I had only seen my companion as a dark shadow, but slowly climbing into the light, I saw that he looked very familiar.\u00a0\u00a0 I hadn’t seen Viktor in these clothes, but they fit him.\u00a0 Kind of, I don’t know, lumberjack.\u00a0 (And no, I wasn’t going to hum the Monty Python tune.)\u00a0 He looked more relaxed, if possible, as if he was in his native element.<\/p>\n
I wondered briefly what other things Doloise hadn’t told me about what I had experienced with her.\u00a0 Of course, I can’t rightly blame her, because (frankly) I never asked.\u00a0 If she had been human, maybe, I would have been annoyed that she hadn’t thought to tell me, but she wasn’t human, and you know what?\u00a0 I’m good with not holding that against her.\u00a0 I’m big that way.<\/p>\n
With a click of the tongue and a point of a finger, the dogs ran over to him.\u00a0 He had his own fire on this level, one that burned less red than the signal I had been using as a guide.\u00a0 There was wood stacked and a door crafted into the mountain.\u00a0 I remembered reading something about “river sweatlodges” in Siberia, but besides thinking the name was “vanya” (which actually kept leading me like a red herring into thinking about Middle Earth) I couldn’t remember much about them.\u00a0 This seemed to be a more permanent campsite, though, than a waystation somewhere.<\/p>\n
The dogs curled up around the fire, eyes open and watching both of us.\u00a0 Viktor went into a wooden chest and poked around.\u00a0 He handed me a long thin poker, more like a hot dog roaster than a rapier or some sort of actual weapon.\u00a0 I suppose I could have had a lucky shot and got it through his eye, but how do you kill someone in the lands of the dead?<\/p>\n
I was feeling pretty dead myself, dead tired that was.\u00a0 I pulled up a wooden bench and sat on it near the fire, waiting for Viktor to return.\u00a0 He grunted a few times, then straightened up, holding some ingredients I was a little surprised to see, but not unhappy about his acquiring.\u00a0 We made sandwiches of shortbread-like crackers, chocolate, and sponge-like cheese.\u00a0 I would still group them in as “s’more-like objects.”<\/p>\n
I could have been concerned about eating something from the lands of the dead, but I didn’t feel anything sinister or otherwise significant in it.\u00a0 Of course, from my younger days I knew if a Long Island Iced Tea is made well you don’t notice the alcohol in it either.\u00a0 In my defense, I was currently a quivering bundle of paranoid sensitivity, so I think anything that went “twang” when it should have been well-nigh organic to the environment or hostile to me would have set me off.<\/p>\n
I did not want the taste of chocolate to make me think of Doloise, but I was here because of her, and focusing on that was important.\u00a0 I ignored any tendency for tears to well up, because I knew it was just the smoke from the fire.<\/p>\n
We sat and enjoyed our treats in almost silence.\u00a0 I could still occasionally hear a howl or a yip or a bark, and, of course, the stacking and chewing of the food, and the crackle of the fire, oh, and yes, the occasional heartbeat of the land.\u00a0 It seemed quiet because neither of us were talking.<\/p>\n
He threw a couple of the crackers to the dogs, who were awfully polite in catching them without pushing each other.\u00a0 He leaned back.\u00a0 “You have questions,” he said, looking into the fire.\u00a0 “I cannot answer them.\u00a0 We do not share the language.\u00a0 We come from different worlds, you and I.”<\/p>\n
I glanced at him.\u00a0 He had quirked a smile, so it was on purpose.<\/p>\n
“I think wizards just like to feel mysterious,” I said.\u00a0 “You can tell me things.\u00a0 You can tell me one simple explanation of what this place is.\u00a0 I don’t know enough to ask smart questions that need in-depth, technical details.”\u00a0 I stood up and returned the bags of treat-making to him, so I could get close.\u00a0 I kept the wire fire-equipment in my free hand.\u00a0 “And why you lied to me.\u00a0 Make it simple.\u00a0 Lie to me again if you have to, but don’t think I don’t know.”<\/p>\n
He regarded me impassively, taking the bags and leaving them by his own wooden chair.\u00a0 After a moment, he relented and smiled.\u00a0 “You are a strange one, E.”\u00a0 He used my whole last name, of course, with the strange little quirk in it upon which my grandfather always insisted.<\/p>\n
I don’t come from a family of wizards.\u00a0 My talent is a freak one, which is why I’ve had to learn so much about other kinds of practitioners to try to develop rules for myself, capabilities.\u00a0 I still don’t know how I managed to face Ivan and use the portal.\u00a0 I still don’t know that I did, in fact.\u00a0 Maybe I fainted, and this was all a dream.\u00a0 Maybe the magic used me.\u00a0 But sometimes I think there are hints in my family that they hid something, and having an barely-pronounceable name might have been a misdirection for identity magic.\u00a0 Or just ethnic heritage.\u00a0 Who can tell?<\/p>\n
“Yeah, well, that could be why I don’t get many dates.\u00a0 Talk to me.”\u00a0 I like to think I sounded strong, and not cajoling in the least.\u00a0 Convincing was what I wanted to express, but I hadn’t checked out those books on negotiating yet.\u00a0 I did give him room, stepping back to sit on my bench, and burning off the food remnants from my roaster.<\/p>\n
“We knew your face,” he said, finally, “and it was an honest one.\u00a0 Not one that had seen hard work, but one that looked for answers.\u00a0 When Father Ivan left, he tore us apart, and when he returned with his Nellya, we were not sewn together.\u00a0 That is maybe woman’s work?\u00a0 But Nellie was no woman.\u00a0 Trouble never comes alone.\u00a0 Artur joined us, then.\u00a0 I think he looks to slay dragons.”\u00a0 It was an ironic smile.<\/p>\n
“One does not want friend to always agree, but to argue smartly.\u00a0 Andrei wished to weave her to us, use her power.\u00a0 Artur has the heart of a bear who thinks it is a wolf.\u00a0 They argued.\u00a0 I listened to Father Ivan.\u00a0 What he went looking for, he found.”\u00a0 Viktor shrugged.\u00a0 “But it was not good.”<\/p>\n
He sighed.\u00a0 “Nellie wanted to go home, but she could not, not without Ivan’s heart.”<\/p>\n
“So she saw Doloise’s power as a way to change things?” I asked.\u00a0 It made sense.<\/p>\n
“We were looking for a way to close things.” \u00a0 He made a motion with his hands.\u00a0 “Return Nellie to her place, Ivan’s heart to his.\u00a0 You brought the,” he used the word they’d used to describe Doloise again.\u00a0 Boyar-something? “Perhaps that one has knowledge that can assist, now that his Nellya saw they were not rivals, and that the Doloise was not sent to capture her.”\u00a0 He shrugged.\u00a0 “We wished Father Ivan back.\u00a0 He has spent too much time here, in the three-ninth, the far away, his heart may not know the right home.\u00a0 So I came to bring some home to him.”\u00a0 He shrugged.\u00a0 “And then there are the wolves.”<\/p>\n
I looked at the hounds.\u00a0 “These are spells?” I breathed out.\u00a0 It wasn’t really a question.<\/p>\n
He nodded.\u00a0 “I built the signal fire to draw in Ivan.\u00a0 I have not been able to find him.”\u00a0 He looked past me to the valley.\u00a0 “I do not know if the wolves protect him as a wolf, or if they keep help away.”<\/p>\n
I had a very bad thought.\u00a0 “When did you last see Ivan?\u00a0 In the real world, that is?”<\/p>\n
He smiled. \u00a0 Then he frowned, thinking. \u00a0 “Four… days ago?\u00a0 Time is different here. \u00a0 He served me dinner, and we talked spells.\u00a0 I said I had one to help his heartache.\u00a0 He said he needed that or the butcher.”<\/p>\n
The heartbeat had been off.\u00a0 It was getting slower.\u00a0 “The executioner?”\u00a0 I asked.<\/p>\n
“He joked the headsman, yes.”<\/p>\n
So I had seen him just after that, and it was two days ago in real world.\u00a0 Time was a tricky subject.\u00a0 And Viktor didn’t know what happened.\u00a0 If I was right, and even if Ivan could be saved, albeit in a burnward or something, we were running out of time.<\/p>\n
I just love being the bearer of bad tidings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He regarded me impassively, taking the bags and leaving them by his own wooden chair. After a moment, he relented and smiled. “You are a strange one, E.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chapter-four"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}