“Anya, dear. Can you hear me?” Iryna whispered, again and again, staring at her daughter’s pale face.

Anya was silent. Her breath was calm, her pulse even.

The early darkness of a late October evening spread over the intensive care unit of a countryside hospital. Up until today, Iryna hadn’t even known that this small rural village had its own hospital or that this place even existed fifty miles away from the city. No, wait; she had heard the name before when her coworker had mentioned the plot of land that she and her husband had bought to build a house.

Iryna had spent several hours by her daughter’s bed, watching her chest rise slightly and the small vein pulse in her neck. If it weren’t for the deep scratch across her cheek and the bruise over her right eyebrow, Anya would have appeared to be fast asleep. Although she never slept on her back, only on her belly or curled up in a ball.

By Anya’s bedside was a dropper bottle, and towering on the other side of the bed was an old, artificial lungs ventilation machine. Fortunately, they hadn’t attached it to Anya yet; they only changed the medication from time to time to “support her veins” as the doctor had explained.

Looking like an old, narrow piano in the semidarkness, the ventilator was asleep by Anya’s side, ready to rasp awake at any moment, spreading its old bellows. Over its thirty years of service, this inconspicuous worker had seized hundreds—or even thousands—of souls that were about to leave their bodies and pressed them back in.

You’ve been disobeying God’s will, Iryna thought, looking at the machine. Bringing back the lives that Our Lord was about to take.

The ancient piece of equipment didn’t seem to care at all about its feats—or its crimes, depending on the point of view. It could spit at any opinions through its old, sticking valves.

Iryna leaned back against the headboard of the multi-functional bed she was sitting on and closed her eyes, exhausted. The bright butterflies of memories went flashing before her eyes. It was her worn-down brain’s way of getting rid of the overwhelming images. The butterflies fluttered their wings to the beat of her adrenaline-lashed heart. Everything that she could see with her inner site looked like an endless, pulsing glade covered with tiny, bright, fluttering wings.

***

Valery had been waiting in his car, a silvery Toyota Camry.

The heavy traffic on the main street eventually trapped them in a forty-five-minute traffic jam.

The tense silence was broken by the wizard’s flat voice. “Their car will crash in five minutes.”

Iryna reached for her phone, muttering, “I must warn Anya. I’ll call her.”

Her phone was not in her bag.

She looked up, remembering she had last seen her phone on the hallway table. Oh, no! I must’ve forgotten it in my rush.

Realizing that, Iryna was about to walk home on foot to get her phone. They were only two miles away.

“Please calm down, Iryna. She will be all right. Of all the bad things that could happen, it’s the lesser evil.”

For yet another time that day, Iryna felt like she was falling into an abyss. She looked sideways as though asking for help from the drivers of the other cars creeping along.

Twenty endless, cold-and-sticky minutes later, the other cars began to speed up, getting around the invisible obstacle in the right lane. Soon Iryna saw it: a truck with blinking hazard lights and a Nissan Beetle that had collided into its front wheel.

Sliding his gaze across the giant-and-dwarf collision that had held them back for almost an hour, Valery sped up, driving his Camry away from the overpass and out of the city.

Forty minutes later, they passed by the overturned, dark-red Golf at the roadside. Highway patrol officers surrounded it.

“Their car,” Valery said.

Iryna glanced back quickly, but all she could see was the flashing light of the tow truck parked next to the crash site.

Another fifteen minutes later, they entered the rural town.

After all she’d seen at night, Iryna saw no point in asking the wizard how he knew what local hospital they needed, how he knew the car, or how he had known about the accident before it had happened.

A nurse looked up at them indifferently. “For the smashed-up ones? You’re fast.” She immediately recognized them as the victims’ family.

The doctor on duty told them that the driver and the passenger had both been lucky to get out with no injuries except a few bruises and scratches. However, both were unconscious, in a state resembling a comatose dream. He also asked whether the date of birth on Anya’s ID was correct, her relationship with the driver, and whether she was taking any…any medicines. He seemed to try to avoid saying “drugs.”

Another doctor, the neurologist, added little to what they already knew. No distinct neurological symptoms in either of the patients. The radiological examination revealed no problems. He asked the same question about Anya’s age and mentioned the comatose dream. Iryna’s mind kept transforming the word into “aspomatose” dream.

Both patients got IVs, and the ALV machines were by their beds, ready to be used in case their condition worsened.

Learning that the driver was next door to Anya’s room, Iryna couldn’t help but peek inside.

The guy was ordinary-looking. Lean, in his early thirties. Had she met him under other circumstances, he would have even seemed to be a nice guy.

Whatever relationship to the patient Valery had claimed, he was now sitting at the driver’s bedside, staring at Anya’s leather hairband wrapped around his wrist.

It was only at that point that Iryna realized she hadn’t seen Asp in Anya’s hair.

She stepped in to take the band but stopped, meeting the wizard’s eyes. “No, Iryna. He must keep it for now.”

Iryna knew better than to argue.

Valery told her that he would stay with the guy for a while and visit Anya later. He added that Anya needed her mother, so Iryna went back to her.

***

Iryna opened her eyes.

She would have bet that her recollections had taken no longer than a minute or two, but the hospital room had grown completely dark in the meantime; only a narrow strip of bluish light from the hospital lights oozed in under the door.

Looking down at the bed, she jumped up in terror.

For a moment, it had seemed to her that the bed was empty, with the blanket draped in a way that created the impression of a body beneath. But then she sighed in relief. Anya was in bed, breathing evenly in her sleep.

“How is she? Has she woken up?”

Iryna gave a start at the sound of Valery’s voice coming from behind her. She was sure he had not been there a moment ago. A real wizard.

“No. She’s asleep. And how’s that…that one?” She nodded at the door.

“Same. Absolutely the same,” Valery said in a distant voice, then suddenly put a hand on her forehead. His palm was hot and dry, and his touch was numbing, sending her down into unconsciousness.

The last thing she heard was the same distant voice. “Time for us to go there. Our turn.”