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Vlad made another feeble attempt to hold the ground.
“But what made you think I belong to you?” the thoughts were whirling around in Vlad’s head. “I am just an ordinary village boy.”
Freya made a gesture with her hand.
Vlad checked himself.
A scene from his past life was brought back to him, the one he had been trying to forget for many years, though with no success.
A forest road, a sledge with firewood, and the three of them: Vlad and Stepa, eight-year-old boys, and bell-ringer Mark as a coachman.
The tired bell-ringer was leading the horse by the bridle, with his head low. Vlad was dragging behind. They had been working hard: Mark chopped firewood, Vlad and Stepa laid it onto the sledge. Once or twice, they had to push the heavy loaded sledge uphill, helping the poor old horse. Stepa seemed to be hit by a giggling fit, he was kidding around, giving Vlad a push or throwing a snowball at him.
“Stepa, stop it!” Vlad asked
“I won’t!” Stepa laughed.
“I’ll get you!”
“Catch me first!”
A deeply rutted narrow road, a stiff slope. And Stepa, running away from Vlad. The feet of the mischievous boy slipped down the ice-covered slope.
Vlad watched his friend fall and slip down under the runners of the firewood sledge; it was all like a slow-motion movie. A cry escaped his lips, and he thrust his arm out as if he wanted to keep the boy from falling.
Something clenched inside of him and then broke forth.
The sledge turned over.
It’s too late.
The boy was lying still, crushed by the heavy sledge.
The sledge burst into silver blue flame, soaring to the sky…
Vlad shook his head, banishing the horrible scene from his mind.
“I was late,” Vlad whispered with tears in his eyes. “Just a second late.”
Vlad and Freya
“You tried to save your friend,” Freya consoled him. “What you did was not black magic, was it? That is why you need the Academy: So that you are not late next time.” Freya placed an emphasis on the last words.
Vlad failed to find objections. Hating the defeat, he had to admit that Freya made a very compelling argument.
He was overwhelmed by conflicting feelings. Joy and excitement were mixed with anxiety and confusion. What awaits him? Will he like the new place? Is he going to find himself? And what about his friends? His choir? What will they do without him?
“Life is a book,” Freya said as if she was able to read his mind. “It’s time for you to turn the page over and get to a new chapter.”
They both relapsed into silence for a while. The boy was watching the play of the purple energy in the woman’s gown. The chain of events of the day was falling into place little by little: The strange words of Father Konstantin, the tale of old Fedotya. Did they know? Were they preparing him for this? He drew a sigh, closed his eyes, and whispered hollowly:
“When should I get going?”
“Today,” she gave a ruthless reply.
“Today?” Vlad looked around the priest’s house that had become his home, his heart sank. “But I must say goodbye to Father Konstantin.”
“He knows about you,” the master said, preventing further questions. “But you can write him a letter.”
“A farewell letter?” Vlad swallowed hard.
“Yes,” Freya nodded, “a farewell letter.”
She knew how he felt.
“When you leave the village,” Freya was giving him instructions, “find a solitary spot and squeeze this stone hard with your hand,” she pointed at the crystal on the chest of the womanlike hologram. “Don’t be afraid of anything, and don’t be surprised. You will not be alone on your way to the Academy.”
“Who is coming with me?”
“Someone who knows the right way! Good luck and see you soon!”
The lines of her body began to fade and, eventually, the woman disappeared. The remaining shapeless glow flowed into the crystal that slowly landed on the table.
Vlad went to his room. It was small but cozy. The daylight easily came through the only window with no curtains and kept the room light even in the early morning and during the evening hours.
There were two icons on a special shelf in the far corner of the room: The Virgin Mary and Nicholas the Wonderworker. There was also a bookshelf to the right from the God’s corner, filled with a dozen of various books. There were three more icons above the bed, including the icon of Saint Vladislav of Serbia, Vlad’s patron saint. A shabby Bible was lying on the bedside table.
Vlad looked around the place, where he had spent most of his life, for the last time.
There was nothing left to do but to write the letter. But how hard it was! Vlad felt such deep sadness that it made his heart shrink.
“All you have to do is say farewell,” the inner voice told him.
“I am scared,” Vlad admitted to himself and felt tears well up in his eyes.
“No wonder that you are scared,” he heard the encouraging inner voice. “And yet you have to do this.”
Vlad was about to ask himself what was going to happen when he left, but he didn’t dare. He felt that he already knew it.
“It will be hard. It will be really hard. But you can make it, Vladislav Viggin,” his inner voice whispered.
Vlad was still looking at a sheet of paper and a pencil in his hand. It all happened right here. The appearance of Freya, the invitation to the Academy, which wasn’t really an invitation, rather a statement of the fact. He realized he just didn’t have any choice, didn’t have any alternative. What was meant to happen would have happened regardless of what he felt or what he wanted.
Everything became clear.
“I don’t want to leave,” he whispered.
Tears flowed from his eyes, first slowly, and then plentifully.
He went on writing. He was writing in his neat handwriting, and the tears he failed to dash away were falling down on the paper.
He wished he could hug loving Father Konstantin, cheerful bell-ringer Mark, caring cook Anna, old Fedotya, and all his friends.
He had a gut feeling that they were going to disengage from his embrace, no matter how tight he would hold them.
“My dear Father Konstantin, I know that what I am going to do will please your heart, but my heart is breaking. Forgive me, father, and do not banish me from your heart, for I will see it as a bad sign discouraging from the journey.”
With his eyes cast down, Vlad walked along the village road unusually fast, almost running. He knew he would give it up and stay, if he spoke to a villager or even cast a glance back. He looked back only when he was outside the village.
Tears were still rolling down his face. But now, when he held the past tight in his heart, he could let it go.
Chapter Three. The Admission Trial
Words can hardly describe what Vlad felt when he was writing the farewell letter. You can try to understand the twelve-year-old boy who had to leave home, his warm bed, a hearty meal, and most importantly, his loving and caring family. If anyone asked him about the reason for his doubts, he would easily find an answer.
The boy was always obedient to the priest who was like a father to him. Father Konstantin and the church were his only home and his only family. But there was something deep at the core of his loving heart that made him dream of the place the woman from the magical crystal had invited him to. In an inexplicable way, Vlad knew that the new world was the place where he would find all the answers. Old Fedotya’s tales, the utterances like “This is not the place where you should be” and “You’d better leave”, which he had heard repeatedly, the words of the sorceress calling herself Freya, all of that encouraged him to make that step. After all, he was still a child and subconsciously longed for mysteries.
Vlad traveled light. He set his heart on this: Either he enters the new world with nothing that would remind him of the past or…
Longing for Father Konstantin and his home, he made it to a small bridge over the river before he even knew it. A dark forest stretched beyond the river.
Vlad was standing at the edge of a big forest. With a heavy heart, he looked back at his house, the village, and the church rising above it… The boy was on the verge of tears.
He drew the crystal, which called him for the road, out of his pocket, and squeezed it hard with his hand. To his surprise, the hard gem crumbled into sparkling purple dust and slipped through his fingers.
Vlad thought that he messed everything up. He must have missed something in Freya’s explanations, and now he had to go back, disgraced. The few minutes he was walking from his house to the forest brought a dramatic change in him. Now he saw his involuntary return as a retreat, an unfair punishment.
“Keep your head up!” he said to himself. “Freya told me not to be surprised at anything! I just have to wait; something is going to happen.”
Vlad slowly turned around on one foot.
The surrounding landscape was the same, except for fresh colors that brightened it up: The same river, the village far away, and the dense forest. The wind rose and was now shaking the tops of the trees.
“Look at you!” he heard a mocking voice behind his back.
Where did it come from? There had been no one there a moment ago! And no one could get there without being seen! Vlad turned abruptly.
“Are you really from Molyobka?”
A boy of approximately fourteen years old was leaning against a thick tree, with his arms crossed on his chest, grinning.
“Who are you?” Vlad asked, startled.
“When you summoned me, I thought it must be some kind of joke. We haven’t seen anyone from this godforsaken place for more than eight hundred years,” the boy kept grinning. He stepped out of the shadow of the tree, and Vlad could get a good look at him.
The boy was lean and devilishly handsome. That’s right, devilishly, for that was exactly the word for his arrogant face. He was wearing blue jeans and dark-green long-sleeve plaid shirt. His face was oval, with regular features. He had dark green eyes and a chin proudly turned up. His thick dark hair was slightly disheveled, his pale pink lips were twisted into a shadow of a wry smile. The appraising glance of his vulturous eyes was fixed piercingly on Vlad.
When he came closer, Vlad noticed that the boy was almost a half-head taller than he.
“You look somewhat different than I imagined,” the boy narrowed his eyes, still having the grin that began to irritate Vlad. “I thought you were older and taller.”
Despite the provocative behavior of the stranger, Vlad kept calm. He gave a guileless smile and held out his hand.
“Vladislav,” he introduced himself respectfully. “You can call me Vlad.”
But the boy ignored Vlad’s hand. Instead, he stepped back and slowly looked Vlad up and down once again. Vlad was not a bit embarrassed by that.
“You are from the Academy. They’ve sent you for me, haven’t they?” Vlad realized. A sly smile was creeping over his face.
The stranger parted his lips in a smile, showing his straight white teeth. He clapped his hands three times, making pauses.
“Bravo, young man, well done! Only forty seconds!”
“Forty seconds of what?” Vlad was confused.
“It took you only forty seconds to understand where I came from. Others start asking stupid questions like ‘who are you?’, ‘where do you come from?’, ‘you were sent for me, weren’t you?’. But most of the time, they say: ‘Get out of here!’ At this point some problems tend to arise, but not at my end!”
His eyes flashed as if he was up to no good. He was hovering about Vlad just like a predator, preparing to attack.
“I understood it as soon as you appeared,” Vlad said with a sneer. “But asking point-blank would be inappropriate. I thought you were going to introduce yourself first.”
He thought he had cut off the stranger’s arrogance. However, the stranger didn’t change his behavior. He stopped circling around and was now looking straight into Vlad’s eyes.
“Introduce myself? Who needs such formalities? What if you fail the trial?” the boy asked in a low voice.
“What trial? I don’t know anything about it!” Vlad’s throat became dry with fear, but his face remained calm.
“You were invited to the Academy not for your good looks,” the boy sneered. “You have to prove that you deserve studying there. For that, you need to be able to survive.”
“To survive?”
“Before I take you to the portal, I need to make sure that you are the kind of person we need,” the boy’s pupils dilated, turning into two black abysses with shining stars at the bottom.
Silence hung in the air.
“What do I have to do?” Vlad asked, without waiting for an explanation.
The stranger’s eyes glistened with excitement. He spread his arms wide to the sides as if he wanted to hug Vlad.
“Nothing difficult! All you have to do is to beat me in a fight.”
Vlad thought Peter was joking, and reflexively took a step back.
“You want me to fight with you?” he couldn’t believe his ears.
“These are the rules,” the stranger shrugged his shoulders. “I didn’t invent them! I just have to test you.”
“And what if I don’t want to?”
