"Be patient a little," she pulls away from me and starts rummaging in the pockets of her soft pants. "I'm sure I had it with me. Yeah, it’s here..."

The witch takes out a thin rectangular box that looks exactly like a wooden pencil case of an average Soviet schoolchild, and she carefully pushes the lid open. I am not bothering or distracting her, as I’m sitting quietly being a little bit dumbfounded after my first kiss.

Growing up on classic Disney, I always imagined my first kiss in a slightly different way. It was always with a man, but his image was invariably blurred and generalized: a certain ideal picture of a handsome prince who would gallop up to me on some white ungulate and perform everything for me: he would solve all my problems, dispel the sorrows of forever depressed Unsmiling Tsarevna**. But I couldn’t imagine what would happen next after my happy reunion with a ‘prince’. The picture was not perfect like early childhood memories.

I gently touch my lips with my fingertips as if trying to keep the warmth of her lips, to remember forever their softness and tenderness.

Tenderness! Pfff! The girl unceremoniously stretches my leg. Of course, I give a tearful sob, although it doesn't hurt at all.

"Sorry! Sorry! I keep forgetting that you are a human being and not an ordinary shape-shifter!" the witch apologizes and strokes my sore leg like she would do to a child. I rejoice inwardly, having achieved what I wanted. It is difficult for me to control my emotions and actions now, since I can’t understand why I behave this way with the girl. It feels like my well-thought-out little world that I’ve been building in my head since childhood is crumbling all around me, and I’m trying to build something new on its ruins, poorly improvising and using poorly improvised materials.

"It should help quickly!" says the witch, taking out a white ball resembling a hard candy. "You will feel some cold discomfort, but it’s not painful."

She smashed the ball in her hand, and with a pleasant nutty cracking it breaks releasing a milky sparkling mist that envelops my leg. I twitch in fright. It feels like I took my leg out of the felt boot and put it in the ice-hole.

"Tshh, hush, silly," my new doctor says affectionately and squeezes my hand. "The pain will go away, I promise."

I nod obediently, but I listen to my feelings in disbelief. The cold sensation goes away together with the pain.

It cannot be! I gently wiggle my toes: no pain at all as if nothing happened. Even the painkillers do not help so quickly!

I am trying to get up, grimacing and putting all my weight on my healthy leg and scratched hands. Gently but persistently the witch is pressing on my shoulders making me sit back.

"The bones, of course, have grown together, and there is no more inflammation, but the leg will be weak for a while," she says, looking around. "There is a former forester's house not far from the lake. I think, we’ll spend the night there. I'm definitely not going home today," saying the word ‘home’, her voice breaks a little, but she quickly regains her playful mood and fixes ‘shifter’s’ twig on my head. Perhaps I would not even have noticed this change in her tone if I hadn’t so desperately caught every word she said.

"And where did the forester go?" I ask the first thing that comes to my mind, unable to cope with her gaze and lithe body of hers which is too close to me again.

"The forester?" the girl scratches the back of her head absentmindedly. "Weeell, somebody has scoffed him, I guess. And everyone who's anyone is here especially at night: from volkolacs to mermaids! Mermaids! I hate them! Ugh, they just sit on the tree branches, and if you pass under the tree accidentally, you’ll definitely get wet because these ooze-haired bitches are literally leaking. And don’t worry about him," the witch soothes me, misunderstanding my stupid expression. "It was long ago: maybe he strangled himself... or someone helped him," she laughs at the old joke understandable only among local witches.

"I thought people aren’t allowed to be here."

"Well, you’re here," says the witch with a poorly concealed smile in her voice.

"Yes, I am here," I lower my eyes, some slight inexplicable feeling is awakening in my chest. "I never asked your name."

"Hebe," the girl mutters.

"You’ll say: it's fickle Hebe feeding the Zeus’s eagle – it is mirth…"*, I whisper unconsciously once learned lines from "I love spring storms – the rain, the lightning..." the very end of the poem that no one bother to remember.

The witch is rooted to the spot hearing the lines from my favorite poem, and it seems to me that she is smiling, although it is difficult to say for sure in such darkness.

"Do mermaids actually live here?" I ask with some hope in my voice peering into the reeds, hoping to see at least one of them in the lake.

"Mermaids? Really?" Hebe snorts irritably. "You are very insidious, girl: one moment you are reciting poems to me, then you are eager to meet these water sluts!"

"I didn't know they were of loose morals," I answer honestly.

Hebe grabs ahold of me and quickly pulls me to her body. Our faces are so close that our noses almost touch.

"No mermaids, Velia. You are mine; do you understand?"

"I only learned your name a minute ago. Aren't you rushing things?" I do not look away from the cold marble of her irises. The pleasant pulling feeling below is teasing me again. She looses her grip, lies down on the grass and pulls me again making me lie on her.

"Humans don’t live long. I should hurry," Hebe sighs; she doesn't seem irritated or angry: her expression is rather melancholic. She strokes my hair, tucking a few naughty strands behind my ear.

Obeying some previously unknown instinct, I bring my face closer to hers and after several hesitations I press the corner of her mouth with my lips, but she doesn’t move, as if she did not notice my almost heroic gesture.

"Heck! Too early? Or is it too late? What should I do?" I think as if convulsively while lying awkwardly on her; Hebe does not allow me to move away from her, pressing me to her breasts. Her face is directed to the inky-empty sky.

"Hebe?" I like saying her name, savoring it on my tongue and lips just like her sweet kiss. Our first kiss. This one didn't turn out very well, since she didn't react at all. Well, at least she didn't brush me aside like an annoying fly... I could not touch her lips normally, as if feeling I was crossing the line and there would be no way back, almost like falling beyond the event horizon.

"Mmm?" the girl purrs listlessly.

"Aren’t you feeling cold?" I ask quietly, touching her wrist. Her skin and lips are slightly cool, though as usual.

"No," she replies in surprise, touching her cheeks. "I’m fine," with these words she starts to get up, thereby forcing me to sit down too. "I have to ask you one serious question..." Hebe asks.

"Look, if you mean mermaids, I didn't want to do anything with them. I don't even know what they really look like, I... I just wanted to see them; volkolaks, they are probably dangerous creatures, and I thought that mermaids..."

"Did I scare you again, didn’t I?" the witch interrupts my stream of excuses; she is speaking softly like the rustle of reeds at night.

"I want you to have a good feelin' about me..." I’m furiously pulling my dirty dead T-shirt on my bare, scratched knees.

"That's not what I wanted to ask you, little silly!" she pauses. "Why did you scream when you were standing next to the sphere? Did you see anything inside?" Hebe asks me with frank hope in her voice.

"No," I lie honestly, looking sideways at the witch's hunting sword. I won't tell her what I really saw! My leg injury and my first kiss distracted me, but my fear and my mistrust towards her are coming back. Just like the fog that is gradually swaddling the lake and the edge of the forest, my fears began to fill my lungs, making my chest heavy and my body stiff.

"But I was sure..."

"I was just scared of those witches who were talking to Mika while you were away. They began to suspect me. Forgive me! I promised to be quiet, but I failed... What is this sphere for?" I try to change the topic, squeezing a few wet blades of grass in my hands.

"This sphere helps us to see the future. Only the Pythia witches are able to decipher the messages of the spirits. Every year fewer and fewer future fortune tellers are born. The most recent was born about seventy years ago. Our covens have never experienced such a long break and lack of Pythias. That is why each of them is super important. So, I thought..." She rubs her forehead. "Never mind!"

"Did you find out what happened to the witch from the Southern Lands?"

Hebe sighs and wearily squeezes the bridge of her nose.

"Yes, I did. She was killed. And she was one of the Pythias. I was hoping it was an ordinal fight with the undead or a quarrel between witches from different clans, but not this time..."

"I'm sorry," I say, lowering my eyes: I am embarrassed.

"Thank you."

Hebe turns her face to the Moon, which is almost devoured by a terrible forest, only a small reddish corner is barely flickering like a distant star: its light is still coming, but it has been dead for hundreds of years.

"Come on, we have to go. Soon it will be quite creepy here."

Her words give me chills, and I involuntarily embrace myself.

"Grab my neck!" the unusually cheerful voice of Hebe cuts through the night. "It will be more convenient for me to carry you."

She turns her back on me and waits patiently. I do as she tells me, leaning my whole body against her back, and she quickly gets up, catching up my legs"

"Isn't it difficult for you to carry me?"

"Don't talk nonsense! You’d better eat more, girl! Gnaw your fungus-mushroom from time to time (And again, she is reproaching my poor appetite! She’s right, to be honest. While she was gone, I ate, let's say, without much enthusiasm)...

* F. Tyutchev “I love spring storms – the rain, the lightning...” (tr. by I.Shambat)

** The Princess Who Never Smiled (Russian folk fairy tale)