“We have a theory about the Light One,” I said, trying to lead the conversation to a different subject. “Gesar checked out all the Higher Ones, no one’s under suspicion there. But Edgar had a lot of charms on him. That’s the work of a witch. So I thought…”

“That Arina had changed color?” Svetlana asked, looking at me. “Maybe.”

“You squeezed her pretty hard that time,” I said. “You must have felt her mind. Do you think she could have become a Light One?”

“For an ordinary Other, it’s impossible,” Svetlana said. “Or almost impossible…For a Higher One…for Arina…”

She paused, remembering. I waited, glancing now and then at the TV screen, where a sad little girl was dragging a mitten along on a string and imagining that it was a puppy. How terrible! That would be the end of all our mittens and gloves. Nadya wouldn’t actually turn them into dogs, of course-any magic has its limits. But there would be more toy dogs in the apartment from now on.

It was time to buy her a puppy, before life became unbearable.

“She could,” Svetlana said. “She could have become a Light One. Her soul is very strange, there’s everything mixed up together inside it…there weren’t any particular atrocities, though. But Arina swore an oath to me that she would live for a hundred years without killing a single human being or Other. She can’t go against that.”

“And she hasn’t killed anyone,” I observed. “But as for supplying Edgar with amulets and raising his level of Power…nothing was said about that. Arina has enough wisdom to interpret your prohibition selectively.”

“Anton, we’re talking about the wrong thing,” Svetlana said, putting down her cup. “Arina, who has become a Light One, or some other enchantress-that’s not the point at all. The important question to ask is: What are they trying to achieve? What has united them? The ambition to destroy the entire world? Nonsense! You only find people who want to destroy the world just for the sake of it in stupid films. Power? But that’s stupid too, Anton! They have enough Power already. No artifact, not even one made by a crazy magician fifteen hundred years ago, will allow them to achieve absolute Power. Until we understand what they are trying to achieve, what they want to find at the bottom of the Twilight, then it’s completely irrelevant whether it is Arina or not, if she has become a Light One or disguised herself so that Thomas couldn’t recognize her.”

“Sveta, do you have any hunches?” I pretended not to notice that she had said “we.” It’s true what they say-you never really leave the Watch completely.

“The Crown of All Things erases the barriers between the levels of the Twilight…,” Svetlana said, and paused.

“Mama, the cartoon’s over!” Nadya shouted.

“Try comparing it with the White Mist. The spells obviously have a single root,” Svetlana concluded, getting up and walking toward Nadya. “Time for bed.”

“A story!” Nadya demanded.

“Not today. Daddy and I have to talk.”

Nadya looked at me resentfully, fiddling with the thin string of turquoise beads around her neck. She muttered, “You’re always talking…And Daddy’s always going away.”

“That’s Daddy’s job,” Svetlana explained calmly, grabbing hold of her daughter’s hand. “You know he fights against the forces of Darkness.”

“Like Harry Potter,” Nadya said rather doubtfully, looking at me. I suppose I didn’t have the spectacles or the scar on my forehead that were needed to match up to the image.

“Yes, like Harry Potter, Fat-Frumos, and Luke Skywalker.”

“Like Luke Skywalker,” Nadya decided, and gave me a smile. Obviously that was the character she thought I resembled most of all. Well, that was better than nothing.

“I’ll be straight back,” said Svetlana, and the two of them went to the nursery. I sat there, looking at a chocolate with a bite taken out of it. It had alternate layers of dark chocolate and white chocolate. When I counted seven layers, I laughed. It was a graphic illustration of the structure of the Twilight. The White Mist folded all the layers together, turning any Others who got in the way into stone. OK, let’s sidestep the effect of the spell in battle. What happened afterward? I closed my eyes, trying to remember.

Afterward the Twilight straightened out again. The levels of the Twilight returned to their old places.

Why had we decided that the Crown of All Things would join the Twilight and the real world together forever? Simply because we believed what Rustam had said? But how did he know…The Twilight would fold up-and then expand again. As it left our world, the Twilight would spread out its layers again. It was like a stiff spring: You could compress it, but it would straighten back out.

And that was interesting. I didn’t believe in a Merlin who had created a magical bomb to destroy the entire world simply for the fun of it. He wasn’t that kind of Other. But I could easily believe in Merlin as an experimenter who had invented a new amusement, but decided not to try it out.

What might happen if all the levels of the Twilight were united with the real world for a short time?

Would all Others die out?

Hardly.

If that were the case, Merlin would surely have boasted of his Power.

But he had thought up a kind of allegorical riddle for his message…

I recited the verse in a low voice as I watched Svetlana walk back quietly into the kitchen.

The Crown of All Things is here concealed. Only one step is left.

But this is a legacy for the strong or the wise-

You shall receive all and nothing, when you are able to take it.

Proceed, if you are as strong as I;

Or go back, if you are as wise as I.

Beginning and end, head and tail, all is fused in one

In the Crown of All Things. Thus are life and death inseparable.

“Trying to understand it?” Svetlana asked as she sat down beside me. “You know what I was thinking? Why did we decide that the Twilight would come together with the world forever? Most probably it would move back out again.”

“That’s what I was thinking too,” I agreed. “Like with the White Mist. But what would that lead to? Blue moss starting to grow in our world?”

Svetlana laughed. “Wouldn’t the botanists have a field day! A new form of plant life, and one that reacts to human emotions. They’d write millions of doctoral theses…”

“They’d open factories for processing blue moss,” I added. “Start spinning threads out of it, making blue jeans…”

Svetlana suddenly turned serious. “And what would happen to those who live in the Twilight?”

“The disembodied Others?” I asked.

Svetlana nodded.

“Life and death,” I said, and nodded too. “I don’t know. Do you suppose they might be…resurrected? Come to life again in our world?”

“Why not? We know they live there. I even saw one on the fifth level, when I was fighting Arina…”

“And you didn’t tell me,” I commented.

“You know it’s best not to talk about these things. It’s best not to know about it if you can’t get there yourself. I’m not at all sure that everybody ends up there, perhaps it’s only the most powerful. The Higher Ones, for example. Why should all the rest know that they won’t have any existence after death?”

“Thomas the Rhymer said that down there on the lower levels of the Twilight there are magical cities, dragons and unicorns…all the things that don’t exist in our world, but could have.”

Svetlana shook her head. “Thomas seems like a very good man to me. But he’s a bard. A poet. You can’t cure that, Anton. You talked to him when he was in his Twilight form, dreaming about unicorns and fairies and magical cities, Others who have built a world of their own and don’t live as parasites on the human world. I wouldn’t count too much on all that being true. Perhaps there are only little huts and wooden houses there. And no fairies and unicorns.”