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Stepping into the house, we find ourselves in a tiny hallway, a staircase leading to the second floor on one side, a door to the kitchen on the other.

There's a pile of shoes on the floor here, and raincoats and jackets on the hooks on the wall. Everything is exactly as I remember, even the floorboards creak just as sweetly, greeting me with their broken love, and again I feel good at the thought that at least my house remembers me and waits for me.

Yet, as soon as the front door closes, I can't express my joy, because I find myself trapped between Loretto and the cake box, which is now in Cale's hands. There is barely enough space in for three people in this hallway, and I'm forced to shrink and hunch my shoulders, which makes my lungs cramp as if they were squeezed in claws.

Cale, despite my obvious agony of trying to take a new breath, is in no hurry to go further and invite us to the kitchen table. No, not at all. Despite the fact that the aroma of my mother's baked potatoes, which, as my brother knows, I love very much, stretches from the kitchen, Cale seems to have grown into the floor. Maybe he's not sure how to explain my sudden arrival, waiting for me to sneak ahead and do everything myself.

Or maybe Cale suspects Loretto after all. Because he doesn't take his eyes off my mentor.

But my mentor does not take faer eyes off a portrait.

A huge human-sized portrait that stands under our stairs suddenly absorbs all of Loretto's attention. As if spellbound, Tayen stares, hushed either with awe or with horror. Even faer lips open slightly in a discouraged 'o'--it's not often that Loretto allows faerself such frankness.

At first, it seems to me that in the dark, an ugly portrait, tarnished by time, causes banal disgust, but the next moment, my mind connects a chain of hypotheses together.

Montejo is the one who is in the painting. My distant ancestor, from whom, as I now know, more than four hundred years ago, the feuds between the travelling people and the local shamans began. This canvas has survived centuries and has been kept in our attic for gods know how long, until Cale found it and decided to put it here for everyone to see. He is our idol, said my brother, one day we will hang his portrait in the Great Temple again, which we will call our palace again. That's where we all, Montejo, belong.

The painting, of course, has cracked, the colors have dulled, but the conqueror of the southern lands, stands in his portrait just as menacingly and autocratically. Holding a sharp blade in his hand and leaning on a stone with his foot, he seems ready to rush into battle. He looks with his dark eyes piercingly--as though evaluates his enslaved lands and its inhabitants through the frame like through a window.

It feels like he's staring right at us. He's studying us, waiting for us to beg for mercy.

"Do you like it?" Cale asks, still watching Loretto.

Loretto doesn't. Tayen doesn't answer, just exhales slowly, still staring at Montejo, and then purses faer lips. And then I feel Tayen's hand surreptitiously reaching for mine. With a quick but restrained, thoughtless movement, Loretto intertwines faer cold fingers with mine, squeezing my palm almost to the point of a burning crunch of joints, as if I'm the last saving straw in a rotten swamp that sucks you into its fetid abyss.

I have to bite the tip of my tongue to keep myself from gasping and choking on the air that can't get into my squeezed lungs anyway.

"This is our ancestor, the greatest of them," Cale continues without a trace of embarrassment, definitely not having drawn the same conclusions as I did.

I probably should relax, since my brother decided that for Loretto, the portrait is nothing but a work of art, yet I can't, knowing that something scares my mentor.

And this portrait seems to be designed to scare, doesn't it? Montejo used to mesmerize me with his eerily realistic gaze, the weight of his chest armor, the size...as if there is a real person next to you, who has crept by unnoticed in the dark, with gods know what malicious intentions.

Now, remembering the books on shamanic history that I read in Tik'al, I begin to think that all these touches are reek of death, though.

I'm starting to think that Montejo put his foot not on a rock, but on someone's...burnt skull? And those dark spots of faded colors in the corners of the canvas are probably not peeling paint at all, as I used to believe, but blotches of dried blood, which was on Montejo's journal that I once opened. These blotches suddenly make my thoughts smell rotten, hopeless.

"He even looks a bit like Eli and me, doesn't he?" adds Cale, grinning. Bragging. Like a narcissist indeed. "Nose, eyes, belligerent posture. Our hair lighter, though. Well, and we're younger, for now."

"It's just a painted old man, Cale. He doesn't look anything like me," I grumble, cursing in my head.

Yet, what if Loretto thought so, too? Does Montejo look like me...? From such an idea and from Loretto's frozen palm in mine, my heart sinks in frustration. After all, my mentor and I read the same pages, learned the same scenes: how this Montejo murdered defenseless people with his blade, how screams of innocent pain accompanied his every step, how he branded Loretto's ancestors and threw them into silver-plated cages.

Knowing all this about my ancestor, weren't those scenes repeated in Loretto's mind day after day at the sight of me? Me in such an armor? With blood at my feet? Loretto's blood? And now this picture is here--as if faer most secret fears have found material embodiment, have been confirmed.

Maybe Tayen is holding my hand not because I'm a life-saving straw, but because I'm a potential killer who needs to be grabbed tightly before he attacks, stopped?.. Then I was lucky that when I tried to kiss Loretto, I wasn't strangled for it. With such a face, even our friendship was a miracle. Loretto, having entered my house, probably already feels as if in a cage.

My tongue turns bitter at these thoughts.

"He belongs in a trash can," I add, frowning. "The portrait under the frame has already rotted, I guess."

"This is the first king of our lands. A hero!" Cale objects.

He objects categorically and defiantly, using the tone he always used to tell the little me that I was being stupid. It suggests that I should think before blurting out the first thought out loud, but his peremptory attitude only makes me feel even more stupid right away. Even now.

This tone would hardly have worked if I had heard it for the first time today, but old feelings immediately begin to stir in my soul, and my confidence is completely blown away.

"Not a painted old man, but a real historical figure, our pride, a hero. Like all his descendants who wore the crown, an example to follow."

"An example, the last of whom, after sitting on the throne, was deceived, poisoned, killed for his murders and forgotten by everyone except you," I mutter to myself. "I want to be proud of myself, not him."

"What?"

"Nothing. Let me pass," I say louder. "And don't drop the cake, it cost us dearly."

Pushing my brother away, finally taking a deep, life-giving breath, I walk past him. I lead Loretto, still holding faer hands, into the kitchen.

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The kitchen is always chaos. Delicious, homely, but chaos.

Kofi, Ariane and Ola are sitting at a round wooden table in the center, and their mom, Reta, is by the stove, frying chicken wings. We arrived just on time for the late dinner, and everyone, as usual, is wasting no time while talking about something fervently over food.

When we appear, however, everything goes quiet at once. Voices, chewing, flipping wings on a frying pan...Dead silence. Only the sewing machine continues to calmly, rhythmically rap from behind the door leading to the basement, where my ma has her workshop.

And yet, the rhythm of the machine does not make it easier.

I feel awkward and hot under the weight of four pairs of brown eyes fixed on me. Waiting for...what? An explanation for my sudden arrival? An apology? A joke? Looking for support, I wanted to squeeze Loretto tighter, but Mentor, as if leaving me to my family, pulls faer palm out of mine.

Several long seconds trudge with the speed of a dying sloth, until Kofi finally saves the situation.

He chuckles, putting down his glass of pineapple soda and shaking his short dreadlocks, which fall into his eyes. "Have you already cleaned up all the streets in Tik'al?" He says as if amused, but his worried gaze immediately turns to Cale, who is standing behind me.

If the official version for our parents still says that I spend my time in correctional labor, paying for a non-existent street fight and laundering shamanic clothes, then Kofi and Cale know the truth. They know that the only reason my hard labor could have ended earlier than planned is because their own plan of rebellion is going to shit.

"No, I...I just snuck out for the evening," I say, trying to play along. Hoping to calm both the brothers and mom Reta, who is looking at me with a trembling lip. Is she going to cry or chastise me?..

Meanwhile, Ariane doesn't care about the truth and lies and the fake fight. I'm not the only one here keeping shamanic secrets from the rest. My sister, being a student in the alchemical laboratories, remembers perfectly well how I recently came to her and Faris and complained about what an obnoxious, unapproachable mentor I got.

That's why Ariane is now staring...at Loretto. Loretto Tayen, the shaman known to her not as a lover of wrecked portraits and a scarecrow in a crumpled t-shirt, but as a famous for faer strength and perfect robes, inimitable magician of our entire enclave--a celebrity she begged me to introduce her to, stands right in the middle of her kitchen! Ariane recognized Loretto, Ariane is shocked, I can see it in her widened eyes.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I still don't have time to even rise my brow in mute pleading so that my sister doesn't give me away.

Because the next moment, Mom, sobbing, rushes to hug me.

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My dream have finally come true--I was hugged.

And then Ma came from her workshop with her blond braid disheveled at work and in a blouse even more faded and wrinkled than Loretto's. Tired and, by tradition, dissatisfied with the whole world. And for the quarter of an hour that Mom was patting my cheeks and Ma was scolding me, Loretto--Tom--had to stand quietly in the corner, pretending to be an unassuming, embarrassed boy who does not know how to behave among strangers.

Surprisingly, my mentor got used to this role almost instantly, as if faer had done it before.

And then we all sat down at the table.

And now, while enjoying fried chicken and listening to how many new robes my mothers need to sew in the shortest possible time for the shamans who ordered them to perform at the Trials, I suddenly find myself thinking that I am happy.

Of course, this is not the kind of happiness where your heart flutters and fingertips tremble, not intoxicating as in anticipation of a kiss, but another, a simple one. Happiness that tastes of the voices and smiles familiar from childhood. It tastes like the home-cooked dinner you've eaten a hundred times and you know exactly how warm it will melt in your stomach. It's the confidence that here, you are known for who you are--with all the flaws and fears, and loved no less. Finally, I remember again what kind of house I missed while I was living in Tik'al. A safe, crazy paradise where I am...just me.

And this is already enough.

And now Loretto is here. Loretto! It's still something incomprehensible to me. A shaman at a plainblood table is like sugar with salt. Like a forest fire that doesn't burn snow. Like the past and the future...in the present.

No, I'm probably dreaming. Once again casting a sidelong glance at Mentor sitting next to me, I watch Loretto eating Ma's stewed cabbage. Tayen is smiling. Faer listens to the conversation that is boiling at the table, answers all questions meekly and concisely: "How did I get to know Elisey? I washed the pillowcases, just like your son said." "What am I doing in Tik'al? I work for shamans, like everyone else." "Where do I live? Somewhere out there, on the other side of the city. In solitude and silence." "Where is the family? Alas, there is no family." And again there's silence.

Maybe if someone else were in Loretto's place, such reticence would seem strange, but I definitely got a mentor who knows how to remain sincere, while keeping that sincerity between words. A confused nod of the head, a compassionately averted glance or an interested smile at the right moment, and now you are more valuable than any other listener.

And with faer curious silence, without a bit of self-flagellation, without boasting or bragging, meaning it or not, Loretto only captivates my family more. Everyone wants to be the center of the universe, and Tayen, like no one else, can bestow selfless attention.

Maybe it's a skill.

A talent, perhaps.

But in my eyes, it is witchcraft that intrigues and charms.

The only one who still bothers me is Cale. He is also silent, but does not smile or listen to anyone. He just picks thoughtfully at his plate with a fork. I constantly catch his gaze fixed on me, gloomy and overcast, like a winter thunderstorm. Maybe, of course, he'd just quarreled again with Shanta, his fiancée. Or maybe my brother knows something that I don't...

"How's Shanta doing?" I ask Cale, catching a moment of pause in the conversation. To make my question sound naive, I immediately put a new piece of potato in my mouth.

After looking at me carefully, Cale only shrugs in response.

"As always," he says dryly. He looks down at his plate again.

As always means that they really quarreled as always. Exhaling mentally, I nod.

"Oh, I told you it's too early for you to get married," Ma suddenly grumbles. Having already finished dinner, she tiredly rubs the bridge of her thin nose, as if saying, well, here we go again, I need to explain the obvious. "Before thirty, there is no use to think about weddings and children. The modern world is too complicated, and if you don't find yourself in it to begin with, you can bring all your relatives to the grave. And Cale? Fine. Happened to grow up being responsible somehow. But Eli is just like his father. Reckless!"

I feel my face flush.

I look at Ma, then, without turning my head, meaningfully turn my gaze at Loretto. The last thing I dreamed of is being shamed in front of someone I am in love with.

Ma, unlike Cale, understands hints perfectly. But she doesn't care about them--she knows better. "What? Am I wrong?" she says either to me or Loretto, looking somewhere between us. Loretto, thank gods, remains silent. "Like your dad, who's currently hanging out at St. Daktalion and not thinking about us, you, Eli, won't sit still for five minutes. How did you get stuck in Tik'al, huh? Who did you fight with? What for? How many times have I told you to behave yourself."

I wasn't fighting, I was stealing aura for your responsible Cale, I want to bark back, but then there's definitely no avoiding a scandal and breaking dishes.

"Come on, Delila," Mom Reta gently interjects into the conversation, as she stands up to get cups and a teapot. "Give children room for dreams, they are young. In youth, the world shines with bright colors, every emotion is an ocean, every fear is the end of the world, and love is a nine's cloud. When else can they afford to do stupid things, if not now? How can one not be afraid to explore the world if one doesn't go along with their impressionability?" She pauses for a second, placing the cup in front of Loretto. "And maybe...We're the ones who've forgotten how to enjoy simple things, huh?"

Ma snorts, cynical. "We haven't forgotten how to do anything, Reta. We have learned to live. To survive."

"Even more so. Give your children a chance, too. If you don't love life in your youth, you won't want to live to old age. And didn't you yourself make mistakes, which seemed fantastic back then, when you were eighteen?"

"Yes, I got pregnant and married a jerk."

There is a pause. I'm waiting for Ma to start grumbling again, but after exchanging some kind of incomprehensible, long and mysterious look with Mom, she suddenly...laughs. The sound is strained at first, but then it becomes easier and calmer, Ma shaking her head, as if letting go of her grievances. It's amazing how our moms always find a common language. I'll never understand it.

Laughing in unison, pouring Loretto tea, Mom Reta nods.

"I also met my Umar," she says. "And I don't regret it, even though his death separated us too early. Besides, I wouldn't have met you otherwise. Didn't we become friends by mistake?"

"No, we met by mistake when my husband got drunk and yours gallantly dragged him to the house," Ma says. "But us becoming friends was very intentional."

At this very moment, having poured Loretto a full cup of hot tea, Mom Reta goes around the table pouring the contents of the teapot into the cups of the others. Cale brings the cake, putting the sliced pieces on plates, and Ma continues to say something about how love at first sight is shamanic nonsense, while true feelings are not blind, but sober and boring...

Already by habit, I watch as Tayen nods gratefully after receiving faer portion of tea, takes the cup in faer hands to take a sip, but seems to come to the conclusion that the hot tea is not hot enough. And now, either forgetting faerself, or deciding that all attention is focused on others anyway, Tayen raises faer hand to heat the cup with magic.

Tiny sparks of ink black aura begin to form on the pads of Loretto's fingers in flickering shadows...

Panic washes over me like a prickly wave. You can't, you can't! Not here! Without thinking, I reach out to grab Mentor's hand. I'm going to pull faer very hand under the table, where aura will not be seen, but Loretto, coming to faer senses without me, abruptly removes faer palm on faer own a fraction of a second earlier.

I miss.

Without the force already applied, I miss Loretto's fingers and, grabbing the air with my fist, lose my balance. I almost fall off my chair, but my hand still finds support. A hip. Loretto's hip.

Tayen freezes.

A new wave washes over me. But this time it is a mixture of shame, remorse and languidly suppressed, wild as fire, desire. Suddenly. It's scary and...indecently pleasant. I feel the muscle on the inside of Loretto's thigh tighten. The air in my lungs flares up. Loretto doesn't say anything, but I can clearly see the confused anxiety darting in Mentor's eyes, as if responding to my touch with an inner gasp.

It makes me feel even worse knowing that I'm making Loretto feel uncomfortable again. But I can't apologize out loud in front of everyone.

Tayen continues to look at faer cup, swallowing, also hiding faer feelings, because any reproach or indignation will become the gossip of my whole family. And yet Mentor is no longer able to smile casually as before. Loretto's expression turns into an fake mask of detached surprise, as if trying to portray banal thoughtfulness, but it turns out badly.

However, I cannot recognize Loretto's thoughts. I only notice the corners of my mentor's lips twitching slightly in shock, or maybe in suppressed indignation, and then I feel Tayen forcing faer thigh to relax again under my touch.

Loretto puts a smile on faer face, forgiving me once again, and begins to drink tasteless, cold tea, pushing each sip down faer throat with an effort.

I slowly take my hand off Loretto's hip and look around the table, but no one seems to notice anything.

Obviously, my family does not even think that a scamp like me could find an object for his voluptuous dreams and even persuade this object to come to the house, since they even doubt that I can make friends.

Only Ariane looks at me in a mysterious way. But she's been looking like that all evening.

Loretto, meanwhile, having freed faerself from my hot grip on faer thigh, continues to gulp tea for several long seconds almost with convulsive haste. Either fae's trying to drown faerself in it or to put out the fire in me through faerself, and then fae finds a way to turn the conversation into a new direction before I do. Fae asks, "And what did your husband die of?" Tayen looks at Mom, who just sat down at the table opposite us, and with this question, fae seems to erase everything that has just happened between us. "Was he killed?"

Mom shakes her head. "No, not at all," she answers after a pause. Longing slips into her features. "You see, my Umar worked in the auric diamond mine. Heavy dust is formed in the mines and deep rocks sometimes emit various toxic gases. Many miners suffer from diseases because of this, and Umar was no exception. He came down with lung cancer."

"He went down because shamans refused to treat him," Cale interjects, angrily chewing the cake. "Refusing to help a dying man is also murder, so Tom is right, he was killed. Umar spent his whole life mining stones for their aura, and these duplicitous aurabloods didn't even show respect for his work. Another example of shamanic rotten nature."

"Have people learned how to treat cancer these days?" Loretto asks.

"Don't be so naive, Tom," Cale chuckles. "That's why they're shamans. Magic can do anything."

"Or magic can't do anything. Perhaps those shamans to whom you turned were simply afraid to admit this to you and thereby fall from the pedestal of their greatness in your eyes."

Once again, there is perfect silence at the table.

However, this time, not just confusion or surprise, but sincere shock is imprinted on the faces of my relatives. Everyone looks at Loretto as if they see faer for the first time, having stopped chewing, talking and moving. Even Ariane, who no shaman has surprised for a long time, is quieting down.

None of them has ever thought of such a thing, I understand.

And I find myself suddenly hesitating, too. Tayen's words should have been obvious to me, but my whole life I believed without argument that Umar was killed by shamanic greed, but...not shamanic fear. The fear of admitting their lack of power. To be equal in our eyes. To lose power.

But isn't Maricela also driven by fear every time she tries to stop Loretto from beating her? Who is she without her throne? Another ruler from the past? Another portrait forgotten under the stairs? And who are shamans without their mysterious magical prestige? Ordinary people. They're just as vulnerable as we are. Subject to pain and death.

I see Cale about to start arguing with Loretto, anger and disbelief gathering in the corners of my brother's eyes. But Ma also sees all this. And she also sees the same longing on the face of Mom, flashing in her pupils with, it seems, incipient tears from surging feelings from the past. It is impossible to start an argument now, otherwise tears and memories of losses will not be avoided.

"Well, why don't you and Tom spend the night at home, Eli?" Ma asks, cutting off all disagreements. "And get up early in the morning and return to Tik'al before the start of the working day, huh? Your absence won't even be noticed. And you must have both been exhausted after getting here. Give Tom your bed, and I'll get you a spare mattress from the basement, you'll sleep on the floor . It's better than sleeping in the shamans' laundry room."

The offer is unexpected, I stumble with the answer.

I exchange glances with Loretto, but I don't find rejection in faer eyes. I only find a new unpretentious half-smile, with which Loretto today lives in faer role as an ignorant youth.

It seems that despite all my unplanned advances today, Tayen still sees no reason to fear the possibility of being alone with me. I don't know if this is a naive belief in my sinlessness or a remarkable self-control, concealing the well-curbed anger at faer rabid student. In any case, the choice of a place to spend the night is up to me.

"Well, if there is a spare mattress..." The chance to spend the night at home really warms my soul. And I still haven't found the right moment to discuss what I came for with Cale.

After a moment, I nod.

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