Edgars Auziņš
Fascinating geography

And now my ears are getting unpleasantly stuffy again. Like taking off. The plane decreases altitude.

Of course, as a child, the girl imagined Moscow simply and clearly: the plane lands on Red Square, and happy October students Alinochka and Kostenka run to the mausoleum to admire grandfather Lenin, and then put a bold dot in the center of the square with a bright felt-tip pen. In fact, everything turned out to be much more prosaic – a typical airport, a banal stop, ordinary white and green Lipetsk buses and orc taxi drivers, impostors. It’s still a long way to get to the city center.

However, the newly minted sorceress remembered the text of the note; she did not need to go to the square at all, that she was not brought here from Siberia in order to look at the eternally sleeping Leader of the World Proletariat. They were waiting for her at the second, international terminal. She imagined a tall blond foreigner like «Ordinary Brad Pitt» smiling at her with sparkling snow-white teeth, walking with her arm and treating her to hamburgers at McDonald’s. Alina was never lucky in love. Either she lost her head over a man who had a girlfriend, or her lover turned out to be a female, or, oh, horror, perverts who wanted nothing more than erotic pleasures were interested in her. But why is life so unfair to her? She is an ordinary girl, no worse or better than her friends, half of whom lived with the most wonderful husbands. Fate didn’t like her. And so she dreamed: about Superman, a prince on a white horse, or just a strong defender. And when the girl fell into the magical layer of this world, her matrimonial dreams filled her head in double volume.

At the wheel of the bus sat a strange creature that could easily be dubbed an alien – red, with a large egg-shaped head and one single eye. The creature had no nose or mouth at all. The driver’s torso was much smaller than his head, and his three-fingered hands, like suction cups replacing nails, dug into the steering wheel.

«The fare is 15 rubles, buy a ticket from the bus driver,» Alina read and handed the money to the mysterious creature. The silent alien took the coins with the help of a thin string-tail and in the same way returned the change and ticket to the girl, and she, having punched her travel document, went into the cabin and sat down in an empty seat.

She leaned her forehead against the glass and sadly looked at the landscapes – ordinary Russia: both in the provinces and in the capital. Clouds no different from Siberian ones floated across the same blue sky. Nothing special, as if the non-magical world had returned to her life again. Alina was sad. It was like she was replaying in her memory the circumstances of leaving for another, as they called here, the second layer, and still could not understand: whether she had died or been reborn in a new capacity.

The girl was torn from such thoughts by noise… A fight? She shuddered and looked out the window – she had already arrived. She jumped out of her chair and ran out of the bus.

At the exit from the arrivals hall at Sheremetyevo-2 stood a tall young man with blond hair, who looked like a foreigner, wearing a blue robe up to his hips, tight leather trousers and platform boots. The same one that the girl saw at the moment of departure, rebirth, death, or whatever you call what happened to her. Alina wanted to jump back on the bus and go away from this terminal and the person she saw. She moved back, but when she wanted to put her hand on the railing of the bus, she found that she was grabbing an empty space. Too late.

The face of the man from the dying vision was more likely to be unhappy than angry, and did not at all resemble a collector of the souls of innocent girls, an evil demon of hell, and others like them. In his hand the guy held a leash with a black dragon. The animal grabbed the notebook on a beautiful plastic spring with its front paws and looked at the attackers with a pleading look. It was obvious that this pet furry did not intend to attack.

The asphalt between the guy and the attackers was torn up. In all likelihood, the stranger defended himself with earthen magic. Is it really a shaman? The magician’s first attack against the three hooligans ended in his favor, but what will happen next?

The guy was attacked by three orcs wearing taxi driver jackets. The dispute, most likely, was over which of them would take the foreign guest to the city center. Although an inner voice whispered to Alina: «This is not so!» Intervene! He’s the reason you’re here!»

Chapter 3. Battle with taxi drivers

The guy in the blue robe raised his right hand up, as if wanting to create a large combat fireball and rain down fire on the unfortunate taxi drivers and their personal vehicles.

A colleague, a battle mage, for some reason Alina decided for herself. She was both afraid and embarrassed to intervene. And rightly so, who needs an incompetent sorceress? Her fireballs, which she used to light the burners on the stove, could not compare in any way with real battle spells. Perhaps the girl would have succeeded, but, alas, she had no practice in this matter, and she was afraid to get into a fight, hoping for the Russian «Maybe» that the spells from the books of Olga Gromyko or Sergei Lukyanenko would work as described. What if the guy gets out on his own? He has a dragon. Fire-breathing, judging by the smoke from its nostrils.

The orcs, sensing their imminent death, retreated back to the cars, and the guy, taking advantage of the enemy’s momentary confusion, rushed away from the parking lot.

The unfortunate dragon, who did not expect this from his owner, almost let go of the notebook from his front paws and, stumbling, trotted after him.

– Prey! – the monsters roared and rushed together after the fleeing magician.

He turned around sharply and, noticing the chase, jumped. He summoned a levitation spell and jumped over the almost ten meter high fence that separated the parking lot from the airfield. The black dragon, whose owner had thrown away its leash, looked with a sad gaze either at the magician standing under the wing of the plane, or at the orcs approaching him in the clothes of taxi drivers.

– Dan, who did you leave me with? – he howled, clutching the notebook to his chest.

In the animal’s gaze one could read only one thing: «For what, Judas?» He tensed his small wings, twenty centimeters in span, and tried to take off, but, alas, the carcass turned out to be too heavy to lift. No matter how hard the pet was scolded, it could only jump a meter and, comically flapping its wings, fall and crush its tail.

But the orcs turned out to be much more perceptive. After another attempt by the dragon to imitate a black Boeing, one of the monsters jumped onto its back and, springing, grabbed onto the fence mesh at a height of almost five meters. Then it was a matter of technique, and the orc climbed to the other side of the airfield. The remaining two did the same, despite the fact that the dragon was indignant and promised them something unflattering. True, he babbled all his threats not in Russian, and no one had a chance to find out what fate he had in store for the nasty taxi drivers.

The owner, realizing that there was no way to escape the chase, ran under the stationary plane.

«He’s not a battle mage,» Alina said quietly under her breath, watching the guy hide from the taxi drivers behind the landing gear of the plane. – And not a shaman. The asphalt is probably the work of these orcs.

The dragon, who sat down under a pillar and began to write notes, glared at the strange girl with a yellow eye with an elongated black pupil, but, realizing that danger could hardly be expected from an unarmed girl, he continued to do his job.

– Levitation! – Alina commanded herself, repeating all Dan’s intonations and spreading her arms wide.

From the films, the girl remembered that the magician did exactly this when taking off. It didn’t work, so she jumped and repeated the spell before her feet could touch the ground. Managed!!! She felt that she had suddenly become weightless and could fly anywhere.

The dragon followed her beyond the fence with a look full of envy and, stopping writing, also began jumping up and down, repeating the word ’levitation’. Alas, what is given to people is not given to magical mammals, so he had no choice but to cling to the chain-link mesh with his claws and climb over the fence, as the orcs did.

While the clumsy, fat-assed dragon, holding a notebook in his teeth, climbed onto the field, a real battle unfolded there.

As soon as Alina reached the Hungarian Airlines airbus, around which Dan and a trio of orcs were almost playing tag, she quite accidentally released a real combat fireball towards the pursuers of the stranger magician.

The spell happened by itself: the girl just imagined how a small light flies out of her hand and grows to the size of ball lightning. And as soon as she uttered the word «fireball,» something lit up in her heart, hot lava flowed through the arteries to the palm of her right hand and, flying out into the air, turned into a half-meter ball.

Why did she decide to help this strange boy in a blue robe? Why is he good, but the orcs must run away with their backs scorched? If it weren’t for the memories of the moment of her departure from the banal world, the girl would not have paid any attention to this tall, strong guy in a blue robe and his problems. And since this was the only witness of her transition to the world of magicians, then he must be saved from the orcs, even if these monsters are «good» gentlemen. But what about who to interrogate if they kill the magician?

Three non-humans, seeing a strong combat spell, collapsed to the ground, pressing the backs of their heads with their paws. It’s not without reason that they say that the orc offspring are not distinguished by intelligence and intelligence: the monsters bowed their heads, but they placed their butts just right so that the fireball thrown by Alina would set their pants on fire in the most indecent place.

The magician, who was escaping from the nonhumans, stopped and stared in amazement at the savior who had appeared out of nowhere, muttering a single word under his breath: «Lina.» There was no end to his surprise, but it was too early to relax and celebrate the victory. And Alina herself wondered why he was so scared that he knew her name and called her in the European manner.

– Letistenote 2! Let’s go! – the black dragon sitting on the fence screamed as if he had been cut, which brought the guy out of his stupor about the girl who saved him, and the sorceress – well… also out of her stupor.

The sorceress, who did not know the language in which the animal screamed, only looked where the dragon was pointing with its paw. The magician also stared there.

The fireball that set the orcs on fire did not melt in the air, but continued on its way… towards the small Boeing at the next exit. And the plane had already turned on its engines. You don’t need to be an aviator to understand what happens when a fireball touches fuel. So it’s not difficult to demolish the airport. Bin Laden will be jealous.

Why do fireballs go out on their own only in cartoons and science fiction novels? However, Alina did not waste time thinking about it.

– Water cannon! – the girl blurted out the first spell that came to her mind and extended both hands forward, palms out.

It didn’t take long for the force to appear again. Now it seemed to the sorceress that her heart had drowned in the depths of the ocean, and a stream of water gushed from her palms under great pressure, so that she could hardly stand on her feet.

I must say, Alina made it just in time, and the hissing firebrand fell to the ground literally five meters from the plane’s wing.

– Phew!

Dan, smiling contentedly, looked at the heavily breathing magician.

But, alas, it was too early to relax again. She was guaranteed a meeting with the asphalt that the sorceress would remember for a long time. Two orcs took a tactically correct action and, knocking her down, sat on her like on a log: one on her shoulder blades, the other on her knees.

The cheek with which Alina hit the ground ached with pain, but she could not even raise her head.

– Why did you interfere, bitch? – barked the orc, who settled on his shoulder blades. – Pink FIFA doesn’t like amateur performances!

No matter how much she wanted, the girl could not say a word. And while two disgusting taxi drivers were holding her back, the remaining one attacked Dan with a knife. And he would not have lived if not for an accident.

– Hey, orc, wait! – the black dragon shouted in Czech, having already climbed over the fence and settled down not far from the battlefield with his notes.

The taxi driver, who obviously did not know any language other than Russian, stared questioningly at the animal, which spoke a language very similar to this Russian, but in a slightly different language. Ukrainian? Moldavian? Bulgarian?

– What are you staring at? You must attack Dan with a brutal expression on your face, and my master must skillfully dodge you. Otherwise there is not enough pathos in the poem.

The orc, blinking his eyes, looked questioningly at the foreign dragon, who, after his fiery speech, again began to diligently scribble in his notebook.

Dan, who really disliked his pet’s penchant for poetry, winked at him. It turns out that sometimes the stupid speech of a graphomaniac has a stronger effect on the enemy than a spell. All the orcs abandoned their prey and went to the writer. Have you really decided to read his heroic poem?

Alina, of course, got up, without ceasing to rub her cheek, which was torn and bleeding.

– Jak se jmenujete, Linanote 3? – Dan looked sideways at the girl.

Alina stared questioningly at the magician with a stunned look. His phrase was similar to a stupid student stem: «Who wrote Turgenev’s Mu-mu?»

«I don’t name anyone,» she snorted. – And I’m not Lina. You’ve made a mistake.

– You don’t understand me, Russian woman. I’ll ask you what your name is. And Lina… You look a lot like her.

The girl introduced herself and smiled back, as much as her broken cheek would allow her. But the magician opened his mouth in surprise. Even if it’s not Lina, Alina, what’s the difference.

– Are you a foreigner? – she asked in response. – But you know Russian quite well.

– I’m coming to Moscow from Prague. My name is Dan. I study Russian at school. I am a necromancer. I will get…

But he didn’t have time to finish. The orcs, who suspiciously quickly ceased to be interested in the dragon’s poetry, looked at the victim with a grin. But Alina understood perfectly well that the magician she met at the airport did not know combat spells. It’s a shame not to be able to use levitation, but other bells and whistles require strength. If Dan is a necromancer, then all his abilities are in resurrecting the dead, and not in throwing fireballs. That’s why the guy chased the orcs around the plane, because the only thing he could do to them was to exhaust their physical strength.

The sorceress stretched her hands forward and whispered:

– Fuck-tibi-doh-tibi-doh! Kirieshkus-dimedrolus!

She closed her eyes and imagined small crackers, filled with sleeping pills, flying out of the palm of her right hand. For some reason, out of fear, she decided that the stupid orcs would certainly rush to the crackers scattered on the ground and begin to devour them. As if the movie Shurik’s unsuccessful experience with the professor’s sausage didn’t mean anything.

But, alas, even the first point of Alina’s plan failed. She has not yet reached that absolute level when any imagined spells would be translated into reality. I rolled my lip, as they say: it was one to noon in the magical world, and I already wanted to throw homemade spells.

So it turned out that instead of a hail of crackers, a pack of «Kirieshki’ suddenly fell out of the sorceress’s hand. This would have been the end of the stupid idiot if one of the orcs had not picked up the crackers and swallowed them along with the packaging. Alina grimaced, how unsympathetic she was to such a habit of monsters.

Suddenly the non-human grabbed his stomach and spat out a pile of white rounds onto the ground… sucked diphenhydramine tablets. In the best traditions of «Operation Y», as you would expect!

However, the effect of the spell immediately manifested itself, and the orc, unable to overcome gluttony, fell to the ground, snoring loudly.

«You are a very powerful magician, Alina,» Dan patted her on the shoulder. «You are no worse than Lina, with whom I confused you.»

The two remaining monsters, having recovered from putting their comrade to sleep, grabbed him by the arms and ran towards the airport service premises, loudly shouting to the skeletons in the trucks that hooligan magicians were operating at the fence.

«I would probably die if Alina didn’t save me,» said the necromancer, taking the girl’s hand and touching the back of her hand with his lips.

Oddly enough, in her twenty-three years of life the girl had never met such a gallant gentleman as the young necromancer turned out to be. And even if he doesn’t look like Sylvester Stallone or Leonardo DiCaprio, it doesn’t matter that his long-nosed face is not at all photogenic, and his amber eyes combined with thick silver hair made him look like a Japanese cartoon character. But despite all this, there was something attractive about him. She lowered her gaze and covered her bruised cheek with her hand.

– Is a Russian girl embarrassed? – the magician pouted, – Dan doesn’t understand.

– Hey, what are you doing there? – a skeleton on a cart, driving towards the place where the sorceress and the necromancer stood, shouted into a megaphone. – Who allowed you to walk along the runway as if it were Arbat?

The skeletons in Novosibirsk and Moscow were in exactly the same uniforms, only on the back of their orange vests were different airport names.

From her past life, Alina knew very well what the risks of walking along the tarmac were: if you weren’t arrested and called a terrorist, you’d be run over by an airplane or blasted with such hot air that you’d turn into a chop. Airports in the world of magicians were no different, with the exception of the skeletal-goblin staff, of course.

– Levitation! – Alina and Dan said, each in their own language, and jumped over the fence.

– And what about me? – the dragon howled, starting to climb the net in the opposite direction.

«You’ll catch up, poet,» the necromancer waved his hand and walked towards the transport stop.

The sorceress, limping on her leg that was broken on the asphalt (and she only now felt pain in her knee), trudged behind. She still had nowhere to go, and this young man, whom she saw at the most terrible moment in her life (or death), could explain something. What if the ticket was his doing?

«Excuse me, Dan,» she interrupted the short pause, «what did these airport orcs want from you?» Who is Pink Fifa?

– Dan doesn’t know. «Dan is coming to catch Pink Fifa,» he answered dryly and looked back towards the fence.

The persistent dragon had already climbed back, unfortunately for the skeletons, and was rushing after the owner and his random sorceress acquaintance. The necromancer slowly walked to the stop, crossing his arms over his chest and looking at the sky. Alina kept trying to look into his face, but the sharp-nosed magician kept turning away from her.

«Dan, Dan,» she became too intrusively attached to him.

– Tell me, beautiful girl, where in this city should the polyglot magician live?

She stared questioningly at the foreign tourist.

– Dan wants to know Russian without an accent. Then Dan tells the beautiful girl Alina why being with him is dangerous.

«But,» the sorceress became embarrassed, «I have never been beautiful.» I’m ugly.

He stopped abruptly and turned around, grabbing her hands.

– There is no such thing as an ugly girl, every girl is beautiful!

If he had paid attention not only to the self-critical Alina, he would have noticed how his dragon suddenly stopped and began to finish writing the poem.

– And also, Dan, it doesn’t matter to me that it’s dangerous with you, since only you can explain to me what happened to me. You saw it all. You were in non-magical Novosibirsk. And maybe you know who sent me the plane ticket. I don’t know where to go, who to look for, what is expected of me, why did I leave that life? Let me be by your side until I find the answers to my questions. My intuition tells me to do just that.

«No,» the necromancer snapped, quickening his pace.

– Yes! – the sorceress answered persistently, catching up with him. «I saw how helpless you were.» You don’t know how to cast combat spells, and your poet can’t even breathe fire on the enemy to protect you!

– I will show someday that Dan is not helpless and knows how to fight. But Dan does it at too high a price. He doesn’t do this over trifles like orcs.

The dragon jumped forward and, looking displeasedly at Alina, read in broken Russian, as he said, the quatrain he had just written from his brilliant poem.

The Black Dragon and the Russian know, And the ungrateful girl understands, She will be asking for forgiveness, When the Dragon publishes his book, And becomes a great author.

– Which of my ill-wishers taught you Russian? – the magician cursed in his native language.

«Idiot, do you still doubt that I am the most talented dragon in the whole world?» – the pet was offended and, sitting down by the side of the road, wrote down a couple more lines in a notebook.

While he was distracted by the manuscript, the sorceress returned to the question that there was no one to protect Dan. She, of course, admitted that she was not much of a magician, because she had never even studied at the appropriate school.

«You are a strong battle mage, Alina,» the necromancer praised the modest girl, «you use the author’s spell, you are a good warrior, you come with the first layer.»

The terminology is unclear, but certainly familiar. The girl began to remember the novels of Sergei Lukyanenko, where six layers of Twilight were noted. She even tried to tell Dan something about the books she had read, but the necromancer just shook his head and began to desperately convince her new acquaintance that all the stories from writers from the first layer never reflect the actual state of things, and promised to tell about the structure of the world as soon as he will be able to speak Russian without an accent.

The companion who had imposed herself on his head was frightened, but Dan only reassured her and added again that he wanted to speak with the beautiful girl only in her native language. From another compliment, Alina blushed again and walked, looking at the toes of her shoes.

All her classmates at school laughed at her at one time. Because of this, after finishing ninth grade, she went to college, but even there the ridicule of the tall, thin girl did not stop. If there are beautiful princesses in the world, then for balance there should also be stuffed animals with long ugly noses, thin lips, small, poorly developed breasts, chubby knees and narrow hips. You don’t choose your appearance, and neither do congenital diseases. Alina suffered from a weak heart all the time, but for some reason here, in the magical analogue of her own world, she stopped feeling pain in her chest. But all this is not so important… the foreigner called her beautiful. What bad taste this necromancer has.

The girl was distracted from these thoughts by Dan’s shout. He stood on the steps of a stopped minibus and waved his hand to her. The dragon writer had already settled into the front seat next to the driver, a thick-headed golem.

– Alina, do you want to go to the city? – asked the necromancer.

– Yes, sure.

He gallantly let her go ahead of him into the salon and slammed the door.

– Why is the driver a golem? – the sorceress asked him in a whisper.

In fact, minibuses are a purely Russian phenomenon, and the foreigner did not have the slightest idea about the national characteristics of local roads and drivers.

«So that if she crashes into a pole, she won’t die,» the pitch black man sitting opposite her whispered.

«Schumacher’s children are the same as in that life,» she thought. It’s a pity that there was no one to tell these thoughts to. The minibus rushed at full speed towards Moscow, and Alina and Dan played a staring contest and occasionally complained to each other that they were both seeing the capital of Russia for the first time, and where to find a polyglot magician capable of putting fluency in Russian into the mind of a necromancer, they had no representation.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), they were unable to reach the city safely. As soon as the minibus passed the ring road, a police car jumped out across it, and the golem driver had to stop the Gazelle, although slightly denting the side of the patrol Zhiguli car.

A goblin in a gray uniform got out of the car and, looking displeasedly at the damage and presenting his ID, asked the golem:

– Police Sheremetyevo-2. Where is the citizen of the Czech Republic, Daniel Spatnynote 4, necromancer, twenty-five years old, and his black dragon?

The creature sitting next to the driver closed the notebook and chattered when the goblin stared at him:

– I am a white dragon, and you are colorblind, and Dan is not in this machine.

«Alina,» the necromancer whispered to his companion, «you make me become invisible, prosimnote 5. The battle mage must be able to walk to the first layer.»

Should, but not obliged. The sorceress could not do this. And if such an ability came with a full set of magic spells in one package with fireballs, water cannons and diphenhydramine, then she had not yet learned how to use it.

True, there was a clue: all the spells that she cast during the battle with the orcs came from her heart, whatever she wished came true. Yes, with diphenhydramine there was a slight overlay, but still, some semblance of what was desired was achieved. And since Dan claimed that any battle mage could hide in the non-magical analogue of this world, then the spell should work properly. In addition, Alina couldn’t get the names of two parallel worlds out of her head: the first and second layers. Almost according to Lukyanenko. How did Gorodetsky go into the Twilight? Maybe the same principles work on this second layer?

The sorceress found her shadow and imagined that she was falling into it. No, it didn’t work! What was written by science fiction writers in that world did not work here. Or was she just not trying hard enough? The girl once again presented Twilight as it was shown in films, and as the author described matter in novels. But, alas, the substance invented or spotted in the magical worlds by Sergei Lukyanenko refused to obey her. If, in general, there was Twilight around the sorceress.

Dan looked at her pleadingly. No, she couldn’t let her new acquaintance down. Alina closed her eyes and imagined that she was becoming transparent, disappearing, the same thing happening with the necromancer and his dragon.

While the sorceress was weaving a spell to move to another world, the black dragon convinced the police goblin that he still does not distinguish colors, and that there are color blind people who confuse white and black, and he, the dragon, has an accent that is not Czech at all, but Moldavian, and his owner works at one of the construction sites in the center of Moscow. How the animal managed to find out about the Moldovan workers being brought to the capital is unknown, but from the outside his speech looked convincing.

Meanwhile, Alina slowly erased the images of her companions from the second layer. And suddenly… the same feeling: the colors around lost their saturation, and then, as if someone had turned on a switch, and the colors returned to their places. «So this is what happened to me in Tolmachevo,» the thought flashed through her head like a spark.

And now it’s no longer a golem sitting in the minibus, but a bald bully driver, and he communicates with an ordinary Russian cop. He, judging by the conversations, issues a fine for driving on the wrong side of the road. And in the GAZelle’s interior, instead of pitch-black creatures, vampires and other magical creatures, there are ordinary people.

«Here it is, the first layer,» Dan said, taking the sorceress by the hand, «you won’t see us magicians here.» We need to hide quickly. As long as Alina has strength. If she uses up all her magical power, she will die.

But why then, there, in Novosibirsk, did she not lose her abilities and die? One more question for the collection.

Dan walked through the closed door of the minibus and offered his hand to the sorceress. The dragon followed and all three decided to get away as quickly as possible from the GAZelle, on which someone had set a goblin policeman.

It couldn’t have come at a better time when a long red truck passed by, carrying a shipment of Coca-Cola. It was simply impossible not to jump into such a car. So all three fled from the scene along the first layer. Luckily for them, the car in the non-magical world was driving just in time to a store near one of the metro stations. And as soon as the trio finished their journey among the soda cans, Alina returned herself and her comrades back to the second layer.

«It worked,» Dan took a breath, looking around. «You are a strong magician, you need to be on the first layer for twenty-four minutes,» he deliberately looked at his watch, «and not lose your power.» An ordinary magician can be there for ten minutes, or fifteen. Rare mage lasts longer. You are stronger than Lin.

The tired girl sat down on a bench at the entrance to the subway and greedily inhaled the air of the magical world. Although she is a powerful magician according to Dan, this time being invisible took a lot of her strength. Maybe it’s because she didn’t just rub herself over the first layer. It’s okay, she’ll figure this out later. And how did her new acquaintance know what the first layer looked like? Has he been there before with another magician? Or he can do it himself, he’s just saving his strength, you poor bourgeois!