Other Scribes sit next to Benedikt in the Work Izba. That sweetheart Olenka draws drawings. A pretty girl: dark eyes, a gold braid, cheeks like the sky at sunset when the next day'll bring wind-all shiny. Bow-shaped eyebrows, or, like we're supposed to say now, yoke-shaped; a rabbit coat, felt boots with soles-must be from an important family. Olenka comes to work on a sleigh, the sleigh's waiting for her after work too, and it's not a plain one either: it's a troika. Under the harness the De-generators stomp their feet, the shaft Degenerator is skittish, watch out or he'll bite you, and the trace Degenerators are even worse. How can you approach Olenka? Benedikt only sighs and steals glances at her, and she already knows, the sweetheart: she'll blink her eyes at him or turn her head just so. A modest girl.

So Benedikt goes to work, looking all around him, bowing to the Stokers, watching out for the sleighs, breathing in the frosty air, enjoying the blue sky. He was staring at a beautiful girl mincing by, and boom-he ran straight into a post. Ooooh, may you all go to here and there and back again. Damn things are all over the place!

Ouch. Nikita Ivanich, the Head Stoker, put up these posts. An old friend of Mother's, may she rest in peace. Also one of the Oldeners. He's about three hundred years old, maybe older, who knows. Who counts time? Do we know? Winter, summer, winter, summer, but how many times? You'd lose count just thinking about it. There are ten fingers, and on the feet ten toes -though some people have as many as fifteen, it's true, and some have two, and Semyon, the one from Foul Ponds, has a lot of tiny fingers on one hand, just like little roots, and nothing at all on the other. That's the kind of Consequence he got.