Methodius Buslaev. Ticket to Bald Mountain

The keeper squatted and slowly passed his open palm several centimetres from the portrait. Then he lightly tapped the boy’s face with his finger. A golden wave ran from his finger along the portrait.

“Do you want to bring the portrait to life?” Irka asked.

Essiorh shook his head. “It’s impossible. The artist was neither a guard nor even a wizard,” he said.

“But you did something nevertheless?”

“Something,” Essiorh replied briefly. “But very little… The portrait won’t be able to come to life, but some minimal changes will happen to it. Possibly – I emphasize! – possibly, in several days the portrait will grow up and we’ll see the face of today’s Bagrov… The way he has become.”

“Even if it’s a skull?” Irka asked.

“Even if it’s a skull. The question is whether we have these several days. I fear not,” Essiorh confirmed stiffly.

After removing his finger from the portrait, he got up. The paint, Irka noticed, had become much brighter. It seemed the artist had just finished it all of a few moments ago.

“What you’ll hear now are only speculations. I rely only on meager information that the Transparent Spheres possess, and my own intuition, which we, keepers, have developed better than the usual guards of Light. Personally, I’ve never seen Matvei Bagrov, not counting this portrait, of course,” Essiorh continued, rather boringly, in his usual verbose manner.

Irka listened attentively.

“However, I’m still almost certain that what I’ll say now will turn out to be close to the truth. One thing I fear is that this would be no closer to the truth than the truth itself, because then it’ll be a lie. Do you understand?”

“Yes. That is, more or less,” Irka corrected herself.

“Matvei Bagrov is about eight in the portrait here. When he disappeared, in the sense of finally disappeared – and he disappeared twice! – he was no more than fourteen. Between eight and fourteen is all of six years – about two thousand days! – but what years and what days! The boy was very energetic. He was raised by his father. Lightning killed his mother when he was around one year old. The father, a retired hussar Colonel, a bully and a petty tyrant, educated the son himself and brought him up very strictly. He got up at five in the morning, and they ran four versts along the forest to the spring. In order to get breakfast, the boy had to fire a pistol and hit a coin hung on a string suspended from a pole. Each day the coin rose a little higher. They hacked with real sabres, only a little blunted. No training weapons. They rode horses without saddles. At the age of seven, the boy was already breaking in the most skittish horses. They say that even steppe stallions became manageable when he looked into their eyes. He hunted not only together with his father, but on a par with his father. An important point, mind you, especially if we recall how old he was then. They say he had bruises all over his shoulder from the recoil of the rifle, but the boy nevertheless continued to shoot and hit… In addition, there were also foreign languages, arithmetic, geography, ancient history, domestic literature, and much more. Such a childhood! At the age of twelve, Matvei Bagrov ran away from home with the gipsies. Someone claimed that he had been stolen, but, knowing his nature, I’m certain that he ran away himself.”

“Didn’t his father try to find him?”

“His father was no longer alive. He perished when the kid was eleven. He rushed out in a fierce frost to drag out a peasant’s old horse that had fallen through ice, caught a cold and died. Matvei’s uncle became his guardian till he came of age, but the young Bagrov could not stand him, although the uncle seemed to be a good-natured man. In any case, he didn’t even raise his voice. Here’s another riddle!” Essiorh said.

Irka, not tearing her gaze from the portrait, felt that the teenager’s face grimaced at the mention of his uncle. “No. Simply a trick of the light! Essiorh said that the portrait can’t come to life…” she thought.

“You said the flight with the gipsies was his first disappearance,” Irka reminded him.

“Yes, the first. Sometime later, the boy found himself on Bald Mountain. More precisely, next to Bald Mountain, since a moronoid can never ascend Bald Mountain. He – this is important! – was twelve and a half. He was wearing peasant clothes. Over his shoulders was a sack. In the sack were a sabre and a pair of pistols, covered with rags so they wouldn’t be seen. By that time, Matvei had already left the gipsies and led a vagrant lifestyle. He slept where he had to, either in a shed or a haystack, and in winter he would ask to spend the night in a warm hut. An outstanding hunter, he easily obtained game and either exchanged it for food or sold it. Now and then herdsmen treated him to potatoes and bread. There were only two things he would never do: steal and beg. Both were beneath him. Indeed he was gentry after all.”

“Didn’t the uncle search for him?” Irka was surprised.

Essiorh smiled. “Perhaps he did, but it was more for formality. Indeed in the case of death or disappearance of the boy, he would acquire the estate. And who could recognize the wellborn son Matvei Bagrov in the peasant boy, and even far from his native place? Well, a boy is a boy. He walked and walked along the road. ‘Where are you going?’ ‘Yeah, to my aunt in the city. Father and mother died, and aunt’s in service at a master’s. Perhaps with her I’ll earn a living somehow…’ Besides, Matvei undoubtedly had acting talent. He imitated peasant speech as if he had never read Homer in the original and did not speak three European languages. Now and then, getting carried away, he made up stories, more plausible than truth itself. Truer than the truth, phonier than lies. Only on this basis was it possible to distinguish them.”

“Truer than the truth, phonier than lies….” Irka uttered mentally in order to memorize it. She looked at the portrait again. The facial expression had in no way changed. But the hands on the hilt… Had they really been resting like that?

“You interrupted me! Having accidentally turned up near Bald Mountain, about which he knew absolutely nothing, Bagrov decided to spend the night. The day was already ending. It was summer and he wasn’t afraid of freezing. Before sunset, he came to a stream, across which was a decrepit bridge of a couple of logs thrown together. On the opposite side of the stream was an old cemetery fence, while on this side was a hovel. Not pondering for long, Matvei crawled into the hovel, slipped the sack under his head, and slept as only a person having spent the entire day on the road can. In the middle of the night, he suddenly wanted to drink, and so strongly that he woke up. This desire also saved his life. He saw that a ghoulish green hand had pushed through into the hovel and was reaching for him. Matvei pulled the pistol out of the sack, set the trigger, and fired. He did not miss – and how could he miss! – only the bullet inflicted no harm to the one attempting to grab him. The hand fished for his leg, grabbed it, and dragged it towards itself. Matvei clung to the sack, groped for the hilt of the sabre, snatched it out, got tangled with the webbing of the sack, and with a short downward blow chopped off the hand up to the elbow. In the darkness he heard someone moan, gnash his teeth, and leave.”