Chapter Six: In Nodvragoda, part I.

by Gege16

The caravan of merchants, with its slow pace, had just crossed the forest.The trio had slipped away in the largest cart of this to get to their destination faster. They were so tired that they fell asleep for several hours, but when they woke up,they realized that they weren't the only ones going in it. Aliosha reached out and saw a group of men beside him.
"Did you sleep well, little children? " asked the oldest of the group that was in the cart.
"How did you get here and where you come from? " asked a young man with light blonde hair to the children " Because we clearly know where you are going."
"We were attacked by wild animals in the forest, we got lost and we got stowaways. You are not angry, right? "Dylara replied by slightly touching her hair.
"Not at all ... In fact, welcome to our club," he replied, stretching the cloth that covered the floor of the cart. "What are your names?"
"I am Aliosha," said the young kozzakhi a little embarrassed, "and she is Dylara. We live in Barkistan."
"My name is Vladimir. And I'd rather not to talk about my past," the young adult replied, looking down. "I have suffered a lot and many of my people had a worse fate."
"Here clearly we are all stowaways and outlaws, so you don't have nothing to be ashamed of" said the old man leaning on a large soft lump covered by the cloth.
The bulge moved and when he decided to run the cloth it was Megrez underneath!
The old man fainted instantly after seeing the tiger.The caravan finally left the forest to enter a wide and dry plain in which some mountains and small mountains were seen in the background. In this region it had not snowed as much as in the vicinity of Barkistan, so there was still no accumulated snow.There were visible dry, yellowed grass and some isolated patches of snow whose color combined with the whitish color of the cloudy sky. For a few minutes the horse-drawn carriages continued their trip until they reached a fortress that was next to a river. It was made of deteriorated white limestone, with several flat roof towers. They had reached Nodvragoda.
The drivers of some carts got out of their chairs after stopping the vehicles to warn their arrival to the guards who were next to the wall.
"What are you carrying those carts? " asked one of the sentries from the top of one of the towers that was next to the door.
"The usual: fabrics, vegetables, dishes. Items brought from the capital and its surrounding areas" one of the coachmen answered, who started talking to the guard.
The driver who carried the largest cart (in which the trio and the other outlaws were traveling) got up from his seat and put his head inside the cart to say, "We have reached outr destination, comrades! Get down carefully."
"How did he know we were in here?"Aliosha asked confused.
The tiger lifted his shoulders and looked at the boy with a face of disregard.
The passengers got off and entered through the door of the wall. The citadel looked more gray than Barkistan, although its streets were also made of stone, with the exception of some that were made of mud.Many of the buildings were circular in shape, like a tower, and their roofs were pitched. Some houses, however, seemed to have been consumed by the flames long ago, since many had stains on their walls with a charred appearance, in addition to having torn curtains instead of doors.
While some Nodvroguites were walking, they watched them strangely and with some fear, perhaps because of the obvious presence of a huge tiger next to the group.On the other hand, other people simply passed by the particular group with total indifference and a serious and desolate expression, as if their joy had been erased from the city.
They kept walking until they reached a corner. The trio and Vladimir separated from the rest of the outlaws who went to the market, and got into a narrow and gloomy alley that was empty. They waited in silence for a while until in the darkness the silhouette of a hooded woman wearing a long robe was seen. She was of a relatively short stature (almost the same as Dylara's) and among the dark her braids of shiny gray hair were visible.
"Follow me, guys "said the old woman in a whisper, moving her hand forward.
"So she is the one we were looking for " said Aliosha. The old woman did shut up him by gesturing with her index finger.
The five walked down that alley to reach a sparsely populated residential area on the outskirts of the city.The mysterious woman stared in front of the door of a simple wooden cottage and opened it using a key.The group entered the house and the woman took off his hood.
"Are you the famous Baba Yanga? "asked the young kozzakhi
"Famous, huh? "Said the old woman looking at Megrez " Tell me, what you have told these children about old Shirkania Yanga?"
The house they had entered was much larger on the inside than how it looked from outside. It was adorned with colorful carpets hanging from the walls. The table and chairs were made of rustic wood and were painted with intricate designs. There was striking a large iron cauldron and an amazing floor-to-ceiling library that occupied an entire wall. It had numerous shelves, many of which had hundreds of books and others contained different objects.
Dylara saw what appeared to be a nest with several large eggs on one of the shelves. When she tried to touch them, a female voice was heard coming from above the library.
"Be careful with that, gurl! " warned the voice "I saved them from a fire recently and I am taking care of them until they are born.They coul2d be eagle or gargoyle eggs, who knows? Living with her you can find even what does not exist.
The children looked up and saw a young woman arranging books on the highest shelves, hanging acrobatically from a long staircase. She wore braids like Shirkania but her hair was orange and she wore brown pants and a purple jacket.
"She is Malaika, my granddaughter. She helps me with all the things I have to do around here. And she is an expert in the art of fighting."
Malaika came down from the top of the stairs with a jump and fell next to Aliosha and Vladimir.
"If you need it, I will teach you how to fight and in a short time yo will be the star of any fight."
"Do they really still believe that we are capable of doing something or that we are the ones they're are looking for? "Aliosha asked Dylara in a bewildered tone.
"Come on, have faith. Do you think coming to Nodvragoda was in vain? We cannot give up without even knowing what we will have to do."
The wind was loud outside, and it moved the small windows of the cabin that were open. Suddenly, the windows closed and locked. Both jumped at the sight of this and turned around. Shirkania and Malaika laughed at the stunned expression that the young kozzakhi had on their face.
"Are you ... A witch!?" Aliosha shouted in horror.Dylara opened her eyes wide and Vladimir lifted them up.
" You are right, but do not shout it because if you do, we will get into a lot of troubles" she replied laughing while levitating bowls with soup to the table" you must be very hungry."
"This soup has no spell on it, right? "Aliosha asked suspiciously.
" No! " everyone else shouted surprisingly in unison.
The six sat at the table and ate the vegetable soup the witch had prepared in absolute silence until there was nothing left of it.
"Did you enjoy the food? " Shirkania asked the kozzakhi.
"Yes, it was delicious!" Dylara replied.
" I also liked it very much, thanks for the hospitality. I missed my city a lot" said Vladimir ". If you'll excuse me, I'll go for a walk and get some fresh air outside". Vladimir got up of his chair and the witch unlocked the door so he could leave.
"Now, do you know why you are really here? " asked the old woman in a serious tone.
"Sincerely, no, everything has been too strange for us since these last days and nobody knows how to explain why." Aliosha exclaimed a little angry " Megrez told us that we were the "chosen ones". But I don't know what does it mean"
" The chosen ones, uh?" Shirkania said "first and foremost, what do you guys know about yourself?"
"Oh, now we get into existential questions or what? " Aliosha asked "If we continue like this I will end up being unable of answering even that. I don't know how many times I repeated it today: we are just two simple kozzakhi, we grew up in Barkistan, where we used to have a normal life until on our birthday we received a very strange gift, we got lost in the forest, we got carried away by many strange things and now here we are ..."
"What kind of gift? " asked the old woman interrupting the angry monologue of the young man.
"These sabers," Dylara said as they both removed the covers that were tied to their waists. They both unsheathed them in front of the woman and her granddaughter and left them on the table.
Malaika opened her eyes wide and they both silently took their swords, looked them up and down. They also ran their hands over the silver blade to see its coppery glow and feel the cold of the metal as they looked at Megrez, who was in silence, but he showed a determined expression in orange and furry face.
The kids stared at them with a strange expression.
"Who gave you this? " Malaika asked.
"My mother gave them to us," replied the teenager, looking down, "she said it was a special present."
"It also came with this thing " Dylara added showing the letter they had found inside one of the scabbards last night.Shirkania took it.
"That letter says that the swords belonged to my father and belonged to my family for generations." Aliosha said " I don't remember almost anything about what our lives were like before living in Barkistan, I just remember that my family used to be very happy and that we used to have a great time with him."
" We were very young to remember what happened before Ivar turned into Tsar" said the girl.
Malaika was leafing through one of her grandmother's books while the kids were talking when she opened her mouth again "Those two are not two common sabers ..."
"Yes, we know that, in the letter it said that they belong to Aliosha's family," Dylara said.
"Not just that," the old woman added. "Those weapons are featured in a lot of the old stories I have told Malaika. They were not only part of your family, little one. They were possessed by the best warriors in history, from time immemorial. They are the heritage of many families. They were forged by the very stars. They are magical and know what they do.
"What does it mean?" the girl asked curiously.
"If you are really the chosen ones, you will not need so much training in combat, because the sabers will express the power that's running on your blood. You just have to hold on to them" said the old woman seriously..
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Vladimir left the house and began to walk the streets of the place that had once been his home. Novragoda was no longer the happy city he remembered years ago, before he got captured. its people looked dull, as if their essence had run out, the air looked gray and heavy. The whole space was bleak.
"What have they done to you, my sweet home?" Vladimir whispered sadly as he walked in a narrow, muddy street with many abandoned houses. He stopped at a small stone house and knocked on the door several times. The wooden door opened revealing a tall man who, seeing him, turns his suspicious expression into one of astonishment.
"Vladimir! I can't believe you're here! " said the guy hugging Vladimir with an air of hope.
"I told you that I didn't imagine it.He heard a familiar voice from behind. It was the old man who had traveled with him and the trio inside the caravan, who was sitting at a rustic table with two chairs inside the house.
"Wait, do you know him?" he asked, as he entered the house.
"Ehhh, he asked if he could get a drink, then I invited him and he told me that he traveled with you inside a caravan " he replied while grabbing the glass he had left on the table" What have you been doing all these years, brother? Where have you been?"
"Ugh,saying it shortly, I had to serve the nasty Ivar and the capricious psycho of Mikhai. They are people you wouldn't like to mess with," Vlad replied to his brother as he leaned against the wall and looked around.
"It's amazing that you got out of there alive. Seriously, I admire your courage, "said his brother, surprised. " I missed you so much as mom and dad".
"I will only say that I have seen ugly things inside that palace, but there are many people who are in a worse situation.I came to end this, to free us all.Not only Nodvragoda " he responded with determination to his brother who looked at him "During my trip I met two young kozzakhi, I thought they no longer existed."
"I always knew you had great ideals and that.... Wait, really? replied his brother
"Yes, and from what I saw they have big plans. Baba Yanga let us all come to his house to eat and.. Do you know where the rest of the crew of the cart is? I need them." Vladimir turned to the old man who had filled the glass of his glass back
"They are still in the market" replied the old man in a chuckle.
Vladimir said goodbye to his older brother with a hug and ran out of the house in the direction of the market with the intention of bringing the outlaws back. What nobody knew, is that his idea was not too simple as it seemed, it was actually much more shocking, risky and even crazy since he had proposed something that no one had ever imagined: face the Tsar and ending his reign of terror.
If he wanted his plan to work and to be able to fulfill the promise he had made to his family, he was going to need a large support.

******

"At first you have to accept it" was the phrase that resonated in the children's heads, especially in Aliosha's. What did the witch mean?
Aliosha and Dylara had sat outside the wooden house thoughtful while watching the snowfall and Shirkania was searching something in her library. Malaika in the meantime could not take her eyes off the swords.
" I found it, come here!" Shirkania shout them from inside. The children came back into the house and saw the old woman with a book in her hands. This one was large, its cover was red and full of dust. She left it on the table
"What is this about?" Dylara asked approaching the book.
"I will only say that if you want to know what I mean by "knowing who you are", just read it. Believe me, to erase a culture, its physical disappearance is not always necessary. Just by erasing their history from books, they lose their identity. " The witch replied as she walked out the door.They looked at the book with an expression of suspense.
Aliosha grabbed the book and dusted it off with his hand and sneezed when the dust reached his face. With great care and some distrust he opened it and several sheets began to fly out in a whirlpool, as if a mini tornado had come out from the book. They watched the scene in amazement and tried to collect the leaves that flew all over the place. The wind was also messing the room quite a bit, but they couldn't do much to avoid it. Aliosha managed to capture a few leaves just like Dylara.
When he started reading them, he realized they were messy and told his friend to help him sort them out.
They arranged them on the table and Dylara put them back in the book. They couldn't believe what they saw: The written words began to glow with an orange light, and when they began to read them, they glowed with increasing intensity. But When they looked up, they ended up with their jaws on the floor. There was a swirl of bright orange mist above them that began to envelop them. When they ended up covered by it, they began projecting images as they progressed in reading. These figures They showed a group of people from the Kozzakhi people, just like the two of them, traveling in caravan with big and colorful wagons, then they changed shape, showing the same people in various simple situations such as writing huge books and reading them next to many people when visiting a city, riding horses with sabers in their hands in a battle, singing by the light of a campfire and feeding wild animals as squirrels, the teenagers' eyes lit up at these cloudy figures that were appearing and disappearing, they tried to grab them but it was in vain because them vanished when they touched them. When they reached the last line, the mist stopped spinning and fell to the ground. Behind the teens, the witch Shirkania and Megrez were staring at them both as they remained completely silent with an expression of great astonishment. Aliosha was holding his head down, breathing heavily.
"I can't believe it. We were warriors ... We were travelers," he said aloud as he raised his head to look at his friend who was thoughtful.
"That explains then, what we felt when we touch those sabers," she answered, whispering in a tone that went from serious to cheerful. She turned and looked at the old woman and the tiger.
"Well, what do you think? " asked the lady intertwining her fingers.
" This... is amazing! Extremely awesome ! "Dylara said with a huge smile on her face and tears of emotion in her eyes, clutching her sword that was on the table.
"Why did my mother hide all this from us, how is it that we lived so many years without knowing anything about our own culture and basically...half of our lives? "Aliosha said confused with a hand on his forehead.
" Do not be angry with her, little boy, because it wasn't her fault. It is the only option she had,since talking about the subject got banned and your culture was demonized. And the normal books were erased, with some spell that I do not know, I think... you all ended forgetting your history, but luckily it seems that the emperor's army does not know how to find magic books," said the old woman, closing the book delicately.
"The Tsar's spoiled child had enough to do with it, I think," Malaika said. "For some reason he hates your people . Whenever news came here before the conquest, in all the reports some defamatory comment made by him was mentioned. It is said that in the capital his crazy ideas had a lot of weight."
Aliosha remained engrossed, thoughtful, still amazed at what he had just learned. Once again, his mind had filled with mixed emotions. There were certainly too many revelations for such a short time at once he agreed to carry a responsibility he did not even know, which he had never imagined before, because he loved having everything calculated, and from one day to the next his whole concept of his life had changed dramatically.
Instead, his friend took on any kind of challenge with great enthusiasm. He began to walk in circles while he thought and went out the door. He looked up at the gray sky with a melancholy expression, and as he dug through the snow with his boot he closed his eyes, feeling the cold winter breeze.
"Now, let's go back to what matter to us. Do you know who you are? " asked Megrez.
"Yes.I understand what you want to get to" replied Aliosha. "But I'm still having doubts. What about the letter? Is that about the stars and darkness real?"
"Of course it is" Megrez replied.

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