“Not true!” Essiorh was outraged. “We have an understanding. It strictly stalls at a traffic light. But starts quite obediently when you accelerate afterwards.”

“And your motorcycle, is it also an unlucky motorcycle? Or did you hijack it in the routine way?”

“You insult me,” Essiorh said, getting furious. “This evening, this motorcycle was supposed to take away another man’s wife. And then two days later, it would be stolen, the exchange bureau would be robbed, and then it would be dumped in the swamp outside the city. What vandalism! What abuse to motorcycles!”

“But now, of course, none of this will happen. You did a good deed again, didn’t you?” Daph asked.

Essiorh coughed. It seemed like he did not much like the question. “Koff, koff… Well, how to tell you…” he muttered.

“Tell it like it is.”

“Eh, eh… well… Actually, to be honest, reality will change a little. They’ll rob the Exchange using a Zhiguli, and take someone else’s wife away on the subway. Moreover, she’ll pay for the ticket herself.”

“But they won’t dump the motorcycle in the swamp?”

“Of course not. Just let them try!” Essiorh uttered challengingly.

Daph finished the potatoes and disappointingly slurped with the straw in the empty juice glass. Depressiac, meanwhile, had dealt with the dried shredded squid. Only the tray, presenting no gastronomical interest, remained of the dinner. “So, someone else’s wife will be taken away on the subway! Phew, how unromantic! This damsel would be sort of proud to be kidnapped on a motorcycle, but now she’ll only snort!” Daph said. This thought had already been troubling her for about two minutes.

“It’s her problem! But generally, they may say thanks. Rail transport is much safer than the wheel!” Essiorh retorted sternly. He clearly intended on defending his motorcycle against all sorts of attempts.

“Well, it’s all bull!” Daph said, having already had time to fall under the verbal charm of Eddy Khavron.

“What’s bull?” Essiorh asked without understanding.

“Well, bull, it’s like… hmm… crap,” Daph explained authoritatively.

“What’s crap?”

“Crap, it’s bull! What, don’t you understand?” Daph said, no less authoritatively.

She was ready for new questions, but her keeper had already satisfied his curiosity and only thoughtfully drawled, “Ahhh!” The subject had been exhausted.

A group of about fifteen fanatics rushed past them, jumping over the bench in panic. Another group of about fifty raced after them at some distance.

“How wonderful!” Essiorh said approvingly. “Instead of sitting in front of the TV, these youngsters are busy with sports.”

“Are you sure it’s sports?” Daph doubted.

“What else? Do you have another hypothesis? Well done, friends, good luck to you in your group race with obstacles!”

The first group of fanatics reached the alley, and the other group, more numerous, rushed to Daph and her keeper. Not analysing the way, the group burst right onto the small park, jumping on automobiles. The bench on which Daphne and Essiorh sat was overturned. Both were forced to leap up quickly.

“Hey, hey, friends! Don’t knock over my motorcycle!” Essiorh was alarmed, clinging to the handlebar of his iron horse.

One of the pursuers tried, in passing, to grab Depressiac from Daphne’s shoulder, but jerked his hand back with a howl. Blood slowly appeared from five fresh scratches. Depressiac thoughtfully licked its claws, determining the level of hemoglobin.

The first group of fanatics had reached the alley, where they suddenly received a solid reinforcement of about a hundred people. After locking together for a minute, the groups’ roles were reversed. Now the first group was pursuing and the second group was fleeing. And both groups again rushed past the astonished guards. This time, however, Daph and Essiorh had enough sense to press against the wall of a house.

“Perhaps I’ll go and see where they’re running to! What fervor, what expression! I’m sure this will be informative for me. See you later, Daph!” Essiorh said. He took the motorcycle from the stand and ran, pushing it. Then, after hopping nimbly onto the seat, shifted gear and dashed away, gunning the engine, enveloped in bluish fume.

“I’ll rent a brain. They aren’t offered second-hand!” Daph said after him. She imagined to herself advertising in the newspaper. Her guard-keeper was an impervious idealist. However, Daph liked this. Each gets the keeper he deserves.

* * *

After taking leave of Essiorh, Daph, having more or less satisfied her hunger, decided not to search for Eddy Khavron anymore, but simply stroll. However, Depressiac suddenly started hissing, broke away from Daph’s shoulder, and, on the run trying to free its wings from under the overalls, dived into a gateway. Daphne’s first thought was that it had seen a dog. The second one was that it had met a great and innocent love, the seventy-fifth according to count, which directly preceded the fleeting seventy-sixth and the incomparable seventy-seventh.

She rushed after Depressiac, but just into the gateway on one side was a house, and on the other side was the red brick fence of an unknown factory. Without attempting to climb over the wall, the cat slid into a manhole and disappeared, leaving its mistress in confusion.

“The escape of overheated cats! When you dispatch the brain for repair, write a return receipt!” Daphne thought.

She was about to follow the cat, using the magic of passing through objects, but recalled in time what this would be fraught with. The entire lunch eaten recently, which was pleasant, would remain on the wall outside, as it was ordinary, non-magical by nature of its substance, and it had no ability to pass through objects.

Daph was not seriously worried. Depressiac had run away from her so many times that this already gravitated towards bad infinity. One time it had disappeared for twelve years. True, this happened in Eden and not in the moronoid world. However, there was also nothing to fret about here. Daphne did not envy the car which would hit it, or the dog that would attempt to smother it, or the kamikaze, working for the city, who would try to shove Depressiac into a cat cage.

Still, she did not like parting with the cat. Winged cats, even with a nasty disposition, do not lie around on the road. Daphne wanted to fly over the fence and had already grabbed her backpack so that the materialized wings would not be entangled, when she suddenly experienced an acute unease of unknown origin. The unease was much stronger than in the case with the succubus. If it had only been a vague unease then, now Daph was simply beside herself with worry. Her heart leaped twice as if on an elastic, and then, after growing bolder, skipped two beats.

“Run! Hide! Do something! Ahh, mama, make this sleepyhead think quicker! They’ll finish her off and me together with her!” her inner voice howled in panic.

Daphne obeyed. She pulled the flute out of her backpack and, focusing in order not to slip, blew the maglody of invisibility. Her body became invisible first and slightly later also her clothing. Only the backpack dangled in the air as an eternal monument to obstinacy.

But Daph’s inner voice was not calmed down by this, demanding something more. After dashing to the kiddie sandbox, Daphne climbed in it and lay down, taking refuge behind the freshly-planed wooden border. She did not wonder whether this was a foolish act, trusting what was leading her.

“I don’t understand why intuition isn’t included in the list of basic feelings. A guard of Light without intuition is a corpse standing in line for burial! Mark my words, my nestlings, and let the scar remain in your memory!” Elsa Kerkinitida Flora Zaches loved to repeat.

She pronounced the word “scar-r-r-r-r-r” so menacingly and meanwhile rumbled in such a way that unripe fruits poured down from the pear of decency. Sniffka was probably difficult, but she taught her subject well. A good teacher, as is known, is an enthusiastic bore, not even permitting the thought of her tediousness.

And here Daph, one of the victims of the mentioned training, had already been lying for almost a minute with her stomach on the green sand, which smelled of cats. Judging by some tactile signs, non-magic cats. A crushed nicotine-smudged filter stuck out from the sand in front of her nose. Daph grimaced with disgust. She wanted to crawl away, but she did not dare. Her inner voice demanded full immobility. Moreover, it even wanted her to bury her face in the sand and almost burrow in it, but Daph could not go through with this. Not a chance! No need to steal bread from ostriches.

From where she was hiding, Daphne saw perfectly the gateway through which she had recently ran, following the cat. Danger radiated precisely from there; it stretched out to her just like a draft. No one entered the gateway. By the dumpster, on the spot, pigeons were feeding, cooing, and coupling. The wind was flapping a duvet drying on the balcony of the third floor. On the duvet were stout blue hippopotami with bulging eyes. When the wind blew the fabric, it seemed that the hippopotami were about to scatter from the balcony like a hailstorm.

“How is it possible to nestle with such a duvet? How gross! They would even decorate it with hanging squirrels! Ahhhhh! I’m done! I’ll now grow roots if I lie here any longer!” Daph thought towards the middle of the third minute.

Her present position smacked of idiocy. Three minutes in a row she was hiding in a sandbox, contemplating the artistically lightly-buried cigarette butts. And all this was guided by an unconscious unease. It felt ridiculous to Daph. She wanted to get up and leave. “I’ll count to a hundred and, if nothing happens, I’ll move away to mourn my stupidity!” she thought and turned her gaze, intending on looking up at the sky, checking whether golden wings shone there. Precisely at that moment a terrible elastic force pressed her into the sand. What was that? It was something combining an explosion, a flash, fire, and light. A terrible, panicky thought flickered in Daph that her eyes were scorched. Pain, fear, emptiness… Daph understood that she was being attacked by the magic of destruction. Darkness with a white whirl of flares sucked her in. It seemed to the girl that she had broken up into hundreds of little screaming Daphnes, and that she no longer existed at all.

“Told you, wimp, face in the sand! Squeamish about cats! Ooh, how delicate we are! Got it?” Perhaps the inner voice should be more polite, but Daphne was not so gentle with herself. The number one rule of life says: if one is gentle with oneself, others are not so gentle.

Several tormenting seconds later her sight began to return. Daph felt relief. She had not been blinded! She was saved by looking up, shifting her gaze. Nevertheless, for now she saw only outlines, silhouettes, and shadows, nothing more. In the strange dance of shadows and flares, it seemed to her as if the stones in the gateway opened up, and a man stepped out of the reddish brick onto the road. Daph lay low, fearing to breathe, to stir, not daring to change the position of her body. She no longer trusted the maglody of invisibility. After all, it had not helped her before the explosion.

She felt rather than saw the unknown person stopped and looked around.

“If anyone from Light was here, he no longer exists. Only the one who hid in a pine coffin would survive,” the man uttered in an undertone and, after turning his back to Daph, walked out of the gateway. Under his arm he was carrying a long object wrapped in burlap.

The voice was distorted: it jumped, sounding sometimes like a falsetto, sometimes like a bass, and Daph would not risk assuming whether it belonged to a man, a girl, or an adolescent. “Look at how he protected himself! The spell of voice change. Plus the magic of distraction, attached to the rune of falsity of the second level. You see an old lady or a packed donkey, but in reality it’s a massive Cyclops, to whom the doctor prescribed cannibalism to boost hemoglobin, or a combat unicorn!” she thought. “Eh! Moscow is becoming a boring, weird place. A little longer, and it’ll breed so many wizards that moronoids will become an attraction. But why did I survive?”

After deciding that it was time to leave her hideout, Daphne started to get up, but the back of her head struck painfully against something. She twitched and pricked her shoulder with a carelessly driven nail. She rolled away fearfully, imagining heaven knows what, with her hair sliding along the wet sand, leaped up quickly and… her gaze was captured by the recently planed side of the sandbox – two boards below and one horizontally for the comfort of resting mommies.

Do not throw sand in mommy’s eyes! You will get your hands dirty!

“Indeed, the sandbox is pine! A board on the side and a board overhead!” Daph thought. She suddenly wanted to burst out laughing, fall down and, rolling on the sand, repeat, “Well, have you eaten?” Realizing that she had started to become hysterical, she bit her hand painfully. The pain brought her to her senses.

Daph approached the arch, examined and even felt it. Her returned sight informed her that in front of her was plaster with a cheerful pattern of mould, and brick under the plaster. The arch was like an arch. Fully moronoid in every respect. There was no confirmed presence of a permanent magic teleport. So, the passageway was temporary.

So, here was the fatal danger Essiorh had imagined! A temporal shift had befallen the hapless keeper, and he had seen a threat that had not yet happened at that moment. If not for the appearance of the succubus confusing them, Essiorh’s help would have come opportunely.

Daph already wanted to leave the arch when she suddenly saw a dark spot on the asphalt. She squatted and ran her finger along it. She lifted her finger to her eyes and suddenly felt sick, nauseous, and horrible. To a guard of Light, even inexperienced, it was enough to see blood once in order to understand whose and under what circumstances the blow was inflicted. There was only one thing Daph could not say: who had inflicted it.