Pegasus, Lion, and Centaur. Дмитрий Емец

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 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