LITMIR.BIZ

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once again fell upon its victim. Viator died down. A faint groan of exhaustion completed the cacophony. Jacob slowly, not paying attention to his victim and not noticing the frightened Marianne, slipped through the wall. In his hand, Marianne made out an ax.

      For a minute, Marianne stood still, recovering. Then he moved slowly towards the shapeless figure in the corner.

      – He is dead? He asked barely audibly. He took a step towards the body, which was sprawled on the floor, and noticed that blood was slowly spreading across the floor. I did not dare to come closer. He knew he couldn’t help. And Marianne felt sorry for Viator, despite the fact that he tried to kill him in his sleep.

      – If not for Jacob, Viator would have killed me, – whispered bitterly in Marianne’s voice, after thinking a little. And then he turned around.

      “Where is Mignis?”

      “If you hadn’t fallen asleep so soundly, you would not have killed,” came the voice of the mouse. – I tried to wake you up. Yes, it’s good that Yakov was under the table all this time. I didn’t like this “hunter” right away.

      – He saved me? Marianne marveled, not entirely sure what had happened. – It turns out that Yakov saved my life?!

      Mignis crept slowly from under the bench.

      – He took a picture of you.

      – What? – did not understand Marianne. Mignis was looking not at Viator’s immobilized body, but at a rectangular object nearby.

      Marianne approached cautiously, recognizing the familiar outline.

      Marianne picked up the phone from the floor. Password protected. Graphic key, standard lock screen. Marianne ran his thumb across the screen, connecting the dots with lines to form the letter O. Nothing happened.

      “I don’t know the key,” Marianne said.

      Mignis ran to his leg and squeaked:

      – Give me.

      Marianne put the useless device in front of the mouse and turned it to face her, not understanding why and following Mignis with interest. “What’s the use of this? She doesn’t know how to use a telephone, can she?

      Mignis touched the screen with her small paw and slowly traced it over it, forming a “Z” shape. At the same time, she had to climb over the phone twice on outstretched legs, which looked very funny. The lock screen went out, and the application icons appeared on the background of a bright picture of the sea and clouds.

      – Wow! – Marianne sincerely admired. He fell on his knees in front of the mouse and looked at the phone. – Mignis, you are a miracle!

      – Come on, – Mignis was shy, but was very pleased with the praise. – I saw how he ran his finger across the screen.

      Marianne touched the middle of the touchscreen and brought up the downloaded app. A white and yellow picture with lines of different thickness opened.

      – It’s a map! – The scale was too large to understand what kind of terrain. – There’s a marker here. Goal. Yes exactly. Look, here are the coordinates displayed. Marianne pointed to the corner of the screen. – The phone is receiving GPS signals. Navigation software. I have one on my phone. Hmm, looks like a laid out route. This line shows the path traveled. This point in the center is the current position of the phone. Yes exactly. This line is a railroad. So this is our home. It is not on the map.

      Marianne was silent for a short while, then said:

      – The target on the map matches our position. It turns out that he was heading here. This place is the goal of his path. And he was talking about Esterby.

      “Look closely,” said Mignis. Marianne tilted his head to the side. “What else is there? The map is unmarked, there are no names nearby.”

      “Viator told you he was heading east. East is on the right side of the map. He came from the east. And he walked west.

      Marianne quickly zoomed in on the map. Mignis was right. Viator came from the southeast. And the starting point of the path also did not have any settlement nearby.

      Marianne sat down on the floor and thought. “Viator lied about Esterbi! What for? What did he want here?”

      “He also talked about his friend,” Mignis said. A sense of renewed unease swept over Marianne.

      “Of course, Viator could not be alone!”

      – Right, I also don’t like Viator and what he told me. Marianne looked around the room. The lamp did not burn, the hearth was almost extinguished. The backpack is in the same place.

      – I have to get out of here! – Marianne perked up. He had long forgotten about the photograph he wanted to find on his phone. He didn’t like this house any more.

      – How far are you going? Mignis asked with a plaintive note in her voice. – Take me with you.

      Marianne stared at the mouse. This thought did not occur to him, although he did not want to part with Mignis. She was the complete opposite of the gloomy house and became a friend in the last hours.

      – Of course, with joy! – blurted out Marianne and smiled at Mignis.

      – I’m hungry and cold here. Let me out in the first warm house. And even better – in a hotel or in a tavern. Or wherever you want. I’m not demanding at all … – said the mouse quickly, as if Marianne was trying to persuade.

      He nodded, wondering where to put the mouse.

      “Shouldn’t I put it in a backpack?”

      But Mignis was already climbing up Marianne’s clothes with her tenacious paws. He pressed his head into the collar as it climbed onto his shoulder. Then Mignis went down to her breast pocket, opened the valve with her nose, and climbed inside. Marianne listened, expecting what would happen next. Inside the pocket, Mignis seemed to be digging with her paws or biting something. The fabric twitched. Then a small hole formed at the bottom, in which a mouse nose appeared for a second and then disappeared. “Mignis can look outward through such a hole with only one eye,” Marianne estimated when the mouse looked out of his pocket.

      “Don’t forget the mitten,” she squeaked and disappeared into her new hiding place.

      A mitten lay in the middle of the room.

      Stepping to the door, Marianne touched something with her foot. The object bounced off and rang across the floor. Viator’s Knife. The young man recognized him with disgust. But then he decided that the knife in the forest was a useful thing, and he picked it up. And from Viator’s belongings, Marianne took snowshoes with him.

      Chapter 5. Pursuit

      Marianne unlocked the door and looked out. The familiar gloomy landscape has not changed. No one is visible, and silence reigns. Marianne looked at the snow. There were footprints around the house. Someone approached the window. From the shape of the prints, one could say that this man had snowshoes on his feet. The snow was trampled down more under the window. Viator walked around the house and watched Marianne through the window before knocking on the door.

      Marianne hurried away from the house with the dead man. The forest was left behind on the mountain, the snowy steppe stretched behind the house, conifers darkened on the horizon. This means that the forest was waiting for the traveler again.

      Marianne stepped into the snow, glad to have the snowshoes on his feet, which he had taken from home. It became much easier to walk. He walked for several minutes on flat snow when he sensed that something was wrong. The shapes appeared on the left. There were about a dozen of them.

      People were previously invisible in the shade of the trees on the slope. A little deeper in the forest, the red glow of the fire gleamed.

      Marianne looked around at the people and continued walking forward. Short roll call,

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