Methodius shivered. He was unpleasantly startled that Julitta knew about the puddle and the dream. He looked around at the empty courtyard, the entrance door, through which already for a very long time – so it seemed to him – no one had entered or left. It was sufficiently absurd, especially if one considered that at this hour dogs would normally fill the grass plots by the building. “Strange… Everything is very strange! It’s possible to think that all this is a plot. As in the theatre,” thought he.
Methodius noticed that the zipper of Julitta’s jacket was undone approximately to a third, and an unusual adornment – a silver icicle on a long chain – had broken loose outside. In passing, he thought that if Julitta now attempted to do up the jacket, then the zipper would cut the chain in two. Such happened to Zozo repeatedly, without considering the stupid incident when Eddy accidentally swallowed her earrings, which she placed in a small vase with candies. Methodius mechanically stretched out his hand in order to repair the adornment, but, after touching the silver icicle, for some reason held it in his fingers. He suddenly noticed that the icicle was behaving extremely strangely: it changed shape and colour, attempted to come over his hand to clothe his palm like a glove, and something elusive inside, more like a cigarette flame glowing in an empty dark room, lit up.
“Hey, what are you doing there with my jacket? A forward type and all that?” Julitta giggled. She looked down, but, after seeing what Methodius was holding precisely, she began to squeal shrilly. Methodius perplexedly let go of the adornment. He was shaken. It seemed to him that the witch, with such skill getting rid of the hog like a soccer ball, would not squeal this way at all, especially over such trifles. Julitta issued two or three additional trills, and then, breathing heavily, took a step back. “What’s with you? This is darc!” she said with horror.
“Well, so?” Methodius asked.
“What do you mean so? DARC!”
“Well?” Methodius asked.
“You don’t understand what this is?”
“Ne-a! An icicle.”
“You’re losing your mind! To touch a darc! So casually take and touch someone’s darc like this! Lunatic! Nuts!” Now, when Julitta had calmed down slightly, admiration was definitely detected behind the fear in her voice.
“And what’s this darc? Why is it necessary? I thought it’s simply a trinket on a chain and some such,” said Methodius.
“Darc – it’s not a trinket. Darc – it’s darc… I don’t know how to explain it! But what you did is more dangerous than if you touched a rattlesnake! Understand?”
“Sort of,” said Methodius.
“Say, how long did you hold it?”
“Not long! Well, about three seconds, maybe five,” Methodius estimated.
“Five sec-conds?” Julitta drawled. “But it’s wildly painful!”
“Painful for you? Sorry!” Methodius apologized.
“No, not for me! It had to be wildly painful for you! You should be rolling on the ground and attempting to bite off your hand in order that the new pain somehow muffles the first! It’s MY darc, you understand? And a STRANGER, i.e. you, touched it! And with naked hands: not a staff, not a sword, not magic. With your hands! Have you considered? Darc can only be removed from a defeated enemy, and not by tearing it off, but by felling him, cutting the chain! And you felt nothing?”
“No… Well, almost. It was not painful, in any case,” refined Methodius, honestly attempting to recall what he had experienced. Curiosity – yes, but there was clearly something else. Something reckless and slightly evil. Something like what he felt, say, when he succeeded in crushing a fly on glass.
“Hmm… The great Methodius Buslaev! Then I, perhaps, understand why…” Julitta began, but, after recollecting, changed the theme. “Well, it’s unimportant… Let’s switch over to business. I came to you not entirely by myself… That is, I came by myself, but they sent me. Someone wants to meet with you personally. How about tomorrow night? Say, 1 a.m.?”
Methodius was uneasy. He was a contemporary teenager, and a contemporary teenager does many things automatically. For example, he does not trust the unacquainted much. And indeed more so he generally does not go to unknown places on a first summon to a meeting with some unknown person.
Julitta, it seemed, reading his thought, wonderfully understood his fears. The little witch raised her head, squinted and ambiguously blew into space. And immediately Methodius felt like cold fingers were closing on his heart. An invisible icy snake was sliding through his blood into his brain. And in the next moment Methodius’ feet took several steps by themselves. He stared at them with horror – the feet did not obey him anymore. They served an alien will. “So!” Julitta said with satisfaction. “And now this!” She raised her hand to the level of her face and, smirking, lifted her fingers. Methodius discovered that his own hand was repeating the same gesture – it rose and lifted the fingers.
“Ah, stop! Stop! I don’t want to!” he shouted. He tried to lower his hand by force, after gripping his wrist with the other hand, but the insidious witch suddenly brought both hands to her neck, grabbed herself by the throat, and began to squeeze it. Moreover, she was clearly doing this carelessly, although with the exaggerated grimace of a man hanging. Methodius started wheezing. Spots spread before his eyes. He was suffocating himself and could do nothing about it. Moreover, in contrast to the insidious Julitta, who was barely squeezing her throat, Methodius’ own hands were suffocating him extremely responsibly.
Only when he, almost choking, fell onto his knees, Julitta, taking pity, let go of her own throat. “Well, that’s it. Enough with you. Get your arms and legs back,” she said. The witch smiled, shook her ashen hair, and Methodius again gained control over his own body. Coughing, he got up and, looking at his hands with distrust, began to massage his throat. “Why did you do it?” he asked.
“Ah, why! I only wanted to show you that if I wish, I could deliver you to this meeting even without your consent. And the most disgusting – I’m being nasty sometimes! To play such a trick on Methodius Buslaev himself!” Julitta languidly said.
“But not this time! You couldn’t!” Methodius announced simply from obstinacy.
Julitta yawned, “Yes, my dear, yes… Although you’re monstrously strong in the magic sense, nevertheless I have more experience. I could force you to do everything I want. Say, to get up to the roof and take a leap down like a swallow. And not simply to leap but to laugh aloud in flight and sing a song about brave pilots…”
“Stop. What fly of humanism has bitten you today?” Methodius asked glumly.
“None. Just that I want tomorrow’s meeting with the one who sent me to be voluntary for you. No one forces you to go anywhere. And generally, the meeting is necessary not so much to me as to you. Do you finally want to find out who you are? Do you want to learn to manage your own gift? Trust me; you’re several times more brilliant than me in the magic sense! After the appropriate development and faceting, it goes without saying, it’s possible to cut out from your magic dozens of witches such as me… Although, of course, they wouldn’t be so charming. Charm is not a dead person, you won’t dig it out of a cemetery,” thinking for a bit, Julitta said more precisely.
Methodius related with distrust to the girl’s assertion that he had many magic abilities. “She’s mixed up something! To make a magician of me is like turning a live elephant into a stopper for the bathtub!” he thought not without regret. “And who sent you? Who must I meet?” he asked.
Julitta interrogatively looked up suddenly, accurately trying to examine something in the air. In Methodius sprung up a sensation that they were not alone here – that right beside them in the void of the courtyard there was still someone else – terrible and invisible. “No. I can’t tell you this for the time being. He… He himself will tell you everything. You will come?”
