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WHERE DO WE GET THE IDEA THAT MILK STRAIGHT FROM THE COW TASTES good?

It rade Soue, about hoonderfully tasty ht from the cow And the naive city kids believe it

In fact ht from the cow tastes rather peculiar But after it’s been left to stand in the cellar for a day and cooled off¡ª now that’s a different estive enzymes drink it And there are plenty of therown-ups have no business drinking milk¡ªit’s children who need it

But people usually don’t pay much attention to nature’s opinion

And Others pay even less

I reached for the jug and poured lass Cold, with a s make the creae s No more¡ªI had to leave soe¡ªit was quite a big one, with fifty houses¡ªhad only one cow It was a good thing there was at least one and I had a strong suspicion that the hunificent yields Her owner, Granny Sasha, already an old woman at forty, had no real reason to feel proud As well as Raika, she owned the pig Borka, the goat Mishka, and a gaggle of miscellaneous poultry without any nahter to drink genuine ht any illnesses Granny Sasha could have fed her on sawdust and it wouldn’t have changed a thing

But genuine ood Never mind the characters in the ads¡ªthey can arrive in a village with their cartons of lea!" as often as they like They’re paid s easier for the peasants, ere long ago broken of the habit of keeping any kind of livestock They can just carry on abusing the politicians and the "city folk" and not worry about pasturing any cows

I put downbetween two trees The locals eois I arrived in a fancy car and brought roceries, spent the whole day lounging in a hammock with a book In a place where everybody else spent the whole day roa to fix their hangovers

"Hello, Anton Sergeevich," someone said over the top of the fence¡ªit was Kolya, a local alcoholic He hts¡ªand how come he’d remembered my name?

"Hoas the drive?"

"Hello, Kolya," I greeted hiet up out of the hammock He wouldn’t appreciate it in any case That wasn’t what he’d come for "It was fine, thanks"

"Need any help with anything, around the house and the garden, or you know" Kolya asked hopelessly "I thought, you know, I’d just come and ask"

I closedtoward the horizon, glowed blood-red throughI could do Not the slightest little thing A sixth or seventh-level intervention would have been enough to free the poor devil Kolya fro for alcohol, cure his cirrhosis and inspire hi vodka and thrashing his wife

And what if I had defied all the stipulations of the Treaty and esture of the hand And then what? There wasn’t any work in the village And nobody in the city wanted Kolya, a former collective farm mechanic Kolya didn’t have any money to start ’his own business’ He couldn’t even buy a piglet

So he’d go off again to look foroff his anger on his wife, who drank asIt wasn’t the man I needed to heal¡ªit was the entire planet Earth

Or at least this particular sixth part of the planet Earth The part with the proud naeevich, I’m desperate" Kolya said pathetically

Who needs a fore where the collective farm has fallen apart and the only private farmer was burned out three times before he took the hint?

"Kolya," I said "Didn’t you have some kind of special trade in the army? A tank driver?"

Did we have any paid professional soldiers at all? It would be better if he went off to the Caucasus, instead of just dropping dead in a year’s time from all that fake vodka

"I wasn’t in the army," Kolya said in a miserable voice "They wouldn’t take iving eevich, if you want soht Don’t you worry, I’ll tear them to pieces!"

"Kolya," I asked hiht it was knocking a bit yesterday"

"Sure, I’ll take a look!" said Kolya, brightening up "You know, I"

"Take the keys" I tossed him the bunch "And I owe you a bottle"

Kolya broke into a happy smile "Would you like me to wash your car too? It must have cost a lot and these roads of ours"

"Thanks," I said "I’d be very grateful"

"Only I don’t want any vodka," Kolya suddenly said, and I started in surprise What was this, had the world turned upside down? "It’s got no taste to it now a little bottle of hohted, Kolya opened the gate and set off toward the s before

And then Svetlana came out of the house¡ªI didn’t see her, but I sensed her Thata sweet after-lunch nap Sveta came over, stood at the head of the hammock and paused for a moment, then she put her cool hand on my forehead

"Bored?"

"Uh huh," I le thing How can you stand it here?"

"I’ve been coe since I was a child," Svetlana said "I re and happy He used to give me rides on his tractor when I was still a little snot-nose He was sober He used to sing songs Can you is better before?" I asked

"People drank less," Svetlana replied laconically "Anton, why didn’t you re to¡ªI felt a treht There aren’t Watcha bone and how long does it last?" I answered churlishly "I’m sorry Uncle Kolya’s not where we need to start"

"No, he’s not," Svetlana agreed "But any intervention in the activities of the authorities is prohibited by the Treaty ’Humans deal with their own affairs, Others deal with theirs’"

I didn’t say anything Yes, it was prohibited Because it was the si the mass of humanity toward Good or Evil Which was a violation of the equilibrius and presidents in history ere Others And it had always ended in appalling wars

"You’ll just be o back to town"

"But Nadiushka loves it here," I objected "And you wanted to stay here another week, didn’t you?"

"But you’re fretting Why don’t you go on your own? You’ll feel happier in town"

"Anybody would think you wanted to get rid of rowled "That you had a lover here"

Svetlana snorted "Can you suggest a single candidate?"

"No," I said, after a moment’s reflection "Except doleaway and the woive the children some fresh air and exercise That re that happened here"

"Yes?" I asked, intrigued If Svetlana called soe"

"You remember Anna Viktorovna came over to see hed Anna Viktorovna was such a typical school ht she came over to see your mother"

"My mother and me, too She has two kids¡ªa little boy, Romka, he’s five, and Ksyusha¡ªshe’s ten"

"Good," I said, giving Anna Viktorovna my approval

"Don’t try to be funny Two days ago the children got lost in the forest"

My drowsiness suddenly evaporated and I sat up in the ha onto a tree with one hand I looked at Svetlana "Why didn’t you tell ht away? The Treaty’s all very well, but"

"Don’t worry, they got lost, but then they turned up again They ca on their own"

"Well, that’s really unusual," I couldn’t resist saying "Children who stayed in the forest for an extra couple of hours Don’t tell me they actually like wild strawberries?"

"When their ot lost," Svetlana went on ih the forest¡ªand straight to some wolf cubs"

"I see" I ue flutter of alarm in my chest

"Anyway, the kids were in a real panic But then this woman appeared and recited some lines of verse to the wolf, and it ran away The woave thee of the forest She said she was a botanist and she knew special herbs that wolves are afraid of"

"Childish fantasies," I snapped "Are the kids all right?"

"Absolutely"

"And here I was expecting some kind of foul play," I said, and lay back down in the haic?"

"They’re absolutely clean," said Svetlana "Not the slightest trace"

"Fantasies Or ht from someone maybe even a wolf And some woood belt"

"The young one, Romka, used to stahtest problem He rattles on, recites pieces of poetry"

I thought for a estion, you know, hypnosis or what else is there?"

"There is no cure for it Like the co with hypnosis is a charlatan Of course, if it were some kind of reactive neurosis, then"

"Spare y," I asked her "So there is no cure What about folk , except ?"

"Even bedwetting," I growled "And incontinence But Sveta, you didn’t sense any one"

"That can only ot up out of the haood A witch With Power greater than yours And you’re first level"

Svetlana nodded I didn’t often mention the fact that her Power exceededthat came between us that could come between us some day

And in any case, Svetlana had deliberately withdrawn froht Watch Otherwise otherwise she would already have been an enchantress beyond classification

"But nothing happened to the children," I went on "No odious wizard pawed the little girl, no evil witch made soup out of the little boy No, if this is a witch, why such kindness?"

"Witches don’t have any coression," Svetlana said po a lecture "All their actions are deterry, sheFor the simple reason that she doesn’t think of herself as human But otherwise why not help the children? It didn’t cost her anything She led them out of the forest and cured the little boy’s stammer as well After all, she probably has children of her own You’d feed a homeless puppy, wouldn’t you?"

"I don’t like it," I confessed "A witch as powerful as that? They don’t often reach first level, do they?"

"Very rarely" Svetlana gave me a quizzical look "Anton, do you have a clear idea of the difference between a witch and an enchantress?"

"I’ve worked with them," I said curtly "I know"

But Svetlana wasn’t satisfied with that

"An enchantress works with the Twilight directly and draer froed with a greater or lesser degree of Power All the ical artifacts that exist in the world were created by witches or warlocks¡ªyou could call thes or cornified eleernails That’s why a witch is har an enchantress and tie her hands"

"For sure nobody’s ever going to gag you," I laughed "Sveta, why are you lecturing ician, but I know the ele"

"I’ized quickly

I looked at her and saw the pain in her eyes

What a brute I was How long could I go on taking out my complexes on the woman I loved? I orse than any Dark One

"Svetka, forgive ive a stupid fool"

"I’m no betteryou on the basics? You deal itches every day in the Watch"

Peace had been restored, and I was quick to say, "With ones as powerful as this? Come on, in the whole of Moscow there’s only one first-level witch, and she retired ages ago What are we going to do, Sveta?"

"There is no actual reason to interfere," Sveta said 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 toward the cubs come from?"

"That’s if it was a wolf," I rereed "But the children’s story hangs together very well And the second question is¡ªis the witch registered in this locality, and what’s her record like?"

"We’ll soon find out," I said, taking out my cell phone

Five ht Watch records about any witches in the area and there shouldn’t be any

Ten minutes after that I walked out of the yard, armed with instructions and advice from my wife¡ªin her capacity as a potential Great Enchantress On h the open doors¡ªKolya was hovering over the open hood of the car, and there were soround Holy Moses all I’d done was ine!

And Uncle Kolya was singing too, 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 histheine:

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

When he spottedto cost you more than half a liter, Antosha! Those Japanese have cos they’ve done to the diesel engine, I can hardly bear to look"

"They’re not Japanese, they’re Germans," I corrected hiht, it’s a BMW, and I’ve only fixed Subarus before I ondering why everything was done different Never ether Only , the son of a bitch"

"Look in to Sveta She’ll pour you a drop," I said, accepting the inevitable

"No" Uncle Kolya shook his head "Not while I’htwith the h here to keepa mental farewell to the car, I walked out into the dusty, hot street

Little Rohted at my visit I walked in just as Anna Viktorovna was about to suffer ignominious defeat in the battle of the afternoon nap Ro 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 can I do with hilad to see me "Hello, Anton Tell me, does your Nadyenka behave like this?"

"No," I lied

Ro up and down and pricked up his ears

"Why don’t you take hiested craftily "What do I ith a silly dunce like him? You’re a strict man You’ll teach him how to behave He can look after Nadyenka, wash her nappies, wash the floors for you, put the garbage out"