The Twilight Watch (16 page)

'I'm no better myself,' Svetlana admitted. 'Really, why am I lecturing
you on the basics? You deal with witches every day in the Watch . . .'

Peace had been restored, and I was quick to reply:

'With ones as powerful as this? Come on, in the whole of
Moscow there's only one first-grade witch, and she retired ages
ago . . . What are we going to do, Sveta?'

'There is no actual reason to interfere,' she replied thoughtfully.
'The children are all right, the boy's even better off than he was
before. But there are still two questions that need to be answered.
First, where did the strange wolf that drove the children towards
the cubs come from?'

'That's if it
was
a wolf,' I remarked.

'If it was,' Svetlana agreed. 'But the children's story hangs together
well . . . The second question is whether the witch is registered
in this locality or not, and what her record is like . . .'

'We'll soon find out,' I said, taking out my mobile phone.

Five minutes later I had the answer. There was nothing in the
Night Watch records about any witches in the area.

Ten minutes later I walked out of the garden, armed with instructions
and advice from my wife – in her capacity as a potential
Great Enchantress. On my way past the barn, I glanced in through
the open doors – Kolya was hovering over the open bonnet of
the car, and there were some parts lying on a newspaper spread
out on the ground. Holy Moses . . . all I'd done was mention a
knocking sound in the engine!

And Uncle Kolya was singing, crooning quietly to himself:

We're not stokers and not carpenters either,
But we're not bitter, we have no regrets!

Those were clearly the only lines he could remember. He kept
repeating them as he rummaged around enthusiastically in the engine:

We're not stokers and not carpenters either,
But we're not bitter, we have no regrets!

When he spotted me, he called out happily:

'This is going to cost you more than half a litre, Antosha! Those
Japs have completely lost it, the things they've done to the diesel
engine, I can hardly bear to look!'

'They're not Japanese, they're Germans,' I corrected him.

'Germans?' Kolya said. 'Ah, right, it's a BMW, and I've only
fixed Subarus before . . . I was wondering why everything was
done different . . . Never mind, I'll put it right! Only my head's
humming, the son of a bitch . . .'

'Look in on Sveta, she'll pour you a drop,' I said, accepting the
inevitable.

'No.' Kolya shook his head. 'Not while I'm working, no way
. . . Our first farm chairman taught me that – while you're messing
with the metal, not a single drop! You go, go on. I've got enough
here to keep me busy till evening.'

Mentally bidding farewell to the car, I walked out into the dusty,
hot street.

Little Romka was absolutely delighted at my visit. I walked in just
as Anna Viktorovna was about to suffer ignominious defeat in the
battle of the afternoon nap. Romka, a skinny, suntanned little kid, was
bouncing up and down on the springy bed and yelling ecstatically:

'I don't want to sleep by the wall! My knees get all bent!'

'What am I supposed to do with him?' asked Anna Viktorovna,
glad to see me. 'Hello, Anton. Tell me, does your Nadienka behave
like this?'

'No,' I lied.

Romka stopped jumping up and down and pricked up his ears.

'Why don't you take him and keep him?' Anna Viktorovna
suggested craftily. 'What do I want with a silly dunce like him?
You seem like a strict man, you'll teach him how to behave. He
can look after Nadienka, wash her nappies, wash the floors for
you, put the rubbish out . . .'

As she said all this Anna Viktorovna kept winking at me emphatically,
as if I really might take her suggestion seriously and carry
off little Romka as an underage slave.

'I'll think about it,' I said, to support her educational efforts.
'If he just won't do anything he's told, we'll take him for reeducation.
We've had worse cases, and they turned out as meek
as lambs!'

'No, you won't take me!' Romka said boldly, but he stopped
bouncing, sat down on the bed and pulled the blanket up over
his legs. 'What would he want with a silly dunce like me?'

'Then I'll put you in a boarding school,' Anna Viktorovna threatened.

'Only heartless people put children in boarding schools,' said
Romka, clearly repeating a phrase he'd heard somewhere. 'But
you're not heartless.'

'What am I supposed to do with him?' Anna Viktorovna repeated
rhetorically. 'Can I offer you some cold kvass?'

'Me too, me too!' Romka squealed, but a stern glance from his
mother shut him up.

'Thank you,' I said with a nod. 'Actually it was this silly dunce
that I came to see you about . . .'

'What has he been up to?' asked Anna Viktorovna, taking a businesslike
approach.

'It's just that Sveta told me about their adventures . . . about the
wolf. I'm a hunter, and the thing is . . .'

A minute later I was sitting at the table with a glass of cold
kvass, the centre of attention.

'Yes, I know what they say, but I'm a teacher,' Anna Viktorovna
was saying. 'They say wolves help clean up the forest . . . only
that's not true, of course, a wolf doesn't just kill sick animals, it
kills any animals it can get . . . But it's still a living creature. A
wolf 's not to blame for being a wolf. But here – right next to
the village! Chasing children! It drove them towards the cubs, do
you realise what that means?'

I nodded.

'It was teaching the cubs to hunt.' Anna Viktorovna's eyes lit
up, either with fear or that mother's fury that sends wolves and
bears running for the bushes. 'What was it – a man-eater?'

'It couldn't have been,' I said. 'There haven't been any cases of
wolves attacking people round here. There haven't even been any
reports of wolves living in these parts for a long time . . . most
likely it was a feral dog. But I want to check.'

'Yes, check,' Anna Viktorovna said firmly. 'And if . . . even if it's
a dog. If the children didn't imagine the whole thing . . .'

I nodded again.

'Shoot it,' Anna Viktorovna requested. Then she added in a
whisper: 'I can't sleep at night . . . for imagining . . . what could
have happened.'

'It was a doggy!' Romka piped up from the bed.

'Hush!' Anna Viktorovna shouted at him. 'All right then, come
here. Tell the nice man what happened.'

Romka didn't need to be asked twice. He got down off the
bed, came over to us, clambered up onto my knees with a very
serious air and looked into my eyes searchingly.

I ruffled up his coarse, sun-bleached hair.

'So this is what happened . . .' Romka began contentedly.

Anna Viktorovna looked at him in a very sad sort of way. I
could understand her. It was these little children's father that I
couldn't understand. All sorts of things can happen. So they were
separated. But how could anyone just cancel his children out of
his life and be happy just to pay maintenance?

'We walked and walked, you know, we were out for a walk,'
Romka told us with agonising slowness. 'And after we walked for
a while we reached the forest. And then Ksyusha started telling
me scary stories . . .'

I listened to his story very carefully. Well, the 'scary stories' might
be one more reason to believe the whole business was imagined.
But the child was speaking perfectly clearly, except for repeating
a few words, which was usual for a child his age; there was nothing
to find fault with.

Just to be on the safe side, I scanned the boy's aura. A little
human being. A good little human being, and I wanted to believe
he would grow up into a good adult. Not the slightest sign of
any Other potential. And no traces of magical influence.

But then, if Svetlana hadn't spotted anything, what could I
expect, with my second-grade abilities?
'And then the wolf laughed out loud!' Romka exclaimed,
throwing his hands up in the air in glee.

'Weren't you frightened?' I asked.

To my surprise, Romka thought about that for a long time.
Then he said:

'Yes, I was. I'm small, and the wolf was big. And I didn't have
a stick. And then I stopped being afraid.'

'So you're not afraid of the wolf now?' I asked. After an adventure
like that, any normal child would have developed a stammer,
but Romka had lost his.

'Not a bit,' said the boy. 'Oh, now you've put me off. What part
did I get to?'

'The part where the wolf laughed,' I said with a smile.

'Just exactly like a man,' said Romka.

So that was it. It was a long time since I'd had any dealings
with werewolves. Especially werewolves as brazen as this . . .hunting
children, only a hundred kilometres from Moscow. Had they been
counting on the fact that there was no Night Watch in the village?
Even then, the district office checked every missing person case.
They had a very skilful, specialised magician for that. From the
normal human viewpoint what he did was pure charlatanism –
he looked at photographs, and then either put them aside or phoned
the operations office and said in an embarrassed voice: 'I think
I've got something here . . . I'm not quite sure what . . .'

And then we would swing into action, drive out to the country,
find the signs . . . and the signs would be terrible, but we're used
to that. Then the werewolves would probably resist arrest, and
someone – it could easily be me – would wave his hand. And a
jangling grey haze would go creeping through the Twilight . . .

We rarely took their kind alive. But this time I really wanted
to.

'And what I think as well,' Romka said thoughtfully, 'is that the
wolf said something. I think so, I think so . . . Only he didn't talk,
I know wolves don't talk, do they? But I dream that he did talk.'

'And what did he say?' I asked cautiously.

'Go a-way, witch!' Romka said, trying in vain to imitate a hoarse
bass voice.

Right. Now I could issue the warrant for a search. Or at least
request help from Moscow.

It was a werewolf, no doubt about it. But fortunately for the
children, there was a witch there too.

A powerful witch.

Very powerful.

She hadn't just driven away the werewolf – she'd tidied up the
children's memories without leaving any trace. Only she hadn't
gone in deep. She hadn't expected there would be a vigilant
watchman in the village. The boy didn't remember anything when
he was awake, but in his dream – there it was. 'Go away, witch!'

How very interesting!

'Thank you, Romka.' I held out my hand to him. 'I'll go to the
forest and take a look.'

'But aren't you afraid? Have you got a gun?' he asked eagerly.

'Yes.'

'Show it to me!'

'It's at home,' Anna Viktorovna said strictly. 'And guns aren't toys
for children!'

Romka sighed and asked plaintively:

'Only don't shoot the cubs, all right? Better bring me one and
I'll train it as a dog! Or two, one for me, one for Ksyusha!'

'Roman!' Anna Viktorovna snapped in a voice of iron.

I found Ksyusha at the pond, as her mother said I would. A covey
of girls was sunbathing beside a pack of boys, and the gibes were
flying in both directions. The boy sunbathers were old enough
not to pull the girls' plaits any more, but they still didn't understand
what girls were any good for.

When I arrived everyone stopped talking and stared at me
warily. I hadn't put in an appearance at the village before.

'Ksyusha?' I asked the little girl I thought I'd seen in the street
with Romka.

The serious girl in a dark blue swimsuit looked at me, nodded
and said politely:

'Hi . . . hello.'

'Hello. I'm Anton, Svetlana Nazarova's husband. Do you know
her?' I asked.

'What's your daughter's name?' Ksyusha asked suspiciously.

'Nadya.'

'Yes, I know,' she said with a nod, getting up off the sand. 'You
want to talk about the wolves, right?'

I smiled.

'That's right.'

She glanced at the boys. The boys, not the girls.

'Uhuh, that's Nadya's dad,' said a freckle-faced kid who was
obviously from the village. 'My dad's fixing your car right now.'

He looked round proudly at his friends.

'We can talk here,' I said to reassure the children. It was terrible,
of course, to see normal kids living in normal families being so
cautious.

But it was better that they were.

'We went for a walk in the forest,' Ksyusha began, standing to
attention in front of me. I thought for a moment and sat down
on the sand – then the girl sat down too. Anna Viktorovna
certainly knew how to bring up her children. 'It was my fault
we got lost . . .'

One of the village kids giggled. But quietly. After the business
with the wolves Ksyusha was probably the most popular girl with
the boys in first class.

In principle she didn't tell me anything new. And there were
no traces of magic on her either. Only the mention of a bookcase
'with old books' made me prick up my ears.

'Do you remember any of the book titles?' I asked.

Ksyusha shook her head.

'Try to remember,' I asked her. I looked down at my feet, at
my long, irregular shadow.

The shadow rose up obediently to meet me.

And the cool, grey Twilight accepted me.

It's always a pleasure to look at children from the Twilight.

Even the most intimidated and unhappy of them still have auras
without any of the malice and bitterness that adults are shrouded in.

I apologised mentally to the kids – after all, they hadn't asked
me to do what I was going to do. And I ran the lightest possible,
imperceptible touch across them. Just to remove the slight traces
of Evil that had already stuck to them.

And then I stroked Ksyusha's hair and whispered: