An old tram curved itself making a long, unpleasant creak and entered a wide bridge across the Rhine. The warm sun of the last summer days brightly lit the streets up, forcing constantly hurrying pedestrians to squint and cover their eyes with hands. An old lady looked outside of the tram window and then stared obscenely intently at the young woman sitting in front of her.
"So unnatural! White! Completely white! Horrible!" the lady shook her head and clicked her tongue in displeasure.
The girl bent over her book and pretended not to hear those comments. The old lady obviously didn't expect to be ignored so frankly, she clicked her tongue once again and frowned.
"Youth nowadays! Back then, I at your age..." started she grumpily.
"...were building pyramids of Giza!" the young woman unexpectedly replied, loudly clapping her book. "By the way, it IS natural!"
Small, fast-moving eyes of the old lady lit with anger and her cheeks turned red. However, before she managed to answer something, the tram's wheels creaked and the slightly rusty, big machine stopped. The young woman rapidly stood up and, as soon as doors opened, she jumped out of the tram, throwing back a cold glance.
It was a wrong station. The girl turned around and looked at the intricate towers of Basel's city centre on the other side of the majestic river, then she moved her eyes to a board with a timetable and to her watch. Numbers on a yellowish, shabby paper didn't look very promising.
"Whatever. I better walk," she quietly mumbled, twisting a long strand of her snow-white hair on her finger.
For a few more seconds the woman remained motionless, enjoying the warm sun and pleasantly lively hustle and bustle of the big city around her. Then she shook her head and quickly marched further to the downtown. The watch inexorably reminded that the girl was late, so she rushed through the streets faster and faster, nearly falling down a couple of times and scrupulously stepping in every puddle on her way.
A loud group of teenagers in grey-black uniform with strange signs on it stretched across the entire pavement, leaving almost no place for other pedestrians. Unfortunately for them, the white-haired girl was completely distracted by a funny sunny bunny that was cheerfully jumping from one shiny roof to another. Before the young men even managed to react, the girl bumped into them.
"Oh, sorry! Sorry!" she muttered instantly, pulling her head into her shoulders trying to escape quickly.
The boys angrily gazed at the small, rapidly receding silhouette for some more moments before moving further.
Although the sun was still shining brightly, coloring the sky orange, it was already slowly getting late. The girl stopped in front of a massive stadium and tried to catch her breath. The watch stated that she still had minimum five more minutes to pretend that she didn’t have to run through several blocks. Looking at her reflection in glance, black doors, she swiftly adjusted her colorful, floral dress and wavy hair. Suddenly the door opened, almost hitting the girl on her nose.
“Oh, Ragna, are you okay?”, asked a boy, carefully examining the young woman.
“Yes, it is fine. You are earlier than I expected, Vince,” she replied, straightening her back in a desperate attempt to add a few extra millimetres to her humble height.
Now, when the boy approached his friend closer, it became clearly visible how tall he was. Although, it wasn’t particularly difficult to outgrow Ragna, Vince did it way too early from her point of view. The two had ten years difference in age and only less than three centimetres difference in height.
“Right, we finished the training a bit earlier. I slightly bent my sabre...” answered the boy, awkwardly lowering his big, light-grey eyes. “What’s for the dinner?”
“I cooked a chicken pie yesterday. We can have it if your parents didn’t leave anything else,” the girl replied.
“Can we take the food to our apartment?” Vince folded his palms pleadingly.
“Why?”
“Dad bought a couple of new videotapes yesterday. I wanted to watch something.”
“Firstly, no, I don’t want to run between floors loaded with bowls and plates!” Ragna commanded strictly. “Secondly, you are not allowed to watch TV that long.”
“It is Friday and I got 6 in Math, so my parents allowed me one movie tonight!” Vince happily explained.
“I wasn’t informed.”
“They left you a note.”
“I see, you have planned it properly,” laughed the girl. “Okay, after the dinner. What do you want to watch?”
“Independence Day. It is the last year’s movie. Something about aliens!” Vince sounded very excited.
“Aliens? Really?” chuckled the girl.
“Yes! I bet there are actually some aliens out there!” Vince stubbornly stated.
“Sure. Together with witches and fairies,” Ragna smiled.
“No. I’m no baby to believe in magic! I believe in science that assumes that aliens can be real!” the boy looked very proud of his point.
“Fine, alien. As long as you don’t have nightmares after that.”
The two turned to a long stair, narrowly squeezed between flat houses. As they stopped in the middle of it for a short break, they heard loud footsteps approaching them from behind.
“Hey, short one!” shouted out a cracking teenager’s voice.
“I rather prefer to be called compact…” replied Ragna slowly turning her head back.
“Doesn’t matter. Do you mind playing a little bit of hide-and-sick?” a tall, muscular young man with wide shoulders stepped closer, smiling slyly.
“What do you need? Go away!” Vince commanded bravely, grabbing his sabre case.
Ragna carefully examined the stranger and his two friends standing behind him. For a second, she thought that the uniform of those young men looked familiar to her. Grey-black suits with such strange signs, resembling constellations …Where had she seen it before?
“You better don’t get involved, human!” grinned the stranger.
“Listen, run as fast as you can when I count to five…” Ragna whispered to Vince, softly pushing him behind her back.
“But!” the boy tried to protest.
“Do as I say!” Ragna angrily ordered.
“Let’s not make too much noise,” hissed the man in the uniform.
“One,” the girl frowned.
“I don’t think we want to disturb humans,” continued the stranger.
“Two.”
“Just a little bit of fun,” the man was getting closer and closer.
“FIVE!” Ragna shouted out loudly, pushing Vince away from her.
Before the boy managed to understand what was going on, an extremely bright flash of lightning lit up everything around, blinding the strangers. The stairs, houses and even the busy city below the hill drowned in the impenetrable, snow-white light for some moments. Birds soared into the strongly electrified air, and car alarms throughout the whole neighbourhood, or even the whole city, squealed loudly.
Vince ran. He didn’t want to, but some invisible power was adamantly pushing him away from the stairs. He still couldn’t see properly, trembling white light barely began to disappear. The boy could still feel dozens of small bolts of lightning running fast through the air and stinging him sometimes. He managed to take his own feet under control and stop only when he already almost reached his house. Vince looked around hoping to see Ragna, but he was standing in the middle of the street all alone. Or at least, he thought, that he was all alone.
“Fortis Compedibus!” screamed a young man in the uniform, staring at the boy menacingly.
The next second Vince felt how something wrapped around his body immobilizing and suffocating him and then pulled him towards the man. The boy desperately tried to resist but his every attempt squeezed invisible shackles around him only tighter. His lungs lacking oxygen filled with dull, burning pain, making him nearly collapse. Vince made one last effort and raised his eyes at the man.
The stranger seemed to enjoy the suffering of his victim. His mouth opened in a wide smile, exposing crooked teeth. He was about to step forward, closer to the boy, when an immense white bird suddenly clung to his back with its long claws. The bird opened its huge, curved beak making a loud cry, and thin spiderwebs of hot, glowing lightning surrounded the young man, severely burning his skin here and there.
The bird made one more loud cry, letting the trembling from fear and pain body out of its claws and landed on the ground not far from Vince. The stranger shook his head, trying to recover from the shock, jumped on his feet, threw an angry glance at the bird, and quickly ran away, disappearing in the dusk.
Now, when the shackles disappeared together with the strange man, Vince freely fell on the asphalt, greedily gasping for air. He stared at the mighty bird and nearly chucked when it waved its giant wings and turned into a human, into Ragna. In a second the girl neared her friend and attentively examined him, then patted his messy, dark-brown hair and held out her hand to help him up.
“Come. We better leave,” she said, looking around.
Vince was too shocked to object. He silently got up and followed Ragna. The front door of their house. First floor. Second floor. Ragna’s flat. The boy closed the door behind him and slipped to the floor. He had so many questions and absolutely no powers to ask them all. He could only silently move his lips trying to make a sound and quickly blink in surprise.
The woman carefully put her hand on Vince’s arms, covered in shallow cuts left by mysterious shackles. Tiny, thin lightning run through the air this time calmly warming up the boy. As Ragna removed her hand, all the cuts were gone.
“Who are you? A witch?” finally whispered Vince.
“A witch?” the woman seemed offended. “I have absolutely nothing to do with witches! Unlike those nice men, who attacked us.”
“Then who are you?”
“A Caladrius.”
“Who?” Vince wrinkled his snub nose.
“Yeah, right. Humans are more familiar with our slightly more selfish fellow friends, Phoenixes…” Ragna shrugged. “My kind is slightly different. I am a Caladrius - a healing bird. We are masters over death and life, we can heal ourselves and others. Even the deadliest wounds and diseases, we can heal everything.”
“Wow...” the boy gaped in surprise. "How...I can't believe it, is it even real?"
"As you see...But I can kick you to make sure you are not sleeping."
“No. No, thanks..." Vince answered a little scared. "And those guys? Who are they? What did they want?”
“Oh, those wizards. Well, I guess they wanted to kill me…” Ragna answered sitting down on the floor near the boy.
“Why?”
“You see, the problem with Caladrius’s powers… Our magic works only with those, whom we sincerely want to heal of our own free will. And that is not always the case. So, wizards learned how to create healing potions out of…You know, out of us…”
“So, they just kill you?” Vince shook his head in disappointment.
“I mean, it was forbidden some centuries ago, but there are always some poachers, who want to try their luck.”
“Yeah, right. Those guys definitely had bad luck today,” chuckled the boy.
“Yes, I actually didn’t want to hurt them that badly. I haven’t used my powers for years…” Ragna rubbed her forehead squinting awkwardly.
“Why? That was so cool!”
“You know, last time I did it back in Estonia, it attracted a whole bunch of poachers…”
“Oh…” Vince sighed. “If they come again, I will help you! Don’t send me away!”
“I don’t think your parents would like this idea,” laughed Ragna.
“So what? I have my sabre, I can fight!” insisted Vince.
“You remember that you can’t actually cut anybody with a sport sabre, right?”
“It still hits painfully!”
“True, true…And now get up my little knight,” said the girl heading to the kitchen. “I should still feed you before your parents pick you up.”
Vince didn’t eat much that evening. In fact, food was the last thing he could think about after everything he had just seen. After calming down a little bit he bombarded Ragna with endless questions. Unfortunately, she couldn’t answer most of them. According to her, Birds and other creatures avoided magical communities and preferred hiding among humans or, even better, far from any civilization. Ragna only knew very remotely that there are some hidden magical cities with their rules and laws, but that was pretty much it. The girl mostly knew about healing and other supernatural creatures. However, even those tiny pieces of information were highly fascinating for Vince.
The two didn’t notice how cold night slowly enveloped the city. It was already half-past ten when Vince’s mother – Lara knocked on Ragna’s door. The boy skillfully pretended that nothing interesting had happened today and lectured his unfortunate parent, that half-past ten was unforgivable too late for a thirteen-year-old child to go to sleep.
Ragna lingered on the stairwell for a while and observed how Vince and Lara walked up one more floor and disappeared behind the door of their apartment. The white-haired girl wondered shortly if today’s occasion would have any consequences. She wouldn’t want to move and hide again. She loved her small but cosy home, had just started her master’s at the university and didn’t want to change anything.
