Short story by Natalia Lialina
Linked up with Write and Link #6
“Do you believe in magique?”
The woman’s voice, with a lovely French accent,
sounded soft and ingratiating, and her eyes were calling me to follow her. As
if charmed by the sound of a magic flute, I made a few steps, then suddenly the
voice started laughing louder and louder, sounding unpleasantly piercing. I
covered my ears and… woke up.
I was sweating, it felt hot under the covers, and my
mouth was dry as a desert.
“Mom, mom,” I said quietly, but no one responded.
Then I cried out loud, from all my lungs, which still
felt weak, “Mo-om!”
“I’m coming, I’m coming, my little one,” Grandma
opened the door to my bedroom, with a cup of hot herbal tea-like substance
which she cooked on the stove for at least one hour, adding berries, leaves,
lemon and spices to it and calling it by the name of the British inspector, “mors”.
She’d watched the show on Netflix almost every single night. Honestly? I
thought she had a little crush on him.
“Mors has nothing to do with Morse, silly,” she’d say
every time I brought it up. “It is a Russian drink, and all Russians have it in
winter. They made it long before his time. Maybe his parents were Russian?”
“Do you mean his ancestors, Grandma?”
“Yes, yes, you know what I mean.”
