"For sure nobody's ever going to gag you," I laughed. "Sveta, why are you lecturing me like this? I'm not a Great Magician, but I know the elementary facts. I don't need reminding…"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you," Svetlana apologized quickly.

I looked at her and saw the pain in her eyes.

What a brute I was. How long could I go on taking out my complexes on the woman I loved? I was worse than any Dark One…

"Svetka, forgive me…" I whispered and touched her hand. "Forgive a stupid fool."

"I'm no better myself," Svetlana admitted. "Really, why am I lecturing you on the basics? You deal with witches every day in the Watch…"

Peace had been restored, and I was quick to say, "With ones as powerful as this? Come on, in the whole of Moscow there's only one first-level witch, and she retired ages ago… What are we going to do, Sveta?"

"There is no actual reason to interfere," Sveta said thoughtfully. "The children are all right, the boy's even better off than he was before. But there are still two questions that need to be answered. First, where did the strange wolf that drove the children toward the cubs come from?"

"That's if it was a wolf," I remarked.

"If it was," Svetlana agreed. "But the children's story hangs together very well… And the second question is-is the witch registered in this locality, and what's her record like?"

"We'll soon find out," I said, taking out my cell phone.

Five minutes later I had the answer. There was nothing in the Night Watch records about any witches in the area and there shouldn't be any.

Ten minutes after that I walked out of the yard, armed with instructions and advice from my wife-in her capacity as a potential Great Enchantress. On my way past the barn, I glanced in through the open doors-Kolya was hovering over the open hood of the car, and there were some parts lying on a newspaper spread out on the ground. Holy Moses… all I'd done was mention a knocking sound in the engine!

And Uncle Kolya was singing too, crooning quietly to himself:

We're not stokers and not carpenters either,

But we're not bitter, we have no regrets!

Those were clearly the only lines his memory had retained. And he kept repeating them nonstop as he rummaged enthusiastically in the engine:

We're not stokers and not carpenters either,

But we're not bitter, we have no regrets!

When he spotted me, Uncle Kolya called out happily, "This is going to cost you more than half a liter, Antosha! Those Japanese have completely lost it. The things they've done to the diesel engine, I can hardly bear to look."

"They're not Japanese, they're Germans," I corrected him.

"Germans?" Uncle Kolya said. "Ah, right, it's a BMW, and I've only fixed Subarus before… I was wondering why everything was done different… Never mind, I'll put it back together. Only my head's humming, the son of a bitch…"

"Look in to Sveta. She'll pour you a drop," I said, accepting the inevitable.

"No." Uncle Kolya shook his head. "Not while I'm working, no way… Our first farm chairman taught me that-while you're messing with the metal, not a single drop. You go on, go on. I've got enough here to keep me busy till the evening."

Bidding a mental farewell to the car, I walked out into the dusty, hot street.

Little Romka was absolutely delighted at my visit. I walked in just as Anna Viktorovna was about to suffer ignominious defeat in the battle of the afternoon nap. Romka, a skinny, suntanned little kid, was bouncing up and down on the springy bed and yelling ecstatically.

"I don't want to sleep by the wall! My knees get all bent!"

"What can I do with him?" asked Anna Viktorovna, very glad to see me. "Hello, Anton. Tell me, does your Nadyenka behave like this?"

"No," I lied.

Romka stopped jumping up and down and pricked up his ears.

"Why don't you take him and keep him?" Anna Viktorovna suggested craftily. "What do I want with a silly dunce like him? You're a strict man. You'll teach him how to behave. He can look after Nadyenka, wash her nappies, wash the floors for you, put the garbage out…"

As she said all this Anna Viktorovna kept winking at me emphatically, as if I really might take her suggestion seriously and carry off little Romka as an underage slave.

"I'll think about it," I said, to support her pedagogical efforts. "If he just won't do anything he's told, we'll take him for reeducation. We've had worse cases, and they turned out as meek as lambs."

"No, you won't take me!" Romka said boldly, but he stopped bouncing, sat down on the bed and pulled the blanket up over his legs. "What would he want with a silly dunce like me?"

"Then I'll put you in a boarding school," Anna Viktorovna threatened.

"Only heartless people put children in boarding schools," said Romka, clearly repeating a phrase he'd heard somewhere. "But you're not heartless."

"What can I do with him?" Anna Viktorovna repeated rhetorically. "Can I offer you some cold kvass?"

"Me too, me too!" Romka squealed, but a stern glance from his mother shut him up.

"Thank you," I said with a nod. "Actually, it was this silly dunce that I came to see you about…"

"What has he been up to?" asked Anna Viktorovna, taking a businesslike approach.

"It's just that Sveta told me about their adventures… about the wolf. I'm a hunter, and the thing is…"

A minute later I was already sitting at the table with a glass of cold kvass, the center of attention.

"Yes, I know what they say, but I'm a teacher," Anna Viktorovna was saying. "They say wolves help clean up the forest… only it's not true, of course, a wolf doesn't just kill sick animals. It kills any animals it can get… But it's still a living creature. A wolf's not to blame for being a wolf… But here-right next to the village. Chasing children! It drove them toward the cubs. Do you realize what that means?"

I nodded.

"It was teaching the cubs to hunt." Anna Viktorovna's eyes lit up, either with fear or that mother's fury that sends wolves and bears running for the bushes. "What was it-a man-eater?"

"It couldn't have been," I said. "There haven't been any cases of wolves attacking people around here. There haven't been any wolves at all left in these parts for a long time… most likely it was a feral dog. But I want to check."

"Yes, check," Anna Viktorovna said firmly. "And if… even if it's a dog. If the children didn't imagine the whole thing…"

I nodded again.

"Shoot it," Anna Viktorovna asked me. And then she added in a whisper, "I can't sleep at night… for imagining… what could have happened."

"It was a doggy!" Romka piped up from the bed.

"Hush!" Anna Viktorovna shouted at him. "All right then, come here. Tell the nice man what happened."

Romka didn't need to be asked twice. He got down off the bed, came over to us, clambered up onto my knees with a very serious air and looked into my eyes searchingly.

I ruffled up his coarse, sun-bleached hair.

"So this is what happened…" Romka began contentedly.

Anna Viktorovna looked at him in a very sad sort of way. I could understand her. It was these little kids' father that I couldn't understand. All sorts of things can happen… okay, so they were separated… but after that, how could anyone just cancel his own children out of his life, and do nothing but pay the alimony?

"We walked and walked, you know, we were out for a walk," Romka told us with agonizing slowness. "And after we walked for a while we reached the forest. And then Ksyusha started telling me scary stories…"

I listened to his story very carefully. Well, the "scary stories" might be one more reason to believe the whole business was just imagination, but there was the child speaking perfectly clearly. Save for repeating a few words in the usual way for his age, there was nothing to find fault with.