The Island of Charon. Playing Another Reality. Antoine de Saint-Exupery Award

1.4. The Old Man with black birds

I felt uneasy, but at the same moment I heard someone’s steps from the left. A hunched male figure was approaching us from the pier side, and soon a barefoot, gray-haired Old Man in linen clothes, with a wooden walking stick in one hand and a cage with black birds in the other, stopped nearby.

“Good evening,” I said to break the oppressive silence. “Can I help you somehow?”

The Old Man chuckled and continued to scan me, and the Boy giggled again.

Suddenly, a woman, apparently the boy’s mother, appeared out of nowhere. She bowed deeply to the Old Man, muttered something in the local dialect, then grabbed her son by the arm, and they instantly disappeared into the thickets.

I felt completely uneasy and stood as if paralyzed. I could not move in fear.

“What do you want, my dear Soul?” the Old Man asked distinctly, in an authoritative voice.

My heart began to beat wildly.

The disastrous chaos reigned in my head, but for some reason I thought about the Fisherman. I wanted Yanis to appear right next to me, but I kept silent.

The Old Man, realizing that he was unlikely to wait for my answer, turned around and hobbled further. I looked after him, still unable to recover, as someone’s hand fell on my shoulder, and I screamed in surprise.

“Alice?” I heard a familiar voice, turned back and saw Yanis.

He graciously escorted me “home”, said goodbye and disappeared.

Chapter 2. DEAD WATER

2.1. The Ocean comes silently

…Water… all around me is water… I can’t float up… I have no strength to…

“Damn! This dream has already tortured me!”

I vaguely remembered that always in that dream, in its last frame, I saw a man’s face, although waking up I couldn’t restore it in my memory.

I woke up on the Ocean shore just in time. High tide. Still, it was strange, there were no waves at all there, and the Sun used to fall into the water instantly, giving way to Mrs. Warlock, named Night.

I sat down at a table in Yanis’ cafe.

“How are you, Alice?” he asked. “Have you got enough sleep?”

“Yes, thank you. It’s good you walked me home at night. To be honest, I was a little bit scary. Do black magicians really live here?”

“Yes, all kind of sorcerers, and stargazers, and healers, and alchemists… It’s easier to tell who is not here!” Yanis chuckled.

“And that Old Man with black birds… Who is he?”

“The owner of the Island,” Yanis replied reluctantly.

“The owner?! I would have never thought! Just like a beggar… Does he have a villa here? Or is he content with a hut in your Paradise, too?”

“He lives in the cemetery,” Yanis replied without showing any emotion.

“Where?! Yanis, you’re kidding! Although on the Island of black magic, there is probably no way to exist without black humor… Well, but what about sightseeing here? Tell me, you do know Camotes better than me.”

“It depends on what you want to see.”

“Does everyone see one’s own?” I laughed.

“Why not! However, like everywhere else. What does your tender soul prefer for dinner today? Shrimps, mussels or…?”

“No, no… Only coffee with milk, please!”

Yanis left and was back a couple of minutes later with a cup of cappuccino and a glass of water, and I decided to continue our sweet talk.

“How long have you been here, Yanis?”

“Time is a relative concept,” he answered evasively. “It depends on the way you measure it.”

“So, what would you recommend me to see?”

“Everything!” Yanis smiled.

Suddenly, someone pulled my arm. I turned around and saw… the yesterday’s Boy! The one who looked like a beggar. He dived into my soul with a plaintive look, held out his hand and said the cherished word… “LANTERN!”

I looked at Yanis. He said something in an unknown language to the Boy, and the Boy went away.

“But why ‘lantern’?! ” I exclaimed, because such a strange request had sent my mind into a stupor.

“You shouldn’t be surprised at anything here, on Camotes,” Yanis winked me. “This Island is not like ordinary ones!”

I finished my coffee, thanked Yanis, left a tip and decided to take a walk.

2.2. A Scary Market

That evening, instead of going back to the hotel, I went far along the path that started immediately after Yanis’ cafe and, apparently, led to the village of local residents.

The lights of candles and torches flickered in the darkness, children were rushing back and forth, people in the houses were talking loudly and even singing something. I noticed that many of the natives I met along the path were walking with baskets full of all sorts of things, as if they were returning home from the market. And indeed, behind the village, some market rows were placed…

I was glad to have change in my pocket and decided to treat myself buying something delicious.

However, in the first shop, to which the queue lined up, I found only water.

“Do you want to try?” the seller asked me kindly.

“Is it from your Island? Mineral? Sparkling water?”

“From our Lake!” the salesman clarified with pride. “But it’s neither mineral nor sparkling. It is just dead! Pure dead water without gaz!”

“Dead water?!” I recoiled with a thought in my mind, “One more joker?”

“Have a try!” insisted the seller and handed me a glass.

“Oh, no, thank you! Next time!” I smiled for the sake of decency and proceeded further.

Having passed bats, snakes, cockroaches, spiders, and other creatures cooked in different ways, I stood in line for a man, who was selling coconut cocktails and fresh pomegranate juice. Almost reaching the counter, I suddenly heard exclamations from the crowd.

“Deceiver! The seller is a liar! Don’t trust him!!! It expired yesterday!!!”

An enraged, half-naked woman flew up to the seller with a bottle in her hand and doused the unfortunate man from head to toe with a burgundy-colored liquid.

“It’s not fresh! It’s yesterday’s!!!” she shouted.

The people in the line roared indignantly and instantly evaporated, leaving me tet-a-tet with the seller. As if hypnotized by my own lack of understanding of what was happening there, I approached the counter even closer.

The seller, after wiping his face, gave me an appraising look and…

“It is fresh!” he said, as if nothing had happened. “Fresh blood! The freshest one! I swear by my mom! Smell it! How many liters do you need? With milk or without?”

I recoiled in disbelief, and stars twinkled in my eyes. I began to lose consciousness, but, fortunately, someone caught my arm in time. I opened my eyes.

“Yanis…”

“Drink it!”

He handed me a wooden mug. I took a sip and immediately came to my senses.

“Dead water?” I joked.

Yanis leaned in to my ear.

“There is no other water here…” he whispered.

2.3. A Giant Ship

I couldn’t fall asleep at night. I left my hut to enjoy the Ocean view from the cliff, directly from the point where the stairs, connecting the hotel with the beach, began.

I stopped at the very edge.

Black starry Sky, in every sense the Pacific Ocean and me…

However, literally in a couple of seconds, I felt a strange, already forgotten there, on the Island, breathing of… the Wind! Yes! Who could imagine, the Wind…

And the Sky instantly changed! The clouds started running across it and so quickly, as if someone had pressed the fast-forward button of a movie. I heard a powerful thunderclap, and the Sky was cut by lightning blades.

I was about to run back to the hut when I suddenly noticed… a Giant Ship! It looked absolutely surreal! It seemed to be brought there by the Wind and quite by accident, from some other era, or even from… another world!

It was raining, but I couldn’t move, gazing at the Ship… It was really gigantic! And so strange, old, with shabby sails, but without any flag or identification marks…

Finally, the Ship entered the bay…

…Oh, no! It was impossible! Passengers began to descend from the Ship straight into the Ocean! How many people were there on board? A hundred? A thousand? But all of them seemed to be ghostly transparent. They were walking on the water surface to the shore and, as soon as they reached it, immediately disappearing!

I hardly forced myself to ran back “home”. I locked the door. Oh, I was sure, if my phone had not been dead for the lack of electricity, and the Internet had been available, the Giant Ship would have made a splash on the network! I wondered if ghostly people would have shown up in the pictures. However, nobody would have believed my words.

“I’ll be back home in a week, and I’ll have to report to the ‘community’ about my journey. Not to forget anything, one needs to start writing everything down in time!”

I lit a candle, since there were plenty of them in the table drawer, took out my notebook and began like this…

“…Water, water, all around is water, and a panic horror seizes me. I try to float up to the surface, but for some reason I can’t, and… I am suffocating…”

Chapter 3. The CAPTAIN of the SHIP

3.1. The Captain

Michael was the captain of a ship. At first. And then he became an important person in political circles. When I got a literary prize at the Central House of Writers, the President awarded him a state one. But Michael was also a creator like me, and, unlike me, he was a genius. Actually, we met each other on the creative wave. And then…

Michael turned each of our meetings into a firework of emotions. He seemed to be trying all the time to prove to me or even to himself, he was the best, no one would be like him. It was certainly pleasant, but not at all necessary, because Michael was already the best, at least for me. Not just damn charming, tall and, as they say, athletic, but also an intelligent and wise person, Michael liked to read a lot, to dress stylishly, to eat delicious food and to be perfumed expensively. When we walked around the city, I envied myself, “What a man I am walking next to!” Actually, we were a wonderful couple, not only outwardly.

Sometimes I wondered why Michael would not find himself a young girl, because I was only seven years younger than him. Once (although we quarreled only twice), I even sent him to… prostitutes, but he calmly replied that it was interesting and pleasant for him to communicate with me, as an intelligent and wise person, and, despite the fact that we were completely different in characters, we had common interests, intellectual and physical compatibility, and prostitutes were a road to nowhere.

Yes, I considered myself a bad lover, but only with Michael I kissed on the lips, such kisses were his know-how, and exceptionally easily and unobtrusively, on his initiative, with my consent, we tried in bed everything and then returned to the traditional classic.

Michael was a leader, and I appreciated it, because, of course, I was an unquestioning dictator at job, but in personal relationship – a submissive clay.

I knew Michael for many years, not only by words, but by deeds, so I could assure you, he was exactly the man that almost all led women were dreaming of. Any of us could feel with him safety like behind a stone wall. He didn’t hide his head in the sand, like an ostrich, but courageously solved every problem.

There’s no subjunctive mood in history, but… Michael was the only man sent to me from Above, whom I would marry immediately, having quite consciously agreed with the fact that…

“MUMMY!!!” it exploded somewhere very close…

“Her cry will even raise the dead from the coffin!” I thought and opened my eyes…

The water was arriving… High tide…

3.2. The Girl, again?!

Water… all around… water…

I sat down on the white sand, moving away from the Ocean advancing on me, and turned back. The Girl. The very same one. She was crying again, standing on the shore and looking into the distance. I went up to her.

“What’s your name? What happened? Where is your mother?” I asked once more.

The Girl whimpered. However, she seemed to understand my words, but she was silent like a partisan. I hit the snow-white sand with my heel, signing my own impotence, and saw Yanis walking towards us.

“Hello, Alice!”

“Hello, Yanis. The child… Something needs to be done with her! We must report to the police! Doesn’t she understand what I’m asking about?! Do you know her? Where does she live? She is clearly not a local aborigine! And what about her mother?!”

Yanis honored me with a strange look, full of deep sadness or even… pain? And it seemed to me again, I had met Yanis before, or maybe, he looked too much like someone else…

“What do you want to eat today?” Yanis asked suddenly, and at first I was taken aback.

“Help the Girl to find her mother! I can’t stand her endless crying!” I screamed.

Yanis put his finger to his mouth, “Shh!”

I stopped talking and suddenly… I found myself in a vacuum silence. I turned around. The Girl was nowhere to be found! I looked at Yanis with horror, but he extended his hand to me, as if nothing had happened.

“Let’s go, Alice…”

“The GIRL!” I shouted even louder.

“She’ll be back…” Yanis answered calmly.

3.3. And once more… the Boy!

I placed myself in Yanis’ cafe, although I didn’t want to eat, having a terrible headache.

Yanis brought me the freshest tropical fruit juice and half a coconut, and then, glancing at the wicker chair in front of me, politely asked, if it was free.

I nodded “yes” to him. He sat down, and we continued our conversation.

“Well, where did you have a rest in Greece, Alice?”

“On the island opposite to Mount Athos.”

“Thassos you mean?”

“No, Ammouliani. Have you ever been to Thassos?”

“No… And how do you like Ammouliani, the island of monks? Not so long ago, it belonged to the monastery of Vatopedi. Did you feel the Spirit of the Holy Mountain? We can say that you lived in the Holy Land!”

“Yes, it’s amazing!” I smiled remembering. “You know, there is a wild sandy beach with Mount Athos view there. The water is so clear and transparent, that even if you swim far away from the shore, you can see the bottom, and it’s not scary to swim there. To be honest, I’m afraid of water.”

“Afraid? Why?”

“I don’t know. Since childhood. I often have the same nightmare about drowning in the sea or in the ocean. That’s why I’m afraid of waves. Fortunately, there are no waves usually in the Ammouliani bay.”

“There are no waves here either,” Yanis chuckled.

“But the Ocean here has lots of algae, and for a kilometer there is no deepness at all! It’s impossible to swim, only to walk! On Ammouliani one makes two steps and doesn’t feel the bottom anymore. And there is no seaweed there! Although I used to swim far from the seashore, I felt like a fish in water! Оr… maybe like a mermaid… I used to stay in water for more than an hour, all alone, or rather, me, the sea and the Holy Mountain… Imagine, nobody else around! By the way, I’m fond of diving and watching fishes!”

While I told Yanis about his Greece, he was smiling, and I was smiling too, diving in my memories.

Many years ago, in some book of a wise person, I discovered an interesting idea,

“Our consciousness does not care if something happens only in thoughts or in reality, because the reaction of the body is always the same”.

And I thought,

“Perhaps the ‘time machine’ is a human thought, and our memories are nothing but the ‘here and now’ reality. So, it is good for our health remembering happy or just pleasant moments…”

Suddenly, someone grabbed my hand. I screamed in surprise, turned around and saw…

…the Boy! The very one…

He held out his hand, looking pitifully into my eyes, and said, “Lantern!”

And at that moment my brain seemed to be completely hacked.

Yanis got up from the table and took the boy by the hand. Speaking in the local dialect, they went towards the village. I thoughtfully followed them with my eyes, but I suddenly remembered my last nightmare – the Giant Ship. When Yanis came back, I decided to share my mysterious dream.

“Yanis, listen! Tonight!”

“You couldn’t fall asleep…”

“Yes, I went out to breathe the Ocean. I was standing on the rock, by the stairs, when suddenly the Wind appeared! It looked like hurricane! The Sky instantly became so scary! Huge clouds were moving back and forth! Lightning, thunder, and it started to rain, or rather, it was a tropical downpour, and a Giant Ship entered the bay! And people on board… I saw through the wall of rain, I swear to you, I saw them descending from the Ship, but straight into the Ocean! And they walked towards the shore on the water surface!!!”

“And how else do people arrive on Camotes, if not by ship or by ferry?” Yanis chuckled. “How did you get here, Alice? By a flying carpet?”

My mind went blank again. I got a glitch in the brain, I perfectly understood that there was no other way to the Island. However, the picture on the internal screen split in two. I saw the old ferry that brought me there with Alex, many years ago, and I also saw…

…water… everywhere… all around me… water… and a panic horror seizes me… I try to float up to the surface, but for some reason I can’t and…

…no, I’m not suffocating! – I see a face of a Man before it, a face, pulsing through the double image on the internal screen – the last thing that flickers in my nightmare…

3.4. Voodoo Procession

It was suspiciously quiet at night with neither wind, nor clouds in the Sky. I took one of the torches from the reception and went for a walk around the gloomy Island, aimed to reach some specific “point”.

I turned towards the pier, as the previous night, and walked for about ten minutes along unknown to me species of shrubs and the long-legged palm trees piercing the black-book starry Sky, when at first the tambourines and then drums roll with chilling chants were heard in the distance.

However, curiosity got the better of fear, and after a couple of minutes I saw a shocking procession of almost naked native magicians with painted faces and feathers on their heads, with frightening jewelry and scaring accessories, with skulls on thin sticks and a huge straw doll on the central thick one. Several people provided the musical accompaniment of the ceremony, manipulating with tambourines and drums, the rest were singing incantations and dancing.

I took a step back, out of the road, to skip the procession and immediately felt someone pulling my dress sleeve, and the already familiar magic word rang in my ears…

“LANTERN!”

“My God!” I exclaimed, turning around. “Look, my dear, I don’t have any lantern! Only a torch, this one!”

I gave it a glance.

The Boy pointed at the Sky in response, but I had no time to think what it meant, because I saw Yanis on the road, wandering towards the pier with fishing nets and gear. The procession of black magicians was moving away.

“Hi,” I breathed out. “Are they Voodoo people?”

“Yes. But you’d better not…”

“Do they really shamanize here, or is it just a game?”

“Really, but…”

“Every night?”

“Yes…”

Yanis was too laconic, but I felt that the topic of Voodoo did not excite him, while it would be very curious for me to attend their ritual.

“Where are they going?”

“To the Portal… However, I categorically advise you not to contact them.”

I was about to ask, “Who are you to advise me something?” But I stopped in time, because Yanis, fortunately or unfortunately, was the only one local resident, with whom I could communicate, speaking the same language. I thought, “The voodoo ceremony would wait for me till tomorrow. No one forces me to inform Yanis about my plans and to report to him about their implementation.”

“Okay, Yanis. Let’s say the Portal does exist. But what about… lanterns? Why does the Boy keep asking me for some lantern?”

Strange things happening on the Island didn’t fit into the standard frames of my mind.

“He doesn’t really ask you for a lantern,” Yanis sighed, “but for a light bulb.”

“A light bulb?” I was surprised even more.

“Yes, a light bulb for the lantern. But it is okay also without lantern. A light bulb is enough…”

“What for?” I exclaimed understanding nothing.

“To hang it up on the Tree.”

Apparently, Yanis decided to make fun of me!

“I see… There are no light bulbs even in the hotel! There are no lights on the roads! There is no electricity here at all!”

“But we have a Wish Tree,” Yanis smiled and asked, “What are you dreaming about, Alice?”

I clenched my fingers into a fist because of my powerlessness to understand something.

“Walk me home. Please.”

***

I returned the torch to the reception and went into my hut, lit a candle, took out the notebook and continued…

“Michael was the captain of a ship. At first. And then he became an important person in political circles…”

Chapter 4. The CAVE of MAGICIANS

4.1. Life is too short

Michael… I wished he had been with me on the Island!

We never spent vacation together… I used to send him my erotic pictures from the Greek islands asking, “Which girl do you prefer? Choose!” to get in response, “Let’s take them all!” He had a good sense of humor…

Yes, perhaps Michael was the only man sent to me from Above, whom I would marry immediately, having quite consciously agreed with the fact that he would cheat on me after the wedding in the same way, as he cheated on his wife with me.

It was strange for me that many girls were lost in deep illusions concerning the possibility of changing a man via some stamp in his passport. I never understood those who used to read phones, to look out for a strange hair on clothes, to sniff out foreign smells and to perform other functions of a private detective. Having noticed the evidence, probably I would have said something acrimonious, asking not to bother me with it any more.

Was I jealous of Michael for his wife? No. Did I secretly want them to get divorced? I didn’t even think in that direction.

His wife was an axiom. Besides, almost from the first day of our acquaintance, Michael hammered into my mind the idea that I was absolutely free and could find another man at any moment with the aim to be friends or to get married, and he would be sincerely happy for me and even ready to celebrate my wedding, because there was no Michael in my life and would never be.

From time to time, I honestly tried to get acquaintance with someone with the aim of creating a family, considering exclusively free boys, and sometimes I even shared the results of such search with Michael. Negative results. Not because I had excessive demands to a potential prince.

Apparently, it was my destiny. I attracted not “my” men, such as chronic alcoholics, hardened gigolos, uncompromising atheists and sexual perverts. With all the wealth of choice, there was no alternative to Michael.

Perhaps for the spirit of freedom each of our rendezvous, which could become the last one, turned out into a bright holiday, and such a format of relations withstood a rather long test of time.

Michael never gave me money or gifts, but the most magical February the 14th was connected with him. Michael just used to catch for us a unique moment of “here and now”, in which we found ourselves shining as the Sun.

However, the feeling of being unoccupied and not belonging to anybody poisoned me. What did it cost him to admit that he existed in my life? In general, we must face the truth, that was not at all the relationship that could bring happiness, should be dreamed of and / or envied.