“The door’s open,” the witch said calmly as she took an odd assortment of cups out of the sideboard.

“Aren’t you afraid that the Tiger might be out there already and he’ll just splat me?” I asked as I opened the door.

“Well, that would solve all our problems!” Arina exclaimed. “Surely a daughter would avenge her father?”

Nadya looked at me in fright.

“Daddy, don’t go!”

“Nadya, don’t be afraid,” I said. “Arina’s right, it doesn’t make sense for the Tiger to kill me. Tell me, can you open a portal?”

Nadya paused for a second, then shook her head.

“I’m sorry, Daddy. It’s like the Twilight’s boiling. It’s all ripples and bubbles . . .”

I couldn’t imagine what she was seeing and where. As far as I could see, the Twilight was still the Twilight. Perfectly normal.

On the first level, at least.

I sighed, opened the door, and walked out into the evening forest gloom. Arina’s little house stood right in the middle of the forest, without any fences, vegetable plots, or other extravagances. There was only one path that led to it.

The one and only item of convenience here was a fallen tree fairly close by. It had fallen in just the right spot, and a few of its branches had been trimmed off, transforming it into a kind of natural bench.

I stood there, looking at the bench and the individual sitting on it.

Then I walked up, sat down beside the Tiger, took out my cigarettes, and asked him: “Like one?”

The young man in a formal business suit and light-colored raincoat looked at me for a while without answering. Then he said: “Smoking’s bad for your health.”

“It’s okay for Others,” I said glibly.

“If I disappear, your Power disappears too,” the Tiger reminded me. But he took a cigarette. It lit up on its own in his hand. The Tiger took a drag, removed the cigarette from his mouth, looked at it quizzically, and shrugged.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“That’s the wrong question,” said the Tiger, shaking his head. “What’s the point of asking that? You can’t check what I say, can you? I could say that I’m God, when I’m really the devil.”

“But even so, if you did answer me, what would you say?”

The Tiger looked at me curiously.

“I’d say that I’m the Twilight. That I’m a person. That I’m a reflection of the consolidated mind of all the people who have become Others, lived their lives, and departed—departed into me. That I want to live, although you can’t even imagine what my life is like. That I have my own interests, which you can’t understand. But all of this is just words spoken for you.”

“Good,” I said. “Good. Then tell me, what do you want?”