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Medea sat with her old legs stretched out. She picked at the soil between the roots of a juniper bush and called to Nike. A tarnished ring with a small pink coral lay in her hand.

“Another find?” Nike asked in delight.

Everybody knew about Medea’s unusual talent. She shook her head. “How shall I put it? A loss, more like. Your mother lost this ring. She thought the sea had washed it away, but here it is.”

She put the simple little ring in Nike’s hand and thought, “Does it still hurt? It seems it does.”

“When?” Nike asked tersely. She guessed she was skirting a forbidden topic, the long-standing quarrel between the sisters.

“The summer of 1946,” Medea replied quickly.

Nike held the ring in her hand, the coral still gleaming pink, but dead. Everybody crowded around, looking into her hand, as if it really was a living creature that was lying there.

Georgii glanced down over the women’s heads: “Tatar. My mother has one almost exactly the same.”

Katya cast a covetous eye at it. “Mum, can I try it on.”

Masha too held out her hand to take a closer look. It was not a big miracle, but a miracle nevertheless.

Suddenly little Tanya shouted, “Look! Look who it is!”

Someone was hurtling down the steep slope of the hill toward them. He was flying with the speed of a skier, jumping over the occasional bushes, skating over the scree, squatting down, swerving from side to side, braking with one foot then with the other. Before him rushed a cascade of small stones, and behind him rose a plume of dust. His face was invisible beneath the peak of his baseball cap, but Nora immediately recognized him by his white jeans: it was her new neighbor.

Georgii glowered at him. The man was agile, but a poser. Butonov flew, just ahead of a minor avalanche of stones, into the middle of the clearing, jumped up on the spot, and froze like a statue. Then he dusted himself down and, addressing himself to Nora, said, “I saw you from the Village when you were approaching the road, and now I’ve caught up.”

Everyone, including Medea, looked at him with interest, but that was nothing new for Butonov. He took off his cap, ran his hands over his face, and shook them as if they were wet.

“You approached Karatash from the left, then?” Georgii asked briskly.

“Where?” Butonov asked in return.

“This hill,” Georgii said, indicating it with a nod.

“Yes, from the left,” Butonov confirmed.

Georgii knew this inconspicuous path but did not take the children along it, considering the descent with its loose scree too dangerous.

“Who is he? Who is he?” Masha nagged Nike.

Nike shrugged. “A vacationer. He’s staying with Aunt Ada. He looked in yesterday with Nora.”

“Oh yes, of course, I heard someone come in. I put the children to bed and fell asleep myself.”

“And see what a dreamboat you missed. Some hunk!” Nike whispered in Masha’s ear.

“Right, on your feet now, everyone!” Georgii commanded.

Liza started whining and clinging to her mother’s legs. “Mummy, carry me, I’m tired.”

“Walk, walk yourself, you’re a big girl,” Nike said, fending her daughter off absentmindedly.

“Masha, carry me for a bit, eh, Masha?” she said, latching on to Masha.

“Who is he, then?” Masha asked.

“Half-athlete, half-masseur,” Nike grunted. “Don’t get too excited, he’s not your cup of tea. He’s completely thick.” She promptly called over to Butonov, who was standing some way off: “So what’s this, Valerii? Changed your mind at the last minute and decided to catch up with us?”

“Yes, I looked down and saw this nice bunch of people. I thought I must be completely thick to be the only person left behind in the Village.”

Masha and Nike burst out laughing: the man was a mind-reader.

“Have your landlord and landlady gone out?” Nike enquired.

“This is their second day hitting the bottle. They’ve got visitors, and that’s not my favorite occupation,” Butonov replied, unexpectedly primly, having probably sensed something uncomplimentary in the women’s laughter.

Georgii turned to Butonov: “I’ll go first, you bring up the rear.”

Valerii nodded. Georgii jumped down, following the path. Butonov let everyone go in front of him. Masha with Liza on her shoulders went immediately ahead of him. He caught up with her and touched her forearm: “Let me carry your daughter.”

Masha shook her head.

“No, she won’t let you. Take Alik if you like.”

But Alik didn’t want him to either.

Masha felt the spot this athlete or whatever he was had just touched. The skin was burning. She automatically felt her other arm—no, it was only the spot he had touched that was burning. She stopped, took Liza off her shoulders, and said quietly to her: “Liza, walk yourself, I’m not feeling well just at the moment.”

Liza looked at her with her clever eyes. “Shall I carry your bag?”

“Oh, how sweet you are,” Masha said, delighted by such unexpected goodheartedness in the spoiled child. “When I get tired, I’ll ask you, all right?”

It was the start of the section of the path with a sheer drop on one side. Once upon a time, a hundred years ago, there had been a road here which the local smugglers had used to ferry their precious goods out through the coves, and in those days you could drive a bullock cart along it. Year by year the path had crumbled away. The smugglers who had once looked after the road, shoring it up, reinforcing the slopes, had long since died out, some of old age, some more violently, and their descendants had either been deported or become bureaucrats, first in the old tsarist council, then in the district soviet, exchanging one form of criminality for another. Now it was only Medea who remembered the illicit romantic past of these parts, and perhaps a few old Crimeans who had long since moved on, to the Central Crimea if they were lucky.

“In a hundred years or so it will have crumbled away completely,” Georgii remarked.

Medea nodded fairly indifferently. Katya and Artyom seemed not to hear what he had said—for the old and the very young a hundred years, for different reasons, is too long a period of time to be taken very seriously.

Nora, trying not to look to the right, into the ravine, was leading Tanya with hands damp with fear. Tanya had refused a ride on Georgii’s shoulders. Nora was upbraiding herself for dragging the child on such a hazardous outing. It was very, very unwise, but she could hardly be the only one to turn back halfway. Tanya, incredibly enough, was not complaining but, lost in some fantasy of her own, asked periodically, “Mummy, are we going to see a castle?” She couldn’t be persuaded that there wasn’t going to be a castle, only sea.

On the last stretch of the sheer path, however, a castle duly materialized. It was an eroded limestone feature raising gothic spires of different heights toward heaven. The underlying granite of the Karadag spur, igneous tufas, and tertiary deposits combined, as Georgii told them, in a formation of geological strata the like of which was to be found nowhere else in the world. It was as if icicles many meters long were growing upward, in some places vertically, while in others, revealing the prevalence of a wind blowing from one direction, they all inclined the same way, like the tentacles of some gigantic subterranean creature.

“Mummy, look, there’s the castle!” Tanya shouted, and everyone laughed.