Methodius Buslaev. Third Horseman Of Gloom

And here this happened. Irka understood that she was sitting by the computer without light, and in that case, thieves could think that there was no one in the apartment. The kitchen had been quiet for a long time, but Irka, with some real, natural intuition, sensed that this was a false silence. There, in the dark, unlit kitchen, someone was lurking, someone completely real. She started to phone her grandma on the cell phone, but Granny did not answer. Her workshop was in a semi-basement with such thick walls that a cell phone only picked up when she by chance appeared near the window.

After deciding that the most reasonable thing would be to go to the neighbours, Irka began to quickly turn the wheels of her wheelchair, but the monitor continuously flared up, spitting out new lines.

Anika-voin: Hey, what’s with you? Freaked out?

Miu-miu: Where did she go?

Anika-voin: What if they really attacked her? Call the cops?

Miu-miu: Aha! We’ll call and say, “At user Rikka’s, IP address unknown, someone is moaning in the kitchen! When we suggested that the dude had a chainsaw, she called us ‘idiots’ and slipped off somewhere.” And we’ll introduce ourselves: Anika-voin and Miu-miu.

Anika-voin: You blockhead! (takes a machine gun and shoots).

Miu-miu: blocks with a frying pan.

Anika voin: bullet will pierce frying pan.

Miu-miu: Fig. See what frying pan.

Irka hurriedly moved the levers, setting the wheels in motion. The wheelchair went in the gloom of the hallway almost noiselessly, but it seemed to Irka that her heartbeats were giving her away – resonant, chaotic, as if a leather-covered tambourine was located inside. She had already guessed the entrance door, which was darker than the walls. Open the lock, then the latch, push the door forward – by no means hard enough that it would hit the wall – and leave carefully. Insert the key outside, turn it once, and then whoever was in the kitchen would not be able to follow her. She would be out of danger and reach the neighbours.

True, the most fearful was ahead: from the kitchen to the door was a short hallway, about three or four steps, no more. And the door could be seen perfectly from the kitchen. One hope was the gloom. If the eyes of the one who had climbed into the kitchen from the brighter street had not gotten accustomed to the darkness, she would have a chance.

Let us repeat once more: lock, latch, pull out the key, leave, insert the key outside, clo…

However, before the chain was completed, the world faltered. Her palm missed the lever, only stumbling everywhere on the rubber elasticity of the tire, and in the next moment, the warm linoleum struck Irka’s cheek. Irka lay, perplexedly contemplating the overturned world. Her head was buzzing. She realized too late that she had caught the edge of the shoe rack, which she usually went around diligently. The darkness had turned from a friend into an enemy.

Understanding that the noise had hopelessly given her away, Irka hurriedly crawled and dragged the wheelchair behind her like the shell of a snail. Her useless traitorous foot – how Irka hated it at this moment! – it goes without saying, had landed between the spokes.

The shoe rack, having managed to conspire with the wheelchair, swayed. Winter boots, tucked away for the summer, bounced merrily. The material world took offence at once and rose up against Irka. This looked tragicomic, at the intersection of gothic and ordinary everyday farce.

A light suddenly blazed in the kitchen. It bore little resemblance to electric light. Bluish, persistent, much brighter, it broke out and illuminated the hallway. Irka’s eyes started to hurt and tear up. The world dazzled with the strips of the painted walls (Granny hated wallpaper) and blinked with the frivolous vases on the wooden shelves.

“Well! Really!” Irka thought, realizing that, lying, still chained to the wheelchair, she would never reach the lock.

After raising herself on her hands, she peered anxiously into the illuminated kitchen, expecting to see a stocky male figure with a crowbar, a flashlight, and a large bag. For some reason, that was how she imagined an apartment thief. But reality shook more than any naive fantasy.

A white she-wolf lay by the table among the broken crockery. The side of the beast directed to Irka was covered with blood. The wolf studied Irka without rage. Sorrow froze in the eyes of the beast.

“Hello! Ah… ah… and I’m crawling here!” Irka said for some reason.

The wolf’s upper lip lifted, baring long yellowish fangs. Blood continued to flow from the wound. It ran along the wet fur in large drops.

“Are you hurt? You poor thing!” Irka said, wondering where the wolf could have been wounded.

Had it cut itself jumping through the kitchen window? But the kitchen window appeared intact. Where could the wolf have come from at all, and even an albino, in the city, on the second floor, with the glass intact? But this was all secondary. Many things are more useful when taken for granted.

Feeling sorry for the beast, Irka tried to crawl up to it, pulling her disobedient body with her hands. She did not think about the frightened, suffering wolf charging. Too much intelligence was in the sad eyes of the beast. When, after jerking up its muzzle, the wolf howled, its howl, low and intermittent, immediately stopped and resembled human speech. As if the wolf wanted to utter something, but, not getting an answer, realized the futility of its undertaking. It tried to get up, but it was unable to. The hind legs of the beast never came off the floor, and it collapsed heavily with its chest onto the linoleum.

They lay this way on the floor for a long time. Two cripples – human and beast— equally helpless. Except that helplessness was familiar to Irka, but the wolf was apparently meeting it for the first time. Irka said some friendly, disjointed and not very coherent words, but the wolf first growled softly, then looked at her expectantly.

Finally, after twisting, Irka successfully freed her foot and escaped from the wheelchair. Without the wheelchair, Irka dragged her disobedient body along the linoleum much faster. The wolf watched her with understanding, not trying to move from the spot. Occasionally it turned its head and licked its wound. However, it was too deep, and the beast only irritated it with its tongue.

“Don’t touch it! We need to seal it up or to call the vet, if only those fools won’t induce sleep in you. Wait, I just… Darn, I won’t reach the table,” Irka muttered, hoping to calm the wolf with the sound of her voice.

Irka had almost crawled to the table when the strange bluish light dimmed, coiled with a mysterious image like a spiral, and enveloped the wolf. The wolf howled, and its howl, growing fainter every moment, was the howl of death. It placed its snout on its paws, continuing to look at Irka. The howl turned into a wheeze and died away. Its eyes became dull and glazed over.

It seemed to Irka that she was delirious. The body of the dead wolf changed. The matted fur with spots of blood more resembled feathers. The snout with bared fangs changed into a white bird’s head with a beak. And here in the middle of the kitchen, a swan was flapping a broken wing, making an effort to take off. The kitchen was tight for the huge bird. The healthy wing touched the table. Finally, exhausted, the swan stopped flapping and, stretching out its neck, issued a throaty, sorrowful sound. This again resembled speech.

“I don’t understand!” Irka said helplessly.

She no longer crawled closer – and froze about a metre or two from the swan, sensing that this was still not the end of the transformation. And she was not mistaken. Suddenly the body of the swan quivered, losing its outlines. Silvery sparks scorched Irka’s face. To save her eyes, she covered them with her hands. When, squinting, she dared to peek, she saw a young woman in a long white robe, half-sitting on the floor. Her collar bone had been fragmented by a terrible blow. The woman was bleeding.

Addressing Irka, she uttered something hoarsely. Irka shook her head, showing that she did not understand. Mild annoyance distorted the truly classically beautiful face of the woman.

“Don’t be afraid of me! I’m a swan maiden,” she repeated in Russian. Her voice sounded throaty and aloof. There was in it something of the howl of the wolf and of the trumpeting of the swan.

“A swan maiden?” Irka asked.

“At times, they call us valkyries.[6 - In Norse mythology, a host of female figures called valkyries is sometimes connected to swans. These valkyries are responsible for choosing who should be slain in battle.] Soon I’ll be completely gone. He caught me off guard. I thought he was weak, and I was mistaken. I turned out as weak. The sword had inflicted me a wound, from which I’ll never recover. Two of my essences – the swan and the wolf – have already perished. Now death is getting closer to the last…”

Irka crawled up to the valkyrie. She hardly believed in the reality of the situation and continually glanced down to where her bitten nails were scratching the linoleum. This was the logic: the fingernails were real, the linoleum with onion skin was also more than real. The onion skin and Granny’s eyeglass case lying under the table were too detailed for a dream. But the special liberty and creative fluency, skipping insignificant details, that most daring fluency which always accompanies dreams, did not disappear, confusing Irka.

“Who wounded you?” she asked, putting aside, for the time being, the thought of whether what she was seeing was real or a hallucination caused by the new prescription from the day before.

The valkyrie looked at her sternly. In her tired eyes, continually changing colours, was something poignant, otherworldly. A strange power, authority, and wisdom. On the wall behind the swan maiden, it vaguely seemed to Irka, was a shadow of enormous heft. The worlds opened wide. The worlds were created from dust. Fates intertwined and untwined just like golden hair in a braid.

Finally, the valkyrie looked away. The shadow of heft disappeared. The wall of patterned tiles appeared before Irka in all its dreary banality, flickering beet, carrot, and other idiotic greens.

“Don’t try to find out. Until you’re ready. Your time will yet come!” The maiden coughed. Blood came out of the corners of her lips. “In the pattern of runes of the Sinister Gates there was a single error. One of the runes was not finished, and he knew how, after completing it, to convert it into its own opposite… It was impossible to flee, but he sent his breath out. I stood outside, but saw nothing. It was my fault, since I was his guardian in this century. His breath moved into the messenger’s body, and he wounded me with a sword, which strikes even an immortal. Once this was a sword of Light, and even now, after passing through many rebirths, it has retained its power over us, its creations. I didn’t have time to parry the blow. It was too unexpected to receive it from the one who inflicted it.”

“Whose body did he move into?” Irka quickly asked. For some reason, this seemed important to her, though she did not even know who he was.

“You have asked good questions. Your mind is inquisitive and restless. You’re not one of those living dead, whose heads are empty and whose eyes fade before death. I think I did the right thing choosing you…”

The valkyrie’s voice weakened. Her pupils were losing colour, becoming almost transparent. Irka suddenly realized that the swan maiden’s life was departing together with the colour of her pupils.

“What if we bandage you? Granny has a first-aid kit there…” she said helplessly.

The valkyrie looked at her fragmented collarbone and smiled weakly. “The wounds inflicted by this sword don’t close. Even if it scratched my finger, I would be doomed. Remember the main thing about whom you must stop! You have to come in contact not even with him, but only with his breath. However, there’s also enough force in it to put an end to you. He doesn’t have his own flesh, since it has long become dust, and the wind has scattered it. His spirit is capable of moving into any of the few suitable bodies, crowding its owner. However, while he is in a stranger’s body, his potentials won’t be greater than those of that body. In order to attack in earnest, in full force, he will leave it, and only then will you be able to battle with him. But if he doesn’t leave the body, you’re powerless. Your spear will pierce only the human flesh and its true owner, but not affect the one hiding inside. However, the sin of murdering the guiltless will make you weak, and you no longer will know how to do anything.”

“And how do I recognize him?”

“Don’t worry. It’s impossible not to recognize him. When his breath leaves a body, it’ll become visible even at noon. It’s a spectre of a rider on a red horse. Fight him like you would fight a normal rider. The spectre will be vulnerable to your weapon. But fear his magic: it presents a threat to you, just as the sword that struck me.”

“And if he doesn’t want to leave the body?” Irka asked reasonably.

“Antigonus will help you if he accepts you as his mistress,” the valkyrie replied. A shadow of sadness passed over her pale face. “Perhaps the sword’s blow wouldn’t have caught me unawares had Antigonus been nearby. He’s endowed with the gifts of foresight, expulsion, insight into true essence, and many other abilities.”