*
“Aaaay!”
I sat straight up. In the west, the sun was rolling toward the sea, the sky gaining a pale orange tint. I’d slept until evening. All my fingers and toes seemed to be still there. No monsters had come out of the sea and nibbled away any digits. My face didn’t hurt either. My skin looked tan even in winter and didn’t burn easily, but I had managed it a couple of times in my life and I didn’t care for the experience.
“Aaay!” a man called.
I turned. A boat drifted toward me. The hunter I’d met earlier sat at the oars, his shaggy dog waiting next to him. At the nose of the boat, the small man waved his arms at me.
“We have come to save you,” the hunter called out in accented Russian.
“Thank you!”
“It looks like you have saved yourself.” The hunter slowed the boat and it bumped gently against the rock. I climbed aboard.
The small man smiled at me.
“Hello,” the hunter said.
“Hello.”
“We have an important decision to make,” the hunter said. “The city is that way.” He pointed north. “Two and a half hours. My house and dinner, that way.” He pointed northeast. “One hour. I will take you either way, but I’ll be honest: night is coming. Not good to travel in the dark while magic is in charge. Mountains are not safe.”
Two and a half hours to the castle meant he would have to make a return trip in the dark by himself or stay somewhere in the city. His tone of voice told me he didn’t care much for cities. If some strange mountain beast ate him on the way back, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. The castle and everyone inside would just have to survive without me for another twelve hours.
“Your house and dinner, please.”
“Good choice.”
*
The hunter’s name was Astamur. His dog, which turned out to be a Caucasian shepherd, was named Gunda, after a mythical princess with many magical hero brothers. According to Astamur, the small man wouldn’t give us his name because he was afraid it would grant us power over him, but his kind was called atsany, and he didn’t mind being called that.
“They live in the mountains,” Astamur explained, as the boat glided along the shore. “They don’t like to be seen, but I rescued one of their young once. They don’t mind me as much. They are very old people. Been here thousands of years. Left their houses all over the place. Now they are coming back.”
“How did they survive?” I offered my hand to Gunda. She sniffed my fingers, regarded me with a very serious expression, and nudged my hand with her nose for a stroke. I obliged. I really missed my attack poodle.
Astamur shrugged. “The atsany slept. Some say they turned into rocks and came back to life when magic returned. They won’t say.”
“How did he end up in the sack?”
Astamur asked Atsany in his language. The small man crossed his arms on his chest and mumbled something.
“He says gyzmals caught him.”
“Gyzmals?”
Astamur bared his teeth at me. “Men-jackals. It’s bad luck to kill an atsany, so they put him in a bag and threw him into the water.”
Volodja and his fellow shapeshifters. “Not the brightest lot. They tried to rob us.”
“When magic first came, some people turned into gyzmals. Stories said they were evil. People were scared. When people get scared, bad things happen. Many gyzmals were killed. Then Megobari came. Now the gyzmals run the town, do whatever they want. Nobody can say anything. But robbing people, that’s going too far. The boy that led you into the cave has a mother in town. I’ll tell her about it. She’ll take care of him.” Astamur shook his head at me. “I tried to tell you: bad place. That’s where Agulshap lives. The water dragon.”
A lot of their words started with A. “Not anymore.”
Astamur’s eyebrows crept together. He said something to Atsany. The small man nodded.
Astamur laughed, his deep chuckle carrying above the water. “I thought I was saving a pretty girl. I was saving a warrior! We should have a feast. We’ll celebrate.”
He landed the boat and I helped him drag it ashore. We climbed up the mountain for about an hour, until the trail brought us to a valley. Mountains rolled into the distance and between them lay an emerald-green pasture. A small sturdy stone house crouched on the grass, and a few yards away, a flock of sheep with gray curly wool baaed in the wide enclosure.
“I thought you were a hunter.”
“Me? No. I’m just a shepherd. There is a bathroom inside. You are welcome to it. My house is your house.”
I stepped through the door. Inside the cottage was open and neat, with beautiful stone walls and a wood floor. Colorful Turkish rugs hung on the walls. A small kitchen sat to the right with an old electric range. There must be a generator somewhere. I walked through the living room, past a comfortable sofa covered by a soft white blanket, to the back, where I found a small bathroom with a toilet, shower, and sink. I tried the faucet. Water splashed into the metal basin. Running water all the way out here. Astamur was doing well for himself.
I used the bathroom inside and washed my face and my hands. When I came out, Astamur built a fire in a big stone pit behind the house.
“We’re going to cook over fire,” Astamur announced. “Traditional mountain dinner.”
Atsany ducked into the house and returned with a stack of blankets. I helped spread them on the ground.
Astamur brought out a large pan filled with chunks of onion, meat, and pomegranate seeds in some sauce and started threading them onto big skewers.
I caught the aroma of the sauce, a touch of vinegar and heat. My mouth watered. Suddenly I realized I was starving.
Astamur set the skewers above the fire and went to wash up. The aroma of smoking wood mixed with the smell of meat sizzling over the fire. The sky slowly turned orange and deeper red in the west, while in the east, above the mountains, it was almost crystalline purple, the color of an amethyst.
Astamur offered me a skewer. I bit into the meat. The tender meat practically melted in my mouth. This was heaven.
“Good?” Astamur asked with concern.
“Mm-hm,” I told him, trying to chew and talk at the same time. “Delicioush. Besht shting I ever ate.”
Atsany leaned back and laughed.
The shepherd smiled into his mustache and handed me a bottle of wine. “Homemade.”
I took a swallow. The wine was sweet, refreshing, and surprisingly delicate.
“So you live here all alone?” I asked.
Astamur nodded. “I like it here. I have my flock. I have my dog. I have a fire pit, a clear mountain stream, and the mountains. I live like a king.”
Atsany said something. Astamur shrugged. “Castles are for rulers. Kings come and go. Someone has to be the shepherd.”
“Do you miss being with other people down in town? Must get lonely up here.” I wouldn’t miss them. I would totally hitch up a house in the mountain and live all by myself. No shapeshifters. No brokenhearted mothers. No, “Yes, Consort,” “Please, Consort,” “Help us, Consort.” Right now that sounded like pure happiness.
Astamur smiled. “Down in the cities people fight. I fought too for a while until I got tired of it.” Astamur pulled up his pant leg. An ugly scar punctured his calf. Looked like a knife or a sword thrust. “Russians.”
He wagged his eyebrows at me and pulled his shirt off his shoulder, exposing an old bullet wound in his chest. “Georgians.” He laughed.
Atsany rolled his eyes.
“Does he understand what you say?” I asked.
“He does. It’s his own kind of magic,” Astamur answered. “If it weren’t for supplies, I’d never go back down to town. But a man has to do what a man has to do. Hard to live like a king without toilet paper.”
We finished eating. Atsany pulled out a pipe and said something with a solemn expression.
“He says he owes you a debt. He wants to know what you want.”
“Tell him no debt. He doesn’t owe me anything.”
Atsany’s bushy eyebrows came together. He took out his pipe and lectured me in a serious voice, punctuating his words by pointing the pipe at me. I was clearly on the receiving end of a very serious talking-to. Unfortunately for him, he was barely a foot and a half tall. I bit my bottom lip trying not to laugh.
“Do you want a short version or a long one?” Astamur said.
“Short one.”
“You saved his life, he owes you, and you should let him pay it back. That last part is advice from me. It will make him very unhappy to know that he owes someone. So what do you want? Do you want him to show you where there are riches? Do you want a man to fall in love with you?”
If only love were that easy. I sighed. “No, I don’t want riches and I have a man, thank you. He isn’t exactly a man. And I don’t exactly have him anymore, but that’s neither here nor there.”
Astamur translated. “Then what do you want?”
“Nothing.”
“There has to be something.”
Fine. “Ask him if he would share the magic word with me.”
Astamur translated.
Atsany froze and said something, the words coming fast like rocks falling down the mountain.
“He says it might kill you.”
“Tell him I already have some magic words, so I probably won’t die.”
“Probably?” Astamur raised his eyebrows.
“A very small chance.”
Atsany sighed.
“He says he will, but I can’t look. I’ll check on the sheep.” Astamur got up and went toward the pasture. “Try not to die.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Atsany leaned forward, picked up a skewer, and wrote something in the dirt. I looked.
An avalanche of agony drowned me, exploding into a twisting maelstrom of glowing lines. I rolled inside, each turn hurting more and more, as if my mind were being picked apart, shaved off with some phantom razor blade one tiny, excruciating layer at a time. I turned inside the cascade of pain, faster and faster, trying desperately to hold on to my mind.
A word surfaced from the glow. I had to make it mine, or it would kill me.
“Aarh.” Stop.
The pain vanished. Slowly, the world returned bit by bit: the green grass, the smell of smoke, the distant noises of sheep, and Atsany wiping the dirt with his foot. I’d made it. Once again, I’d made it.
“You didn’t die,” Astamur said, coming closer. “We are both very glad.”
Atsany smiled and said something.
“He wants me to tell you that you are kind. He is glad that you have the word. It will help you in the castle with all those lamassu. He doesn’t know why you have them up there anyway. Don’t you know they eat people?”