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“…Yurka,” Gleb whispered.

When Yar heard the name of his son, he felt like every nerve inside him just caught fire. Suddenly the image on the screen rippled and Yurka disappeared behind the yellow tongue of fire. Gleb leaned over to Yar and whispered, "Quiet, Yar. I’ll explain all of this later."

“Yes, later on, when the Magister is not around or he'll suspect something,” Yar thought, feeling intense pulsing.

The image on the screen rippled again and the tower’s base near the coastal rocks became visible. The waves washed upon the rocks. The thin boys’ bodies fell down from the tower, moving sideways like shadows and disappeared without touching the ground.

The image suddenly winked and disappeared. The mnemofilm was over. It was strange to see the black lacquer tray and flowers painted on it, instead of pictures.

“And what happened next?” Yar asked in a flat voice.

“That's all,” the Magister answered.

“Why did you show this to us, Magister?” Chita asked in a harsh voice.

“But you wanted it yourself...” the Magister said. “It was simply an illustration.”

“What bastards you are,” Dasha said quietly.

“Are you still hoping for an alliance after what you showed us?” Gleb asked seriously.

“Yes, Gleb Sergeevich. But what did I show you? This is just what happened. After all, it's their own fault. Adults could be persuaded or frightened, but children are seldom logical. It was a forced response from our side.”

“And that's why you decided to burn them alive,” Yar said. His face turned pale.

“Oh, really? I mean, it wasn't pretty, but none of them died. I'm telling you, they turned into, you know, Windies and flew away.”

“They didn’t all turn into Windies, don't lie,” Ignatik said.

“I'm not lying, boy,” the Magister said patiently.”Come on, you saw it with your own eyes.”

“Show us your mnemo-record again! I want to see the ending again,” Ignatik demanded loudly in a harsh voice. Yar never heard him sound like that.

“But this is impossible, I assure you,” the Magister said. ”Sorry, I'm very tired.”

“He’s lying,” Ignatik said. “Okay, Magister. I know how you do it. Any trick can be duplicated. Actually, I can project your memory directly from your brain.”

“Don't do it!” the Magister shouted and tried to stand up, but he couldn't. Yar looked back at Ignatik. The boy had turned pale and had sweat on his upper lip. The metal tray rattled and transformed into a screen again. Yar again saw the tower’s basis, the rocky shore, the waves and foam in the raging sea. The images were moving slowly. The mnemo-record was playing at low speed. The boys on the screen fell down from the tower very slowly. Their figures were seen disappearing low near the rocks, and little whirlwinds appeared in the air right there. But not all boys had turned into Windies. Several boys fell down on the ground.

“Stop it…” the Magister moaned.

In slow motion, Yar saw the boys' bodies tossing amid the small pebbles on the coastal strip and then getting thrown half a meter in the air, and falling to the ground again and lying motionless among the rocks.

Yar's teeth were clenched. The whole world shrank to the size of the room. He was preparing to see Yurka among the fallen boys.

The image of the shore moved towards the audience in the room. A boy lay sprawled with his face down on the shelly gravel, which was covered with blood. He clutched the round pebbles in his fingers. He was wearing a torn green shirt with a square white collar like that of a sailor's.The wind pulled the collar over the boy's head, so that only the red hair on the top of his head could be seen. A small and agile lizard crawled out from under the boy's arm and climbed up on his shoulder. The lizard froze. Only its lively and intelligent eyes glittered.

The motion of the film slowed down, and then turned into a still frame.

“They were the boys who did not have time to turn into Windies,” Ignatik said in a whisper. The image faded and the tray fell to the floor with a clang. Ignatik laid his head on Yar's shoulder.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

The Magister was gasping for air. His face looked all contorted. One of his fake eyebrows was slanted a bit. Somehow, he staggered to his feet and fixed his eyebrow back with a slap.

“I've always regretted sparing your life, Tik. It was a mistake,” the Magister said in a strange metallic voice.

Ignatik raised his head over Yar's shoulder and said in a low voice, “Get out of here, you сlay dummy.”

Chita made a chuckle.

“Of course, I'm going,” the Magister said. “But... Yaroslav Igorevich...I still hope for another meeting with you… I'll see myself out.” He went stumbling out of the room.

Chita followed him out with a free plasticity of a panther before a jump.

image [https://disk.yandex.ru/i/rRmHYQIMCIUlZg]image [https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSIPfckX50VfyzLJl-V1K-VGGfaecslsE74g-_kF9-q-_Hxru2u]

Alka suddenly said loudly, ”There is the sun outside.”

They all looked out the window. The sun shined through a break in the clouds like a huge coltsfoot flower.

Tik said, “Yar, there were no Yurka among the rocks... Well, I mean among those guys who fell from the tower.”

Yar bit his lip. His joy turned to shame.

“My son Yurka survived, but it didn’t make any easier for the fathers and mothers of the boys who smashed on the rocks ... But Yurka had enough time to turn into a Windy and fly away. He’ll stay forever a twelve year old boy. Nothing can touch him—not time, not pain, not cold or fire. But who will protect him from his longings? Who will protect the Windies?” Yar thought about it with a sense of concern and anguish.

Then the sound of approaching steps emanated from the hallway. Chita entered the room. He seemed very calm to Yar, although there was a blush on his cheeks. Chita said abruptly, "We have a problem with the Magister. He was walking past the gym. The guys were playing there. They have hit the Magister with the ball."

“So what?” Gleb asked.

“Nothing special,” Chita said. “At first they were scared, but I told them that it was some high schoolers’ prank-- they made a movable clay dummy model, but it was too weak and broke into a thousand pieces. I told them to put everything in the dustbin. It is strange that even the Magister’s coat had turned into a plaster crust. Can you believe this? Seven hundred twenty-nine units of intelligence, but one ball was enough.”

“I think, Tik just totally trashed the Magister and the ball finished him off,”Alka said sitting on the windowsill.

“But what if a hundred or a thousand aliens appeared right now, strong and merciless? Like those that were in the coastal fortress," Yar thought without fear. He braced himself. He was still a star scout who would persevere in the face of danger.

“Oh boy!” Alka exclaimed, pressing his face against the window glass.

“What is it now?” Yar turned around.

“There's a whole crowd of them and they are running in here,” Alka said.

Chita slid open the door. Gleb took his revolver out.

"Who?" Yar asked.

"The Windies!" Alka answered cheerfully.

The noise of footsteps, a wet thumping, and children's voices came from the hallway.

Dan ran into the room first, followed by twenty or thirty other boys. Yar recognized Dan at once, although he did not look the same as he did in the snowy meadow. He was wearing a new short-sleeve shirt with epaulettes. He had pencils in his breast pockets and a violin case under his arm. Dan was shivering and sniffling.

“Yanka!” Gleb exclaimed.

Yanka-Dan came up to Gleb and said, kind of shyly, “Gleb! You’ve aged… a bit.”

“Yanka ... Damn it. When we were in the meadow last winter, I thought: Dan looks just like Yanka! How the hell did this happen?”

Yanka just shrugged. Vovchik-Peabody answered for him, “We don't know how it happened. Dan came back three days ago. We all landed into the meadow today. Dan began to talk us and suddenly we felt cold, as before, when we were real boys ... Then Dan said: Go to the school, now! We could no longer fly and ran through the forest."

Yar resisted an impulse to ask Dan for news from Starogorsk. There were more pressing matters. Yar commanded, "Dasha, remove the desks from the classroom and put the folding beds there. Give them each a blanket. Alka, turn on the water heater! Chita, get the ski suits from the pantry in the gym!"

Meanwhile, Gleb asked Yanka, ”What about Gelka? Wait! Was he here during the uprising?"

"No! He stayed there, in Starogorsk..."

“Did it happen only to you guys, or to all the Windies?" Yar asked Vovchik.

The Windies’ commander lifted his hands in dismay and said, “I don't know. I can't understand..."

“Yar!” Gleb barked. “It probably happened with all the Windies, because Gelka broke the time loop.”

“What?”

“Look!”

Gleb and Dan were holding some tattered sheets of paper. Yar stepped closer. He saw red lines written on the paper: “Gelka, goodbye! We won't have time to see each other. I'm about to fly away, I can feel it. I’ve turned into a Windy earlier than I expected. Those two drops of blood that we gave to create the magic Sparkies probably took some of our lifetime, just like Jeremy said. I don’t have another minute. Gelka, break the temporal loop...”

Large green letters were written below, ”Yanka, don't worry! I’ll break it!”

“These words have appeared since I've been here,” Dan explained. “Then I wrote to Gelka, but there was no answer... It means one thing only: the temporal loop is broken. We got out of it.”

“I don't understand anything that you've said,” Yar said.

There was so much hustle and bustle in the room. The boys were coming and going along. Some of them had put on ski suits, which were too big.

Yar called out to Chita, “Have the third-graders create a chain around the school. Have them tell any adult who wants to come here that we are in quarantine.”

“Yar, I think there's no need for that,” Ignatik said quietly, tugging on Yar’s sleeve. “The time loop is broken and ‘Those’ won’t show up here for a long time.”

There was a fuss at the threshold. Dan and Vovchik tried to push someone into the room. Dan said cheerfully, ”Well, what are you afraid of? Go ...”

The boys around Yar quickly stepped aside and he saw a glum, dark-haired boy in a baggy ski suit just in front of him. There was an incredibly loud silence.

The boy wiped his nose with his finger, looking around shyly. He lifted his face and said to Yar in a husky voice, "Are you... my dad?"

TO BE CONTINUED...