Fascinating geography

Alina sank to the floor right next to the chair where her brother was sitting and began to cry. But even her sobs were inaccessible to Kostya’s hearing.

Pity, bitterness, hopelessness… all this overwhelmed the girl. Why did fate treat him this way? For what? First the parents, and then she… Although, no, she is alive. Mom and dad aren’t around. They died when Alina and Kostya were nineteen. She remembered that terrible day perfectly… as if in reality, as if it was repeating itself in her memory even now, after the so-called death.

It was summer. Heat. Alina came back from her exam. She was then graduating from food college. Kostya is not a coward, he did not run away from the army, in those years he served Russia somewhere in the Ryazan region. So the girl lived alone with her parents. Having returned from the exam, she lay down on the sofa and fell asleep. A phone call woke her up. She immediately felt that he was not kind. That’s what it turned out to be: they called from the hospital – my father and mother crashed near Berdsk. Since then, she has already lived for four years with her only relative, her brother, earning a living, being in fact the head of the family. True, Kostya himself was also not known as a slob and got a job at the same factory as Alina, as a truck driver, delivering «Kirieshki» throughout Western Siberia.

After the death of her parents, the girl increasingly began to show strange abilities: as if she could see someone else’s future using cards, all the food she prepared had the desired effect, and, oh, horror, she learned to make fire by snapping her fingers. This is how Alina began to do without matches, the quality of which was simply skimped on by manufacturers. True, the girl began to use magic sparks only after the flashing fragment of one such match hit her in her left eye with all the ensuing consequences. And it’s not worth talking about cutlets with love spells and hangover cabbage rolls. And all these miracles are at the behest of the pike, Alinochka’s desire.

Remembering her extraordinary gift, the girl decided to try to set fire to her brother. If she succeeds, she will quickly heal him with the help of her own homemade jelly. But her magic turned out to be invisible, like herself. A fireball the size of a tennis ball flew through Kostya’s chest, and then through the monitor, and then went out completely, hitting the wall.

– Cool! – Alina smiled to herself. – Invisible fire is an original thing, isn’t it?

Two days ago she would not have started making such jokes, but now she had no time for that. Well, at least someone would have noticed and understood that she was alive, but no: her brother is killed and thinks that she is no longer in the world.

The girl was offended and went into her room through the wall. What’s wrong with that? If slippers do not fit on your feet, then why not overcome fifteen centimeters of concrete rock? She imagined that the wall was parting in front of her, and… she succeeded!

When Alina was five years old, she kept asking her mother: what was there in the thick walls. Mom answered that the brownies lived there, and there was no point in disturbing them. Now, when she grew up, she saw with her own eyes – nothing special: grayness, dust and not a single poltergeist.

It’s good to be dead. From time to time. You go wherever you want. But how terrible it is when no one sees you, and you cannot turn on the light in the room, put on your shoes and simply pick up a telephone receiver or an automatic pencil.

The girl, looking doomedly at the writing utensils, sank into her favorite chair, covered with terracotta leatherette, and lay her head on the glass of the desk. Solid, which means that if she wants objects to be impassable for her incorporeal form, they will become so. It turns out that slippers can be made to fit on your feet.

And then the girl’s gaze stopped on an object that she did not leave on the table when she left for work on the day of her death. No, it wasn’t a deck of cards, or a half-written gel pen, or even a notebook with notes in the «family accounting» style, which she hid in a drawer under lock and key. Alina could not afford this item because of its high cost.

In front of her lay a bright green plane ticket. She looked at him questioningly for a long time, until finally she dared to extend her hand to him and… take it! Strange but true! She managed to hold the ticket in her hands, which, by the way, is heavier than a pen! She forced him to submit to her will! Progress in disembodied life!

Having overcome her shock, the girl finally turned away the cover and looked at her own name printed as a red carbon copy. Airplane ticket from Novosibirsk to Moscow, business class. Someone wealthy was waiting for Alina in the capital. In Sheremetyevo. If this unknown person paid that kind of money and slipped a ticket, then it was necessary. One logical question arose – how to get on the plane if no one sees you with a ticket at check-in.

It’s good that the girl noticed this sign of attention to her person in time. Departure is in three hours. We urgently need to go to the airport. She folded the ticket in half and put it in the back pocket of her skirt, because there was nowhere else to go, because a jacket or jacket would hardly have given in to the girl’s will, which had not yet strengthened after the shock.

There’s nothing you can do – Kostya will have to suffer. He had already realized the fact that his beloved sister was no more. Of course, my brother will be incredibly happy if Alina returns. But how can she establish this? Perhaps the mysterious stranger who placed the ticket on the girl’s table will be able to take her back to the world of the living. Therefore, you need to go towards your destiny and what cannot be avoided.

The girl tried to take something writing to scribble a short note on paper for her twin brother. The pen even obeyed her will, but as soon as she tried to write the first letter, it became clear that she would not succeed. No matter how much she tried to concentrate, the text she had written immediately disappeared from the page. And after the third attempt, instead of her scribbles, a strange note in broken Russian appeared on the paper:

Alina, don’t try to write your brother. Alina reject the first layer. Alina should be on the second layer. Alina should try. I’m waiting for Alina in Moscow. Sheremetyevo. Terminal number two.

What would that mean? The girl stared attentively at the scribbles. Nothing other than fate. You need to go to understand all these first and second layers. Something told her that no one took her life, and what happened to her was not death at all, but, most likely, a banal departure to another world in the best traditions of fantastic fairy tales.

Although she lived in the center of Novosibirsk, it was still far from the airport. The girl, of course, did not want to walk down the street barefoot, so she began to hypnotize the shoes so that they would fit on her feet.

Oddly enough, Alina’s witchcraft abilities, which Alina spent only on everyday fireballs, did not fail, and within ten minutes a satisfied girl, wearing two different shoes, was leaving the entrance of her house. Yes, yes, the shoes that nevertheless obeyed the will of the deceased turned out to be from completely different pairs: the left red sandal with a low heel was put on the right foot, and the right black autumn boot with a five-centimeter stiletto heel was put on the left.