LITMIR.BIZ

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already started to get dark. It was the wrong place to spend the night, but there was nothing to do: it gets dark quickly in the northwest.

      I set out at once to search for a secure place to camp, but it was too late: I was already hearing howling. If only those were wolves! Wolves are fairly straightforward creatures: they will never harm you, other than by eating you. But that howling… It was the kind of howl that scares the soul right out of your body and makes it run without a single backward glance at its abandoned and defenseless home.

      So, I was standing there and felt like crying, or dying, or, anything, just so I wouldn’t have to hear that sound. But, instead of the sound stopping, I heard it much better now. Meaning – closer. Having grown up in these places, I knew it was useless to run. So there I stood and waited, as everything around me was growing darker and darker, and fog continued to rise from the ground, and something howled closer and closer to me and, finally, I saw it, emerging from the fog…

      A spaniel. A Russian one. It was black and white, no collar, his hair matted and dirty, his ears covered in burs – quite a monster of a dog. However, good news, it was still a dog and not a monster. But I had never seen such a miserable and stupid canine. A sagging, melancholy muzzle, red watery eyes with drooping lower eyelids, and a pink snotty nose tirelessly sniffing for something. One could recognize in it a lost dog at once. Such a thing will look for its owner until it’s dead. He sniffed at me indifferently and slouched to look further.

      «Hey, bro,» I yelled, «where are you off to? You don’t have the slightest idea what this place is, right?»

      The spaniel stopped and stared at me with his dark, sad eyes.

      «Listen,» I said, «Don’t leave yet. I will set up my tent in a minute. Trust me, in these places, you will be much better off inside it. Besides, I have some sausage.»

      The spaniel thought for a moment, sighed and lay down. He laid his head down on his paws, stuck his snout in the moss, and howled. Normal dogs raise their heads when they howl – this one lowered it to the earth. Well, not that it was any of my concern. My concern was to put up the tent, to tuck fir tree branches under the floor, and to dig a trench around it for the rain. After finishing that, I made the large fire near the entrance and lit the largest firefly I was able to find inside it. The whole thing looked really cozy.

      «Come in,» I invited the spaniel, «the sausage is waiting.»

      He paid me no attention – just looked at me with his joy-killing eyes and said nothing.

      «Listen,» I said, «In these places, it’s either you eat inside, or you are eaten outside. As simple as that, bro.»

      That got through to him. He slowly lifted his ass, staggered over, and collapsed again inside the tent. I took a moment to tie up the entrance a bit better and dove into my sleeping bag. The spaniel instantly lay at my feet, put his head down on his paws and stared at the tent wall.

      There, on the wall, a shadow play began. Someone was tearing off someone else’s head, somebody was knifed and axed and sawed, others were just eating each other. The sounds only made things worse: all that cackling, whining, moaning and screaming. Basically everything that made sleeping impossible.

      «Let’s read something,» I said, and pulled a book out of my backpack.

      It was named, simply and nobly, «A Feat», by one H. Potter. A real heart-warmer, five solid stars from me. All about the heroic everyday lives of ordinary people (like you and me, gentlemen). The author, for some reason, first calls us muggles, then simplemen, but that’s not a big deal, right? The idea, that’s what really matters. And the idea of this Potter is the whole life of an ordinary person is one continuous feat. From dawn till dusk and from birth till death. Inspiring, right?

      Just imagine: a muggle does everything all alone, by himself, without so much as a single wave of a magic wand. Amazing. The author seems to be especially impressed with the fact that these people find the strength to enjoy their lives. Is this not a feat, is this not a triumph of the spirit, asks this enthusiastic H. Potter once per page.

      The author of course bends the truth a little. The picture he proposes to his readers is this: a common muggle gets up early in the morning (with a happy smile on his broad, weathered face), eats his breakfast (half oatmeal, half smile), grabs his shovel, goes underground and starts digging a tunnel to get to his office (joking and smiling all along the way). Once at his work place, he immediately starts to move an enormous pile of shit with his shovel from one place to another. Smilingly. After everything is in its new place, he heads home. He finds out that the tunnel has already collapsed, smiles understandingly and starts digging it anew. When he is finally at home, he smiles at the empty freezer and falls asleep, not forgetting to smile happily.

      Well, I suppose, yeah. I agree with the author. It’s really an amazing epic. In fact, I had just made it to the chapter about horcruxes. The author seemed to be kind of obsessed with living a healthy life, therefore he suggests they not actually be used. He doesn’t advise that anyone attempt to make one, and seriously worries about anyone who decides to do so anyways. Muggles here are the most at-risk category. The author brings in statistics stating that literally every muggle had taken part in making a horcrux at some point in his life.

      If the author is to be believed, the process goes something like this: a muggle finds an individual to mate with and puts a piece of his soul inside of it, and then it becomes a horcrux. Later this horcrux-person will disappear, leaving the muggle with a rather poor choice. He can either search for an escaped vessel in the hope that he can extract the contents out of it somehow, or he can start all over again and search for another storage place, which is risky, as the soul has its limits and sharing it all over the place doesn’t work. In extreme cases the muggle can completely lose a human face. Then he turns into a creature known in science as a «heartfreak vulgaris.» It looks exactly like an ordinary dog (canis vulgaris) with one small difference. Namely, it can sob, cry, and throw tantrums.

      I had to stop reading here because it felt like I had peed myself. The entire bottom part of my sleeping bag was wet. I was already starting to turn red, when I understood that the fault was not mine. It was the damned spaniel that had started crying rivers. Tears came pouring out of his sad eyes, down his grim muzzle, and onto the floor where it gathered in a puddle right under my sleeping bag. I petted the poor thing and continued to read. And then, all of a sudden, it dawned on me!

      «Now,» I said, setting the book aside and watching the spaniel cautiously, «let’s see, who might you be? An Erich? A Key?»

      It was like I had already seen this sad mug before. That drooping nose and dull eyes reminded me of… And then it hit me. I knew that face!

      «Eddie?!»

      The spaniel began to wail. Tears came gushing from his eyes, and snot from his nose. He threw himself on my neck and howled right into my ear.

      «Wow, Eddie,» I said, «long time no see, bro. Okay okay, stop keening and let’s just read and see how we can fix this.»

      I flipped through the book and began to continue reading aloud.

      «Unfortunately, the process of transmutation into «heartfreak vulgaris’ is absolutely irreversible. The maximum modern medicine has been able to provide is to teach the afflicted to follow simple commands like «stay, «sit’, «down’, and «fetch’…»

      And then, all of the sudden, the spaniel stops wailing and a weird expression slips into his eyes. Something like «whythefuckdidInothangmyselfyesterday?», but a little more complicated than that.

      «Eddie,» I said quickly, «now we don’t need any hasty decisions here. Everything probably isn’t as bad as it seems to you. There should certainly be some positive aspects too. Like, you don’t need to wipe your ass anymore, and you can run faster and… Why, you look much better now! Such a handsome doggie… Do you remember who you were before? A pathetic nerd and eternal loser. You don’t

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