She held the cane in her hands. An ordinary movement, a strike on the floor — and the entire illusory space shattered. Thousands of small fragments, as if mirrors, that once preserved memories.
My memories.
No, not mine at all. Theirs. That which I wanted to steal, like another's breath. That which I wanted to call my own, having neither the right nor the basis for it.
She stood, holding the cane like a victor's banner. And in her gaze, no desire to fight. No, none at all. She had come not to fight, but to win. Crushingly, without a trace. To grind into powder, to scatter the ash over her abode, like the ashes of a tedious test subject. As if I am a pig, and she fastidiously cannot stand dirt.
It seems she did not intend to linger. However, I understand her. Who would want to look at something so disgusting for long?
"Tell me in more detail, what was that memory and what did it mean for you?"
There it was, the request that sounded like an order. Not that I was glad to tell her everything I had ever experienced. From the outside, this whole ceremony looked as if I were her slave, forced to dig through my own memory to entertain the mistress. But, strangely, I didn't dwell on it. Because this is a game. And a game does not tolerate violations.
"What exactly do you want to hear from my lips?" I asked, as if I hadn't heard, as if I hadn't understood.
"Don't play the fool (though, perhaps, it's not pretense). I'm curious. This memory is yours and not yours simultaneously," said the witch with a slight bitter tinge in her voice. "It belonged to Yahweh, after all. The path we witnessed."
That mountain. That path. That mission. Not my memory.
"Then why were we observing his life and not yours?"
"Stop," I interrupted her. "You speak as if you yourself have nothing to do with it. Isn't it you who chooses what the memory will be?"
"You are right," she said. "However, I cannot know which moments of your life were the deepest wounds in your heart. A pity, for I so want to touch them. And make them even deeper."
And however it sounded, in her voice one felt not a lie, but a sincere thirst. A thirst for pain, but not her own. Mine.
We continued to speak. Where to hurry, if time does not exist here? Here there was neither beginning nor end, nor clock hands to remind you that you are still alive. And, perhaps, that was what was most irritating.
"How inconstant you are is astonishing," she said. "You do not wish to see me, but you continue to drag out the game, as if I am your own desire. Ehe-he-he."
That laugh again. Irritating. Ringing. Poisonous. A laugh that stretches for an eternity, like a snake coiling around the throat.
"It is a remnant of the past in which Yahweh and his comrades headed for the mountain," Enua began.
Understanding that the real game had begun, the witch discarded her ceremonial verbiage.
"And who was the person who lived on that mountain?" she asked. Calmly, like a teacher checking homework.
"An Elder," I answered shortly.
A confession of the ages. Throughout human history, people were born whom fate had prepared a special path. A thorny path. A sorrowful path. A path before which others fell, but you had no right to stop. They were called heroes.
They were granted a mission, not by gods, but by people. They were the hope of humanity. Legends said that heroes appeared only when the world stood on the brink of destruction. When eras crumbled. When people went extinct. When hope became a luxury.
And every hero sought the one who knew the most. The Elder. Not an old man, no. But the one who bore knowledge. Who saw the future. They predicted, and their words always came true.
The hero's main mission was to find the Elder. The one who would tell of the coming threat.
"What happened next?" asked the witch with a slight, almost theatrical smile. "Did they find him?"
"When they arrived…"
A pause.
And suddenly a scene flashed before my eyes. A fragment of memory came to life.
"He was dead."
"The Elder was killed for unknown reasons," I said.
"Unknown to them," corrected the witch. "But not to you. You were observing, after all. You saw everything. Name the killer's name."
The name of the one I had encountered more than once. A name that always returned, like a splinter. Alien, but close. Close, but distant.
The killer's name…
"Avaley Le Fay."
"Bingo-o!" the witch drawled, rejoicing.
And at that same moment, I felt heat enveloping my body. I lowered my gaze and saw a blade piercing through my right shoulder.
"AAAAAA!!!"
A scream tore out like a flash, ripping through the space. But it wasn't the space that trembled, everything trembled. From her laugh. From that dreadful, insane laugh, as if she had just hit the jackpot of fate.