back, and a luggage box above them. Not bad at all! I could never understand why children would have a three-wheeled bike taken away from them and put on an uncomfortable construction on which you have to devote most of your time to keeping your balance.
The stores and apartment buildings on the other side of the river that stood along the sidewalk were larger and newer than those in the center. I feared I might lose sight of the sorcerer, but I turned around every now and then to survey my surroundings. Though there was nothing to be afraid of, because if I was too slow, the sorcerer would come back and drag me by the arm. I stopped to look around properly. The river flowed between the hills that crowded to the left, and to the right, their level gently dropped into the green valley. On one of the hills to the left, halfway to the top, a castle stood, and above it - an observation tower. Beneath the castle, red-roofed huts sprawled, and somewhere among them the morning tavern got lost. Newer brick houses stood along the riverbank.
“Rina!”
I flinched and turned around. No one had ever called me that before!
Against my expectations, the sorcerer didn't come back to drag me by the hand, but informed me that if I got lost, I would be spending the night in the street.
“I will call you Rina. Katherina is too long.”
He could at least have been polite enough to ask me if I minded. Although I didn't seem to mind - anything is better than Hey you. I thought of Alina, held back the sob that was about to burst out, and followed the sorcerer. We turned onto a side street that began a gentle ascent up a hill of neat mansions. Sleepy, desolate silence reigned here. The inhabitants were either out in the center or doing their household chores.
The street did not loop, but curved gracefully and smoothly around the hill, occasionally branching into two. On both sides were two- and three-story houses, variously, to the taste of their owners, decorated with moldings, columns, and even gargoyles. The neat gardens made every effort to capture the imagination, each striving to show its unique character. Here spherical shaped boxwood bushes and sprawling hydrangeas with unopened umbrellas of flowers frame the narrow paths, and there everything is planted with fir trees. A statue of a maiden stands by the fountain, thoughtfully touching a lock of hair with her hand. In the high hedge that separates the properties from each other, birds twitter noisily.
The sorcerer looked alien in this place - slouching, pale, dry like an old book that had been taken out of an ancient chest and hadn't had time to remove the dust from its cover yet. But where were we going?
At the next corner Robin was waiting for us, with a big sack at his feet. He looked just the right sort of person to live in a mansion, tall, athletic, with a proud posture and a broad smile of a man who had conquered the world and deserved a glass of wine by the fireplace. That meant Jay would be staying with a friend until he found a place of his own. I switched back to my TV series perception, forgetting that I wasn't a bystander, but a participant, and I needed a place to live, too.
“Don't you have a job?” Jay muttered as he moved closer to his friend.
“You're my job now,” the man smiled broadly. “Seriously. Come to think of it, there's a dangerous sorcerer back in town, and he wasn't expected back so soon. Many people already know. I have been ordered to watch you.”
“Ordered by whom?” Jay frowned.
“I'll tell you everything. Let's go inside first.”
The three-story mansion had wild grapes running all the way to the top, even covering the windows. I immediately questioned my conclusion that this house belonged to Robin. If the houses here presented character, this one made it clear that he didn't welcome visitors. It bristled with an overgrown hedge in the direction of the neighboring houses, and threw branches of bushes out toward the sidewalk, as if it wished to repel a forgetful passersby who had not bothered to walk across to the other side of the road.
A wrought iron wicket, not more than a foot high, served more as a decoration than as a protection against uninvited visitors. Two mailboxes were attached to it, one on the outside and one on the inside. A pair of marble lions stood on either side of the wicket door on small pedestals. One sat proudly upright, while the other slept peacefully with his head resting on his paws. The marble, once white, was overgrown with moss and covered with layers of dirt.
“Thirteen years,” Jay whispered, and patted first one lion's head, then the other. The semblance of a smile appeared on his tired face.
He ran his hands over the wicket, and it creaked back.
“Is that it?” Robin wondered.
“It's only one level,” Jay answered. “And there was someone trying to get through.”
Branches overhung the path leading to the house, forming a narrow corridor. Robin held each one up until I intercepted it. The garden was unfriendly, trying to mess with me in any way it could, tripping me with its roots, grabbing my hair and sweater with its branches, trying to pull my backpack off my shoulders.
Jay tore off the twigs of grape and ivy that covered the dark wood door. Having cleared a small space, he put both hands to the surface. He was silent and didn't move. I peeked out from behind Robin's back to see if there was a sparkle. He whispered:
“Very powerful magic.”
At that moment, I faltered and grabbed his shoulder to stay on my feet. My strength was draining out of me again. Robin understood and supported me, but I pulled away. I didn't like his silent complicity in my capture, along with his passive sympathy. I dropped my backpack to the ground and stood proudly.
At last the door clicked open. It was as if the house had exhaled, and teven the plants in the garden had loosened their tense branches.
“Nothing has changed here!” Robin said admiringly as he followed Jay in.
He tried to take my backpack, but I pushed his hand away. "Katherina, a real lady shouldn't be carrying heavy bags!" - my Auntie's voice sang reproachfully in my head. I waved it off, lifted my backpack, and immediately regretted my refusal of assistance. My energy dropped considerably, and the backpack felt like it was full of rocks. However, dignity comes at a price. I dragged the backpack along the ground, lifting it only to drag it up the steps.
Inside, there was no trace of the neglect that had reigned outside. It smelled like autumn, and there was a red and yellow leaf lying in the hallway, as if it had just fallen from a tree.
“It would stay like that for another hundred years,” Jay said with a touch of pride. “I had it frozen before I left.”
“So you knew you'd get caught,” said Robin.
“I was hoping to get away. If they caught me, I thought they'd only throw me in jail for a few years, at most. I didn't expect them to use the mirror chamber, you know.”
We were standing in the hallway, with a staircase running up to the right that led to a wooden balustraded area. A corridor led down the hallway. Somehow I'd thought the door on the left was a closet, but Jay opened it and told me:
“Your room.”
His voice sounded like he was still mad about that towel.
I dragged my backpack inside and looked around. The room was spacious, bigger than a hotel room. Despite the open curtains, it was semi-dark. One window faced the feral garden, the other gave a view to the narrow gap between the wall of the house and the overgrown hedge that separated it from its neighbors.
There was a dresser in the corner, a narrow bed, a table, and a chair arranged along the walls. A spherical lamp hung from the ceiling, but I did not see any wires or switches or outlets. Behind a narrow door in the corner was a bathroom with a toilet, a sink, and some sort of shower, which had the shape of a copper basin with high edges and a watering can on a long leg. I was awfully glad that they have invented plumbing and sewage in addition to bicycles here. However, my joy was premature - I turned the valves over the faucet, but there was no water.
I started rummaging through my backpack to change my sweater for something not that warm. The first thing I found was a red plaid shirt, which looked even more out of place in this world than jeans and sneakers.
“Rina!” The sorcerer called impatiently.
I gave up digging and walked out of the room, putting on my shirt as I went. At the end of the hallway was a large, bright kitchen. Here the plants spared the windows, and the dirty panes gave a view of the veranda and the large courtyard, covered with tall sprouting grass, small trees, and surrounded by the same unfriendly green hedges.
To the left was the stove and sink, to the right cupboards and shelves, and in the middle stood a round table on which Robin had put food from his sack. Jay tossed his dusty cloak straight to the floor and remained in a dark, equally dusty shirt, brown tight pants, and tall boots that would probably be black without the layer of dust. Robin's cloak hung neatly on the back of the chair, and the man himself was wearing black pants and a light blue shirt with wide sleeves.
Rina?" Robin asked in surprise and smirked.
I looked at him questioningly - what was so funny?
It's a bird, a rinka. Maybe you saw them in the golden fields. Small, gray, sparrow-like, but with striped tails. They hide in the spikes.
I only sighed back. In this world, my bird essence was desperately trying to break free. Suddenly the awareness that I wasn't home came over me. With all the shifting and traveling, I had completely forgotten that I wasn't in the fictional temporary adventure I'd accidentally entered through my laptop monitor. This was not a dream, but a real catastrophic situation. I collapsed onto the chair, exhausted. The mountain of food on the table reminded me that I hadn't eaten in a long time. The sai amulets had artificially subdued the hunger and thirst that had now returned. But no one offered to eat, so I threw my arms around myself and slouched down. Maybe Robin would see how miserable I was and give me that apple.
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Jay took a mug from the shelf and filled it with tap water. Is my room the only one without water? The sorcerer slowly took sip after sip, as if getting used to the liquid again. I figured I wasn't going to be offered any water either. "Where are your manners, Master Sorcerer ?" - I thought with my Auntie's intonations.
I wondered how much independence was allowed in my position. Don't take the towel, don't touch the cloak! I got up with determination, walked past Jay, got myself a mug from the same shelf and turned the faucet. There was no water. I unscrewed it all the way, nothing. When I felt eyes on my back, I turned around. I should have asked what I was doing wrong, but I felt stupid enough already.
“So how is she doing with magic?” Robin asked.
“She doesn't,” Jay answered, and he tossed the rest of the water around in his mug. His voice wasn't as husky as it used to be.
“But the oath worked, and the amulet?..”
“Everyone has potential, but she's from a world with faded magic. It's like...”
Robin nodded and picked up:
“...like expecting a desert dweller to swim the first time he walked into a lake.”
“Exactly. But he can learn,” he looked at me doubtfully. “If he sees water.”
He ran his hand briefly over the tap. The water gushed out.
“Can you see anything?”
I could see the water just fine, but that wasn't what he meant. I squinted and tilted my head and even tried to look with one eye, but I couldn't see anything.
Jay covered his eyes just so he wouldn't see my pathetic attempts, sighed, and condescended to explain:
“The water, the lights, the stove - it's all powered by magic. That's why there are no pipes or wires. I just open and close the water passage and use a valve to adjust the intensity and temperature.”
“If there are no pipes, where does it go?”
“It goes into the purification ponds. That is where they separate the impurities from it.”
“With magic, too?”
Jay looked at me as if I were a stupid bird who'd inadvertently learned the human language.
“She hasn't eaten or drunk or slept,” Robin said reproachfully. “And the ritual. Let's eat and I'll tell you how it works.”
I managed to put the mug under the water before the sorcerer turned it off again. The menu included fresh bread, cheese, tomatoes, and cucumbers, in addition to apples. Grapes also came from somewhere, though it was late spring here as well as at home. Probably magic, too. Actually, it was mainly me who ate. Robin obviously had his lunch, and all Jay did was sip from his mug and twirl an apple in his hand.
Robin told me that water is moved by magic from underground springs to faucets and then to ponds, where it's purified by magic. In large cities, the water system is regulated, so the taps are tied to a particular source and pond. Here you cannot summon water from any other source to your house. Faucets can be enchanted in different ways. You can buy the simplest one, and then the water will be icy straight from the spring, and you have to heat it separately. In this house, the taps are more complicated - heating and flow rate control are already woven into their magic, you only need to move the little lever. It's designed so that the homeowner can spend his energy on something more useful.
“What am I supposed to do then?” I asked with my mouth full.
Auntie's voice was silent, because it was numb with horror. Sorry, Auntie, I have to eat now, and I have to ask too.
“For such an occasion,” answered Robin, “I brought something.”
He took a box out of the sack. It contained yellowish pieces of paper the size of half my hand, in stacks according to the color of the text.
“They're spell notes. The ones with blue text are for water.”
There were only a couple of words written on each one, but I couldn't understand them. I twirled the paper around. Wasn't I holding it upside down? But I understand their language! What's the matter...? I glanced at Jay, hesitating to ask a question - he would either be rude again, or look at me like I was a talking log. Right now he reminded me of myself, when I was watching the adventures of my heroes in trouble, when the new episode of my favorite show came out.
“You have to learn to read and write, it doesn't transfer that way.”
Well, then they're useless. I put the note back in the box.
“That's all right,” Robin replied, looking at his friend disapprovingly again. “The text is only necessary to indicate the scope of the application. You can tell by the color of the letters. You can touch the object or just wave it nearby. Each note is designed for several uses, that should be enough for a month.”
Then he asked Jay if he would show me later how to use them. Jay nodded and then grimaced, maybe because he'd finally taken a bite of his apple. Or maybe it was because he didn't feel like explaining anything. Jay resolutely put the apple away from himself and looked at Robin:
“Okay. You tell me the news. And you,” he turned to me and waved at the groceries, “put it all away.”
“J...” Robin began reproachfully.
Jay rolled his eyes.
“You please tell, and you please clean up. Those shelves. That's the fridge,” he pointed to one of the shelves.
The sorcerer didn't pay any more attention to me. I hesitantly got up and started opening drawer after drawer to see what was inside. It was frosty and empty in the closet that had been labeled a fridge. The only thing missing was a light bulb. To my great relief, everything was relatively clean, for the house was frozen in the same condition as the sorcerer had left it thirteen years ago. Either the place was cleaned by magic, too, or he had a maid working for him. When I realized who the maid was now, I stopped in the middle of the kitchen, considering my new status. At that moment, my only wish was that the cleaning notes existed after all.
My room has never been a sample of tidiness. It's the important things that are neatly laid out - that I enjoy! CDs with movies have their own place, cartoons and TV series have theirs. Books are arranged alphabetically, magazines sorted by date. Figures of movie characters and toy men from the constructor live in different boxes. This is important. And stuff like clothes somehow exists in the closet without my involvement. Which, incidentally, was one of the reasons why Alina packed my backpack on this ill-fated trip. I only went into the kitchen to get a cup of tea. Rarely did a damp rag touch the floor of my room, and the windows and mirrors risked getting covered in dirt, if sometimes Alina didn't do a general cleaning. She would run like a hurricane through the apartment, including my room, while I slowly and thoughtfully scrubbed a spot on the stove.
Somehow it made me believe that I was dreaming again, and that as long as I was in this prolonged delirious nightmare, it was okay to play by its rules. My aching back and aching legs were hinting that I was wrong, but I managed to ignore them for now. My brain must have set up some clever defense system to keep me from overheating.
Robin and Jay went out to the veranda, with the wicker chairs. The sorcerer had taken the bitten apple with him, and was twirling it in his hands. The door and window remained open, so I could hear the conversation, but I did not pay much attention to it. As I stared at the pile of food, I tried to remember how my parents kept it. I'd gladly throw everything back in the sack and just put it under the table, but I doubted the sorcerer would approve. So, what should be kept cold, and what could be stored at room temperature? Logically, cheese, vegetables, and fruit belong in the fridge. I hesitated about the potatoes, but still put them in the bottom shelf without refrigeration and the buns in the top shelf.
While I was rearranging the groceries and struggling with the law of physics according to which an apple and anything like an apple would fall, and a round one would roll under the table, while I was crawling around picking up tomatoes and potatoes, the sorcerers had time to discuss currency rates, the price of gold, changes in the law, and political news. Cleaning in the kitchen was accompanied by the news from the parallel world.
At the mention of gold, something jingled. I ducked out from under the table, where I'd been busy hunting for a tomato. Robin had put a bag of what appeared to be coins on the outdoor table, and Jay was waving it away. In general, he was waving his hands in a way better than he was talking. Robin didn't take no for an answer, and slipped his friend a roll of banknotes as well. So they invented banknotes here, too. Why did I even think I was in the Dark Ages? Because of the little houses in the center? Or maybe because sorcerers do not belong in a civilized world, where magic has long been superseded by science and technology. Is it even possible to imagine a sorcerer on a bicycle?
I had already gathered all the scattered grapes from behind the legs of the cupboards and shelves and rescued them from the embrace of lumps of dust. I shook out the sack to see if there was anything else in it. Small debris scattered across the wooden floor. I pretended that it wasn't me who did it, and went through the notes in the box as if nothing had happened.
I let some of the conversation pass my ears while I was doing this. I only caught the fact that the country was now ruled by the grandson of an old king who wasn't even sixteen years old. Besides, there's an independent Magical Council, the one that put Jay in the mirror thirteen years ago. Since that incident, there have been stricter controls on how sorcerers recruit their apprentices, and Robin and Jay's teacher has been found partially responsible for his apprentice's crimes. I shrugged my shoulders to shake off the goosebumps that ran down my skin.
Finally, Robin began to talk about himself. I'd gone through the notes by then, and I didn't see a single scribble that would look familiar, so I quietly knocked the crumbs off the table and decided I needed another bun. That' what I choked on when Robin said he worked for the Secret City Police, or, more accurately, was the head of them.
No wonder I'd imagined dank cellars and shackled prisoners when I'd followed the sorcerers to the tavern, thinking of good cops and bad cops - that was Robin, the two in one! To everyone he was an average police officer, but in reality he worked for the King and had a network of informants all over the city, who in turn also considered him just a link in the chain.
His talent for medicinal magic had come in handy in the war, and it was then that he discovered that people willingly trusted him with secrets.
“Perhaps,” said Robin, “it's the result of our childhood experiments with magic, as well as the blocked traveling.“
“It's always been a part of you,” Jay argued.
Robin turned and said through the window that he and Jay had grown up together. I nodded cautiously, forgetting to chew my bun, having once again lost whatever little trust I had in him, and confused as to how they could have grown up together if Robin looked ten years older.
They continued talking, and I decided to test a note, especially since my throat was dry again and the bun felt like it was stuck halfway down my throat. I waved the blue-lettered note over the faucet, just as I'd done when I'd opened the passages after the sorcerer. Water rushed out of the faucet, splashing me with a fountain of water. I hurried to turn the faucet back on and found the lever on the back that changed the temperature. Robin handed me two mugs through the window, asking me to fill them, too.
Jay was not satisfied and handed the mug back to me:
“Cold,” he said, and after Robin's cough, he added: “Please.”
I changed the temperature, handed the mug back to him, and, not knowing how to stop the flow, waved the note again. It worked!
The sun was nearing the horizon. The sorcerers kept chatting, like office workers who didn't want to go back to their office space after a break. My thoughts were confused, and I propped my head up, but my imagination had already taken me to the glass skyscraper that the witches were flying into on broomsticks. The turnstiles must be set higher for them, or the guard would get mad... A young man, adjusting his pointy hat, complains that he has to order new glasses, because his eyes are damaged by the computer, and the supreme boss has swamped him with a dozen orders for notes. An old wizard in a black suit and a striped black and red tie is leaning over the desk of a witch-secretary in a leopard robe, whining that their floor has been stocked with defective mirrors and someone is wandering around in them.
I woke up when my head slid to my elbow. Another minute and I would have slammed into the tabletop.
“Time to sleep,” Jay announced.
Robin promised to come back tomorrow, and the wizards hugged again.
“I'm so glad to see you,” they said almost simultaneously, and both smiled. Jay's lips tightened, and Robin's smile was wide and radiant, showing all of his snow-white teeth.
Robin clapped me on the shoulder in a friendly way, telling me not to walk him to the door. I suppressed the urge to run after him and ask him not to leave me alone with Jay.
The front door slammed shut. Without Robin, the house shrank and quieted, and so did I, surrendering to its mood. Jay was silent and looked at me skeptically, as if he wished he'd had a robot or, at most, a wizened old maid to replace me. Then he wouldn't have to explain how things worked around here.
The sorcerer picked up his cloak from the floor and went out into the corridor. I hurried after him, taking the box of notes with me.
“I'll show you the house tomorrow,” Jay said, and nodded at the box. The orange ones are for the lights.
I opened the box and pulled out a piece of paper with orange letters. Already from the stairs the sorcerer said:
“I'll wake you up.”
I nodded at his back. He turned on the light on the second floor with a wave of his hand and disappeared behind the door. “Well, good night, Master Sorcerer ,” I thought with sudden anger. He was no longer used to drink, no longer used to eat, and no longer able to speak normally either. Or did I get the rudest sorcerer in the world? Why couldn't Robin have put a spell on me? On the other hand, if Robin had sat in the mirror for thirteen years, he wouldn't have come back so friendly, either.
In the room, I waved the note over the lamp, and it lit up and then went out. I understood that I had to wave once. When I managed the lights, I closed the curtains to keep the insects away. The bedding was found in the dresser, along with towels and a toiletry kit. This must have been the room of the supposed former maid, or just a guest room.
My backpack still stood in the middle of the room like a ghost from another world, as strange and incongruous in its surroundings as I was. I didn't want to disturb it, but I needed something to sleep in. All day I'd been wearing the same top I'd slept in at the hotel.
As I changed, I felt something in my jeans pocket. Surprised, I pulled out a folded piece of paper. It was a pencil drawing of a small, disheveled bird balancing on a spike of wheat. It wasn't a sparrow. The tail is striped, like the rinka's on the edge of the golden field, and the legs are a little longer than they should be. I shoved the drawing under my pillow and marveled at my equanimity. Here I was, a disheveled little bird, caught from my home golden field into the heart of an enchanted forest - and there I was, as calm as a stone, as cold as a mountain stream.
I waved a note with orange letters, the lights went out, and then I began to weep.