There were so many. The trees prevented me from seeing just how many of them were standing there. If not for the forest, the Others would have stretched all the way back to the horizon. They had let the ones I had known come through to the front.
“Yes, Tiger Cub, I remember,” I said.
I didn’t feel any more fear or anger. Only sadness-a calm, weary sadness.
“They look so real,” Tiger Cub said and smiled. “But they bring no joy at all…”
“You’re looking good,” I muttered, for the sake of saying something at least.
Tiger Cub pensively examined her tiger-skin cape. She nodded. “I made an effort. For the sake of this meeting.”
“Hi, Igor!” I said. “Hi, Alisa!”
They nodded. Then Alisa said, “Good for you, Anton. You’re powerful. But don’t get too bigheaded, Light One! Merlin himself has been helping you.”
I looked around at the old man.
“Sometimes,” Merlin admitted tactfully. “Well…besides that outlandish tower escapade of yours. And then when you were fighting that werewolf in the forest…And only just a little bit…”
I wasn’t listening to him any longer. I was gazing around, trying to find the one whose words were most important of all to me.
Kostya pushed aside the Other he had been standing behind and came forward toward me. Of everyone there, he probably looked the best and the most absurd at the same time: He was wearing a tattered space suit that had once been white, but was now blackened and burned through in several places.
“Hello, neighbor,” he said.
“Hi, Kostya,” I replied. “I…I’ve been wanting to say something to you for a long time: Forgive me.”
He frowned. “Will you drop those Light affectations of yours…What is there to forgive?…We fought honestly, and you won honestly. Everything’s fine. I ought to have realized that you weren’t erecting the Shield because you were afraid…”
“Even so,” I said. “You know that I hate my job. I’ve turned into a small screw…a tiny part of a machine that gives no quarter and shows no mercy!”
“And how else could it be, between us?” Kostya suddenly smiled. “Drop that…And you…forgive my father. If you can. He never used to be like that.”
I nodded. “I’ll try. I really will.”
“Tell him that Mom and I are waiting for him.” Kostya paused and then added firmly, “Here.”
“I’ll tell him,” I promised, trying to spot Polina in the crowd.
Kostya suddenly took a step forward, shook my hand awkwardly-and stepped away again.
And in that brief instant when our hands touched, I felt his cold hand turn warm, saw his skin flush pink and his eyes gleam once again. Kostya stood there swaying, looking at his hand.
But my hand was seared by an icy chill…
The ranks of Others shuddered. Slowly, involuntarily, they began moving toward me. There was hunger and envy in their eyes-in all of their eyes, even Tiger Cub’s, even Igor’s. Even Murat’s…
“Stop!” Merlin shouted. He darted forward and stood between me and the withdrawn Others, raising his hands high in the air. I noticed that he carefully skirted around me to avoid touching me.
“Stop, you mad fools! A few minutes of life…that is not what we want, not what we have been waiting for!”
They stopped and looked at one another with embarrassment. Then they moved back. But the hungry fire was still blazing in their eyes.
“Leave now, Anton,” Merlin said. “You understand everything and you know what you have to do. Go!”
“I can’t get through. The Last Watch is up there,” I said. “Unless your golem has stopped them…”
Merlin looked straight through me at something. Then he sighed. “The golem is dead. Both golems are dead. A pity, I used to go up to the fifth level sometimes and play with the snake. But it was sad and lonely too.”
“Can you take me through?” I asked.
Merlin shook his head. “Not many of us are capable of going up to the fifth level. Only a very few can reach the first level, and even so we are powerless there.”
“I won’t be able to get past them,” I said. “And I can’t go straight forward to the seventh level either.”
We smiled at each other.
“You will be helped,” Merlin said. “Only, do everything right, I beg of you.”
I nodded.
I didn’t know if it would work. All I could do was try.
The next moment the air around me started to vibrate as if something seething with a huge excess of Power had broken through the Twilight. What levels, what distances? What did these mean in the face of this Power resonating in awareness of its own self?
Little Nadya stepped down onto the grass. She waved her arms about but couldn’t keep her balance and plopped down onto her bottom, looking up at me.
“Get up,” I said strictly. “It’s damp!”
Nadya jumped to her feet, dusted off her velvet jumpsuit, and jabbered, “Mommy taught me how to walk into the shadow! That’s one! And there was a monkey and a snake fighting, and they both beat each other. That’s two! Two men and a woman were watching the snake and saying very bad words. That’s three! And Mommy told me to bring you straight back home for supper! That’s four!”
She gulped when she saw the huge crowd around her, then lowered her eyes in embarrassment and said in a polite little girl’s voice, “Hello…”
“Hello,” said Merlin, squatting down in front of her. “Are you Nadezhda?”
“Yes,” Nadya said proudly.
“I’m glad I’ve seen you,” said Merlin. “Take your daddy home. Only not straight home. First go back to the sleeping people. And then home.”
“Backward means forward?” Nadya asked.
“That’s right.”
“You look like a wizard from a cartoon,” Nadya said suspiciously. Just to be on the safe side, she took hold of my hand, and that clearly made her feel more confident.
“I used to be a wizard,” Merlin confessed.
“A good one or a bad one?”
“All kinds,” he said with a sad smile. “Go now, Nadezhda.”
Nadya cast a wary look at Merlin and asked me, “Shall we go, Daddy?”
“Yes, let’s go,” I said.
I turned around and nodded to Merlin, who was watching us silently, in sad anticipation. The first to raise her hand and wave good-bye was Tiger Cub. Then Alisa. And then they were all waving to us…waving good-bye forever.
And when my daughter, the newly initiated Absolute Enchantress, took a step forward, I stepped after her, holding her hand in order not to lose my way in the swirling vortex of Power that had completed its circle and was returning us to our world.
Because the Twilight, of course, has no end, just as no ring or circle has an end.
Because the warmth of human love and the cold of human hate, the running of beasts and the singing of birds, the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings and the sprouting of a grain through the earth do not pass away, leaving no trace. Because the universal stream of living Power out of which parasites like the blue moss and the Others greedily snatch their crumbs does not disappear without a trace-it returns to the world that is awaiting rebirth.
Because we all live on the seventh level of the Twilight.
“HOW! LOVELY! IT IS! HERE!” NADYA EXCLAIMED.
I picked her up in my arms. We were standing on a cobbled street in Edinburgh, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of sleeping people. The sirens were drawing closer and closer as the time of the Others was coming to an end.
“Yes,” I agreed. “Everything here is real.”
“Only, everyone’s sleeping,” Nadya observed sadly. “Like in the fairy story about the sleeping princess. Can I wake them up?”
She could… She could do anything at all now-if she was taught.
“But aren’t you tired?” I asked. My legs were buckling under me and I was feeling a bit dizzy.