Chapter 4
A Flashback
I don't remember how I got here. To this unusual fairy-tale world, infected with technology. With technology and skyscrapers coexisting with magic, dwarves, and dragons. I remember the moment of my arrival here. But nothing before that. I left Kyiv to go to a village twenty kilometers from Kharkiv, where I had an urgent business to deal with. A friend called me, whom I hadn't seen for many years. A desperate cry for help on a phone. And then darkness. I don't remember a thing about what happened there. Neither the way nor the arrival. Not even whether I made it to my destination or not. A mystery that had been puzzling me over years here.
Since then it was only here – in this strange alien world.
Upon my arrival I walked around the city, thinking I had gone back to Earth's past, time travel to the thirties or twenties of Earth's history! I thought of a time machine I had accidentally bumped into somewhere on my ride to Kharkiv. Fool! But this misconception was quickly clarified. Nobody spoke here in English, Chinese, French, or any other earthly language. Although everything looked comically funny. The 1930s U.S. style, wildly mixed with some own cultural atmosphere so foreign and yet even more absurd. Probably, such a world could have been existing only in another Universe, where the laws of physics are different. An alien city in the American thirties, which was able thanks to some miraculous technology, to fly to other star systems.
Two days after my "landing" I wandered the city, looking around, trying to talk to passers-by, marveling at the sight of some 'people' who turned out to be not humans, but fairytale creatures. Sometimes humanoid, sometimes not. I remember the shock when I first saw the magic. Although at first, I decided that it was some tricks, illusions, then I realized that I'm wrong. There are no such tricks were possible back at my home planet. Magicians and illusionists always arrange some disappearances, levitations, and similar things in a special way, but here it was completely different. With tricks being performed, you never see how the magic itself occurs; this part is always dropped out, hidden by decorations, while it's an art of deception. But here it was shown in all its glory. If something was disintegrating or disappearing, you literally see how the object shrinks and melts into itself, releasing a physically palpable dose of energy, and affecting the surrounding air temperature and pressure. In other words, the air temperature around dropped or rose dependent on the art of magic that had been performed. Try to take this as a focus! Definitely, it was reality.
By the end of the second day of my wandering through this fantasy and yet retro-like alien metropolis, I was desperately craving food. A mundane human desires: to sleep and eat. They say a person can go without eating for two months. But I didn't want to test that theory. Water was not a problem, there were parks with small fountains to drink from and I was almost 100% sure that the strange hieroglyph inscriptions on it, which I'd never seen before, mean the drinking water.
Then I met Shania. A magical being classified in local magic science books as a Shaynar giant pixie-fairy.
It was a strange coincidence – to bump into such an adventure right on arrival. Such a cliché! As if someone deliberately led me to this alley, manipulating my subconsciousness. The feeling when you can't figure out yourself whether you made this foolishness or someone got into your head and made you turn in the right direction. In a small alley, I bumped into a gang of some strange 'Gopniks' that I could not define otherwise, because they were not human at all. They had trapped an unusual violet hair girl at the dead end of the street. I had seen 'grey-faced' types before, although not in such numbers. But never seen a sixteen-year-old human girl with lilac hair before. She caught my attention with both the way she had white and lilac-tinged ponytails tied on the back of her long hair and her strange outfit, reminiscent of an Eastern dancer's clothing with an open bare waist.
Leading this gathering of thugs was a hefty type, as I later found out, called here Ronka. A race of micro-giants, often used for security and bodyguards' purposes. They simply lack the brains to perform more advanced labor. Typical: strength is needed, no brains required, in its full glory.
Ronka was about twenty meters away, with his back facing me, and as such presented a perfect target to strike from behind using the inertia of sprinting. I barely hesitated. The question of why I got myself into this never even crossed my mind. I didn't really have a choice: either I gain the attention of the locals or starve to death or become a criminal. Without language or the knowledge of local customs, I desperately needed a "local guide" to survive.
So whatever they say about chivalrous acts and proper gentlemen coming to the aid of ladies in such troubled situations, I was mostly helping myself.
It's called 'Yoko-geri-kekom' is what I did next. From Japanese, it translates to a "side thrust kick". The healthy guy whose neck I unloaded all my knowledge of Eastern martial arts on, fell forward like a streetlight pole. And it really seemed as if I kicked the pole itself; he was so massive, at least two hundred pounds, and not fat at all.
My action caused shock and panic for a moment in the "gray-eyed" crowd. With what I took advantage of. Or rather, so I thought. The Dravers are shorter than most people and somehow more fragile. Bones covered with thin meat, like young teenagers. But they have claws. Or rather, nails are ten times sharper and more massive than human ones. Sharpened with a file, they present a terrible threat in a street fight. While I was enthusiastically throwing them around with judo moves, karate kicks, and punches, I was cut several times, so quickly and accurately that I only noticed it when I started to feel the smell of my own blood and after a sharp pain. As if that wasn't enough exactly at that moment I was cursed with a magic spell. For the first time in my life attacked with magic. A whirling annoying sound - and a terribly hard blow to my back. As if someone drove me with a sack full of flour. My breathing froze! There was no stiffness from the baseball bat, but it immediately took out all air from my lungs. I started to fall and at that moment a blue girl screamed. A flash of an incredible lilac light, which protected me from the subsequent attack of the street gang sorcerer and a shock wave, scattering the Draver's gang. I swayed on the edge of numbness, realizing the foolishness of the situation. I wasn't a savior anymore but being saved himself from certain death. It was my last thought before I lost consciousness.
Later I woke up in Shania's sewing studio. As she later explained to me, she had called a taxi and brought me to the exit of the alley, which I still can't believe. I'm weighing ninety kilograms and she, a forty–kilogram Shaynar pixie fairy, could not lift me – a healthy human guy according to local standards. Probably she used magic to assist with the task. Fairies are always okay with that.
So, I woke up with this lilac girl. Naked. She undressed me and took care of my cuts. When I looked at them, I almost fainted. Mamma Mia! I was cut everywhere. Even forgot about shyness lying naked before an unknown girl. Being confident in the weakness of my opponents, I did not keep them at a distance, and each of those scoundrels in some way cut me with their sharpened nails or claws, dunno how to call them.
But the lilac-eyed maiden knew her business. And right before my eyes she patched up my wounds and cuts with a leaf of some odd plant in combination with magic. She just touched with it the spot and quietly sang. Once, twice. The cuts disappeared and tightened, leaving only scars. Seeing what I was looking at, she smiled approvingly and said something melodic. A sweet voice. Probably angels talk like that in heaven if it really exists that should be the case.
I shook my head. "No, I don't understand you, girl!"
She spoke again, in a different language as far as I could tell.
Again, I helplessly shook my head. She switched languages at least twenty times, like some kind of super-polyglot. To stop this senseless language test, who know knows how many she speaks, I interrupt her with the words:
"I don't understand you, Beauty. Sorry."
She was taken aback by my words, and then repeated my phrase exactly and without an accent.
"I don't understand you, Beauty. Sorry."
"No, no! Handsome. Beauty is meant for the female gender. Though it's far from the truth. You are the beauty here. And I... Well. A wild night wanderer."
She also smiled. Enticingly soft. She poked me with her index finger and said:
"I understand. Handsome," and then to herself: "Beauty."
I quietly whistled. Although she came to an incorrect conclusion. But the first word she deciphered right at spot! And even the decline was also correct.
"No, no!" I said, repeating her gesture, correcting a ready-to-happen linguistic misconception: "Man, woman."
Then I added, pointing to her again:
"Beauty."
She guessed again. Briskly laughed. And stroked my forehead with a comforting lie:
"Handsome, handsome. A handsome man."
"Come on," I waved off. "Don't flatter me, lilac-eyed one, I don't remember how many times my nose had been broken in fights...
This was how I met Shania. Or Shaynar's pixie fairy. The real fairy. Or the earthly analog of a fairy. Whatever you want. She even had wings. But they are magical and only appear at night under the moonlight. If the fairy exposes her body naked to the moonlight, they appear. Thin and transparent, like a dragonfly's ones. Otherwise, Shania looks like an ordinary human girl. A very beautiful girl, one must say. Miniature and with a model figure. But only looks like. She is a magical creature, not a biological one, like a human. And that needs to be clarified. There are no male fairies. And can't be, they don't reproduce like humans. Our sexual desires are incomprehensible to them. Moreover, they live so long that it's not even a dream for an ordinary person. Shania, for example, was about fifty with a jag. And for a fairy, this is the age of an eighth-grader. So by their standards, she is not even yet an adult. And comparisons with humans are out of place here. It is something else, absolutely something different. And why she saved me, I still haven't gotten until now. Fairies don't like people. Men especially. They contact with women but with human males never, didn't even talk to the opposite sex. Either she understood with her magical sense that I was not from here and, therefore, not quite a human by the standards of her world, or something else was at play. Only Shania and God know what it was.
Shania had a tailoring shop. A tailoring shop for making women's clothing. Quite fashionable in this area. It sounds ridiculous at first glance, a fairy doing fashion. Shania herself was from a distant island. A home of extinct species – giants. On their native island, fairies were subjected to genocide by explorers and conquerors from the overseas southern empire, called Shaynar. That's why they called Shaynar Fairies. But you better not pronounce it in her presence. After the genocide, the remaining fairies scattered in different directions. Shania had a mentor who brought her here, and she herself 'went away', trying to prepare her disciple ready for local life as well as possible, before her passing. And Shania adapted. To strange human life. Without flights in the light of the moon among trees as high as a good skyscraper, and without nectar of flowers as big as a house on her native island to feed. Bridgeport was a strange and wild place for her. How she was able to adapt so quickly, I thought, watching her day after day in her sewing studio, commanding two assistants, Milby sisters. Periodically, she would put on an improvised fashion show for me. I would describe the clothing from my world, and she would often interrogate me with long questions about how we do this and that. I had already told her half of the books I had read in my life, and half of the movies I had seen, and I suspected that she just was feeding off my stories, like some kind of vampire eager to suck the next portion. It looks like the new information seemed to have replaced fairies the most of our, human, entertainment.
That was how I lived. With a fairy behind the curtain. Or rather, on her account, which I was terribly ashamed of. I tried to get a job as a dockworker a couple of times, but Shania vehemently forced me to quit such a job despite my protests. She wanted to teach me to sew since I was so eager to work. But I flatly refused to share her professional passion with her. Maxim Svyatlyakov, a former cop, sniper, and now a seamstress in the studio!
Once I got settled in the local stone jungles, learned the language, and started to figure out what was going on there; I opened a private detective agency. It was a crazy idea, honestly, I'm still new here, after all! Well, I've been here for five years, but you can't learn all the subtleties of local life in such a short amount of time. But still, I took the risk. Opened a bureau. Put a phone there. Put an ad in the newspaper. With Shania's money, of course.
Slowly but surely, the business went on. A couple of years of work in the investigative department helped me a little. I was dealing with minor things. Marital infidelities, shoplifting, disappearances. At the same time, I tried to find out as much as possible about magic, about this strange city. I recorded and analyzed everything in my diary. After five years, that was already the seventh volume. I already knew Bridgeport was founded by mysterious "engineers", and only a fool would not guess where they came from. So, my case of transfer to this world is not the only one, as I found out. Now, the question is whether some portal, a door to another world, exists. How I'd know that?
Engineers ignited in this world a technical revolution but in a separate kingdom. The whole planet was too big for them. God knows how many of them were when they arrived here, obviously no less than a dozen, since they left such a powerful trace. The rest of the planet was what it was supposed to be; a wild place full of magic, kingdoms, empires, dragons and God knows what else. Beyond Bridgeport, I wisely did not go. I am a city man, and all those magical things could easily 'swallow me up', a helpless stranger to the magic world. The other population of the magic world hated people from Bridgeport bitterly for an unknown reason. The stone jungles were much safer and somehow more familiar to me. A corrupt 'ammaratia' an analog of our police, politicians, factories, journalists, newspapers, fast food, and cars those things was native to me, although cars and technology were still from the times of Prohibition, people, and not only them, were wearing hats and suits according to the fashion of the thirties of the twentieth century. Still, I'm not a magic man. Not in the slightest!