The Souls
She was young and beautiful.She had graduated from school and had all her plans ready for the new chapter of her life: mastering what people calledhealing with witchcraft.
She was the only woman in her family, and her “road” had been designed for her before she was even born.
“Go to university first,” her father said.
He was a warlock himself.
He was educated and believed education was one of the most important things a person could have. People without proper spiritual cleansing, without education, even those who were simply good talkers, meant nothing to him.
He was old-fashioned, proud of his position in the world of magic, and very sure of his opinions.
She was preparing to go to university when the Second World War started.
Instead of university, exams, studies, and books, she went to the military registration center.
“After a ten-month program, you can join the army,” a Soviet officer told her, looking at her with admiration.
What a brave young woman,she could almost hear him thinking.
She would hear something similar many times later:
“When people look at you, they want to live.”
The medical school was far away from the battlefield, in a small city where everyone and everything seemed to turn grey.
Many men had already joined the army. The ones who remained had worried, sad faces as they thought about the future.
During the day, the city was almost empty because people were at work.
At night, it was empty again because of the evacuated military factory. Only workers with special passes were allowed to go to work and return home at certain times.
She found a room in a small two-story house.
On the first floor, in a living room connected to an old-fashioned kitchen with a fireplace, lived a music teacher who had been evacuated from the war zone.
She had brought her large piano with her.
It took up a huge part of the room.
There was no school yet, and there was no music school either. So the woman spent her days at home reading cards.
She also knew how to make clothes, and that became her source of income.
She often talked about her hands, about her former students, about the important music prizes they had won.
Everyone felt sympathy for her.
On the second floor lived two young women who worked at the factory around the clock.
They would leave for work early in the morning and return almost at night, exhausted, sometimes carrying heavy bags filled with food.
Only on weekends did they sit together in the kitchen, drinking tea from small round cups.
The two young women were from a local village. They had just graduated from school.
On weekends, the piano teacher read cards for them.
She talked about long journeys, a charming dark-haired man, a gift, a letter.
There was a map on the wall.
Every movement of the Soviet Army was carefully marked and studied.
We all learned the names of cities and places.
We waited for victory.
The victory was not coming.
After about a year, the young woman found herself on the battlefield.
The earth was shaking from the bombing.
Day looked like night.
For the first time, she saw a German soldier.
He was injured and waiting to be sent to a prisoner-of-war camp.
One day, she was changing his bandage at their mobile medical station.
It was actually his last day there.
They were alone.
She took off his old bandage and healed him right in front of the German soldier.
He became frightened.
“I hated him so much,” she later said. “He was in front of me, injured and waiting to be sent to a prisoner-of-war camp. I touched his hand. It was burned.
“I was thinking,How can I harm him?
“But instead, I started to heal him.”
She looked at her hand.
“It changed. It became almost like a chicken's foot. Long nails. Thin and white.”
She had touched the burns and scratches beneath the bandages.
“Slowly, they started to disappear.”
A few days later, she met a young Soviet commander.
She was assigned to his division.
The commander told her that he could see things no one else could see.
He recognized the invisible signs.
The young nurse was ablack magician.
She was practicing black magic.
And the young commander was awhite magician.
They were opposites.
Or so it seemed.
During one battle, he saw her eyes watching him.
She was holding him with her powers.
That was how it felt.
Suddenly, he saw himself as an old man, completely dressed in white, with a long white beard.
And he saw her.
Young and beautiful.
Long black hair.
Dark, beautiful eyes.
She was reaching out her hand to him.
The old man in white touched her hand.
Lightning passed between them.
After the battle, he walked to the medical station where she was working and sat down.
She ran toward him, crying.
He closed his eyes.
He was exhausted from the battle and probably fell asleep.
And he began to dream.
He was a boy.
He was walking with his grandmother toward an underground river.
His grandmother was telling him the old folk stories she had told him when he was a child.
The river was hidden somewhere beneath the earth.
Only an almost invisible fountain of water reached the surface.
His grandmother touched the water.
Then she washed the boy's face and whispered words that only she knew.
The war ended.
He wanted to marry her.
Only her.
She was walking far away across the farmland.
He could see the long veil of her magic stretching farther and farther into the distance.
It was her gift.
Her magical gift.
She was giving everything to him.
Before that, there had been a long conversation between their relatives.
The war had united them.
Afterward came the spiritual cleansing.
And she became awhite magician.
They lived together happily ever after.
