LITMIR.BIZ

      This is what the legend says. Nobody knows whether it is true, but in the 16th century, a cursed child of the Ice People was born. He tried to turn evil into good, which is why they called him Tengel the Good. This legend is about his family. Actually, it is mostly about the women in his family – the women who held the fate of the Ice People in their hands.

      Chapter 1

      “Nataniel! Nataniellll!”

      The persistent screams came in a dream, but Nataniel knew that they were nevertheless significant. Even while he was sleeping he tried to focus on them and make a mental note of what he saw and heard.

      The dream was strange: he couldn’t quite place it; it moved in spheres he had never heard or known of.

      There was a clear blue sky. Something was floating and whirling down from it, but it wasn’t snow. Petals, perhaps?

      White petals with a touch of pink or light mauve.

      Or perhaps they weren’t petals but women’s faces, pale as snow?

      “NATANIEL, HELP! HELP ME, NATANIEL!”

      It wasn’t the faces that were screaming but a voice he recognized from real life.

      Strangely hard yet quiet sounds from a stringed instrument reached him. “It is a biwa,” said a man’s voice not far from him, though he couldn’t see anyone.

      It was petals that were falling, from the flowers of fruit trees – apple blossoms or perhaps cherry blossoms. And as the petals reached the ground they were transformed into the pale faces of women, with red lips and melancholy, almond-shaped eyes. One of the faces floated close to him, then disappeared. But its eyes had looked straight at him, and they conveyed a terrible tragedy. The small mouth was heavily made up, the lips painted to look thinner than they actually were. Sorrow, sorrow, endless sorrow was written all over its face.

      He heard the man’s voice again. “We are grieving over Heike,” it said. “Taira is gone forever. Gone at Dan-no-ura.”

      “NATANIEL! NATANIEL!”

      The deadly, fearful screams were there again. And those screams belonged to someone he knew.

      “NATANIEL! HELP ME! I CAN’T GET BACK!”

      He woke suddenly and sat up in his bed. Drowsy from sleep, breathless and not yet able to see clearly, he whispered: “Tova! It was Tova! What has she done now?”

      For he took the dream seriously. Nataniel had experienced his dreams coming true too often to simply dismiss the strange visions he sometimes had.

      Heike? “We’re grieving over Heike.” But you can’t grieve over someone who’s been dead for over a hundred years. At least not with that depth of sorrow. And those faces – they looked practically ancient, and they clearly weren’t of Nordic descent.

      “Taira is gone forever. Gone at ...” He mustn’t forget that word, he sensed that it was important. “San” ... no, “Dan-no-ura.” That was it. Nataniel rushed to write down the words he had heard. Biwa. Was that some kind of musical instrument?

      He jumped out of bed and fetched an encyclopedia from the bookshelf. Biwa ... it probably wouldn’t be there ... but yes, it was!

      “Biwa: a Japanese lute-like instrument with a flat-fronted, pear-shaped body and a fingerboard with four frets and four strings; a plectrum is used to play it.”

      Japanese. He would never have guessed that. Then again, he had never heard the word biwa before, he was practically certain of that. But you could never be entirely sure. The brain is able to store words that you might not be aware of.

      But what about all the rest of it? “We are grieving for Heike. Taira is gone forever. Gone at Dan-no-ura.” He knew who Heike was, of course, but the other names were completely unfamiliar to him. He couldn’t have heard of them before, for his knowledge of Japan was very limited.

      Was it all just nonsense? Perhaps. He had heard the story of the woman who dreamt that she was the guest of honour at a grand ball, and everyone flocked around her and listened to her attentively as she said something extremely profound and highly intellectual. Everyone was in awe of her wisdom. Then she woke up all at once and rushed to her desk in the middle of the night to write down the startlingly wise words she had uttered. In the morning she read the words she had written down during the night. They said, “Hulihu, huligame, men are polygamous. Hulihu, huligame, women are monogamous.”

      Perhaps something similar had happened to Nataniel now, with his own dream. Meaningless words to which he had given too much emphasis.

      But he didn’t think so. Tova’s screams of anguish had been too heartrending to listen to.

      He looked at the clock.

      Was it really

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