his interlocutor with such trite and highfalutin turns of phrase upon first meeting was absurd. I decided to refuse the burden. Besides, I had written better dialogs when I was eighteen. I didn’t know how, but I was determined to get the better of him.
At that moment, something utterly bizarre began happening to me. I felt that I was starting to “harden” again. It seemed to me that I had turned into a small, hard apple—one of those that only a seven-year-old boy can munch on (since boys that age are known to chew on everything that comes their way).
Then I had a completely mad thought—I began thinking that there was no way a grownup man like my opponent was going to munch on the hard, bitter apple that I had somehow become. This delirious notion seemed to me to be so self-evident that there was no way around it. And this restored my belief in my own powers. To be honest, I had completely forgotten about my human nature and about the human problems that beset me. We sour green apples live our own inscrutable, carefree lives . . .
My guest began to grimace. He wore the expression of a person who has been wandering around for the last twenty-four hours with a mouthful of vinegar and unripe persimmon. The ancient fellow grew quite upset— and at that very moment the little green apple became a person again. And the person acquired the ability to act. He gave his left hand a good shake—a single deft motion was all it took. In the middle of the prison cell stood Sir Lonli-Lokli.
“You brought Thumbkins!” Maxlilgl cried with indignation.
It was as if we had agreed on the rules of battle beforehand, and I had breached the hypothetical contract.
“You’re not Perset!” the ghost added vehemently. Evidently, he was still hoping that I would feel ashamed of my behavior and stuff Sir Shurf back in the closet. I think Sir Annox had become considerably softer over the past years of associating only with defenseless, frightened inmates.
“Don’t ‘Perset’ me!” I growled.
The ghost’s confusion was palpable. Sir Shurf needed time to peel off his protective gloves, covered with runes. While the dead Magician and I were squaring off, Lonli-Lokli managed to carry out the necessary preparations. The brilliant light from his death-dealing hands illuminated the cell walls, and life seemed all of a sudden to be a devilishly simple and precious matter. A story with an untold number of happy endings—take your pick.
I didn’t even suspect that my chances for staying alive were still approaching zero.
It was my own fault, of course. I had never had to deal with retired Grand Magicians. I foolishly assumed that there was no hurry in killing him. My vanity demanded that I deliver this mistake of nature to the House by the Bridge and drop it screaming and kicking at Sir Juffin’s feet. How I was going to capture a ghost I had no idea. But then again, I had had a miserable, third-rate education. I didn’t have classes in the foundations of metaphysics, either in high school—which I got through on a wing and prayer—or in college, from which I was unceremoniously expelled. I shared my half-baked thoughts on the matter with my colleague—but Sir Shurf is the most disciplined creature in the universe. As he saw it, I was the leader of the operation. Consequently, my orders had to be summarily carried out. Even the most half-baked ones.
Lonli-Lokli’s paralyzing right hand did not achieve the desired effect. Instead of freezing submissively to the spot, the ghost began to increase in size, threatening to assume gigantic proportions. At the same time, he became increasingly transparent. It all happened so quickly that within the fraction of a second his indistinct head was hovering somewhere up near the ceiling.
“Stupid Thumbkins!” Maxlilgl Annox screeched. “He knows not how to kill! Begone, Thumbkins!”
And without paying any more heed to Lonli-Lokli, the thick mist, which by now had almost lost its human form, lunged at me. It managed to touch me—a cold, damp, sticky pudding—that’s what it felt like. The touch left a bitter aftertaste in my mouth, for some reason, and the cold pain that shot through my body was such that I still can’t imagine how I survived it.
I didn’t even lose consciousness. Instead, I screamed at the top of my lungs:
“Liquidate him!”
Sinning Magicians! Where was my head?
As though from a great distance, I watched Lonli-Lokli join his remarkable hands together and cross his forefingers. This promising gesture had no visible consequences, though. Another tormenting second passed. I didn’t understand a thing. Why didn’t Shurf kill him? The human pudding was already thickening around me.
And then another improbable thing happened. It was like the icing on the cake of this bewitched night. The shining fingers of Lonli-Lokli drew the outline of a wondrous curve in the darkness, and a waterfall came crashing down on us. Tons of cold water swallowed up the transparent silhouette. I still didn’t understand what was happening, but I turned my face to the refreshing streams of water. A good wash was surprisingly welcome right then.
Our opponent, however, turned out to have a very tenacious vitality. Of course, the water wasn’t able to do serious harm to him, although it did engender another metamorphosis. After his bath, the ghost began shrinking at an alarming rate. As huge and transparent as he had just been, he now became tiny and dense.
My insights into astronomy are catastrophically limited. I don’t even know what super-dense heavenly bodies are called. That they are “dwarves” I know for certain. But whether they’re “white,” or “black” I have no clue. Our dwarf was, in any case, white, a miniscule homunculus, shining with the same blinding whiteness as Lonli-Lokli’s hands reaching out for him. In spite of his miniature stature, he looked very threatening.
“You were mistaken, Sir Max,” my imposing partner remarked evenly. “Water can’t harm him.”
“I, mistaken?! Wherever did you get the idea that water would do the trick?!”
“But you yourself told me to liquify him!”
“Sinning Magicians, Shurf!
I broke off in mid-sentence. Suddenly I couldn’t go on. I wasn’t up to talking anymore. The tiny creature glittered in the air, very close to my face. It was muttering something. The bastard’s putting a spell on me, I thought indifferently. I didn’t have the strength to resist him . . .
. . . I was blinded by the bright light of the sun. I was standing beneath the spreading branches of a tree, and an unkempt girl, milky-white, as short in stature as Sir Maxlilgl Annox, was offering me an apricot. “Accept the gift of a fairy, Perset!” Why, I don’t know myself, but I took it and bit into it. The fruit was worm-ridden. A pale little caterpillar slipped into my wide-open mouth and dove into the tender depths of my gullet. I felt its sharp jaws pierce the sensitive membranes. Poison began coursing through my body, filling me with weak nausea. I should probably have died of pain and disgust, but a blinding hatred filled me, and I began to shout. I shouted so violently and fiercely that it set a rushing wind in motion. Leaves, scorched dry, began falling from the tree, and the milk- white girl, her face distorted from horror, slithered through the withered grass, hissing like a viper. Finally, I spit out the poisonous caterpillar at the feet of Lonli-Lokli, who wasn’t in that garden at all; and then the glaring light began to subside.
What I really admire in our Master Who Snuffs Out Unnecessary Lives is his unflappability. He won’t be caught out! While I was wandering through the sunny fields of my nightmare, the guy did what had to be done. He finally put his death-dealing left hand into action—something he should have done straight off. In such cases, everything goes off without a hitch. Whether you’re a human being, or a ghost, or a Magician-knows-what, death will be easy and instantaneous.
Then this remarkable fellow pulled on his protective gloves, and with the dexterity of a professional nurse poured the remains of the Elixir of Kaxar into my mouth.
“It’s very helpful in cases like this, Max, so drink up. I regret that I didn’t understand your order properly. I concluded that you were talking about a new method of destruction by water. It cost me considerable effort to get him wet. Here in Xolomi, even I have a hard time working wonders—although Sir Juffin, naturally, gave me special training.”
From the Elixir of Kaxar I not only came to, I also cheered up—a clear sign of an overdose.
“A method of destruction by water—Sinning Magicians! How could that be expected to work? Why water? You should have just pissed on him! That would have killed him, I’m sure! Loki, have you never tried pissing on a ghost?”
