slowly. The wing feathers began to break off from the stress. It seemed it was forcing its way through glue. Each stroke of the wings moved them forward, but monstrously slowly. It seemed to Yara that they were not flying but crawling. Without a winged horse she could not cover even a centimetre here, though she would be raking up the sticky air with her palms over the centuries.
Eric and Delta made their way along a narrow tunnel. It was drilled by the hurricane and had clear sticky walls, which sucked in everything but let nothing out. Yara was amazed by the wisdom compelling the horses to rush to the centre of the hurricane. It would be unrealistic to fly through the quagmire in all the other places. Here the hurricane opened a breach.
Something brightened hazily in front, although it was a dense, sucking darkness to the right and left. Yara stubbornly tried to look only at the horse’s mane, knowing that it was mortally dangerous to avert her eyes from it. She understood the melancholy of those who once got stuck in the swamp. To sit eternally in the sticky scum, which held on such that you would be unable to blink or stir a finger. And all this time guessing at the something close by, something completely different – bright, real, flamboyant.
In the dense darkness drifted sluggish grey shadows, similar to clay-covered dwarfs with googly eyes. These were elbes. The shadows were shifting and approaching the walls of the tunnel. When the dwarfs touched the walls, they fired off something not unlike gossamers. A piece of gossamer touched Yara’s jacket and immediately burst.
Yara felt the short probing twinges almost continuously and surmised that there were lots more elbes than she was capable of discerning in those two-three seconds that she had the courage to look. At the moment of the touch of prickly little gossamers Yara experienced sometimes a wolf hunger, annoyance, greediness, sometimes sluggish sleepiness and indifference. But again and again Eric’s wings traced a semicircle and tore up the gossamer.
After ascertaining that their attacks were futile, the elbes changed tactics. They upped the stakes. Now instead of hunger and melancholy they proposed pleasures of the most different kinds to Yara. All this time they were probing Yara, attempting to find a flaw in her. So, you do not want to put your arms up to your elbows in the gold coins of an Indian rajah or stroke the fur of a tame tiger? How about running with cheetahs or standing under the rainbow jet of a waterfall? Shashlik with hot mulled wine? Again no? Maybe, sinorita prefers furs, a long car and a taciturn chauffeur, who will slowly transport her along the streets at night to the sound of cocaine jazz?
The imageries were so distinct, so visible that Yara no longer distinguished them from reality. She could scarcely determine where she was in reality – under the waterfall, at a noisy eastern market, or in the thick swamp shaking like a jellied dish. Dreams, hardening, were transformed into reality. She wanted to doze off, to relax, and to give herself up to their lulling power.
Say “yes,” little one! My little, beloved, warm little one!
Say “yes,” essence!
Say “yes,” trash!
Yara knew: all these juiced up imageries, which they stuffed her consciousness with, were nothing to the elbes themselves. Elbes were cold as ice. They did not sleep and did not grieve. Their enjoyment was in another realm, which was impossible for her to comprehend. Gold, food, romance had no greater value to them than a fat worm moving on a hook did to a fisherman.
Yara knew that if she would be friendly now and give internal agreement, it would be impossible to break the fetters later. She would be stuck here and would remain forever in the swamp. It had happened many times that hdivers, even the most experienced and hardened, indifferent to pain and easily putting off hunger, jumped off the saddle, after becoming prisoners of a cherished mirage. And they would hardly find their mountain streams, their smile of a beauty, or fantastic cities there, in the thick fumes of the swamp.
Wanting to warm herself with something warm and important, Yara began to think about Ul, but suddenly realized that she completely did not love him. A boor, a brute, a barbarian! Hid flowers in attics and she chased after them only to get dirty all over in pigeon crap! If he would at least be a handsome man, but his teeth are uneven, his legs short! Neither apartment nor distinct future. And even counts each kopeck in a cafe! Minor little offences crawled like agile cockroaches along all the cracks in her mind.
Yara understood that Ul never needed her. He simply wanted a girl, any who would agree to endure his tricks. The other girls do not give a hoot about him of course, and likely, the whole HDive is laughing at her! If Ul would turn out to be here now, Yara would pounce on him as a cat would, begin to scratch and bite. She wanted to turn the horse around in order to sort it out finally with this freak. The hatred was so strong that Yara even saw black spots with her open eyes. She no longer kept her eyes closed. Why? Damn the swamp! Her chief enemy is Ul!!!
Eric started to neigh sorrowfully. She did not hear its neigh, but guessed it from the impatient movement of the head and the snout covered with a cap of foam by the nostrils. After a second, the horse began to heel over and tip sideways. They were no longer advancing but hovering over one spot. Something that could not be broken off caught Eric’s right wing. The left wing was convulsively scooping up the sticky air. Yara saw that the horse would now overturn, and she herself would hit against the wall of the tunnel. The grey dwarfs also considered this and, pressing against each other, they quickly crawled together into one place.
Not understanding what was happening to Eric and why he was falling, Yara lowered her eyes and saw how above her boots, a gossamer, thickened into a fat white root, had quickly entered her leg. Small beads rolled along the gossamer from an elbe to Yara. At the moment when the beads touched her leg, she experienced new jabs of hatred towards Ul. True, now it was technically complicated to hate. Her knees slid along the saddle, the left stirrup was dangling, the saddle girth loosened, and any minute now the saddle itself must turn out to be under the horse’s belly. Good that the bent front pommel held on behind the base of the wings.
“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
