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Pillars and trees flashed by, and the windows of houses winked at bends, but I couldn't find that one familiar road in the maze of forks and junctions. The city was so big, and the streets so deserted, that I soon felt a quiet longing inside. The music had long ago ceased, ending with a song about a son who could not wait for his mother, which made me feel very sad. So I drove in silence, to the sound of sirens somewhere in the distance, wondering if I should catch up with the other cars to ask for directions. Until he came upon a man who was wheeling something like a backpack but on two wheels, clinging to a tall handle. The man's coat was dirty, his tights shabby, he was very old, and he looked frightened and covered his eyes with his hand. But he was an adult, and surely he could know the way.

"Hello, do you know how to get to the Upper Novgorod boarding school?" I moved to the window near the right-hand seat.

"I know," he answered, showing a very toothless mouth, and froze wary as if preparing to run.

"Can you tell me the way?" I burst into a blaze of joy.

"Straight to the fork, then along Lermontova Street, then off to Justice Avenue and onto the highway," Granddad mumbled uncertainly.

"Eh," I said sadly, trying to imagine what was a difference of Lermontov Street form others. "Why don't you come with me, eh?"

"I can," he agreed to my delight, "but only as far as the highway."

"Sit down!" I fidgeted in my seat, pulling the hare onto my lap and freeing the seat. "Don't go back. There are bears out there!"

The man crouched very carefully on the seat and slung the rucksack over himself, peering out from behind it with his neck outstretched ridiculously. He didn't smell much, but as soon as we started moving, the smell wafted in through the ajar windows.

"Now, around that corner," the old man said, as I turned onto the very track adorned with the so familiar 'Upper Novgorod' sign - my heart was pounding! "Leave me here."

I carefully slowed down beside a concrete pad with a concrete box and a sign with a T on it.

"Where should I go next?" I was a little worried, peering into the lamp lighted line of the road.

"First right and straight ahead. There'll be a fork. Cemetery on the left, cardboard factory on the right, and boarding school on the right. You go right."

Grandpa let the rucksack go ahead of him, rested it on the ground, and left the car.

"Thank you," I thanked him sincerely, then fidgeted, pulling a present out of my pocket. "Here, take it!" I handed him the jaw of the failed kidnapper.

Grandpa needs it more.

"Thank you," he took in the yellowish metal of the teeth in a bewildered way, weighed it in his hand in surprise, and, looking around cautiously, inserted it into his mouth. "Farewell!" A yellow smile shone on his face.

There are good people, after all.

Soon the familiar outline of the boarding house came into view, with the high fence and the clumsy building behind it sleeping under a bright starry sky. Of all the windows, there was only a vertical row of stairs, and the lamp above the entrance flickered from the midges circling it.

I did not drive up to the fence, stopping a couple of hundred meters away. It was time to say goodbye: to the car and the stars. Alas, I had no idea where to put the bears. Maybe I should have left them with the policeman to catch criminals, but that good idea came later, and I couldn't go back. I got lost in the streets.

The power flowed back into my hands, and with it, the line of stars flowed brightly to my right and left open palms. The stars shone even brighter here outside the city, which meant it would be easier for them to see and reach their kin. I waved my hand, raising a splash of lights overhead.

"Fly home!"

But they froze again, whirling around confusedly, slowly, and unhurriedly.

My stomach rumbled quietly, reminding me of a hungry day. And then an idea flashed through my mind!

"You're just hungry," he told the starlets fondly, "and you don't have the energy to get home."

The lights were silent, but I could see how woozy they were. Luckily, I had something to feed them.

An ocean of Curiosity spilled out to my hands, gathering lights into two dense orbs, growing every second! More curiosity, more power, more excitement, and joy at the glow of the two new suns, the size of an elephant, that popped out of the palms of my hands and upwards, slowly circling overhead!

"I'm not pity!" I exhaled, finding new reserves of strength within me. They need to be full-fed for the long flight home!

In the sky, with a loud humming sound, like giant bumblebees, two balloons were spinning in circles, getting bigger and louder!

"Come on!" I turned to them with a little resentment, feeling my legs wobble.

The noise was already roaring around me. The metal of the car was scraping, a metal pole in the distance was tumbling, the wind was ripping my shirt, bears were howling frantically, and... somewhere very close, sirens were howling! I looked around frantically, catching the red and blue lights of nearby cars. Shit!

"Now!" I yelled, putting my Voice and Will into the words.

And in a single instant, the flight of lights converged to merge into a single glowing ball, abruptly exploding in a long, lingering lightning bolt all the way to the sky!

"Whoa," I opened my mouth, looking up into the dark blue air blindly because of the flashes playing in my eyes. Where there was a white trail... oh, no... that's a plane falling.

"Damn!"

I ran to the car, grabbed the hare from its seat, and hurried without looking back in the direction of the boarding school. My intuition told me that the bears would be fine, but if I was late, the opposite would be true!

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The heavy branches of the bushes whipped at my feet. The holes in the grass were clawing at my sneakers and trying to pull them off my feet, but I kept stubbornly moving toward the high fence, frantically searching for the very spot where Laika had wandered into our yard - with a bar bent out to the side. Behind me, sirens roared. Shrill voices echoed, demanding that they stretch out in a chain and search the place. But I was already standing by the familiar tree, opposite the concrete ring that had grown into the ground, and I carefully helped the hare across to the other side of the fence. And then I climbed up myself, wedging myself between the ground and the dangerously protruding ironwork.

And somehow, the sounds of the chase became quieter, and suddenly I was at peace inside, especially when I saw the window of my room open in the morning. I am home!

He sneaked around the edge of the lighted circle, reached the wall, threw the rabbit inside the room, and then fell headlong into the warmth of the room, leaning first on the frame and then on the table.

"This is where I live," I waved my hand, addressing the hare.

He looked at the surface of the table with interest, but I helped and gave him a little tour, from the table to the bedside table with the clothes. I had gotten a lot of dirt on myself. And I needed to wipe the hare off the dirt and grass. At the same time, I needed to hide my phone and money in a safe place.

We went to bed in a dozen minutes, but sleep would not come to me. I stared at the border of the long shadow of the lamp in the courtyard on the wall, wrapping myself in the unexpectedly cold blankets-even under the two, the cold and the chills were wavy. Only my chest was warm, where the toy lay under my hand.

And a little later, the longing came. Somewhere out there were my bears, whom I had abandoned. Just as my dad and mum had abandoned me... I had a reason and the belief that they would be better off with adults... And my parents? They probably had them too, but it doesn't make me feel any better...

And the stars? Maybe they had nowhere to go at all. Maybe they had no one in the sky, either? I kicked them out... I shot down the plane... I stole the car... I am a bad emperor.

I shivered, pulled the rabbit tightly against me, and almost jumped when a loud song echoed in the room. It turned out that the hare was singing, awakened by the push of a secret button. It sang long and beautifully. About me.

"I am not frightened by the waves or the wind..." reflected off the walls, chasing away sadness and melancholy, reminding me that behind the shadows hides the beautiful yellow of the walls and that tomorrow all will be well again. And I will find it, I will definitely find it!

"Where have you been?!" The babysitter whirled into the room, spoiling the song with her ugly voice.

"Walking," I answered in a single voice, listening to the end of the story.

"Where did you get it?!" She shouted, snatching the hare from my hands.

"Mine! I found it in the bushes!" I squeezed my arms, not letting go of my friend.

"You stole it!" She slapped me in the face, snatching the toy away.

"No!" I grasped at the red bowtie.

It snapped soundly, remaining in my hands. And the hare froze in the nurse's hands, looking at me sadly. Even you I didn't save.

"Gimme," she held out her hand demandingly.

"Try and take it away," I suggested, trembling with anger and clenching my fists.

"How dare you..." her voice twitched halfway through the sentence and subsided when she caught my eye.

"Come on..."

"We'll talk in the morning," she turned around, taking with her the hare, the song, and the good that was in me.

"For there is no such thing as a lost child..." echoed through the corridors, becoming a distant echo, a legend of a beautiful day.

A day that I had lost. The day I had allowed to be taken away from me. It got so dreary that I decided to get sick.

A loud cough ripped through my chest, fever was replaced by a cold. Sweat soaked the bed, and the image of the girl on the rock floated before my eyes for some reason. I wondered what her name was.

In the morning, they still didn't speak to me. But there was a respectable doctor, for some reason not in a white coat but in a suit, but his injections were just as painful. He carried me to the infirmary, connecting my hand with a transparent string to a jar on a pole, from which slowly the liquid was flowing out of who knows where. It turned out to be in me, but I was asked not to check it out again.

Through the weakness, unfamiliar male voices could be heard coming from the courtyard. There was a gathering of all our own - only a general gathering could buzz like that. They seemed to be looking for someone and even tried to match their shoes to the footprints imprinted on the ground. Good luck with that - we all have the same size. It's just that for some it's small, and for some, it's too big. Then they checked the lists loudly, interspersed each name with a silent: "...not him", counted the names by heads, and just as loudly and sternly asked the headmistress if there were any other children in the boarding school. As it turned out, there were none. I don't exist, after all. So soon, the sounds died down.

I was in no hurry to get well, so I also met the news that someone very respectable would be giving a lot of money to the boarding school in bed - the babysitter and the nurse were whispering. There, in bed, I read the latest news from the big headlines in the newspaper, which the nurse was flicking through in front of me.

The kidnapped bears were found in the burning car". "Blueness and drinking: The pilot of the private plane that made an emergency landing was dead drunk. Mr. Mistratov blames the crash on lightning out of a clear blue sky and chicks".

"What nonsense is written," sighed the babysitter, folding the sheet in half.

A visit of a princess... who's going to pay... I dabbed my eyes over another headline and turned indifferently away from the wall. Not a word of truth anyway.

There was a ringing emptiness in my head, without a single thought or emotion. I didn't want to eat, didn't want to move. I didn't even want to breathe, so at least it wasn't piercing my chest with hundreds of needles. They kept injecting me with injections and pills, and I didn't want to get better. It went on like that for six days.

Until, during the night, there was a creaking sound of a door opening. I involuntarily woke up, shaking off the painful dream, and stared warily into the darkness outside the door. But the one who had come was already inside. He jumped onto my chest in one motion, cradling me with his body, peered sternly into my eyes, sniffed, snuggled up, and purred bassily with his eyes slightly closed.

"Mashk," I squeezed out, feeling the warmth spreading through my body with tenderness, appreciation, and concern with a touch of guilt. I'm sick here, and he's not fed.

As if the cat had picked up on my thoughts, it purred even louder.

"I'm not alone," I whispered only with my lips, "I have you."

I wonder how he managed to get here. After all, it's the 2nd floor, and somehow he tracked it down...

I was so curious that when I reached out to pet him, I involuntarily jerked him a couple of times with a spark. But he didn't seem offended, just looked reproachful. And I was about to apologize when I noticed that the sparkle near the fur was not gone at all... It continued to swirl around quietly, moving slowly and smoothly...

"I'm not alone," his voice sounded confident, without the usual hoarseness.

Fifteen minutes later, I was standing in my room, trying on a red bowtie for a new shirt in front of the mirror. There was no sickness, no tiredness, or indifference. But there was a desire to create a new world for myself and my friends, one based on good laws, not the ones outside the window. A world that no one would dare take away from us. Because with the rest of us, we would live by the rules of adults, becoming the cruelest and most dangerous in the human zoo.

"The good is not for everyone," I told Mashk, who was eating the contents of a carefully hidden tin, "the good must be protected."

There was great cheer for my recovery. The doctor gestured admiringly, the nurse was glowing with joy, and even the headmistress stopped by for a moment, looking me over from head to toe. I smiled politely, too, and let myself be examined but tried not to meet their eyes. Their turn would come.

"This bracelet shows you where you are," the doctor told me, snapping a blue band around my left arm, "so we don't worry, and you don't get sick again."

The babysitter nodded, watching with interest something on the flat-screen television with a coaster.

"The signal goes to the satellite and then here," he turned the screen towards me, showing me the map. "We'll activate it now..."

I glanced at the unfamiliar shape, surprised to see the outline of my home country inside a vast expanse of land. And then I cursed quietly as I noticed the little stars that were barely visible in the daylight rising above my skin, and I managed to get them under my bracelet before anyone noticed.

"The system has accepted the data," the doctor continued with satisfaction. "It's ready. Looking at the coordinates - all right, we're in Guatemala...! What?!"

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Chapter 14

Thousands of hands on shoulders