Trafika Europe 13 - Russian Ballet

Val Votrin

in dirt from head to foot, his face overgrown all the way up to his eyes with a grizzled, tangled beard; he was so terrifying that I was struck frozen in place. He did not even so much as look at me. His eyes burning with a red fire were directed at the light – there, where the Tenger stood. I heard the grating of his teeth. I stirred, and he slowly shifted his gaze to me. I will never forget that look, those eyes. In the very next second, I was already racing for home through the snapping bushes, stumbling and falling. It seemed to me that all the shamans of the Red Mound were chasing after me, all of them terrible, smeared with the black dirt of fright. After this, I fell ill. Nishkni visited me. Having listened to my tale, she said that the shaman was a figment of my imagination. That evening, not even the Tenger had come. She simply sat on the foothill and, he not having come, turned around and went home. She thought that I had returned a long time ago. My mother and she spent three days at my bedside, plying me with various potions. Soon enough, I myself grew convinced that the terrible shaman had been a product of my feverish imagination. And soon, I was back on my feet again. CH. 2. TYR In the large city, I lived in a house, the owner of which was a man by the name of Giovanni. Plump, bald, mocking in tone, but with a kind heart. He allowed me and Yazygu, a man from the Hosun of Sidi, into his

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