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GESAR LISTENED TO ME VERY CAREFULLY HE ASKED A COUPLE OF QUES-tions to clarify a few things and then said nothing, just sighed and groaned I lounged in the ha hi I didn’t tell him was that the witch had the book Fuaran

"Good work, Anton," Gesar told ilant"

"What shall 1 do?" I asked

"The witch must be found," said Gesar "She hasn’t done any haristered You know, just the usual procedure"

"And the olves?" I asked

"Most likely a group froive the order to check all olves with three or more olf children"

"There were only three cubs," I reht only have taken the older ones hunting," Gesar explained "They usually have large fae at the moment? An adult with three or retfully "Sveta and I thought of that right away Anna Viktorovna is the only one who came with two, and all the rest either have no children or just one The birth rate’s critically low in Russia"

"I araphic situation, thank you," Gesar interrupted me sardonically "What about the locals?"

"There are soe families, but then Svetlana knows all the local people well Nothing suspicious, just ordinary people"

"So they’re outsiders," Gesar concluded "As I understand it, no one has disappeared in the village Are there any holiday hotels or rest homes nearby?"

"Yes," I confirmed "On the far side of the river, about five kilo Pioneers’ camp, or whatever it is they call the’s in order, the children are all in place And they wouldn’t let them come across the river¡ªit’s a hts out, reveille, five minutes to dress Don’t worry about that"

Gesar grunted in dissatisfaction and asked ht about it It was the most important question that I hadn’t been able to answer so far

"I don’t know It looks as though the witch isthere to kill her and she must sense that"

So Then he declared: "Have Svetlana check the probability lines If the danger to you is only slight, well, then try on your own If it’s more than ten or twelve percent then" He hesitated for a moment, but went on to finish quite briskly "Then Ilya and Semyon will coe"

I s else, Gesar About so that if anything goes wrong, Svetlana will back ht Watch

"And then, you’ve got Svetlana," Gesar concluded "You understand the whole business So get on with it and report back as necessary"

"Yes sir, eneral," I rapped Gesar had toldtone of voice

"In terms of military rank, lieutenant colonel, et on with the job"

I put my phone away and took a minute to classify levels of Power in terms of military ranks Seventh level¡ªprivate sixth¡ªsergeant fifth¡ªlieutenant fourth¡ªcaptain third¡ªmajor second¡ªlieutenant-colonel first¡ªcolonel

That was right If you didn’t introduce unnecessary differentiations or divide ranks into junior and senior, then I would be a lieutenant colonel And a general would be an ordinary ician beyond classification

But Gesar was no ordinary ate slaarden Myrestlessly around her Theacross to the hahter wasn’t initiated, but she could sense her parents And there were plenty of other things she could do that ordinary two-year-old little girls couldn’t For instance, she wasn’t afraid of any anis and cats simply fawned on her

And mosquitoes didn’t bite her

"Daddy," Nadya said, scra up on top of me "We went for a walk"

"Hello, Ludmila Ivanovna," I said to my mother-in-law, just to be on the safe side We’d already exchanged greetings thata rest?"fine Not like in the old jokes But so that she always suspectedan Other, for instance if there was any way she could know about the Others

"Just a little bit," I said cheerfully "Did you go far, Nadya?"

"Yes, very far"

"Are you tired?"

"Yes," Nadka said "But granny’s more tired than me!"

Lud whether a blockhead like hter She evidently decided to risk it, and went into the house

"And where are you going?" Nadiushka asked, clutchinganywhere?" I asked in surprise

"No, you didn’t say" Nadka admitted and ruffled up her hair with her little hand "But you are going?"

"Yes, I as are, if a child is a potential Other, and so powerful that she demonstrates the ability to foresee the future fro a week before she actually started cutting her teeth

"La-la-la" Nadya sang, looking at the fence "But the fence needs painting"

"Did grandma say that?" I asked

"Yes If we had a real man, he’d paint the fence," Nadiushka repeated laboriously "But we haven’t got a real hed Oh those terrible dacha fanatics When people got old, why did they always develop a passion for scrabbling in the earth? Were they trying to get used to it?

"Grand," I said, and thumped myself on the chest "We do have a real man here, and he’ll paint the fence If necessary, he’ll paint all the fences in the village"

"A real hed

I buriedand kicking out at the same time I winked at Svetlana as she caround

"Run to rand Nadya up in her arms "For a drink of milk"

"I don’t want milk"

"You have to," Svetlana retorted

And Nadiushka didn’t argue anymore She set off meekly to the kitchen Even ordinary hue, unspoken understanding with each other So what could you expect from our family? Nadya could sense perfectly hen she could play up, and when it wasn’t even worth trying

"What did Gesar say?" Svetlana asked, sitting down beside ave me a choice I can look for the witch on my own, or I can call in help Will you help me decide?"

"Take a look at the future for you?" Svetlana asked

"Uh huh"

Svetlana closed her eyes and lay back in the has and put them across my knees From the outside it looked perfectly idyllic An attractive wo beside her, playfully stoking her thigh

I can look into the future too, but not nearly as well as Svetlana It’s not er to do it, and my forecast would have been unreliable

Svetlana opened her eyes and looked at me

"Well?" I asked i," she said with a ser at all"

"The witch is evidently weary of her evildoing," I chuckled "All right, then I’ll issue her a verbal warning for not being registered"

"It’s her library that bothers me," Svetlana confessed "Why would she hide away in the middle of nowhere, with books like that?"

"Maybe she just doesn’t like the city," I suggested "She needs the forest, fresh air"

"Then why just outside Moscow? She should go away to Siberia, where the environrow Or to the Far East"

"She’s local," I laughed "A patriot of her own little hoht," Svetlana said peevishly "I still can’t get over that business with Gesar and then suddenly this witch"

"What’s so strange about the Gesar business?" I asked with a shrug "He wanted to ht One And I for one don’t blauilty he ht the child had died"

Svetlana s on a stool, dangling her legs and saying she wants the skin taken off her milk"

"Well, and?" I asked, puzzled

"I can sense where she is and what’s happening to her," Svetlana explained "Because she’s a"

"They thought the boy had died" I muttered

"That could never happen" Svetlana said firot feelings He would have sensed that the boy was alive Do you understand? And Olga certainly would He’s her flesh and blood she couldn’t have believed that her child had died And if they kneas alive, the rest was straightforward enough Gesar has the power, and he had it fifty years ago, to turn the entire country upside down in order to find his son"

"You mean they deliberately didn’t look for him?" I asked, but Svetlana didn’t answer "Or"

"Or," Svetlana agreed "Or the boy really was an ordinary hu fits In that case they could have believed he was dead and found him entirely by chance"

"Fuaran," I said "Maybe this witch is somehow connected hat happened at the Assol cohed "Anton, I want desperately to

go into the forest with you, find this kind botanist lady, and subject her to intensive interrogation"

"But you’re not going to," I said

"No, I’ht Watch operations"

I understood everything I shared the resentment Svetlana felt for Gesar And in any case I preferred not to take Svetlana with h the forest looking for witches

But how ether

I sighed and stood up

"Right then, I won’t put it off any longer The heat’s eased, so I’ll take a stroll in the forest"

"It’s al," Svetlana remarked

"I won’t be far away The kids said the hut was really close"

Svetlana nodded "All right Just hang on a minute and I’ll make you some sandwiches And fill a ther for Svetlana, I took a cautious peep into the barn I almost flipped Not only had Uncle Kolya taken half the diesel engine apart and laid the pieces out on the floor, he had another local alcoholic, Andryukha or Seryoga, ruine beside him And they were so absorbed in their confrontation with Gery that the "little bottle" softhearted Svetlana had brought for the an old folk ditty to himself:

My very best friend and I Worked on a diesel engine

I tiptoed away from the shed To hell with the car anyway

Svetlana outfitted e of the forest, but about to be parachuted into the , a thermos of compote, a sturdy penknife, ht

And she also checked thatin mind the forest’s ency I could always clinal would be bound to reach the network

But it was my idea to take the disk player And as I strolled toward the forest, I listened to Hibernation of the Beasts:

The ht maintains its silence out of fear of death The medieval city sleeps, the dull and washed-out colors Speak to you like some distant echo¡ªbut don’t trust it In libraries books sleep, storehouses are bloated with

barrels, And geniuses lose their es, levels everything: bridges,

canals and houses, Capitols and prisons, all in a single pattern

I wasn’t really expecting to one in the , and with a team But I wanted really badly to locate the suspect myself

And to take a look at that book, Fuaran

I stood at the edge of the forest for a while, looking at the world through the Twilight Nothing out of the ordinary Not the slightest trace of ic Except that in the distance, above our house, there was a bright white glow A first-level enchantress can be seen froo in deeper

I raised ht

The forest was transforest of the trees had twins in the Twilight world

Nohere had the kids come out of the forest?

I found their tracks fairly quickly A couple of days later the faint line of footprints would already have faded away, but noas still visible Children leave clear tracks¡ªthey have a lot of power in thenant women leave tracks that are clearer

There were no tracks from the "female botanist" Well, they could have faded already, but it was more likely this witch had been careful not to leave any tracks for a long time

But she hadn’t erased the children’s tracks Why not? An oversight? That traditional Russian sloppiness? Or was it deliberate?

Well, I wasn’t going to guess

I recorded the children’s footprints in ht I couldn’t see the tracks any Now I could set off