Chapter Four

A FLASHBACK

I don’t remember how I ended up in this unusual, fairy-tale world, corrupted with technology. With gangsters coexisting alongside magic, dwarfs, dragons, and other fairytale stuff. I remember the moment I arrived here, but nothing before that. I was traveling from Kyiv to a village twenty kilometers from Odesa for urgent business. A friend I hadn’t seen in twenty years called, a desperate cry for help on the phone. Then darkness. I don’t recall anything that happened. Not the journey, the arrival, or even whether I reached my destination or not. A mystery I pondered for years after.

From then on, it was all here, in this strange world. Upon arrival, I roamed the city, thinking I had landed in Earth’s past – the thirties or twenties. Dreaming of a time machine, what a fool I was! But this misconception cleared up quickly. No one spoke English, French, or even any Earthly language, though everything looked comically familiar. The style was 1930s USA, wildly mixed with the local cultural atmosphere – so alien and therefore even more absurd. It was as if this could only be the world of some alien city, if in the thirties, thanks to some miraculous technology, people could fly to other star systems.

For two days after my ‘landing’, I wandered the city, observing, trying to talk to passersby, surprised by the appearance of some ‘people’ who turned out to be alien creatures – sometimes humanoid, sometimes not. I remember the shock when I first saw magic. At first, I thought it was circus tricks, illusions, but then realized – such tricks can’t be the old hocus-pocus things from our world. Sure magicians and illusionists always perform disappearances, levitations, and other tricks, but those were on a different level. In tricks, you never see how the magic under the hood happens; that part is always omitted because it’s a sort of deception. But here, it was all on full display. If something disintegrated or vanished, you, literally saw, how the object shrank and dissolved in parts, with a physically tangible release of energy affecting the surrounding temperature and air pressure. The air temperature around would rapidly drop or rise. Try passing that off as a trick! Those things were real!

By the end of my second day wandering through this fantastic and retro-USA-style but alien metropolis, I was incredibly hungry. A banal human desire. They say a person can survive a month without food. But I didn’t want to test that theory. There was no problem with water, though. I often came across parks with little drinking fountains, and I was almost certain that the strange hieroglyphic inscriptions at such places meant ‘drinking water’.

Then I met Shani.

It was a peculiar coincidence, stumbling upon such an adventure right off the bat. As if someone had deliberately guided me to this alley, manipulating my subconscious. That feeling when you can’t decide whether you’ve done something foolish on your own or if someone has infiltrated your mind, making you turn the wrong corner without you noticing.

In the alley, a gang of odd ‘thugs’ – I couldn’t call them anything else since they were far from being human – had cornered an unusual blue-skinned girl. I had already encountered the ‘grey-faced’ types, though never in such numbers. But a blue girl, as tall as a twelve-year-old human girl, was a first for me. She captured my attention not just with her white hair tinged with purple, tied in a ponytail at the nape, but also with her strange attire, reminiscent of the garb of Midwestern dancers, her midriff bare. The gang was led by a huge figure, a Ronka, as I later found out. A race of micro-giants commonly used for security purposes. They usually lacked the intellect for more sophisticated labor. The typical brawn-over-brain scenario is in full display. The Ronka, twenty meters away with his back to me, made a perfect target for a running hit. I hardly hesitated. The question of why I was getting involved didn’t even cross my mind. Essentially, I had no choice: either draw the locals’ attention or die of hunger or become a criminal. Being without knowledge of the language and local customs, I desperately needed a ‘local guide’. So, much as I’d like to talk about chivalrous deeds and decent gentlemen rushing to ladies’ aid, in that case, I was mostly helping myself.

‘Yoko-geri Kekomi’ – that’s the lengthy name for what I did next. In Japanese, it translates to a jumping heel kick or something like that. The hefty figure, upon whom I unleashed all my knowledge from a youth spent fascinated with Eastern martial arts, toppled forward like a lamppost. For a moment, I thought I had hit the lamppost, given the massiveness of the fellow. Two hundred kilograms, at least, and not an ounce of it fat!

My stunt caused shock and panic among the ‘grey-faced’ fellows. I ‘dishonorably’ took advantage of that. Or so I thought. Drawers, as I later learned they were called, were shorter than humans and seemingly frailer. Their bones were thin, like those of teenagers. But they had claws. Well, nails, but ten times tougher and bulkier than human ones. Sharpened to a point, they posed a grave threat in a street fight. As I enthusiastically applied judo throws, kicks, and box punches, they slashed me several times. So swiftly, I only noticed when I smelled my own blood and felt a sharp pain. From my veins! And then, they cast a spell on me. For the first time. A clap – and a blow to my back. As if someone had rammed a sack of flour into me. It lacked the hardness of a baseball bat, but it knocked the breath out of me instantly. I started to fall, and at that moment, the blue-skinned girl screamed. A flash of incredible purple light shielded me from the street sorcerer’s next attack, and a shockwave scattered the gang of drawers. I teetered on the edge of unconsciousness, fully aware of the absurdity of my situation.

‘Great savior, my foot!’ I thought to myself, finally succumbing to the blissful darkness of unconsciousness.

I awoke in Shani’s atelier. As she explained to me later, she had called a taxi, somehow dragging me to the entrance of the alley, something I still find hard to believe. I weighed ninety kilograms, and she, a forty-kilogram Shainarian fairy, couldn’t possibly have dragged me – a healthy, by local standards, brute. She seemed so fragile. But then, she probably used magic. Fairies are pretty good with that.

So, I came to this blue lady’s place. Naked. She had undressed me and was treating my cuts. When I looked at them, I was terrified. Good heavens! I was slashed everywhere possible. Even my modesty was forgotten. Confident in the frailty of my opponents, I hadn’t kept them at bay, and each of those scoundrels managed to scratch me with their sharpened nails or claws, I don’t know what to call them.

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But the blue maiden knew her craft exceptionally well. Right before my eyes, she mended the wounds and cuts with a leaf of some plant, combined with magic. Just placed it and softly sang. Once, twice. The cuts disappeared and healed, leaving only scars. Seeing me watching, she smiled approvingly and said something melodious. Such a sweet voice. Probably the angels speak in heaven like her.

I shook my head, indicating I didn’t understand.

She spoke again, in what I understood to be another language.

I helplessly shook my head again.

She changed languages about twenty times, like a polyglot. Not wanting to tire her with futile attempts, not knowing how many languages she knew, I finally spoke:

“I don’t understand you, beauty. Sorry about that.”

She looked puzzled by my speech but then repeated my phrases exactly, without an accent.

“I don’t understand you, beauty. Sorry about that.”

I laughed. Absolute pitch! Incredible!

“No-no. Handsome. Beauty is feminine. Though what kind of handsome am I. You are the beauty here. And me… just a wild night wanderer.”

She also smiled. Enchantingly soft. She pointed a finger at me and said:

“Understand. Handsome,” then pointing at herself: “Beauty.”

I softly whistled. Although she drew an incorrect conclusion, she deciphered the first word instantly! And the declension matched.

“No, no,” I corrected her and, mimicking her gesture, corrected the linguistic misunderstanding that was about to form: “Man, woman.”

Then I added, pointing again at her:

“Beauty.”

She got it. Laughed heartily. And patted my forehead with comforting falsity:

“Handsome, handsome. A handsome man.”

“Sure, right now,” I dismissed, slightly waving my hand. ‘Don’t lie to me, blue-skinned baby, I can’t even remember how many times my nose has been broken in fights...’

That’s how I met Shani. Or a Shainarian fairy, to be exact. A real fairy. Or an earthly equivalent of a fairy, if you wish. She even has wings. But they’re magical and only appear at night. If a fairy bares her body under the moonlight, that’s when you can see them. Delicate and transparent, like those of a dragonfly. Otherwise, Shani looks like a regular girl. A very beautiful girl, I must say. Petite and with a model’s figure. But that’s just appearance. She’s a magical creature, not biological like humans. And that’s an important distinction. There are no male fairies. They don’t reproduce the way humans do. Our sexual desires are incomprehensible to them. Moreover, they live so long that it’s beyond human comprehension. Shani, for instance, was around fifty-something years old. And for a fairy, that’s the age of an eighth-grade schoolgirl. By their standards, she’s not yet an adult. And comparisons to humans don’t apply here. She’s entirely different, a completely different being. Why she saved me is still a mystery to me. Fairies don’t like humans. Men especially. They interact somewhat with unmarried women, but with men, it’s a no-go. They don’t even converse with men. Perhaps Shani sensed with her magical intuition that I wasn’t from this world and therefore not entirely human by her world’s standards. Or maybe it was something else. Only Shani and God knew the real reason.

Shani owned an atelier, a place for designing women’s clothing. Quite fashionable in that area. At first glance, it sounds absurd, a fairy involved in fashion design. Shani herself came from a far-off giant’s island. On their native island, the fairies faced genocide by explorers and conquistadors from a distant southern empire called the Shainar Kingdom. Hence the term ‘Shainar fairy.’ But it was best not to mention this name in her presence. After the genocide, the surviving fairies scattered in all directions. Shani had a mentor who brought her here, and before passing away, she made sure her apprentice was well-adjusted to the local life. And Shani adapted well. To the strange human life. Without moonlit flights among trees as tall as skyscrapers, and the nectar from flowers as big as houses in her homeland.

It must have been a strange and wild place for her, I thought, spending days on end watching her in the atelier, commanding her two employees – the Milby sisters. Occasionally, she would arrange an impromptu fashion show for me. I described clothing from my world to her, and she often bombarded me with questions about our ways. I felt like I had recounted half the books I’d ever read and half the movies I’d seen to her. I suspected she fed on my stories like some sort of spirit vampire. It looks like the information substituted most of our – human – pastimes for fairies.

So, that’s how I lived. Under the wing, or rather, at the expense of a fairy, which I was deeply ashamed of. I tried working as a porter at the port a couple of times, but Shani indignantly made me quit, despite my protests. She wanted to teach me sewing since I was so eager to work. But I flatly refused to share her professional passion. Maxim Svyatlyakov – former cop, sniper – and now a seamstress. Right. As if I needed that!

Then, once I got used to the local concrete jungle, learned the language, and started figuring out how things worked here, I opened a private detective agency. The idea was ludicrous, to be honest. I was still a rookie here, practically! Sure, I’d been stuck here for five years, but you can’t master the nuances of local life in such a short time. Still, I took the risk. I set up the agency. Got a phone line installed. Placed an ad in the newspaper. All on Shani’s dime, of course. What a freeloader I was!

Business picked up gradually. A couple of years working in the investigative department back home did lend me some advantage. I dealt with the small stuff, mostly. Marital infidelities, shoplifting, missing persons. Meanwhile, I tried to learn as much as possible about magic and this peculiar city. Everything was meticulously recorded and analyzed in my journal. By then, I was on my seventh volume. I knew that mysterious ‘engineers’ founded the city, and only a fool wouldn’t have figured out where they came from. This meant my transportation to this world wasn’t a unique occurrence. The question now was: Is there a way back? Some hidden door in an abandoned castle, like in children’s books, back on Earth, perhaps? How to find it out?

The ‘ingineers’ had ignited a technological revolution, but only within this particular kingdom. Their influence didn’t extend to the entire planet. God knows how many of them arrived here initially, but it must have been at least a dozen, given the significant impact they had made. The rest of the planet was exactly what you’d expect – a wild land filled with magic, kingdoms, empires, dragons, and who knows what else. I wisely refrained from venturing beyond Bridgeport’s limits. As a city dweller, all that magical territory was too foreign and potentially dangerous for me. Plus, the locals outside Bridgeport harbored a fierce hatred for its residents. The concrete jungle was far safer and somewhat more familiar. Corrupt Ammaratia – an equivalent of our police. Politicians, factories, journalists, newspapers, fast food, and cars – those things were familiar to me. Although the cars and technology were from the time of Methuselah, and people, not just humans, dressed in hats and suits in the fashion of the 1930s...