“The wrong question again!” said the Tiger, frowning. “The wrong one! But if you want an answer, then my reply is that I want to live. Simply live.”

“Why do you kill the Prophets?”

The Tiger took his time answering this one. And I suddenly noticed that the cigarette he was smoking wasn’t getting any shorter. The doctors’ and tobacco magnates’ nightmare—an everlasting cigarette . . .

“Do all prophecies have to be heard?”

“But killing . . .”

“Is that a member of the Night Watch, who has personally killed Dark Others, speaking?” asked the Tiger.

“You mean to say that you are Good?”

“I am not Good. I am not Evil. I am the Twilight. I want to live, and my life is people. Everything that is good for humankind is good for me. Everything that is harmful to it is harmful to me too.”

I looked at the hut and saw three faces in the window. Arina, Nadya, and Kesha. Nadya and Arina looked tense. Kesha was drinking milk.

“But prophecies often bring good. And you allow them to be heard and carry them out.”

“I do?” the Tiger asked, with a clear note of amazement in his voice. “A prophecy is a ruptured abscess. Cassandra was not to blame for the fall of Troy. And neither was I. It is the will of humankind, its aspirations and anticipations that erupt into the world through the prophets. And once they have broken through, they come to pass. I can hurry them along and I can delay them . . . sometimes. No more than that.”

“And the prophecy that Arina is frightened about?” I asked. “The one she tried to annul and merely . . . postponed. Or has it already happened?”

The Tiger shrugged.

“Once again, what does my answer mean to you? I could say something that will reassure you. But how will you know that it’s the truth?”

“Tell me anyway,” I insisted.