Seasons of the River: A Town Called River, #2

By Igor Rendic

Paul's adventures continue in this action-packed sequel to A Town Called River, filled with friendship, love, duty and looming darkness.

 

Becoming a krsnik, a magic user from Slavic myths which have turned real in the streets of Rijeka, was not what Paul expected upon his return to his hometown, but an intense first few days in his new role in A Town Called River helped him settle into his newfound life as the town's protector.

Now a new threat looms over his town, growing ever larger and more dangerous, ready to wreak havoc once it spreads out from the river's canyon in the hills. Conflicted  about his private life and his duties as a krsnik, fixing issues big and small, making enemies and dangerous allies along the way, Paul will have to solve the mystery while balancing the weight of his new responsibilities.

As the seasons change and summer sweeps over the horizon once more, Paul and his friends may just find themselves facing a battle they can't win… a battle that their town cannot afford to lose.

 

Fall to summer, a krsnik's job stays the same.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shtriga
• Release date: Nov 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9789538360206

Book preview

Igor Rendić

Seasons of the River

Copyright © 2023 by Igor Rendić

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

Book two of A Town Called River

ISBN

ebook 978-953-8360-20-6

paperback 978-953-8360-21-3

Editing by

Antonija Mežnarić and Vesna Kurilić

Cover art by

Korin(a) Hunjak

Paperback typesetting by

Tamara Crnković

Rijeka, 2023

shtriga.com

[e-mail]

First edition

This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

Find out more at reedsy.com

Publisher Logo

Dedicated to my parents and my sister, mostly because they won’t expect it.

Contents

A Late Summer’s Night

A Day in the Life of a Krsnik

Interlude

Looking for Invisible People

The Two Mills

Interlude

A Night At Brigid’s

Interlude

A Bench by the Sea

Interlude

A Dim Glow

Running in the Dark

A Fistful of Checkmarks

Everybody’s Coming To Svarogkon

Interlude

Yellow Flower, Purple Flower

Interlude

Not Ghosts

Interlude

And in That Sleep, What Creeps May Come

Mulled Wine and Waffles

An Early Christmas Present

Driving in the Dark

Interlude

New Year’s Resolution

Pineapples and Salsa

Moving Objects

Wolves and Other Predators

The Red Thread

Rooms

In The Water, In The Wall

Treasure Hunt

Stalking in the Dark

Pressure

Phone Call

Interlude

Oriel

We Need to Talk

We Need to Talk 2

A Spectacle

Genya

A Relationship in Six Scenes

Sometimes You Feel a Thing Before You See It

Interlude

Stretching Your Legs

Deals

Preparations

The Stone Market

The Golden Thread

Interlude

The Glowing Pool

Dropping The Beat

No Music, Still a Spectacle

Through the Portal

Standing In The Rain

Four Conversations And A Memory

AUTHOR’S NOTE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

About Shtriga

About the Author

Also by Igor Rendić

A Late Summer’s Night

Late August

I stalked through the dark and cold corridors of an abandoned industrial building, listening for screams only I could hear.

My only light was the muted glow of street lamps through dirty, paint-smeared windows that lined one side of the long space stretching ahead of me. The air was musty, motes of dust dancing in the dim light.

The thick dust and dirt on the floor helped, actually: I could make out, here and there, the tracks left by my… I guess quarry was the appropriate word, since I was literally hunting.

The screams had gone quiet again. Did it finally manage to put enough distance between us?

I halted, closed my eyes and focused solely on my hearing. The screams had originally been a high-pitched, annoying whine in the back of my mind, but as the distance between the little bastard and I grew, the screams became fainter.

Breathing slow and steady, I listened. It was so much easier and smoother when I used my supernatural senses now. I didn’t have to wrestle with them anymore, nor were they suddenly going up to eleven on their own any longer. However, I immediately had a new problem to deal with: concentration. I could hear stuff an ordinary human could never hear, but I had to make a conscious effort to do so and then maintain said concentration while doing other things like, say, walking or running. Or chasing a tiny creature through an abandoned industrial complex in the middle of a frisky August night, stalking it through the ruins of Rijeka’s long-defunct paper factory.

Its name was Hartera, named after the thing it had once been making; these days the complex was mostly just a place for the occasional urban explorer or sightseer, hiker on their way into the river canyon or someone looking for free parking. In a way it was a blessing that the bajkač had escaped here instead of heading toward, say, the town center. But then again, he wanted to go unseen, I guessed.

Although, Katrina had mentioned a metal music festival. Glancing at the walls and ceilings around me, I wondered how exactly any part of Hartera could survive the onslaught of noise and vibrations. I seriously doubted the festival was any quieter than the ones I used to visit in my twenties.

I listened… listened…

There… far… at the edge of hearing…

I paid attention to the other sounds, as well. The skittering of tiny feet. Squeals.

Rats.

Also the whooshing sound of the river, at about the same distance as the mandrake’s shrieks.

I stalked onward, picking up my pace as the screams grew just a little louder. Was it still a plant if it could make noises? Was it alive? Well, obviously it was alive, but was it alive in the same way an animal is?

Fuck… was it sentient?

I followed the shrieks around a corner and found myself in a small, empty room. There was a single window there, one of its small squares of glass broken. I looked out into the cool night. Something was moving down there on the street—the bajkač. The little bugger was running, carrying the mandrake over his shoulder like lumber.

I pushed, but the window had rusted shut. I pushed harder. Finally I had to kick it and it swung open, the glass shattering as it struck the wall. I clambered over the windowsill and glanced down. It was at least three or four meters to the ground. I breathed in, hoped the ‘tuck and roll’ was a real thing that worked and not something the movies made up, and dropped down.

I didn’t as much tuck and roll as crash and sprawl. Grunting, feeling the burn of multiple scrapes, I stood up and continued my chase. I’d been working on being more limber, which is why I actually could kick the window, but I would obviously have to find a place in Rijeka that offered… what? An obstacle course? Maybe parkour?

The shrieks were louder now, the mandrake obviously growing too heavy for the little bastard to keep up his full speed. In the next moment, I actually saw him, and he wasn’t moving in the direction I’d expected. He was doubling back. Smart asshole. He was making his way to the small bridge I’d chased him across just minutes before to get from Vodovodna street to Hartera proper. I could make out his shape now, what with the streetlights and my supernaturally good vision: the bajkač was about knee-high, thin to the point of being spindly, and with a round, misshapen head with dark, shaggy hair. He glanced over his shoulder—the one he wasn’t carrying the screeching mandrake on—and saw me gaining on him. Round eyes went wide and I heard him grunt something, after which he picked up his pace, heading straight for the bridge.

I leapt—well, threw myself, to be fair. I slammed into the ground and it hurt a lot, but I felt the fingers of my right hand grasp cloth, and I grabbed with my left, and there was a growling and low screeching as the bajkač struggled.

I didn’t actually need to get him; the mandrake was the important part of this job. So I grabbed one end of the plant with my left hand, and once I was certain I was holding it tight, I grabbed it with the right as well, letting go of the bajkač—whose skin, under the rough-hewn clothes, was unpleasantly clammy and grainy, like sandpaper covered in slime.

Let go, you fucker! I groaned, pulling hard on one end of the mandrake as the asshole pulled on the other.

He screamed something at me—probably returning the sentiment. I was on my belly, so there was no way for me to kick him and I didn’t want to try to throw a punch because I didn’t want to lose my grip on the mandrake. And so there we were, a grown human man and a tiny supernatural creature in a tug-of-war over a screaming plant. As much as Hartera was empty this time of night, I was still grateful you’d need supernatural ears to actually hear the mandrake’s shrieks, now almost deafening. Were we hurting it or did it just not like being touched?

There was something in my eye. The little shithad spat at me. Part of me wanted to return the favor. Another part of me got really angry and I reached for that part, pulled it to the surface.

I couldn’t turn into a wolf because that, too, would mean losing my grip on the mandrake, but I really did my best to act as if I were a wolf right now, as I stared the bajkač in the eye and tried to growl at it: Let. Go!

I also pulled hard, and luckily just in the right moment because the mandrake slid out of his hands and the bajkač fell on his ass. He jumped to his feet immediately and ran away, vanishing behind the nearest corner before I even knew what was happening. He was most likely hurrying back to the little den inside one of the abandoned buildings, the one I’d tracked him to and from which I had retrieved the other stolen plants before giving chase.

I breathed out, relieved. Then I sat up and finally took a good look at what was in my hands. The mandrake was about the length of my forearm and about as thick; its surface was gnarly and rough like an ancient tree root but it was surprisingly light for its size. At one end it had stringy leaves, almost like a fern, while at the other there were these tendril-like growths that I guessed were roots. I just couldn’t make out where the noise was coming from—it was much quieter now, though.

I turned it over in my hands and… well, from a certain angle, a section of its bark (or was it skin? It strangely felt like both under my fingers) kinda looked like a distorted, angry face.

I placed the mandrake on the ground for a moment, just to open the small messenger bag I’d been given to transport the plants back to their rightful owners.

They weren’t just roots. They were legs, I discovered as I dumbly watched the mandrake run away. It was fast, but it was also making a decidedly blind, headlong dash, as if getting away from me was more important than going somewhere in particular.

I dashed after it, bent down low, and managed to scoop it up in my arms just as it started crossing the bridge. For one long, terrified moment I could almost see it fall through the gaps between the wooden boards, and hear it splash in the dark waters below. Could a mandrake drown?

But it didn’t fall through, even though it did its best to jump out of my hands when I grabbed it, its roots-tendrils-legs surprisingly springy. My heart leapt as well, got stuck in my throat. I caught the mandrake in the air, stumbled a little and leaned hard against the metal railing, holding onto the plant tightly.

Shut up, I grumbled, finally stuffing the screeching plant into the bag, covering it in dried out herbs that gave off a fancy gourmet lunch aroma and that I’d been told would make it docile. I also made sure the other plants I’d recovered hadn’t fallen out during my escapades. The silence that followed as I closed the flap of the messenger bag was divine. I took a deep breath, enjoying both the sudden lack of noise and the cool breeze on my face. I could make out the dark outlines of rocks and trees along the sides of the canyon, behind the old buildings. There was a hiking trail leading from Hartera through the canyon and I had been meaning to go for a walk, visit those old mills my grandfather used to go to with friends as a kid, when they’d go for a swim in the Rječina there and try—unsuccessfully—to catch fish.

A squeaking noise drew my attention. A squeaking and grinding noise. I looked sharply to the right.

The little asshole was there, on the metal post at the end of the bridge. The metal post that the railing I was leaning on was bolted to.

As I focused, my eyes adjusted once again, the world suddenly as clear as in bright daylight. Clear enough for me to clearly see the bajkač removing the large screw that held the railing in place. The last screw, I noticed, the other three already stuck in his belt like tiny hunting trophies.

The railing gave way behind my back.

The asshole cackled, holding up the last screw victoriously.

In the cool, dark night I fell backwards towards the Rječina and I’m pretty sure if anyone was still awake in the nearby buildings, they heard a brief, but very loud KURAC! just before I broke the surface with a loud splash.

* * *

One very short swim to the side of the Rječina opposite Hartera, one somewhat slippery climb up the stone wall some meters downriver from the bridge, and one brisk walk through Vodovodna (literally Waterworks) street later I knocked on a door, hoping the Nikojevs were still awake. I had left maybe twenty minutes ago in hot pursuit when their vegetable thief finally struck again, and they’d said they would wait for me but, well, old people are prone to dozing off and it was the middle of the night.

About half a minute later I heard the soft shuffle of slippers on linoleum and then the door was opened by the kindly old man with thin, white hair and a gray stubble. He grinned—and it took me aback for a second, because since I’d left, he’d taken out the dentures I had no idea he wore—and motioned for me to come in. He then noticed I was dripping water on his floor, shook his head amusedly, and proceeded to take me into a small room full of closets. Here he quickly raided one of the closets and motioned for me to undress as he took the bag from my hand, peeked inside and smiled contentedly.

I took off everything except my boxer shorts, handed it to him, and he left, closing the door behind him, leaving me to get dressed in what must have been his old clothes—the pants were too short, and the bright, flower-patterned shirt a bit too big for me. The clothes had a really pleasant fragrance of lavender and something else I couldn’t quite place but didn’t mind at all. Moments later, as I pulled on thin black socks, I heard the unmistakable low hum of a clothes dryer from another room and the old man knocked on the door.

Come in, I said, standing there like I’d just—well, there’s an expression in Croatian for a person whose pants legs are too short: ‘like you’ve been in a flood’. There was no way you’d mistake the night’s slow flow of the Rječina for a flood, but I definitely looked the part.

The old man came in, this time with a tablet in his hands. He smiled, tapped the screen and a moment later out of the tablet’s speakers came: Thank you. Do you want a hair dryer?

I dragged my fingers through my short hair—it was damp but not nearly as wet as minutes ago. I’d gotten a haircut at the beginning of August, during the hottest week of summer, and was happy for it now. No need, thank you, I said. Is Mrs. Nikojev asleep?

He shook his head. She’s replanting the mandrake, the text-to-speech voice said.

Thank you for the clothes, I said. I like the shirt. It was absolutely hideous, but in a way that would today probably be called ‘vintage’ and hipsters would pay hundreds of dollars for it on eBay.

It’s horrible, the computer voice said as Mr. Nikojev grinned. But she bought it for me in ‘77, for a birthday. So I was stuck with it.

He took me into the kitchen we’d sat in yesterday when they first told me about their problem with the vegetable thief.

Coffee? he asked via his tablet, hands flying over the screen, and once again impressing me deeply. The man was very old—I hadn’t asked, but he must have been close to a hundred and yet obviously had a better grasp of modern tech than me. After all, I certainly didn’t have a clue how to turn on text-to-speech on my phone—and he also used the tablet to control the lights in the apartment, as well as the AC that now started gently blowing warm air at me. The electric teapot started brewing without the old man touching it as he opened one of the old cupboards and showed me their tea selection. I remembered the tea I’d had yesterday and immediately said: The rose and elderflower one, please. It was ridiculously delicious.

He smiled at me knowingly and started tipping the contents of the paper bag into a metal infuser shaped like an egg.

It was then that Mrs. Nikojev walked into the kitchen, rubbing dirt from her hands with a piece of cloth, mumbling something under her breath.

You replanted the mandrake, Mrs. Nikojev? I asked her, smiling and enunciating every word. She wasn’t completely deaf but close enough.

Cake, dear? she asked, confused. I still couldn’t make out her accent. It sounded to me somehow both Germanic and Slavic.

Her husband chuckled and made a few motions with his hands. Oh, mandrake, she said. Yes, yes, it’s back in its pot.

Then she did a double take. My husband has a shirt just like that, she said, smiling fondly. She narrowed her sleepy eyes then and looked at me more closely, probably noticing the shirt didn’t fit me and then that my hair was damp.

I fell in the river, I told her.

She frowned, nodded pensively. I don’t have anything ready for liver but I can make you something. What is the problem, exactly?

No, no, I said, shaking my head. I fell in the river, I repeated, a little louder, enunciating more.

Ah, she nodded as if it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.

Her husband placed the teacup in front of me and once again the scent of rose and elderflowers overwhelmed my nose in the best way possible.

Then the two of them started talking next to the sink, she in a low voice, he by signing. I know bits and pieces of a sign language, but Japanese—thanks to a girl I knew when I was eighteen—and not Croatian. At least I guessed it was CSL. Still, I could make a guess as to what they were discussing.

Sitting there, I allowed myself the thought that I might be getting a handle on being Rijeka’s krsnik. The summer had started off extremely eventful. I’d discovered my grandma had died and that I’d inherited her krsnik powers, and then I found out my childhood friend could see ghosts, and I met some witches, and I’d inherited a house—that maybe wasn’t haunted but was definitely weird—and I was also attacked, beaten and almost killed multiple times. To cap it off, I could now turn into a wolf.

Even though nothing in the weeks and months that had followed that week in June matched the horrifying intensity of those first few days in Rijeka, I did also meet other—let’s call them unusual—people and found myself in some other very… unusual situations. A krsnik’s duty—one of them, at least, according to both what my grandma Lena had told my ghost-seeing friend Katrina and what she’d written down in her book—is to help out the people in their domain. Granted, of course, that these same people don’t hurt others.

And it wasn’t only a duty, it was also a job, and a job requires payment. I was still uncomfortable with being paid for doing what I did and being who I was. Mostly because most payments weren’t in money but in two main commodities the supernatural community seemed to trade in: goods and services. By this point, I’d already had several—let’s call them people, even though some would more fall under ‘entities’—in Rijeka owing me favors. It sounded very ominous in my head, even though most of them had been more than happy to offer their services in exchange for my help.

The Nikojevs were mentioned in Lena’s notes in several places. ‘Good people,’ she called them in one of those notes. ‘Excellent relaxing brew,’ it said in another—and the context of that particular note made me raise my eyebrow and wonder what exactly she’d meant by ‘relaxing’.

I liked the Nikojevs. They had obviously grown old together, and judging by the photos that covered the walls and the fridge, they’d led a damn full life. There were destinations on those photos that most people their age—or mine, really—knew only from TV, and there were the two of them in each of the photos. Judging from the dress styles, they’d been together since the fifties and they’d embraced the sixties and seventies hard. Several of the photos showed Mrs. Nikojev at Woodstock, and yesterday, as I passed by one, I’d squinted, and I would swear that in the far back of the image, on the stage, there was Jimi Hendrix. Other photos showed them in the deep snow and in very formal suits and dresses and on white sandy beaches, just in swimwear.

And let me tell you, Mrs. Nikojev, wow. The flowing blonde hair, the blue eyes, the hourglass figure—and also tattooed in several places, said tattoos drawing the eye to certain parts of her figure even more.

Mr. Nikojev wasn’t far behind in those photos either. He had the jawline of a comic book hero and the lethal smile of a natural charmer.

Honestly, they looked like the stars of an old spy movie who’d fallen in love offscreen.

How and when exactly they’d moved to Rijeka and started growing magical herbs and plants was probably an interesting story on its own, and it must have been decades since Lena had first met them—she had, according to her notes, been a regular customer.

They approached me now and while time had definitely worn down their bodies, the eyes and smiles were absolutely the same as in any of the photos.

So it is okay if we pay you like we paid your grandmother? Mr. Nikojev asked through his tablet.

Uh, sure, I said. But I don’t know how you paid her.

If she ever needed anything for emergencies, we would give it to her for free.

We trusted her, Mrs. Nikojev told me, peeking at what her husband had written.

And for everything else we gave her 70% off for a year for each time she helped us.

Oh. Well, now. I had no idea what they were growing in the apartment and on the roof—apart from mandrakes, of course—but that sounded like a hell of a deal.

I stood up, offering my hand. It’s a deal, I said, smiling.

The old man clasped my hand. The old lady gave me a very grandmotherly hug and then made an ‘oh I just remembered’ face and went to one of the tall cupboards next to the fridge. She took out a large paper bag with a printed-out label.

Tea, she said, pushing the bag in my hands, tapping against the top of my palms as I accepted it. The bag was big and heavy—at least a kilo of tea. The rose and elderflower tea.

Oh, I said. You don’t have to—

No, no, you take it. It’s a very good tea, I’m glad you like it. I have a few regular customers from the library, they also love it.

I felt a little like a naive soon-to-be junkie accepting an offer of a free taste from the dealer.

Thank you very much, I said, delighted.

No, not Dutch, homegrown, she said.

* * *

By the time I got back to the apartment, I was ready for a long, nice sleep. I froze in the kitchen doorway, snatching my phone out of the pouchlike bag on my belt. The bag was waterproof and tear-resistant, which were two features that I’d figured would come in handy when I had ordered it online weeks ago. It was also one of those that could contain much more than you’d guess at first glance—including my wallet and my phone.

I opened the messaging app, tapped on Viki’s name. I breathed a sigh of relief. For a terrible moment just then, I’d thought our next scheduled training session had been tonight, but the last message in the chat said ‘Friday night’, which was tomorrow.

I stumbled into the bedroom, fell on the bed and was asleep the moment my head hit the pillow.

* * *

—her hair was like silk on my back falling over her face as she leaned in over my shoulder kissing me her hands sliding around my waist as I turned around facing her finding her lips with mine so soft so giving her fingers digging into my back as I pulled her closer—

A Day in the Life of a Krsnik

I rolled onto my back, gasping, feeling the good kind of sore and sweaty. Breathing in deep, I looked to my left. She was on her back as well, panting, staring at the ceiling. Then she looked over and grinned.

Well, that was fun, Katrina breathed, her chest rising and falling, sweat dotting her skin.

I chuckled. Call it a tie?

She gave me a look. My four to your three. I counted.

I’d swear those last ones were simultaneous takedowns.

She grunted, pushed herself up on her elbows. What’s the score?

The trainer was looking at the both of us, shaking his head. Not interested in pissing contest, he said. I just watch how you punch and kick and look at time. He glanced at the large clock on the gym wall to the far left, turned back to us and said: Katrina, control punches, less is more. He looked at me then. Paul, next week we work on your speed. You have strength, but you’re slow.

I nodded at him and as he left us on the tatamis, I stood up, stifling a groan. Katrina was already on her feet, taking off her sparring gloves, chest guard and helmet. I glanced around as I began unstrapping my gloves with my teeth. The gym had the general appearance and vibe of the ones from old movies—sparse, functional, lots of hardwood panels and plenty of floor mats; very, very few mirrors on the wall. You came here to work out and get your ass beat in a controlled environment, not to take selfies or show off your glutes. There were about a dozen other people here, some training on their own, others in small groups. Men and women, most of them my age, although there were several girls I’d guessed were highschoolers.

I’ll call it a tie even though I’d swear in court I kicked you after you kicked me. But you owe me lunch, Katrina said.

How can you think about food right now? The only thing my body wanted was a long shower and about a gallon of water.

She gave me a mock-pitying look. Paul, I always think about food.

There was a short burst of applause from behind us and to the right as we made our way to the changing rooms. I glanced and saw several people cheering a girl who was looking, a little stunned, at the sight of an instructor on his back on the tatami. The krav maga group, I noticed right away, which meant the girl was obviously a newcomer who’d managed her first takedown—and I knew from experience the instructors here don’t pull their punches with the newbies, so the applause was definitely well-earned.

I like this place, I said. I’m glad you convinced me to come here.

Not long after the entire štrigun ordeal in June, I’d taken it upon myself to make as much as I can of the improved and increased physical abilities my krsnik legacy provided. But while taking long runs from my apartment building, down Korzo, all the way to the port, and then down the length of the breakwater and back, was good for my stamina and general sense of being in shape, I was acutely aware that knowing some actual martial arts would come in handy. But just martial arts for now, no armed combat. Nona’s sika was in its sheath, waiting, and I was aware it was only a matter of time until I had to pull it out again but…

But that was a weapon, for killing. Taking a life.

I’d taken a life already, but it was with my teeth—the wolf’s teeth—my teeth. I’d taken a life but if there ever was a man who deserved it—a creature that deserved it—

I shook those thoughts out of my head like all the times before, in the past few months.

Long ago I’d taken karate for about a year, so I had been considering the various karate clubs in Rijeka when Viki offhandedly suggested I’d maybe want something a little more appropriate for ‘down and dirty fights’. A day later Katrina mentioned she was going to check out a place that offered krav maga and kickboxing lessons and it sounded like a good idea to me.

About an hour later, as I was being tossed about by a svelte instructor about half my size, I was certain it was a good idea. Being powerful had made me cocky, and that almost got me killed by that mora, which was something I was keen on avoiding happening ever again.

The place was owned and run by a married couple, she a krav maga instructor, and he a professional kickboxer-turned-trainer. Their focus was somewhat different, though: the krav maga was for self-defense, while the kickboxing stuff they taught was geared more towards getting and staying in shape. Not that krav maga didn’t get you in shape—a guy who had started taking lessons about a week or so after Katrina and I had already shed a lot of weight. But the training had a good effect on his head as well: long before he started moving from chubby towards robust, he started chatting with others, stopped avoiding eye contact and keeping to the sides of his group, and soon was the first to volunteer.

Yeah, okay, lunch it is, I told Katrina to get her to stop looking at me intensely as we walked.

* * *

FaeGal: so you’re telling me they’re hippies?

DreamGuy: they definitely *were* hippies at one point

DreamGuy: but all the hippies their age still dress… you know ‘flower power’

DreamGuy: there were no colored sunglasses or bandanas

DreamGuy: there was no sitar music in the background

DreamGuy: also no… distinct smells and scents, if you know what I mean

FaeGal: your idea of an old hippy is straight out of an american sitcom

FaeGal: anyways, I’m glad you’ve made new friends

FaeGal: old people can be cool af esp if they’ve had an interesting life

FaeGal: I’m just sorry I wasn’t there to see you fall off that bridge

DreamGuy: okay okay laugh it up

FaeGal: hey you described it so vividly I could almost hear you splash

DreamGuy: the water is cold even in the middle of summer you know

FaeGal: aw, poor krsnik

FaeGal: oh god I just made myself laugh

DreamGuy: what now

FaeGal: I imagined you coming out of the river in wolf form and shaking the water off

DreamGuy: majestic white furred beast

FaeGal: big wet husky

DreamGuy: ha

DreamGuy: ha

FaeGal: seriously though, you’re okay? krsniks don’t get colds or pneumonia?

DreamGuy: i honestly have no idea but if I didn’t catch anything after that, I guess I’m okay

FaeGal: that’s good. would anyone cook you chicken soup if you did get a cold? XD

DreamGuy: Katrina, I guess? Viki would probably tell me to jump into the river again, power through and toughen up

DreamGuy: i’m guessing your long distance healing isn’t *that* long distance? XD

FaeGal: also I can’t cure a cold

FaeGal: but I do make *great* chicken soup :p

DreamGuy: looking forward to maybe trying it some day :p

* * *

You’re on your phone a lot lately, Katrina said as we were waiting for our order outside the fast food place. Eating a hamburger and fries after an intense martial arts workout was probably not a good thing, but over the course of the summer I’d found myself eating more than ever before and yet not feeling my clothes slowly becoming snug. My metabolism was obviously different now. A lot of things were.

Katrina had said getting her ass kicked twice a week was misery enough, that she didn’t intend on also depriving herself of the small pleasures in life—said small pleasures including a hamburger so stuffed with meat and veggies you almost had to dislocate your jaw to take a proper bite.

I glanced up from the screen. Sorry, I said. You have my full attention. I put the phone back in my pocket. I did want to wait for a reply, but I was also aware that, if I’m the kind of person who dislikes people being on their phone while they’re in conversation with me, the least I can do is not stare at my screen as well.

A hint of an amused smile was tugging at the corners of Katrina’s lips. You texting with someone, Paul?

I just stared at her for a beat. No. Just checking my emails. I’ve got three email accounts now, remember?

It was the truth, but it also had nothing to do with me frequently looking at my phone.

My personal inbox would receive an email maybe once a week, mostly every couple of weeks, and those were usually newsletters. My business inbox has lately been emptier than it had been in years, because the extremely generous inheritance my nona left me allowed me not to rack my brain about acquiring new clients and jobs. The third email account was grandma’s, the one she used to keep in touch with various former clients and contacts, at least those who didn’t send notes via messenger pigeons and rats. I am not joking about either. You’d think that discovering that the pigeon which had been pretty insistently cooing and tapping his beak on your kitchen window had a tiny roll of paper strapped to its leg would be weird in this day and age. Later, you hear a scratching noise from outside that same window and there’s a pretty big rat with a plastic tube strapped to its back, containing a message for you. And both pigeons and rats refuse to leave until you tip them in food.

Emails, sure, she said. There was a suspicious gleam in her eyes.

* * *

As David Bowie’s voice flowed out of my grandma’s record player’s speakers, I took another big stack of papers off the desk, sat back in the heavy and comfortable gaming chair I’d bought and assembled just the other day, and started going through them. For each I’d make notes on the laptop, but I’d also mark them with a thin strip of colored paper, each color a different category—everything from what I guessed was research from my grandma’s old cases and notes about her various experiments with spells, potions and magic items, to personal stuff like diaries, to ‘Misc’, which included stuff ranging from ordinary cake and food recipes to half-filled crossword puzzles.

It was long and tiring work, but it definitely wasn’t boring, and it also had me practicing reading Croatian—my reading skills had improved significantly in the past few weeks.

It was also just one part of my grand summer project: cataloging and making some sense of Lena’s impossible room; from the stacks of paper to the content of the cupboards and shelves. Her book was another thing I was trying to put into some semblance of order—I was still trying to think of a name for it, and even though ‘grimoire’ kept pitching itself as the perfect solution, I was resisting it. I just sounded way too ominous when I’d say it out loud to myself.

Anyways, I’d discovered a page all about the magic that made the book possible as a physical object: how to make it very resistant to damage, how to protect it from prying eyes so that only select people can actually read it—and how to remove pages and insert new ones.

I’d been practicing said magic on a small empty notebook, making sure I knew what I was doing before I finally took Lena’s book apart and put its contents into something you could call ordered: all the spells and instructions for crafting magical objects one after the other, all the notes about various plants and creatures in one place, and so on. The book as it was now was a jumbled mess. I’m sure nona would have claimed she ‘had a system’, but it was my book now, so it was going to be my system now.

There was something I’d also been keeping an eye out for: any mention whatsoever of Grobnik as a whole and the house in Čavle in particular. So far, the only thing I had was the deed which Ilona Vranja, the woman whose family had apparently owned the house for a long time, used to officially make my grandma the new owner in the nineteen eighties. I had so far discovered no other mentions of the house or the Vranja family, nor any mentions at all of that weird black water in the basement.

The house was important enough for grandma to create a teleportation link to it from the astral realm. If there were others locations she could have teleported to, I had no access to their symbols. Back when I first entered the astral version of the impossible room, the Vranja house symbol was the only thing that remained on that corkboard after the room ‘reset’ for me, its new owner. In fact, I didn’t even know I could also teleport to the real world version of the impossible room until Viki casually mentioned it while we were practicing astral combat. It turned out that I didn’t need the symbol for the impossible room because it had become bound to me the moment I claimed it as my own.

The house was a mystery, one of many, yes, but a particularly nagging one. Maybe because it was just so big and absolutely because it was left specifically to me. You could say I inherited the entire town of Rijeka as the place I was supposed to protect, but that could be disputed—I certainly didn’t have a legal obligation to do it. But the house was in my name, which placed it in a category all of its own.

Even my own powers were still a big mystery to me. Lena left me her gun belt, as Katrina once put it, but what I could do with it, how the krsnik powers worked for me—it was different than how my grandma’s powers manifested. For example, my grandma had dreamt of a monster stalking the village she’d grown up in. I’ve been having all kinds of dreams since I became a krsnik, but not a single one like that.

So was it a power that I was yet to discover, or was it something that I’d never manifest?

According to Viki, my astral sight, on its own, was ‘shit’, which is why the outlines of astral Rijeka were just gray and white fuzzy and blurry lines. It was also why sleeping people were just humanoid blobs of strong colors and why my vision seemed 20/20 only when it came to things that were not reflections, but were fully in the astral realm—say, myself and Viki when we trained, and other… individuals and creatures. This was in sharp contrast to Lena, who could, apparently, make out basic outlines of a sleeping person’s face, just like Viki could. I was envious, absolutely, but it was what it was, and I would do my best to work with what I had.

* * *

There was only so much time I could spend going through papers before I’d start feeling my brain turning into goo and so I’d break up my sessions in the room with more busywork than actual work, just to relax my mind. For example, making lunch—or dinner—for myself and Bowie, my domaći—domovoi, the spirit of the hearth—named after the musician because he had different colored eyes and because my grandma obviously had a peculiar sense of humor. While traditionally the domaći were content with just a plate of cookies or a saucer of milk put aside for them, yours truly never quite managed to learn to gauge the amount of food he’s preparing—my meal for one would almost always turn into a meal for one and a hearty snack for the same one a couple of hours later.

Back in July I’d asked Bowie if he wanted to actually join me for meals.

He’d accepted after some moments of deep thought. You could never figure out what was going in that head of his, under that shaggy hair and behind those different-colored eyes. But he seemed to have accepted me right away and hasn’t changed his mind since, and I definitely grew accustomed to him much more quickly than I ever would have guessed.

Then again, I’d quickly grown accustomed to the apartment as well, and accepted it as home. It just… felt right.

As I plated the deep-fried chicken and grilled vegetables, Bowie hopped onto the table and sat down cross-legged in front of his plate. I’d asked if he’d like me to commission someone to craft him tiny utensils, but he declined, saying it was tradition that the domaći eat with their hands.

At least he’d drink soup by tilting the cup and not scooping it up in his hands as I’d seen him do a few times at the start of the summer.

As we ate, Bowie no longer shoveling food into his mouth but actually matching my tempo, at one point I asked: Bowie, what do you do with your free time?

His eyes, one green, one brown, regarded me closely as he chewed on a piece of deep-fried chicken.

You told me you’d taught yourself languages, like English. Do you have, um, any other hobbies?

He nodded. I do. Then he added: I don’t need them, though. Time passes differently for me than for you and I can… He was deep in thought for a moment, his brow creasing deeply, his eyes focused as if he were a wizard scrutinizing an ancient scroll. I can fade. That is the closest word I have for that. I can fade, and when I do, I’m only dimly aware of what is happening. I know that time is passing, but it’s a very… distant awareness? I can pull myself back when I need to. It’s how I passed the days between your grandmother’s death and when you came to Rijeka. But long ago I realized that the modern world offered so much to do, he said. Learning languages…

Watching clothes tumble in the washing machine, I said with a smile.

He nodded with a gleam in his eye.

I had a thought then. Do you still learn foreign languages?

He shook his head. I don’t have any new textbooks. Lena was buying them for me.

You don’t need them, I said, getting up. I picked up my tablet from the living room coffee table. I opened the cover and set the tablet back on the table, propped up.

Come here, I told Bowie, but he was already on the coffee table as I sat down on the couch. You know how to use this?

I can use the television. I’ve never used the computer in the room.

It’s easy, I said. You press this button here or you tap the screen with a finger. You might want to use your palm, just to make sure.

He stepped up to the tablet and slapped the screen, which immediately came to life. Bowie glanced at me, excited.

I showed him then what pattern to draw to unlock the screen—suppressing the urge to comment on it along the lines of ‘like drawing a magic symbol’—after which I tapped the cyan icon of a fish with glasses and a pen behind its ear.

Here, I said. You can learn languages with this. Tap there and you can choose a language.

His eyes were as big as saucers as he looked at me.

You can use it whenever you like. It’s very intuitive, but feel free to ask if you get stuck. I pointed at the tablet. I mean, you can use the tablet in general, if you want.

Thank you, the domaći said, his eyes aglow with awe and delight. I will use it well, I promise.

I stifled a chuckle. I wanted to quip something along the lines of Nobody uses the internet well, but he wouldn’t get it.

I couldn’t really imagine what exactly he might use it for, but I was suddenly very interested in finding out. Would I discover him watching ten-hour youtube videos of a laundrette?

* * *

Come on, I growled. You’re pulling your punches.

Viki paused for a moment. You’re delusional.

I swiped at her with a left hook, forcing her to dodge to the side, right where I wanted her. I kicked out and sent her flying at least a meter backwards.

She smacked her lips, floating upright once again. That was a dick move.

I grinned.

Viki sniffed, rolled her shoulders. She floated up, forcing me to crane my neck. You really want it, you’ll get it.

Two of her glittering tentacles of magical power shot towards me and I dodged them at the last moment. Which Viki had expected, because that put me in the path