Дмитрий Емец – Pegasus, Lion, and Centaur (страница 8)

“I… love… Ul. It’s… all… the elbe!” Yara thought, forcing her way through the quagmire of hatred. The next bead could not infiltrate under the skin. It rolled away and collided with the one following. The gossamer swelled, could not maintain the tension and broke. Its strength turned out to be deceptive. Eric scooped the thick stinky air with the freed wing. The elastic bones bent. The stallion neighed from the pain and, wing feathers almost broken, straightened itself. Yara managed to reach the muscular base of its wing and returned to the saddle. “Relaxed! Believed that I can do anything! Called myself a guide!” Yara berated herself. Delta had long since passed ahead and Yara even could not imagine approximately where and when she would meet up with Dennis.

Eric gained speed slowly, with effort. For the first twenty-thirty strokes it barely advanced. Now and then it needed several jolts with the wings in order to remain simply on the spot. Then it jerked its head and briefly neighed reproachfully. Yara touched its back. It was slick and sweaty. The fur shone like it was greased with fat. It was not possible to stop in the swamp. It mattered not that Eric was an enormous, strong stallion, it would get stuck here forever.

Everything blunted in Yara: her love for Ul, pity for the horse, uneasiness about the tiny girl. She remembered only one thing: never let new roots enter her, because this would be death. The hatred for Ul had drained her spirit. She even did not feel the jabs. She dully looked at the mane and tried not to open her eyes.

Yara did not know how much time had passed here. Time in the swamp flew according to its own laws. With the utmost internal concentration on a good horse it would be possible to cross the swamp in ten minutes. Possible in half-an-hour, an hour, and also possible not to break through at all. The number of divers stuck in the swamp was in the dozens and hundreds. More often it was not even known whether a diver got stuck on the way there or was intercepted on the way back. And intercepted by whom. The elbes? The warlocks? Maybe his horse broke a wing, he flew off the saddle or, listening to the whisperings of the swamp, he was unable to break the gossamer and is still languishing somewhere in the sucking gloom, where a lie is like the truth and where you believe in hatred more than love. Twice in the history of HDive it happened that a diver, solidly convinced that he had spent no more than twenty-four hours in the swamp, dived back into the human world after several decades.

Now Yara was also not thinking about this. She chased all thoughts away without exception, including the most innocent, knowing with what ease the swamp would distort, substitute, and secretly connect them, using any thought as a bridge to itself.

Suddenly Yara felt a light push. An unknown elastic force touched her entire body at one go and then parted, after recognizing and letting her through. She felt heat warming her face frozen in the dive. Something showed pink beyond the closed eyelids. She pulled back the scarf and then even tore it off completely. The dull stench had disappeared. Yara opened her eyes. Eric was flying above the ground easily, without the least effort. The remains of the swamp melted on its sides sunken from fatigue. Above ground and not in the narrow tunnel in the swamp.

It was much brighter here; however, the light seemed pale, as if predawn. A forest was discernible below. Beyond the forest began a field with a sluggish and frequently looping creek. “DUOKA!” exclaimed Yara, although this was only its beginning.

Something burned her forehead. This was a big melted plastic hairpin, which Yara had forgotten about. Yara quickly got rid of the soft mass sticking to her fingers, until it no longer spread over her head. This was what Ul warned Dennis about. Here, on Duoka, nothing secondary or derived could exist. No synthetics or polymers. Only skin, cotton, iron. Everybody remembered the story of the new girl, who attempted unnoticed to use plastic girths. Crossing the swamp on her return she had to break through without a saddle, after tying herself to the horse’s neck. Yara recalled how often she got caught by this and wondered that she did not become more careful. Several successful dives and you automatically become arrogant. You stop checking pockets, thinking about hairpins, and boldly open your eyes in the swamp. The only way to regain the sense of reality is to get it on the forehead.

The further Eric flew, the brighter it became. If earlier Yara only discerned a forest below, now she distinguished separate trees. If in her first minutes here Duoka was almost colourless, dark, and only somewhat outlined, now, with each new stroke of Eric’s wings, it became more detailed. An invisible hand unhurriedly threw paint on the trees and generously poured out sounds and smells from a warm palm.

Yara’s forehead was covered with sweat. She wiped it with the back of a hand and thought that today everything began somewhat early. The delay in the swamp had affected her. She had swallowed too much filth there.

Eric listened and took off more to the left. Yara trusted it, although it seemed to her that they were not flying there. Soon, after taking a good look, she distinguished on the meadow a spot, which turned out to be Delta grazing. She saw Dennis only when Eric had descended beside him. He was lying in the shadow of the bushes, in his unbuttoned hdiver jacket, and seemed barely alive. His face was soaked and streaked. Yara had never seen people sweating in stripes. Sections of the skin were red, white, red, white. And all with clear boundaries. Only the nose had no boundaries and jutted out like the usual pierced radish.

Dennis was pulling air in slowly, and breathing out just as carefully. “It’s always so at first. Suffer. Soon it’ll be easier,” said Yara. Dennis opened his eyes and attempted to smile. “I saw how Eric got stuck… But didn’t notice you at all. It seemed the saddle was empty. I pulled the rein, fat chance! It didn’t listen! And later I clung to the mane altogether, such nonsense crawled into my head. That I was always a burden to mother, and sister stole money from the piggy bank. And I was thinking: where have they disappeared to? Then I understood I was only in the swamp.” This did not surprise Yara. The swamp was the eternal place of such insights.

“Did you try to stop Delta in the swamp???” she asked again. “Of course! You’re my guide. I thought: it must be so. But the cursed stool wouldn’t obey! It misinterpreted me!” Continuing to lie on his back, Dennis folded up his hands like a scoop and passed them along his face from top to bottom. It seemed he was not wiping off sweat but washing. “You’re the stool! If Delta had stopped…” Yara did not finish talking.

Dennis looked at his hands. The sweat was flowing from his fingers even now. His wrists were covered with indecent beads. “It pinches. Gets into the wounds and pinches…” he complained. “Strange!” “What?” “Huh? The burning heat, but the water in the stream is cold. But what’s killing me more is the dew. Why didn’t it evaporate?” Yara laughed. Every hdiver poses this question during his first dive.

“It isn’t hot here.” He looked at her with bewilderment. “How isn’t it hot? Do you see me?” “I see you, but all the same it isn’t hot. Look at Eric, look at Delta. Look at me, although today I’m a poor example.” Dennis sat up on the grass, distrustfully looking at her face closely. “Didn’t even unbutton the jacket,” he said with envy. “Everyone goes through this. The main thing, Duoka let you in. It happens that a novice passes the entire way through the swamp and is forced to turn the horse around. And the heat… It seems to me filth comes out of us.” “Cursed swamp! It was the end of me!”

Dennis staggered forward and got up. A branch got him in the eyes. He brushed it aside. “Likely no longer so scabby… Let’s search for markers! Where are they?” he said decisively. Yara glanced over at the meadow. She was holding Eric by the rein, afraid that it would enter the stream and, excited, would begin to drink. “No markers here. Too close to the swamp. Must fly further.”

“Perhaps we can wait till dawn?” Dennis with hope proposed. “Nothing to wait for.” “How nothing? Already any minute now!” “Here ‘any minute now’ stretches to eternity,” said Yara and, feeling that Dennis understood nothing, added, “It’s always cloudy dawn in this meadow and nothing else. In order for it to become brighter, we must fly further. Or remain and be satisfied by what is. But then, no markers.”

“It’s illogical,” objected Dennis. “Illogical for us but logical for Duoka. We have a world of cyclic variations. Morning, day, evening, night. Spring, summer, fall, winter. Sit by the window, pick your nose, and life will revolve around you. The Duoka world though is three-dimensionally constant. Here everything has unfolded.”

“How’s this?” Dennis did not understand. “Like this. The source of light and heat is somewhere in the centre of Duoka; it nevertheless must exist, although none of us has seen it. You haven’t noticed that all the trees lean a little to one side? On the edge, nearer to the swamp, it’s always night and cold. Here it’s always early dawn. Further is morning. They don’t come by themselves. In order to change something, one must move constantly.”