TAMING THE FIREBIRDS

“Hey!”

“Gosh, it’s freezing! The first week of October, but I ran from the subway and got chilled to the bone. Are you shaking too?”

“A little bit. Shaking and reading...”

“You mean, the calculator again? Look, this is BS., things never work like that. Calculators are calculators, they have no editors, they don’t show text”.

“They do. It flips the mode automatically and then... don’t you see? I even switched off the Internet. Didn’t do nothing. The texts appear from somewhere else”.

“From where somewhere? Parallel worlds? Don’t make me giggle! You’ve got a degree, you’re smart! And still you believe in fairy tales”.

They both shut up. Sveta pulled cigarettes out of her purse. But no lighter. Must have left it at home. Or maybe it dropped out at the bus stop.

“Got matches?”

“Over there, on Mickle’s desk. Just put them back, don’t forget”.

“And what do they write today? I think the Event again?”

“Sure. They do, as always about the Event. There are three pages, perhaps”.

“Ok, read them!”

“Right here? But everyone will be back in a minute.”

“No, they won’t. We have at least half an hour”.

Liza looked around the office and shrugged. And coughed a little, to look more dramatic. And then, sounding like a pro TV announcer, she started:

“I missed the signal. BlackSun’s posts made the clan melt down...”

“Hold on. Who’s that Black Sun? Was he mentioned before?”

“No, he’s new, the first time today. I suppose he’s a famous blogger there. Famous for them, not us. I searched on Google, nobody with that name: two old tech blogs and one poster shop... Whatever... Don’t interrupt, okay?”

She coughed again. It felt scratchy, one hundred percent strep. In the arctic like this it’s easy to catch anything. Even the flu.

“Right. Better from the top. Aha, here, ’I missed the signal. BlackSun’s posts made the clan melt down. Cut-up, I met Herx, a brother chemist with more awards than his Veyron could tow. Oddly, he wrestled me thirty minutes with Rina...”

“Rina! Do you believe it? She’s a kid, she’s at school! How old is she, fifteen?”

“Thirteen”.

“Shut up! What can she do at thirteen? He describes her like she saved the planet, his planet I mean”.

“Maybe she did. Age doesn’t matter. Kids save their parents sometimes, once it happened in the building I lived in before, on the seventh floor, two kids and their mother, the fire”.

“That’s fire, that’s normal. But here’s the whole world!”

“Do we read the rest or what? We have like twenty minutes for all”.

Sveta zipped across her lips: mouth locked, I’m hearing. Liza sighed and went on:

“...we ended up taking two hours. Insane! We spoke like lunatics. I trashed my reports and “chronicles”, and soon this novel was born in the attic: a fast, sharp, unpredictable beast leaping between angels and hell.”.

“What’s the attic he’s sitting in now? It makes no sense!”

“Well, it does, just a poetic line. ‘The attic’. They love the word, right?”

“As for me, any attic means dust, junk, old clothes, and mice!”

“But maybe he cleared out a corner there, and now he sits deep in his granny’s armchair...”

“A sagging chair!”

“Sure! He sits there and writes. On a typewriter.

And there is a round window there. With dried-up spiders on the glass”.

“Aha, spiders! Nobody writes like that. I cannot imagine someone who’s able to write a single line without Google!”

“Well, time’s up, we won’t make it anyway”.

“Read on! Actually it’s becoming interesting”.

Liza raised her eyebrows, wanted to say something, but looked at the clock and decided to read a bit more.

“There was a glitch. After checking the draft, Rina called me and said I’d botched the color of a dress. She wouldn’t say which one! She laughed: ‘Worthy books need bloopers for balance’.

Sure, I’m a fashion disaster, especially with color shades. So the text is flawed. Burn the dress! At least all the rest is okay.

But most importantly: I last heard from Rina too long ago, this spring. Knowing her intensely packed schedule, that’s hardly surprising. Nina, meanwhile, calls whenever she pleases, often trying to drag me off to Aunissa’s island for a Watermelon Juice Evening. I’d love to but this year, it hasn’t been possible...”

“Wow! I like it. But it’s kind of... depressive”.

“Of course it’s depressive! He’s thirty-nine, she’s fourteen. Imagine the timing! They are like from different centuries”.

“Totally! But you said she was thirteen”.

“Ha, when was that? A year ago?”

At last, Sveta pulled a cigarette out of the pack.

“Oh, I’m dying, I need to smoke”.

“To the balcony, run!”

“No, no, I’ll survive. First, read what else they’ve sent”.

“The next part is like a letter, he’s writing to a friend maybe. Or to his female friend, his woman. And trying to explain his book, not the plot, but the way he feels it, the heart, you know? It even hurts a little here when I read it. Ok, listen, from this paragraph perhaps:”

“As promised, now I am telling you the truth about the odyssey of our little twins. Everything about their insane journey. Of course, you know the story inside out, but do you really see what happened there, and can you explain how it was possible? I can’t.

I remember that day, that hazy morning. It was like somebody’s stupid joke, my mind refused to believe it anyway. No wonder, skeptics doubt the Event even today, one year later. Funny, but it’s like the articles on the Moon landing: people see the details, the proofs, but they wink and come up with a ‘but’”.

“Well, that time was different, seven worlds with distances so huge the numbers won’t fit on this page.

And it was never about the scale. The sisters did the impossible, they won the battle. But were they just lucky there? Of course not. The real strength was in their souls, they were two weak, fragile, ordinary schoolgirls. However, they saved us, they shielded so many lives with their hands.

Rina once said, “I fear everything, and that’s why I act”.

With this simple phrase, she actually explained the Event much better than the news reports you could read. And that was the main reason I created this novel.

It was my personal attempt to explain and to disclose all and everything about the adventure, about love and the power of little hands. And sure, it is a story of how a wonderful youth rises suddenly out of that shapeless teenage chaos, rises to shine as bright as a star and to fly high into the future.”

Sveta shook her head.

“Man, I think nobody loved me like this. Don’t you see how huge their tragedy is? She’s still a kid. I mean, look at her, what’s her fourteen? Even if fifteen, it changes nothing. This makes me want to cry, really. For them, of course”.

“What do you mean she’s a kid? Don’t you remember yourself back then? When I was thirteen, right after my birthday, I told everyone in the family that the child inside me was no more, gone, evaporated for good, and now I was a young woman instead”.

“You were? A woman? And everyone laughed, right? And you hated them all, then locked the door and read adult books under the blanket. Protesting, right? You know what they call it in Madrid? Típico!”

They went quiet for a moment.

“Our people are coming, I think”.

“Nope, they are all at Straus, burning their tongues on double lattes. What’s the rush?

They signed the contract, got the advance, now they relax”.

“Yeah, the money’s insane! I’ve never expected they would agree. But okay, who’s gonna actually do the Project? All of it? And I know who will: you and me, together with me and you”.

“Not true! They’re hooking Zeminsky into it and all his team, and that other guy, the new one. Eugen”.

“Oh, gods, no, let me do it myself, with no ‘eugens!’”

“It’s okay, let him work. He’s not that bad, actually he’s a decent guy, and from a famous family, you just do not allow him near beer. When he’s fully sober, he’s a perfectly bearable kid, and can be useful for us... Look, something else is there! They keep sending!”

“Right, but not from Lech, it’s from his Curator now. He never says his name, it’s just Curator, Curator all the time. But he writes like a police report, totally flat. Listen”.

“When her sister was abducted, Rina was plunged into a nightmare. Bound by laws of non-interference, an ancient scientist could not solve it; he only gave her an interactive map and a desert-bird’s feather. By burning the feather, she stepped onto the stage.

What followed was an odyssey along the entire Blue Circle. To survive she had to go through painful body transformations. She drowned in the Ocean, fell from the Clouds, turned to light by a nuclear explosion, was buried alive in a snow hill, and flew to the real pirates risking everything.

This voyage pushed her to the edge of sanity before she reached the end of the line in the Fire Kingdom, where her sister was held captive by the King fully dependent on her unique innate skills.”

“Well, nothing like Lech, but he’s a serious dude too, he writes... normally. Millions talk like that, our boss, for instance”.

“Mickle’s voice! They’re back!”

“Yep, here they come. Sixteen minutes late! And you’ll see, they won’t get any crap for it”.

“Of course not! The boss is there with them”.

The door flew open like hit by a blast, and a tall, graying man boomed in a deep bass:

“Ladies’ battalion! Line up eight abreast, fall in!”

“Mickle, seriously, drop it! Never funny. Your army stuff is tedious, and look, you never even served”.

“What do you mean never? I was an intelligence agent! I caught spies! What army?”

“You caught Helen Anwuller, her scarlet skirt, we know!”

“Girls. Zero respect for your elders. What’s the world falling to?”

“Hey, old man, let’s march to the balcony for a smoke. My cheeks are literally frozen, I need a cigarette and right away! But then, straight to the Project. You owe us an Expanded Description, and a formula, and ten posts. All urgent! So chop chop, move it!”

With a wide, royal gesture, Sveta pointed to the balcony.

“Wait, this guy, gosh, what’s his name, is he on the calculator again?”

“Again!”

“Amazing! I told our folks, nobody believes it. They say we run to grab Brandy too often these days... So what’s he writing about?”

“Different things. You’ll read at the break. That’s it, smoking time! Balcony!”

“Well, balcony it is. Let’s go then”.