Читать книгу: «Methodius Buslaev. The Midnight Wizard», страница 3

“But don’t say that here. You go crazy in March, with me it’s every day. Especially when everyone throws on a clearly unsuccessful dress, and the most successful will hang out of sight and dream of moths,” Granny said. She had a small studio in a semi-basement, which she loved to call the “House of fashion named after me.” Besides Granny herself, two more girls were working in the “House of fashion named after me.” One of them was a terrible gossip, and the second was always ill, moreover somehow so cunning that she could never be reached on her home phone. All the time she “has gone to the doctor’s and not yet returned.” “I like the second girl better. With her you don’t get earaches,” said Granny.

“Gram, Met wants to eat!” Irka said.

“Sure,” agreed Granny. “You know where the fridge is. And you know how to work the microwave. I’m going. By tomorrow morning, I’m under orders to think up such a dress so that the investigator, getting married for the third time, will look as naive as the director of the church choir.”

“Okay, Gram, fine! We’ll do it ourselves!” Irka said. She knew better than Methodius that Granny did not particularly like to cook. Instead, in supermarkets she purchased cartloads of yogurts, sausage, oranges, and frozen dinners. Methodius was greatly amazed. For example, it seemed the upper compartments of the freezer were almost half-packed with ice cream, and Granny did not try to count how many portions there were. Skinflint Eddy with his habit of drawing lines with a pencil on toilet paper would get upset if he found out about this.

Granny, singing, left, and Methodius and Irka remained in the kitchen. They warmed up nothing. They confined themselves to extracting from the refrigerator a big tub of ice cream and a large stick of sausage. The sausage Methodius professionally sliced with a knife – picked up from Eddy, who started out as a cook – and then began to eat ice cream, wielding rounds of smoked sausage instead of a spoon. It seemed to him tastier this way.

“Your grandmother is cool,” said Methodius with a well-packed mouth.

“She’s everything to me,” agreed Irka. “Only she cannot stand it when they call her Grandmother. Here a new teacher for Russian came to me – they come to me at home, you know – and said to her: ‘How do you do, Grandmother!’ And Granny was angry: ‘It’s you,’ she said, ‘who’s a grandmother, I’m a person!’”

“And that’s true. Parents are people too. What, are they guilty, perhaps, that they’re parents?” Methodius agreed.

He suddenly recalled how and under what circumstances he was introduced to Irka two years ago. With his one friend – already former – he was passing by her entrance at the moment when Irka was trying to get the wheelchair onto the step in front of the entrance door. Irka, for the first time getting out of the house without the grandmother (afterwards she really got it for this), was considering how she could get out of the tight spot. Possibly, Methodius would have rushed past altogether, not noticing anything, if not for his friend, who began to laugh aloud. He found it very comical that a freak in a wheelchair could not get into the entrance – all the time rolling backwards.

For a long time Methodius attentively, as if comparing them, looked first at the friend, then at Irka, who was pretending with all her might that she had heard nothing, though her cheeks and ears were already crimson, and then very swiftly and precisely he clouted his friend in the chin. This (like the slicing of sausages) was also a lesson of Eddy Khavron, who, until the failure with nested dolls and army hats spent about three years being busy in the boxing ring. “Throw a punch without effort like a stone. The power of the impact is in the legs and the turning of the trunk,” he taught.

The impact turned out unexpectedly powerful. Methodius almost dislocated his hand. After the punch, the friend settled on the asphalt like a bag of manure. He sat on the asphalt and shook his head. A neigh not entirely quieted down yet gurgled in his throat. After this, he essentially stopped being a friend. On the other hand in the life of Methodius appeared his first true friend – Irka.

They sat in the kitchen and ate ice cream, chatting about all kinds of nonsense. Methodius did not mention Zozo, expecting her hog, escorting him from the house. He could not bear to complain. There is something fundamentally pitiful in someone complaining, even with a reason – this he mastered sufficiently long ago. Irka also never complained – and this united them much stronger than if they on meeting cried on each other’s shoulder.

“And how’s your dream?” Irka suddenly asked.

Methodius tensed up, “You know about that dream?”

“Aha.”

“Well, it happens sometimes. Not very often,” he unwillingly said.

“Always the same one?”

“Yes. But I don’t want to recall this.” However, he involuntarily recalled nevertheless, and his mood immediately crawled down like the worm that did not like the Eiffel Tower.

This was one and the same disgusting dream, which he had once or twice a month. In this dream, he was standing in front of and looking at a dull closed lead sarcophagus with ancient signs imprinted on it. Methodius did not know what was inside there, but sensed it was something terrible, something he should never look at, something that must on no account escape. But at the same time he could not take his eyes off it. And the most terrible thing was that the lead sarcophagus began to melt under his gaze. However, every time Methodius woke up before what was in the sarcophagus managed to break loose. Once he even yelled in his sleep, waking Zozo and Eddy. Eddy was so astonished that he did not even swear. “I understand you perfectly, buddy! I have nightmares. Somehow, I dreamt that they ordered my foot with vegetable ragout for supper, and at the same time – dig the impudence? – puckered all the time afterwards and asserted that the meat was over-cooked!” he said then.

They talked some more still, until finally, about ten o’clock, Zozo phoned Methodius. “Come home. I’m waiting for you,” she said.

“And this one has already rolled away on his cart?” Methodius was interested.

“From where did you know that he was not on foot… Everything fell apart.” Zozo’s voice was quite crestfallen.

“How’s this?”

“He arrived a little early. I wasn’t ready and in order to gain time, asked him to dash into the supermarket to buy white wine. I hate it when people with nothing to do hang about near the door and prevent me from putting make-up on. He was about to go, but returned almost immediately – mad like you on Sunday mornings when I wake you up out of habit. Something there with his Audi… Well, I started to calm him down a little, to warm him with sincere heat, and here, imagine, his eyes fell on the wedding picture of your daddy, which Eddy throws darts at. He began to coax and fished out, such a parasite, that I have a son. I didn’t violently deny, nevertheless he indeed found out, even showed him some of your photos. Who knows, I think, what if he manages some major male bonding? Play soccer together, share a first cigarette. ‘Do you smoke, son? I hope, with filter?’ Not frigging likely, didn’t come through! He sat for nearly an hour as if on needles, and then left… My life is shattered!” Zozo’s voice rose to a tragic Mont Blanc and hung there, intending to break loose into the abyss of hysterics.

“Nonsense, mom! Your life shatters about three times a month, and then immediately grows together,” Methodius comforted her. He had already lost count of how often his mother met with second-hand princes from the dating magazine. And each time everything concluded with an inoffensive zero, except one case when the prince at hand dragged away a pathos-arousing bronze ashtray, which Eddy, in turn, had hauled away from the cafe, where he worked before Ladyfingers. The next day this prince returned drunk, drummed on the door for a long time, attempting to have a talk, and fell asleep right on the landing, laying his impetuous head down on the rug. Good that Eddy returned early and, taking revenge for the ashtray, with well-aimed kicks banished Adam from paradise.

“You think so? Okay, forget it,” Zozo said sadly. Methodius felt that in this very minute she was tearing the fat hog out from her heart, crumpling and throwing him into the wastebasket. “Will you come yourself or do I have to meet you?” Zozo asked. It clearly sounded in her voice that she was too lazy to get dressed.

“With biker escorts,” Methodius said.

“Well then, by yourself. I’ll wait! We still have the trophy cake left,” Zozo said.

“That’s it, you’re going?” Irka asked when Methodius replaced the receiver.

“Aha. Tomorrow I’ll hop over after school!”

“Do, bye!” Irka said with light envy. She had never walked into a school. However, Methodius now and then felt that she, working alone at home and with teachers coming, outstripped him by about two grades, no less. In any case, in some subjects Irka had already passed exams for grade nine.

***

Methodius crossed Severnyi Boulevard and approached the house – this time, for variety, from the other side. Here his way was barred by an enormous puddle, which absorbed the melted snow of surrounding courtyards and occasionally with delight sipped water from broken pipes. This gave crafty real estate agents the chance to assert that the house was located in picturesque locality next to a pond. Through the puddle was a caravan path of bricks and boards, scattered at whimsical intervals.

The moon lay like a gold coin on the flat dark surface of the puddle. Once in a while, hardly noticeable ripples passed over it. Methodius looked at the moon – at first in the puddle and then raising his face to the sky – and suddenly a strange feeling enveloped him. It seemed to him that he was absorbing the force of the moonlight – saturating him with its calm power and deathly void. Startled, this was the first time after all, he lowered his eyes and suddenly saw how, obeying his gaze, the reflection of the moon glided along the puddle like a spotlight. Methodius’ skin crawled. He decided that he was going insane. To chase the moon like a ball with his gaze! To describe such things to the school psychologist would be extremely dangerous. Methodius again tossed his head up. No… the big moon, fortunately remained on the spot. His gaze governed only the lunar reflection. Met shook his head and blinked several times, breaking off his gaze from the lunar reflection. He succeeded. The reflection stuck and continued to bathe in the black water already by itself. “It only appeared so!” Methodius thought, experiencing simultaneously easing and disappointment. To govern the reflection of the moon was, of course, eerie, but at the same time, it was something difficult to refuse.

Jumping over from brick to brick, he crossed to the other side of the puddle and approached the entrance. A bell began to ring suddenly in Methodius’ consciousness. This was the special bell of intuition, which Met had long since gotten used to trusting. Now this bell clearly ordered him not to walk into the entrance. Methodius looked around – everything was somewhat quiet: nothing and no one. However, the bell nevertheless did not break off. “Well then, am I to climb to the sixteenth floor along the balconies?” Methodius thought perplexedly. He wavered for a while, and then approached the entrance nevertheless. He had already typed in the code and even heard the inviting peep of the door, when from behind someone’s shadow flickered. A strong hand shoved and dragged Methodius to the gate. He attempted to hold onto the doorknob, but a strong slap pushed him into the entrance. Stumbling, half-thunderstruck, he took several steps.

“Well, finally! I thought you’d never return, puppy,” someone said triumphantly. Methodius already recognized the hog by the voice. In the semi-darkness of the entrance – lights only at the four corners by the elevators and mailboxes – his face seemed greenish and swollen. Methodius puckered from the pain. The strong fingers of the hog sunk so into his collarbone that it was as if they desired to take it with them by way of moral compensation. Methodius almost felt sick from the red waves of fury projected by the hog. They rolled over him, shoved him. Methodius sensed that he could absorb their force, but he involuntarily repelled, deflected, and set up a block – for this reason the wave also smashed with such sprays.

“Let go of me!”

“Let go? Only from the roof head first! What did you do to my car, piglet?”

“What car? I never saw your car at all! Didn’t see who pierced you tires!” The powerful box on the ear, which jerked his head to the side, burned Methodius’ cheek. He was shaken with doubled fury and dragged along the steps to the elevators. Methodius realized that he had committed a strategic error. He could not but see the hog’s car, indeed the first time they met was precisely beside it. And indeed all the more, being innocent, he could not have known at all that the tires were punctured.

“Well, don’t try to escape! I’ll take out all of your insides and wind them around my hand! We’ll now go together to your devilish mother, and I’ll have a heart-to-heart talk with her! I’ll take from you triple for each tire cover, and if not, I’ll break everything in your home!” the hog wheezed. He was so angry and retained with such fury the breaking away Methodius that he in no way could put his finger on the button to summon the elevator. Finally, he managed it. But at the moment the button lit up with the sad red eye, someone’s calm voice uttered, “Hey you, victim of a printer, leave him alone!”

Chapter 2
The Skomoroshya Settlement

Methodius and the hog turned around at once. They heard neither the click of the entrance door nor steps, but they were no longer alone on the landing by the elevators. Next to the mailboxes, above which the mysterious “NUFA – SVENYA!” was scratched on the wall, a tall, very plump girl of about twenty with ash silver hair was standing. In her hands was a triple-decker sandwich so immense that all double burgers in comparison would seem like pitiful undersized objects with a complex. However, the girl was obviously not a bit disturbed by its size. She was conducting with the sandwich like a maestro with his baton, without forgetting to bite off good-sized pieces occasionally. It is worthwhile to add that the girl was in a thick leather jacket and a short skirt. Completing the outfit were tall boots – one red, another black – and bubble bracelets in the form of lizards with eyes of shiny stones.

“Hey you, slammed by a scanner! It seems I ordered you to let go of the boy! If you don’t, I’ll stuff you inside the cable of a busy phone! I’ll have you wandering from one beep to the next! I, Julitta, am telling you this!” the girl repeated, brandishing the sandwich threateningly.

The hog began to snuffle, digesting the complex threat. A whole wrestling match of motivations was launched in his small cranium; however, in the ring the desire to get even with Methodius flattened the possibility of putting in her place the insolent girl with the strange name. “Don’t be in the way! This young criminal punctured two of my outstanding tires!” he growled, shaking Methodius like a pear.

“A whole two tires? Oh, Gloom! My condolences in connection with the loss of the mechanical relative!” Julitta was horrified.

“What???” the hog did not take it in.

“Build yourself a supernatural monument! The road surface will not grow over it!” the girl continued. She was clearly mocking the hog, Methodius, and herself at the same time. Here was some round of shooting.

“The prince’s” scanty eyebrows, angrily wandering towards each other, formed on the forehead a fold like a bulldog. “Go away, fatso!” he bellowed, taking a threatening step towards her. It was not worthwhile to do this, because immediately the girl took a step towards him.

“Who’s a fatso, me? Why are we, heavy people, eternally obligated to listen to this filth? They attempt to vulgarize our kingly proportions by the meanest means! And the main thing, whom do I hear this from? Apollo Belvedere? The handsome man Prometheus? The jock Heracles? Not in the least! From the pitiful crossbreed of a pig with a computer keyboard! A walking cemetery of cutlets! The drain tank for beer bottles, who greases the folds on his diathetic belly with cream!” Julitta was insulted.

The hog started to grunt angrily. The girl, by some mysterious means, had gotten to his sorest point. Dragging Methodius behind him, he threw himself at Julitta. Showing how frightened she was, the girl began to tremble and, after collapsing onto her knees, began to wring her hands. “How horrifying his glance is! What terrible thoughts are concealed under this low pimply forehead! Mammy-nanny, where’s my stiletto? I want to stab myself! At the same time grab a bucket of poison, if the knife, like last time, breaks against my stone heart,” theatrically howled Julitta. She wanted to drop the sandwich for an increase in effect, but she looked at it and thought better of it. “In short, I’m tormented by melancholy and I’ll die in terrible spasms! Consider this an expression of my reproach!” she explained in an ordinary voice.

“What, are you batty, yes? A hysteric?” the hog fearfully asked. His fingers, never closing over Julitta’s hand, gathered empty space. The unpredictable behaviour of the strange person overloaded his grey matter. Must admit, Methodius was not a bit less astonished, although in this match the girl was clearly playing on his team. On a most heart-wrenching note, she suddenly got up on her feet and, having spat with disgust, cleaned her knees.

“How barbaric! You play for them, you try, and you’d think that at least someone would clap! At least one pig! This also concerns you, Buslaev! I’m also a tragic adolescent! Mephistopheles from kindergarten!”

“Buslaev? Where does she know my name from?” Methodius was surprised, hurriedly attempting to recollect whether he had met the girl in school or in the courtyard. Of course not, hardly. Indeed the interpretation that he could simply not pay her any attention faded immediately. Such loud and substantial individuals do not hide behind a cactus, although now and then they take refuge somewhere in a dark corner of an auditorium, concealing a fashion magazine with their knees.

The elevator that arrived with strain threw open its doors. The hog began to push Methodius forcibly into it. The boy attempted to break loose and earned a good punch in the ribs by a fist from behind. “Who are you beating up, support for a bald spot? Are you generally well-informed on what I’ll do with you now?” Julitta asked grimly, and the elevator doors slammed shut much faster than usual. The hog looked around. “He mutilated your car?” Julitta continued. “And, Xerox not finished? Excellent! So I’ll add something still!” Not postponing her threat, she blew on her palm. The sound of broken automobile glass distinctly reached them from the courtyard. Complaining to fate, the alarm began to cry. “Poof! Oh-oh-oh, what vandalism!” Julitta was horrified and blew on her palm again. This time – judging by the sound – it had reached the windshield.

For some reason Methodius did not experience the least surprise. He only thought that if Julitta, instead of blowing on her palm, had made the movement of catching thrown keys and at the same time moved her shoulders in undulation like in Indian dances, the car would flatten in the manner of a hippopotamus-suicide jumping onto it from the Crimean Bridge. “Magic of motion” – it seems it is called. After thinking this, Methodius wondered slightly about his own knowledge.

By then the hog was simply in shock. He glanced with distrustful horror at Julitta, and then, towing the resisting Methodius after himself, he rushed to the street. The glass splinters had barely stopped jumping on the asphalt. The alarm no longer howled, but was only sobbing quietly. The face of the hog changed three or four colours. He was frightened, lost, and enraged. Everything was in disorder in the Oblonsky home. “It’s you… it’s all you, trash! I knew it!” he began to roar.

The ashen-haired girl, who lazily came out after them, made a face, and touched her ear with a long nail, “Calm down, darling! Don’t tempt me unnecessarily with a return of your tenderness! Better to say, cut the cackle!”

“WHAT?! You… you!! I’ll finish you off!!!”

Julitta shrugged her shoulders, “Turn down the sound track, citizen! Of course, it’s necessary to speak up, but not so loud! Well, me, not me – what’s the difference? Is it worthwhile to go into details? From a philosophical point of view it’s all irrelevant!”

The bull was shown a new red rag. The hog flung Methodius away and took a step towards Julitta. His bulging eyes became malicious and wild, as if an entire battalion of scum microbes was lapping in them. “I… Yes you…”

“Calm down, daddy! Heart attack on alert! Oho, it seems they are going to kill me on the spot! Perhaps you’ll kiss me before death, eh, uncle Desdemon? How about a fiery caress? To both burn and sear? Eh, old fax? Or did the battery die?” Julitta lazily asked.

“And do you understand whom you’re dealing with? Whom you’re teasing? I’ll rip out your heart!” the hog croaked hoarsely.

“Ah, if only there were something to be ripped out…” Julitta said quietly. It seemed to Methodius that incomprehensible melancholy flickered in her eyes. But this did not continued for long at all, only up to the moment when the hog, turning, croaked the most overused and worn phrase ever heard, “You have no idea what I’ll do with you!”

“Sounds very promising, pappy! But I already thought that you love to beat up only the young!” The female purred huskily and suddenly, although Methodius was ready to swear that she had not taken a step, she turned out to be right next to them. Her chubby hands with some kind of icy force lay on the unhappy fiancé’s shoulders. “It’s been a very long time since someone among the living has declared love to me! How do you relate to female vampires? I hope they’re to your taste?” Julitta asked with strange significance. Chubby lips moved apart. The hog, like a blind man, sensed wild horror filling his body.

Methodius did not notice what was there beyond the lips, but the auto-maniac started to wheeze and somehow immediately went morally limp. He became like the pig, to which a pensive butcher with a camomile behind the ear arrived at the pen. Smiling bewitchingly, Julitta pulled him to herself, persistently and mockingly demanding a kiss, to which the victim of a fax answered only with a pitiful whimper.

“Look, Met! It seems not everything is well in the Danish kingdom,” she giggled, turning to Methodius. “Every time when I attempt to kiss him, he begins to shake. Stop thundering with your bones, I said! This prosaic detail oppresses me! What, are you deaf, can’t hear?” The auto-maniac despondently bleated that he could hear. The courage left in him was no more than the juice in an empty juice box.

“Then memorize something else in case we meet again some time. Rule number one: don’t be rude to me. Rule number two: my requests have to be received like orders, and orders like natural calamity. Rule number three: my friends are a part of me, and they don’t offend me… Rule number four… Never mind, you won’t be able to violate the fourth rule, because you won’t live till that moment! Go away!” Julitta, with disgust, unclenched her hands. The hog attacked the porch and, without losing time, ran on all fours to the car. Ten seconds had not even passed when the motor roared, and the mutilated automobile dragged itself from the courtyard with the speed of a traumatized tortoise.

Methodius turned to Julitta. The feeling that he had flipped did not forsake him. Reality faded like an old newspaper, and in its place, complete phantasmagoria decisively forced its way with its elbows. Surrealism in the spirit of Salvador Dali.

“Poor devil! I understand him! To see how a witch’s eyeteeth slide forward is not a sight for the nervous. And this regardless that I never frolicked with pure vampirism – I simply met one vampire and learned the technique. It’s not very complex – basic question in the modification of the bite.”

“And did it take long?”

“No, not particularly. I learned to advance the teeth in a month or two! At first it was dreary to train, and then it’s alright,” the ashen-haired one informed him. “Well! Let’s get acquainted!” Julitta stretched out her hand, and Methodius touched her fingers indecisively. He for some reason expected that the hand of a witch would be cold, but it was warm and, perhaps, encouraging.

“Methodius!” he said.

Julitta nodded. “Yes, I know, I know… Good at least that you didn’t say ‘Methodius. Methodius Buslaev!’ One of my acquaintances in glasses, who is now having a ‘great love’ with a certain Russian photo-model, would present himself precisely in this sequence.”

“You know me?” Methodius wondered.

Julitta burst out laughing. Methodius already noticed that she moved from one mood to another with surprising rapidity. If she was not in all of them simultaneously. “Oh, we’re already on informal ‘you’! What can be better than being informal? Treat me with familiarity as much as you want! Okay?”

“Okay,” Methodius said. He again felt uncomfortable. It was not everyday that lady-vampires fell to your lot and asked you to treat them with familiarity.

“I know you, Methodius, and very well. We have been observing you every day of your life. However, only now, when you’re more than twelve, can you learn the truth about yourself. Up to this moment, your consciousness simply could not sustain it. You could die of horror, scarcely finding out who you are and why you came into this world,” Julitta continued with an air of importance.

“A so-so announcement to me!” Methodius thought sourly. Until now, he was certain that he had come into this world without any special purpose. The type: “Hello! May I drop in?”

“And you? You didn’t die of horror? Are you indeed a tiny bit older than me?” he asked without irony.

Julitta’s face suddenly became serious and sad. As if the pain, which Methodius’ question involuntarily caused her, forced her for a moment to remove her mask. “I’m a special case. I had no way out. They cursed me immediately after birth. Besides, the one who did the cursing, his curse had special power… But we’ll not talk about this,” she said and turned away, showing that the conversation was finished and this theme would not be developed further.

“Did you come specially in order to protect me from this character?” Methodius refined his question.

Julitta glanced at the place where the car had been standing very recently and burst out laughing. “Are you serious? To protect you, the very Methodius Buslaev, from this slug? Something I’ll not understand: is this is a funny ha-ha?”

“But he was indeed stronger. And generally he was somewhat malicious,” said Methodius.

Julitta snorted. “Malicious? Him? And what about you, very good perhaps? Who started to puncture the tires first? And as for who is stronger… Delirium! Memorize from this minute and until your brain tissues harden: physical force is nothing in comparison with mental power! You yourself would also have managed if you would exert yourself slightly. You haven’t yet managed your gift by yourself, but this doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. Simply this evening was favourable for my appearance. Look, how many coincidences! A lunatic who wants to knock your brains out. The reflection of the moon in the puddle, which you chase with your eyes like chasing a ball. And finally your dream, about which you recently recalled.”

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.