The human world plays with vibrant colors, every day is full of amazing stories and adventures... Ah, it's morning! You wake up to the sound of cars and realize that your life... Who am I kidding? This is real chaos!
Not only do you have to get up for work in the dark, but by the time you crawl home, you’ll fall into the nearest bushes, break your heel, or damage your bag. This is not work, but hard labor! You run around all day: either bring coffee, or print out papers and make sure that everything comes together, otherwise they will fire you. Yes, I want to escape from such a job and as soon as possible. And at the end of the month, people have such entertainment - “Retrenchment” - this is when you are fired from the most shameful job. Amazing entertainment... And the question is: what have I, the Pureblood Witch, forgotten in this miserable world?!!
Oh yes! I was divorced and decided that the world of people was much better than the world of Magic. And why didn’t anyone stop me then?
Oh, exactly! I am proud, independent and will achieve everything myself! My father, a respected Medicine Man, tearfully begged his youngest daughter not to make mistakes, he was even ready to call off all the suitors, but only not to leave her father’s house. But I’m an independent witch and if I decide to do something, I’ll definitely do it! And, of course, I left.
And what do I have? An unloved job, a despot’s boss, cunning and terrible snake colleagues who wriggle around and wash each other’s bones at every opportunity, and a precious teenage child who can add trouble to you. And life is beautiful and wonderful in the human world!
Inga, you look very pale,” my friend noted.
Masha. She is my friend from my student days. She crossed over into the human world with one goal - to find a worthy groom, and over the past twenty years she has managed to do this very well. And every year this woman only gets younger and does not age an ounce. And why? Cha-a-ars!
Really? - I was amazed. - Why? Oh yes! I'm on my feet from morning to night! I rush back and forth, back and forth, and I want to send this tyrant boss and his subterranean snakes to hell! - she blurted out in one breath and angrily tore the napkin on the table.
Is he putting wedges on you? - asked Masha. - Daredevil! No one dared to approach such a vixen except your hubby,” I threw an evil look at her, but my friend seemed not to notice him. - By the way, he was your real Demon.
What? - She blinked her eyes innocently.
My love turned into a curse. Not a single alliance with a demon has ever ended well, and I, like a naive fool, decided that I would have a different story. This is so stupid!
Arseny was handsome: dark wavy hair, like a Greek god, eyes the color of night, and his body beckoned to him. This could not help but charm the young witch. And I fell in love! My feelings turned out to be mutual.
They threw a wedding throughout the region, called relatives and friends. And after the wedding we were supposed to have a child. Happiness knew no bounds until he left me and drove off to the Underworld, promising to return.
But I, being a purebred Witch, could not afford to wait for some pathetic Demon. Therefore, I packed my things and left for the human world...
I have a wonderful daughter - Daria, a witch, who has come to terms with the fact that we live in the world of people. But she doesn’t stop asking questions about her father, and I’m increasingly avoiding answers.
When will you tell Dashka about him? - asked a friend. - She should know the truth, after all, this is her dad. I understand that if her father was an illegal charlatan, that would be shameful, but here is a real purebred demon.
Masha, it’s not simple,” I shook my head. - And how do you imagine this: “Daughter, you understand, your dad is not a Sorcerer, but a Demon.” So should I say? - sighed heavily. - She’s already nineteen, she has the right to know, but he’s an asshole! - I conclude. - Fuck him, not a child!
Inga,” Masha clicks her tongue. “You loved him,” my friend reminds me. - Your love was really strong, and it seemed that such a union as the Witch and the Demon was quite possible. And no matter what you say, Arseny still loves you. I bet he made a big deal of it after you disappeared. This is Knyazev.
I believed that love can be eternal, and difficulties only strengthen you, but not when you are left alone for many months. Now everything is different... Even if one day I meet him, I will pass by. This Demon is dead to me.
Men can easily throw out phrases: “I love you,” they can kiss, hug, and after a month find another. For them, love is beautiful words and phrases. And they fight for women only when they see that she can disappear from their horizon.
Do you think he didn't love you? - I nod. “It’s unlikely that this man would have knocked on your father’s doorsteps and begged for his blessings.” He would not prohibit all males from being near you. You were the most desired and beloved woman in his life.
That’s the thing, “it was,” I said bitterly. “Mash, let’s not talk about this horned and tailed creature,” I asked.
As you wish,” she responded.
I once believed that love and marriage were the best things that could happen to a young witch.
I believed that all the chosen ones were honest and noble.
And that love is eternal...
But people taught me to be fierce, independent and that you can only trust your mind, not your heart. After all, it is an eternal traitor that leads to the wrong men. Now my whole world was in a red-haired girl named “Dasha” and she definitely wouldn’t betray me.
I came home late in the evening. It was already dark outside, it was getting cold, and I had just come home from the nearest supermarket. My arms ached from the heavy bags, and my toes were so tight that I had great difficulty walking. And this little shit didn’t even come out to meet her mother... Well, Dasha, I’ll arrange it for you now.
Dasha! - the daughter called from the room, but there was no answer.
Again, she put on her stupid headphones and sits on her computer, not hearing anything except this stupid Internet. I opened the door to the room and turned on the light. But I was greeted only by silence.
I'm starting to worry. I dial the number, but she doesn't pick up. What kind of child? These are all her father's dark genes! Otherwise, she would have grown up to be a good girl, and not behave, sometimes well, sometimes terribly.
Suddenly I notice a brochure on the table. My face suddenly turns white. This is not the future I expected for my child. It was not just a brochure, but a brochure for an educational institution, a magical world: “Overseas Valley.”
In that world, everything goes topsy-turvy. Both dark and light magicians study and live there, both knights and princesses, swamp kikimores with forest eccentrics, and of course demons. In the Overseas Lands, we cannot do without evil these days.
And can I, with a calm soul, let my child go to his fate? Well, Dasha, you won’t wait, or if I weren’t a witch. It was not enough for her to greet her dad or my sisters there with greetings.
I went to the mirror, pulled off the dark cloth, and a face appeared to me that was still sleeping.
Oh, what people are in Hollywood! - it whistled. - Your devilish witch highness, Inga!
He had no manners at all. Still would! This mirror was enchanted by mistake. The guy who was imprisoned inside him was a thief and robber of one gang and accidentally fell into the mirror and stayed there.
His hair is colored rainbow. Although he himself is dressed in a decent suit.
There is no education. Yes, and his manners are a little lacking.
Albert, don't be silly.
Show me the Overseas Valley, namely my daughter,” I asked politely.
Albert's face changed to blue tones. The sky was filled with curly clouds and bright rays of the autumn sun. Students hovered in the sky, hurrying to class on their brooms, motorcycles and other forms of transport.
Below stretched great coniferous forests of mighty spruces, pines and larches. High fields with ears of corn, sunflowers and corn. And between heaven and earth, in the air, stretched a celestial route along which buses, dragon trains and cars were traveling.
I miss it all so much! I missed this pine smell, these flights and long corridors through which I could wander, looking for the secret passages of this castle for hours.
They are met at the gate by the director and teachers and welcomed to the Overseas Royal Academy. Skeletons rush around with luggage, losing their next bones along the way, and the snake concierges grind the bones and grumble at the students.
I see my daughter in the company of dubious ladies, namely princesses of high society. They stand in dresses made of pure gold, with their noses raised high, and whisper something displeased. I had the same cocky classmates, but they fell silent when I started dating Arseny. This guy was from the big leagues. If you touch his girlfriend, you will be unhappy until the last moment - that’s what the rumors about demons said.
But then a portal opens and a man bursts into the Academy’s yard. My heart skips a beat from excitement. I already have a feeling who it is, but I also don’t want to believe it yet. He flies in like a whirlwind on a motorcycle that makes the loudest noise. He's wearing a leather jacket, skinny jeans and stupid boots, and his fingers are covered in rings. When he took off his helmet, I already knew who was hiding under it. A woman’s heart always felt the approach of her betrothed, no matter what kind of goat he was. This man is my husband.
Arseny is just as seductive, insidious and you can’t take your eyes off him. There was no need to be surprised at his appearance. This is what all demons do. He gets off the motorcycle, puts on black glasses, and puts a badge on his jacket: “Professor.” Arseny Knyazev."
It seems that my husband has decided to finally get me out of the rut. How can this horned creature teach anyone? Yes, he's a Demon! And you want me to give my daughter to be eaten by this villain? No, no and NO! Never! Never!
I have a plan - to save a child from the Wizarding World! But I don’t think that my friend will be happy with the idea that I propose, but I don’t see other magical creatures in the human world. They probably think that I would make a good exhibit in a museum.
So, Maria, you, as my best friend, are obliged to help me and will never leave me in trouble, otherwise I will curse your next husband!
William Tenn
And my mother is a witch!
I spent my entire serene childhood completely and completely convinced that my mother was a real witch. This in no way infringed or hurt the child’s fragile self-awareness - moreover, at first it gave confidence and generated a feeling of complete security.
My earliest memories are associated with the slums of Brooklyn's Brownsville, also known as New York's East End, where we lived surrounded by nothing but witches. They met here at every step, swarming on benches at any front door, accompanying our noisy children's fun with gloomy muttering and dull glances from under their brows. When one of us boys, in the heat of play, flew close to the porch occupied by hissing witches, the air around the poor fellow thickened with darkness and crackled with black magic - the result of ornate curses of creepy old women.
“May you never grow up again and remain Karla forever! - this was the sound of one of the most common and innocent spells, almost a greeting. “And even if you grow up, you’ll always end up sticking out of the garden like a radish, with your crooked legs pointing up!”
“May you be covered from head to toe with scabies,” read the following, somewhat less harmless. “But first, let your nails dry out and fall off, so that you won’t even have anything to scratch yourself with!”
Such nice little wishes could not possibly be addressed to me personally - my mother’s terrifying abilities were too well known in the area. And by that time I myself had already learned something - the simplest children's passes - and I handled simple street curses quite skillfully. In addition, when putting me to bed, my mother, just in case, was on the safe side - she invariably spat three times over her left shoulder in order to curb and reverse the dark forces summoned by ill-wishers during the day, to boomerang on their own filthy heads, and with triple the force of spitting. .
And in general, having your own witch in the family during my childhood was considered an additional household convenience, a kind of gift of fate. My mother was not just a sorceress - an Aidishe (that is, Jewish) witch, and she equipped her spells with an incredible compote of German, Yiddish and words from unknown Slavic dialects. But this did not bother her at all - the scion of a family of London Jews, by the time she met my future father, she spoke hardly a dozen or two expressions in Yiddish. My father, a retired Yeshiba student from Lithuania and an ardent socialist by conviction, was lassoed by my mother in the East End of London halfway to America. The young woman immediately took advantage of the new circumstances to completely erase her useless Cockney from her memory - why does she need him, one wonders, in the New World?
While his father taught his mother fluency in Yiddish and taught her pronunciation, he could do little to help either her or his first-born in confronting the superstitious environment of the Brooklyn slums. A convinced utopian, he cherished his scientifically based dreams about the future world order and was completely horrified by the everyday magic of his mother. As an erudite man, my father knew a lot of flowery idioms, elegant turns of phrase, and on any occasion, even without it, he could recite Bialik’s poetry for hours, quote other titans of Jewish thought - from Yeshua to Marx - but in the world of enchantments and spells he was helpless, like a small child and unreasonable.
And my mother desperately needed magical support. Our beloved child, our precious baby, she constantly and invariably repeated, is the most desired goal and such a convenient target for all these spiteful critics and envious people living in the neighborhood, and at their service here are entire shelves of occult books, entire libraries of conspiracies and spells. Mom didn’t know a single one; her high rank among the witches of our quarter was based solely on her talent for summoning spirits and skillfully drawing them aside, completely neutralizing them. But she was sorely lacking in traditional spells - those that are accumulated in a family from generation to generation and, constantly enriched, are passed on from mother to daughter. It seems that she was the only one worthy of reaching the United States without the baggage of such small-town wisdom, wrapped in hereditary feather beds and sewn into her mother’s down pillows. My mother's only weapons at first were her inexhaustible imagination and fantastic ingenuity.
To our common happiness, they never cheated on her - ever since my mother first tasted the full delights of Brooklyn life. In addition, my mother grasped everything new on the fly - as soon as she saw or heard an occult novelty once, it was immediately included in the defensive arsenal.
“Mah afaig!” - my mother managed to quietly whisper to me in the grocery store under the enthusiastic cackling of the owner of the establishment about my blooming and truly angelic appearance. And the fragile children's fingers immediately formed by themselves into a well-known figure - an ancient sign against the female evil eye. Figa generally remained the last reserve of my boyish defense, especially when I found myself alone with the evil entourage of Brownsville; I could respond with a fig, like a rabies vaccine, to any unkind remark and continue my serene childhood games as if nothing had happened. If, while carrying out an assignment, I had to run past a line of gloomy old women’s kagals on the porches of apartment buildings, I would poke figs right and left all the way, scattering them without any regret or damage and, thanks to this, not feeling any fear.
And yet my mother’s talent in drawing pentagrams and other divination would never have developed into all its breadth and power if she had not one day had the chance to clash head-on with Mrs. Mokkih herself. Already one ominous name of the old hag - “mokkih” in translation from Yiddish meant pestilence and famine and other misfortunes - threatened with utter disasters and cooled the hottest heads.
From the very first meeting, the venerable lady made such an indelible impression on me that, when reading the most terrible fairy tales, I invariably imagined her. Accompanied by four short daughters - all like their mother, one more fearful than the other - the squat old woman did not walk along the pavement, but stamped her step, as if asserting her unconditional, indivisible and eternal right to the territory conquered from an invisible enemy and leaving behind almost tangible devastation. The hairy wart above her right nostril was so large that behind her back, and only behind her back - God forbid, she would hear! - people whispered, giggling nervously: “Mrs. Mokkih’s nose has grown its own nose!”
You laugh so fearlessly in my face. Even more ironic than really funny, as usual. This is not the first time these people have come. They came before. They warned. They threatened. They told you to give up miracles. They said: “Have mercy on your son! What will happen to him?” And you laughed. It’s not really as funny as it was with me, but more ironic. And I laughed. But after. When they left. We laughed together. They mocked these pathetic people who would never taste the intoxicating power of magic, the power of miracles that you showed me, mother. Yes, you were even taken to the main dungeon of our village once. It looked like a miserable dugout, and not like an impregnable fortress that would be able to hold you. My mom. My crazy, young and always cheerful mother. Perhaps you would have had time to dance and laugh longer if you had helped them - pathetic, helpless people. If only I collected herbs and treated their stupid diseases. Like other healers. If only you were an ordinary healer, and not that powerful witch capable of performing miracles that stun my imagination. Miracles have ruined you. They said the milk would turn sour if you walked past it. And no one understood that the milk had been standing there for a week in the corner of the yard, sour in order to attract the midges that infested the gardens on hot days. They said that spring is delayed more and more every year. With every year you live. As if magic, which is capable of influencing the divine forces of nature, but is not capable of influencing the decision of the village judge, exists. Yes, you laughed. I didn’t just not believe, but I knew that they wouldn’t have the courage to go against you. They themselves did not understand how they did it. How did they gather the strength to capture the one who is capable of destroying the fate of their children with one curse? But they grabbed it. Then you only managed to tell me that I was lucky to be born a man. A man is protected by all the laws on earth. Such an already strong man, but not a weak red-haired woman. That's all. And you were dragged away. I laughed like crazy then. How are you. I thought - now new fun will happen. Now they will be afraid of your strength again. I didn't know there was a force greater than yours. The power of cleansing fire. You were considered a witch who turns into a bird at night and flies to her sisters for the devil's Sabbath. Four-winged witch. You shouted - the king is stupid! They shouted - you will burn like you burned in a lie! You screamed... you just screamed. Wild laughter. They shouted - dance while you're alive! You laughed at their poverty. They cursed you because the shoes of their horses were cracking. And no one understood that the horseshoes were more than twenty years old. You didn't scream or laugh when they piled you on a stack of brushwood. You didn't say a word when they tied you to the post. They shouted - get drunk on our anger! I shouted - Hallelujah to the Fire Maiden! And you laughed shrilly. You rejoiced and raised your eyes to the sky when the flame touched your feet. And danced... danced... danced...
In a military camp during training, I met one officer, he was from Altai and everyone called him by his last name Yarosh. He responded to his last name and seemed to like it, so I don’t remember his name. We stayed together for more than a month and discussed a lot of topics, especially in the evenings (we lived in a double room). We started talking about mysticism, witchcraft, magic. He told a very incredible story.
I'm not speaking from hearsay, I'm talking about my mother. My mother is a Witch! Everyone in the village knows this, I haven’t grown up yet and haven’t thought about it. As a child, I always thought that this was how it should be, when: “Mom has a headache,” she took water from a bucket, whispered something over a mug, and I drank, that’s it, I ran outside to continue playing. Then, when I grew up, I started thinking: why did my older sister get married and live on the other side of the village, but never come to our house? The father quarreled with the mother and left, left three children and never appeared, and the neighbors strongly did not want to talk about it. When I became an officer, I ended up serving not far from home, and very soon my old thoughts visited me again. One day, after an officer’s party, a wallet with money was stolen or lost, and, worst of all at that time, a party card. Then they could forgive everything, but not the loss of a party card - a career, exclusion from the party, no titles, deprivation of all bonuses, etc. I was driving to the desk commission through our stop and naturally stopped home, my mother thought about everything she had heard and said: “Before going into the office, make this sign in the air with your hand and say the words (Yarosh didn’t even say the sign).” He asked a question:
What kind of penalty do you think I received?
No options – expulsion from the party!
Yes, they shouted, called names, stomped their feet, were ready to tear me into pieces for two hours, I was wet as a mouse, and what, a reprimand without a record is all a punishment.
But maybe this is a coincidence? I just can't believe it.
I also had some doubts. But then life showed the opposite. The younger brother, who continued to live with his mother, decided to come to visit me. We drank a little and he told me what happened to him: “I was sitting with my mother late at night having dinner and she said to me:
Son, I'm already old and I need a replacement in my affairs.
What are you talking about mom? I don’t believe in all these fairy tales, there is nothing like that.
No, son, believe me, there is!
And you can prove it to me right now.
She did something, said something, and she began to break, to tear her whole body and face, and all this with such a crunch as if bones were breaking. I was so afraid that I most likely lost consciousness. When I woke up, I was sitting alone, and in the room in the hall stood a girl of extraordinary beauty, dressed in an old white sundress, with a kokoshnik and a braid almost to the floor. I couldn’t move from horror and then everything disappeared or I lost consciousness again.”
I know my brother won’t lie, but somehow I feel uneasy. The brother left and very soon the mother came to visit, the wife and daughter were visiting their parents. Remembering my brother’s story (I didn’t tell my mother anything), at the table I poured a little more into her glass and decided to find out everything.
Mom, do people really say that you are a witch?
Didn't you know?
When the old man left, he beat me - he knocked out two front teeth, took my book and an old large cross.
I remembered something I heard once: a witch has great strength in her two front teeth, and without teeth it is very difficult to send someone to the next world.
I wanted to involve our youngest in our business, but he is afraid of the last test - to bring a candle at night from the cemetery from the grave of the recently deceased.
Mom, they say phosphorus leaves a person and that’s why it glows.
No, son, take my word for it - a candle.
My dear mother, but she said it in such a way that involuntarily I remembered my brother - the hair on my head began to move. Can you show me something? And she, as my brother told me... In short, when the bones crackled, I waved my hands: “Enough, enough, I believe!” When the passions subsided I asked:
Can you teach me something?
No, only who was born first and last in the family.
Finally, I understood why my older sister doesn’t communicate with her mother.
My mother is a witch. You do not believe me? But in vain. The girls with whom I now live in the same room believe. And they are very afraid of me. True, in vain. I don't bite, honestly. And I am very well brought up, I know when to say hello and goodbye, when to say “thank you” and “please.” I know that there is no need to scream, fight, argue, or take away toys from the younger ones. No, in fact, I was raised very well. And now, I don’t like that they took me to this house, where I have to live in the same room with a dozen other girls, when before I had my own room, my own toys, a computer, a lot of videotapes with cartoons that I really liked . There is none of that here, but I remain silent and say “thank you” and “please” at the right moment. I know I just have to wait. Soon I will grow up and go to Aunt Natasha, who lives in another city. I remember her address, my mother checked many times that I remembered everything well. Do you also want to know Aunt Natasha's address? Sorry, but this is impossible. Mom strictly ordered me never to tell anyone.
I had already been asked before if I knew any addresses or names of my mother’s acquaintances. Well, of course I didn't know! After all, my mother said that this should not be told to anyone. Never. And I didn't tell all those countless men and women who asked me that question. And many other questions. I was even surprised - how do they not get tired of asking? But I was raised well, as I said, and I just politely shook my head and said: “Sorry, but I don’t know anything. Sorry, but mom didn’t tell me anything.” And they believed me. It’s so hard not to believe such a polite girl. And if politeness is also reinforced by large blue eyes and two light brown braids with scarlet bows, then it is absolutely impossible to imagine that such a child can lie. Mom told me about this too. Therefore, I always made sure that my hair was carefully combed, my face was washed, and my bows were neatly tied.
I just don’t know why they brought all these doctors to me. They called it “test”. No, I understand the word itself. After all, I had my own computer, I already said, right? But I’m not a computer, why test me, and even so stupid? They showed me some pictures that had no drawings, but only bright spots. And there were also blot pictures. They shone a special flashlight in my eyes and hit me on the knees with a rubber hammer. But I endured all this, never once showing my dissatisfaction, just as my mother taught me. And, in the end, I ended up here. In this strange house, in which I do not have my own room, but there is a common bedroom where other girls live. Actually, children of different ages live in this house, from the youngest to those older than me. They call it “shelter”. Mom warned about the existence of such houses.
I waited a long time for my mother to come and take me back to our cozy apartment. But she still didn’t come. I asked those people who asked me questions when my mother would appear, but they did not answer, they just stroked my head and straightened the bows in my pigtails. And when they brought me to this orphanage, the teacher said that my mother would never come for me. At first I didn’t believe it, but then I saw a newspaper that talked about our meetings, and I realized that the teacher told the truth, and I would never see my mother again. It was for just such a case that my mother made me memorize Aunt Natasha’s address. I remember everything my mother taught me...
What are these meetings that I just talked about? Well, this happened regularly. Mom’s acquaintances gathered to perform the Ritual. They were just like my mother, and I became the same. We are witches.
My mother took me there when I was six years old. I remember this day as if everything happened yesterday. Before this, when my mother left home, she said that she was going to see her friends. I got used to it and never cried. Mom promised that someday I would be able to go with her. And so - I went.
There were a lot of strangers there, but there were also familiar faces. I often saw Uncle Sasha and Aunt Lena visiting us. Then I remembered the others too. Mom said that they are our family. And that's true. Now I think about those who deprived me of my family, and my imagination paints sweet pictures of revenge. But I'll wait. The main thing is not to forget anyone. Not one of those who asked me stupid questions, not one of the doctors who gave me idiotic pictures. And I can never forget the teacher who always picks on me and calls me “the witch’s spawn.”
On the very first day that my mother took me to the meeting, a child was brought there. Very small, baby. He was probably only a few weeks old, no more. I had never seen such small children before. He was so funny. These small arms and legs, which he waved randomly when they unswaddled him and laid him on the table in the middle of the room, surprised me in that on each arm, on each leg, there were five fingers, so tiny, very, very tiny. And he cried. Loud, very loud. He screamed, choking on his scream, opening his small mouth wide, his entire skin turning ugly red from his scream. Maybe he was cold or hungry, I don’t know. Everyone surrounded the table and began to sing, first quietly, then louder and louder, drowning out the cry of this child. What were they singing? I won't tell you this. No, I know the words and the melody, I can even sing it myself. But my mother said that it was impossible to tell about this to the uninitiated who did not take part in the Ritual. So don't ask me, I can't tell.
Yes, so, about this child. Everyone was singing, I felt the sounds of voices intertwining into some kind of picture, I just saw this picture, you know? I saw it! It was beautiful - scarlet flashes on black iridescent velvet. I swayed to the beat of the sounds, I even wanted to sing along, but I could only drag out the melody, not knowing the words. Yes, then I didn’t know the word yet...
Then Uncle Seryozha came out of the circle. We met later, he was my best friend, and that day he was just a stranger, about whom my mother said that he was good.
He came close to the table on which the crying child lay and raised his hand. At first I didn’t understand what he was squeezing in his fingers. Then I saw a knife. Such a strange knife. Not at all like they were in our kitchen. This knife was not metal, but bone. Incomprehensible signs snaked along the thin blade. It was elegant, this knife, which Uncle Seryozha plunged into the child’s chest in one smooth movement.
There was silence. I remember it seemed to me that this silence was material, you could touch it with your hands and even cut off a piece and taste it. It pressed like a thick blanket on a hot summer night. This is because at one moment both the singing of people and the cry of the child stopped. I swam in waves of silence until I heard a quiet wheezing and gurgling coming from the table. Mom pushed me forward, towards Uncle Seryozha. I saw how he carefully cut the baby lengthwise, cut the chest exactly in the middle, and opened the tummy. But the child was still alive, he was wheezing, and blood was gurgling inside him. Quietly, quietly. I saw his red, shuddering insides, saw how the blood spread in spurts over his tiny arms and legs, pouring into his barely trembling tiny fingers. The smell of this blood made my head spin, and a sour taste appeared in my mouth.
Uncle Seryozha took my hand and pulled it towards the child. I obeyed as if in a dream. And I remember that first touch, when my fingers sank into the warm, wet flesh, I remember the viscosity of the blood and the slipperiness of the intestines. And the heart. This child's heart is under my examining hand. It was still beating. An indescribable feeling! I can't even describe it, you have to feel it yourself. I somehow immediately understood what Uncle Seryozha and everyone standing around expected from me. I squeezed this tiny heart in my palm and jerked my hand up, raising it above my head, with the ball clutched in my fingers.
Hearing a collective sigh, I realized that I had done everything right. Uncle Seryozha nodded at me approvingly, and I turned to the others. Mom looked at me with pride. I was still holding this heart above my head, and it seemed to me that it was beating, dying down under my fingers. Blood flowed down my hand, a few drops fell on my face, on my lips, and I licked them off, which caused another delighted sigh from everyone. Someone placed a special dish on which I placed this heart, which had already stopped shaking...
Already at home, I asked my mother if I did everything right.
Yes, daughter,” she answered. – You’re just so smart to me.
I was worried about whether what happened there at the meeting was good. After all, this child died.
But did you break dolls to see how they work? - said my mother. - It’s the same here. It's like a doll, nothing more. I'm proud of you, daughter.
I realized that my mother was right. My mother was always right, I was used to obeying her. And then, it was such an interesting game, to see what was inside them, these living dolls.
There, in the newspaper that I saw with the teacher, it is written that there were forty-eight of them. Those who died at our rituals. I don't remember. Perhaps they are right, perhaps not. Maybe there were more or less of them. We didn't count. Why was this calculation needed? I remember some, I forgot many. I remember the woman with the mole well. It's probably because I really liked the mole. You know, such a small one, dark brown, even chocolate, just below the collarbone on the shoulder. It looked so beautiful on white skin. I wished I had the same one. I wanted to be as beautiful as this woman with the mole and wavy ash-colored hair. My hair is also beautiful, but I don’t have a mole like that. Just a few freckles on my nose. I was allowed to cut off this piece of skin from her, with a mole. I kept this cut piece in a box, lubricating it with cream so that the skin would not dry out, and often applied it to my shoulder, trying on how such a mole would suit me. It's a pity that I don't have one, it looked beautiful against my skin. I even wanted to glue this piece to my shoulder, but my mother didn’t allow me, saying that it wouldn’t stick anyway...
I don’t know where my mother, uncle Seryozha and everyone else are now. I just understand that I will never see them again. On the day when strangers took my mother away, she told me:
Daughter, be smart and remember everything I taught you.
I remember, I have a very good memory. Now I am fourteen years old and have been living in this orphanage for a year now. Soon, very soon, I will grow up and go to Aunt Natasha. I know that she is waiting for me, because one day a postcard arrived addressed to me, not signed by anyone and without a return address. She sent this, Aunt Natasha. I will come to her, I will have a new family, and I will again feel this indescribable sensation of someone else’s heartbeat under searching fingers. No, I can’t describe it, you have to feel it yourself...
Loading...
