A Guardian Angel. Oscar Wilde Award. Playing Another Reality

“What’s there, on the second floor?” as if expecting a dirty trick, Gloomy inquired suspiciously.

“There’re literary agents there, a bit over four hundred of them. You’ll have to come with Alice to the table K-33, will you?”

“I will, I don’t mind,” Gloomy agreed grimly, “but why don’t you bring your ward to the stand of Alice?”

“You don’t understand anything, Gloomy!” Glamorous said offended. “To bump them on the second floor is a non-standard move! And any non-standard move is worth a hundred standard ones!”

Talking with someone from the delegation at the stand, Alice noticed the Writer.

“Can you help me?” he asked calmly.

“Of course, tell me!”

“Did Glamorous send you here?” White asked Gloomy, and the latter nodded in response.

“On the second floor, there are literary agents. They sign up for a meeting with them six months in advance. But what if it works without? I have a few synopses and my novel translated into English. You can help me to talk with them in English.”

Alice agreed. They went up to the second floor by the escalator and entered a huge hall with endless rows of tables, each row was signed with a letter, each table had its number.

“I need K-33,” the Writer said.

They slowly made their way through the rows, found K-33, approached it and greeted the agent. Alice explained who they were, the Writer held out his papers. At that moment, Alice noticed that at the table in the next row, but with the same number 33, appeared… Alice froze in a daze, not believing her eyes. The agent K-33 asked her something, but she didn’t respond. The Writer tugged Alice by the sleeve.

“You read my book about Another Reality, aren’t you?” She sighed. “Would you like to see one of the characters?”

“I would,” the Writer smiled.

“Right in front of us. The one on the right.”

“Who is he?”

“The Man Who Was Not.”

Alice tried to move to the right, behind the column, so that the one they were talking about didn’t accidentally turn around and see her. She didn’t want to face him again, because she was not going to return to their Past even with a glance. Moreover, despite the existence of the Time Turner, life was a movement forward, not backward.

The Writer asked kidding gloomy, “Do you want me to…?”

“No!” Alice exclaimed in a whisper. “Don’t kill him, it’s no need. Let him live!”

The Writer finished his conversation with K-33 and they left the literary agents floor.

***

the Russian Bookstore, evening, rain

Alice was about to leave the fair, as a colorful girl who looked like a young man approached the stand.

“Are you from this stand?” she asked and, having received a positive nod from Alice, continued, “I represent the Russian Bookstore in London. By the way, would you like to visit us? We constantly have evenings with performances by Russian writers. We are interested in books in Russian. If you are interested, we can chat. Here is my business card.”

Alice looked at the business card and put it into her pocket. They agreed to meet the next day to discuss the transfer of the books of the delegation to the Russian Bookstore. The guest’s gaze glided over the shelves and stopped at a book. The girl took it out, open it on a random page, read a bit and asked, “Who is the author?”

“Me,” Alice replied.

“I want it. Sign it, please!”

Alice sighed, the book was dedicated to the Man Who Was Not. The guest left with her book. The Writer appeared. He told Alice that in the evening he would perform at Pushkin House. Alice asked to pass one of her books to Pushkin House. The Writer took it and they said goodbye.

Walking around London alone, Alice found herself on Piccadilly. Glamorous appeared there, “White, do you like the number 3?”

White felt what Glamorous was getting at, “I like the number 7.”

“Well, 7 is also good, no doubts. But 3 is much better than 2, right?” Glamorous purred in a sing-song way. “Bro, there’s that Russian Bookstore just two steps away from here. A presentation of another writer has just ended there. My ward is inside. Alice was invited to visit that bookstore. Take a couple of steps with her. Anyway, she has to show her up there! Let her come in now, not later! So they will bump into each other three times in one day! An evident sign for them! Agreed?”

“She doesn’t want to see him. Don’t you feel it?” White sighed. “Why force her to bump into him?”

“Well, not as a duty, but as a friend, can you help me? Of course, you don’t need this. But just imagine, you’ll get a sinful ward and come to me, and I’ll refuse you.”

White took Alice by the astral hand, “Let’s go, baby, to the bookstore. Anyway, you have to visit it.”

Alice remembered that the Russian Bookstore was right on Piccadilly. She looked at her watch, wondering whether it was still open, and took out the business card from her pocket to check the house number.

The Bookstore was huge, but every book was in English. Alice went to the far hall and found a spiral staircase to the upper floor with a signboard, “Russian books are up there!” Alice went upstairs, stopped at the rack with the books by Solzhenitsyn, Ulitskaya, Polozkova, asked herself a rhetorical question, “How to join them?”, turned left and noticed… “No! No! Just not that!!!” she exclaimed mentally, instantly flew down the stairs and left the ill-fated store.

***

Tower Bridge, evening, rain

Alice had a headache. She walked slowly across Tower Bridge. Why was she drawn there when the Tower was already closed? Alice stopped in the middle of the bridge, thinking about what had happened that day. “What’s the hell? It’s unreal. Three times in one day. That’s Time Turner. What do you want to tell me, God? Do I have to deal in my Future with this man? It’s all long in the Past, and there’s absolutely nothing and cannot be now anymore.”

Standing on Tower Bridge, Alice heard some verses about a chance encounter, wrote them down and… sent them in a message to the Man Who Was Not.

   The wind of chances blows hardaway from home.A lonely verse is born at dawninside the album.   A friendly touch, I went away.Don’t judge me strictly.It hurts. It can’t be glued. I’m sad,while you are smiling.   I’m sorry, mystical surpriseby stars unlabeled,the breeze of destiny repriseis paid by nothing.   You slip as ghosts into the mist.I don’t judge strictly.It’s cold. It’s raining. I’m sad,while you are smiling.   I give my autographs in fog,They don’t know,My funny book about usis still so sunny…

Having received no answer, Alice descended to the Tower and noticed a flickering light in one of the windows appearing and then disappearing. Alice wanted to stop a passer-by to show the strange light, but there was not a soul around. Surrealism.

Already in Covent Garden, at a table by a burning fire in a coffeehouse, Alice ordered coffee and wrote another poem.

   Today, in London, it is coolfor tails of cats and dogs.I had a flight with rains. The bridgewas sad at dreaming me.   All poets tend to fall in loveforever with some ghosts.I passed the Tower and sankinto the fable mist.   The ravens grumble in the castle,their throne is still a stump,but sunny day of freedom shinesin Tablets full of rains.   So shamelessly I lose my mind,while testing all the ways.It’s easy to be dreamt by bridge.Try finding a sweetheart…

White shook his head sadly, the poem was dedicated to the Man in White, whose phantom was already manifesting at the table opposite. Alice was about to send the poem to the addressee, but changed her mind and saved it in the phone’s drafts. She was very sad. The guardian hugged Alice with his wings and relieved her headache.

***

the day after the closing of the Fair,

the Tower, morning, rain

Alice and the Writer agreed to go to the Tower, and then to Greenwich. They met in the subway, reached the Tower, bought entrance tickets and, without ordering an excursion, wandered along the fortress wall, went up into the towers and down to the ravens.

Alice watched the birds and said, “When I was leaving Moscow, I wrote a poem about the Tower Ravens. Some words I didn’t quite understand. It happens that I realize the hidden meanings and connections only after a certain period of time. Imagine, I don’t even know whom I wrote that poem to, because…”

“Recite it to me!”

  “The clouds left for suburbs.The Sun takes up its post.Let’s visit them in London —black ravens, Tower’s hosts.   The weak ones – business people —enjoy the foreign streams.The truly brave ones – ravens —fly only in the dreams.   They wear silver bracelets,but their wings are cut.They gladly keep the vows, —they are the country’s guard.   The retinue for dinnersprepares fairy-tales:or victories for England,or graveyard on the Thames.   In vain you hide in hopeto take away la femmeacross the sea… These ravensstill see as one of them —me, raven…”

“Do they have clipped wings?” the Writer asked.

“Yes. According to a legend, the monarchy will collapse as soon as the ravens leave the Tower. They are well fed here. Each raven has its own name. They are guardians.”

“So, are you a guardian, too?”

“Perhaps, but I don’t know whose,” Alice laughed.

They entered the exhibition of the British crowns. Luxurious specimens with the names of those to whom they had once belonged were slowly moving along in the window. The Writer periodically asked Alice, “How do you like this one?”

“No, I don’t like this one,” she smiled.

“And that one?”

“Well, I like it, yes.”

The writers went to a gift shop. Unlike the Abbey, they sold big crowns there, but Alice didn’t like them. The Writer took one of them, crowned Alice and took a photo of her. Alice laughed, and the Writer said quietly, “That’s it, you are the Queen. That’s for sure now…”

In the courtyard, the Writer was taking a photo of Alice with a beefeater, a guard of the Tower, when suddenly a raven approached her.

“Look!” Alice exclaimed. “All of them are down there, but this one decided to take a walk! Aren’t we alike?”

The Writer took a photo of Alice with the raven and asked, “Did you choose exclusively black and white clothes for London on purpose?”

Alice looked at herself from head to toe and realized that indeed, everything she had taken to London was either black or white, except for the sweater, which was black and white.

“No, it just happened so…”

“Okay, Queen, let’s go to Greenwich to reset to zero, so that life sparkles with all the rainbow colors!”

***

Greenwich, day, the SUN!!!

The writers entered the first car of the automatic train where usual trains had the driver’s cab and took directly the front seats. The poor areas of London flashed through the windows, then a new banking one appeared, an analogue of the City, the giant glass skyscrapers of Canary Wharf. And finally, they got off at the right stop, reached the entrance to the park and slowly climbed up the hill to the Royal Observatory.

“The Sun shines in Greenwich. It’s surprisingly implausible! What is it for?” Alice thought and told the Writer about the Zero Meridian. The Writer smiled skeptically and took pictures of the sky in the grids of branches along the way.

“Do you like Gothic?” Alice asked, already knowing the answer.

“I adore it.”

“It’s very gloomy in the gothic churches, isn’t it?”

“Gloomy,” the Writer agreed. “But I’m a Catholic.”

They told each other stories from their difficult childhoods. Alice wondered, why it had been black for both of them, but she became fond of warmth and the sunshine, of everything bright and light, and the Writer became fond of gloomy places and black bare tree branches. Well, she had killed her characters in stories being young, too, but afterwards, on the contrary, tried to save everyone.

Alice ran up to the Zero Meridian, jumped on it for joy and stretched out her hands to the sky, in which the Sun was shining. The Writer took a photo of her standing on both sides of the Meridian line. Then Alice started dancing and even purring something to herself.

“What are you singing there?”

“A poem, it came to me on the platform 9 and ¾.

Don’t turn your back to magic, you,a hostage of illusion,been frighten by a stone wall.The truth is in diffusion!The fog is clinging to the Thames,in vain you draw a circle!I have a magic wand in handat 9 plus more three quarters!The judges in a mirror webare chatting with the British.They caught a lion with a girlat dancing over Greenwich!”

“You are so funny!” the Writer smiled.

“Come here, reset your life, come on! Let everything black leave us, and life will start from scratch. Make a wish!”

“Will it come true?”

“I was here ten years ago. In April, just like now. In autumn, my life changed completely. So much that I could hardly believe it. For the better, I mean. Although at first, it was hard to turn around so radically. But after it, a new and happy chapter of my Book of Life began! I believe that even now I’m here for a reason, and you too.”

The Writer took a place at the Zero Meridian. Alice photographed him. White looked at her with sadness, because Alice wasn’t completely reset, since the image of the Man in White was steadily present in her mind.

“So, in autumn, you say? A new and happy chapter?” the Writer asked with a smile.

“Definitely! In autumn!”

White sighed, and Gloomy asked, “Bro, is it not true about autumn?”

“Everything is true, including autumn. But Alice has to reach autumn passing through her summer. I would even say, she won’t have summer this year at all. That’s it, bro.”

They both looked at Alice with sadness. So joyful, beautiful, happy, not knowing anything bad about the upcoming, she took the Writer by the hand, and…

They explored the museum of the Royal Astronomers, slowly walking around the exhibits – telescopes, various mechanisms, similar to watches, scrolls – and step into a dark room, where Alice discovered a giant globe and led the Writer to it.

“Look! It’s our globe, just the size I used to see it during my meditations. Imagine, in the sky, there are big monks the guardians of our balloon, the Earth. They stand next to it holding their palms, like we do by a fire warming our hands. The guardians are as big as you and me compared to this globe. Take a photo of me with it!”

After taking photos, Alice came to the table with some objects painted on it – inkwells, pencils, pens and a sign, “Touch me to learn more.” Alice touched it and immediately screamed in horror. Huge, fat, furry ones with a lot of paws quickly ran over the table surface.

“What’s up?” The Writer was surprised.

“This is a bad table! A dark one!”

The Writer touched the table, “Alice, don’t be afraid. This is a touchscreen computer. After these ‘monsters’, a text with a story appears on the table, and you can turn the pages to read further.”

White led Alice away from the table, “Just a sign! If you go through the tunnel of Saturn, you’ll reach a happy autumn.”

The writers left the dark room. At the exit from the museum, Alice noticed an inconspicuous staircase leading somewhere upwards, and with a glance suggested going up. Having enjoyed the next museum rooms on the upper floor, which, apparently, few people got to, the writers went out to the roof and walked along a narrow passage to the door located in the dome, where the biggest telescope was kept.

“Wow!” exclaimed Alice. There was no one else and nothing but a huge device in the center of the round room there. Some meditative music was playing. The writers were fascinated by the telescope and walked it all around. Alice crossed the line, marked by a chain, and climbed up the stairs to the very dome. The Writer took photos of her.

Glamorous appeared, “White, I’m ready to voice the plan!”

Gloomy cast a sullen glance at Glamorous. White grinned, “Wow, bro! Show must go on… Did you suddenly realize that 7 is much better than 3?!”

“Don’t be ironic!” continued the inspired Glamorous. “I realized that in order to return to that situation, they must be bumped into each other in June, not in April. They met in June! And to make it really magic, Alice has to gain weight somewhere!”

“What do you mean, weight and somewhere? Don’t you like her shapes?”

“Well, my ward loves everything glamorous and exclusive! I thought about it and decided the following. Alice takes part in the imperial ‘Heritage’ competition, the results will be announced in early May. I’ll take her to the list of finalists. Well, this year she’ll be a finalist, next year – the winner! And you’ll make her win in the royal competition, the ‘King of Poets’, where she is already in the list of finalists, and the results will be announced at the end of May! Everything converges, White, it all sums up!”

White glanced at Gloomy and asked, “Are you both in cahoots? One tries to put the crown on her head. The other demands to become the Queen. Gloomy, why are you silent?”

Gloomy was getting darker, “No, we didn’t agree. My ward was just joking.”

“A good joke!” Glamorous exclaimed cheerfully. “There’s a bit of a joke in every joke, and the rest is pure truth! So, Gloomy, since it was your writer’s idea, then you’ll make her the Queen of poets!”

“Unreal,” Gloomy sighed.

“Glamorous, I don’t understand it yet. Why should Alice win?” White asked. “Believe it or not, she doesn’t need it anymore. She proved everything to everyone a long time ago. Perhaps Alice will refuse even to participate in the battle for the crown.”

“What do you mean, why?! First, there is never extra victory in life. Secondly, she has to catch my sinner to the quick! He promised once that he would crown her. Well, conditionally, but promised. He did nothing for it, I agree. And now, so many years later – bang! – she makes it herself. With our help, of course. But for him it looks like herself! Imagine, what he would feel! He’ll want to meet her! You’ll see! And then, in June…”

“Glamorous, there is no such option in the Space of Options. Dot. She can’t win.”

“White, nothing is impossible! If there’s no such option yet, then it needs to be imagined! As soon as we come up with it, it’ll immediately appear there, and it’s always possible to realize any option appeared in the Space as an image! In fact, we’ve just come up with it!”

“You’ve done it, not us. So realize it yourself. It’s your ward who has debts to pay, not Alice. I’ll return to Moscow and deal with issues of her health, not creativity. Don’t you care how the next period of Saturn will end for her? Alice’s chances of remaining on Earth are nil at the moment. In my opinion, Glamorous, it’s exactly to your advantage to keep her in their human world, isn’t it?”

Glamorous fell silent. Gloomy got even darker. They all looked at Alice. Beautiful, happy, completely unaware of how her fate was being decided in another dimension, she stood at the top of the stairs under the very dome of the Royal Observatory smiling at the Writer.

“Okay,” Gloomy sighed, “we have to answer for our words, I agree. I’ll do my best.”

“So will I, White. I’ll help Alice, too! Indeed!”

White was silent. Alice came down the stairs. The writers left the Royal Observatory and returned to London.

***

the night before returning to Moscow,

London, hotel, black clouds, rain

Alice was sitting on the windowsill in the hotel. Suddenly, she heard words pouring from somewhere and she habitually wrote them down and saves on her phone.

A blind man got insight at once —all people are so strange!Don’t drink the Truth from human face,the well is in the soul!Let Hogwarts be – in reading signsfor Gucci – number 1.Umbrellas, Londoners’ must have,sneezed on the clouds twice!The grass demands the rains as muchas God – the baptized ones.Ideas of the Space displacedwill soon explode my mind!I’m led away from you by guardsto payment for the sins.It’s just 3 minutes to the wardfor those who went mad.

Chapter 1.8. A Trip to the Astral

May 5, Moscow,

Alice’s room

Alice was sorting out the closet. Finally, it was time to get summer clothes and put away winter ones. The guardian sat in a chair opposite, “As you finish it, deal with the Transits! This knowledge will be useful to you very soon.”

Alice didn’t hear him. Or rather, having finished sorting out her clothes, she came up to the bookcase. Sometimes Alice adjusted its contents. There were a lot of books in it, her own ones, and gifted by her colleagues the writers, and purchased by herself, but not yet read, and photo albums with performances, and newspapers and magazines with her publications, and… Alice got to printouts and notebooks written a long time ago, but never published, she had no time for that. Some of her stories and poems had been lost, some thrown away with her own hands. In the bookcase, there was the third part that had survived. “I should publish that poetry and decide what to do with the stories…”

The guardian chuckled, “I say, study the Transits! When the Sun is in the Dungeon, a person sums up the next results.”

Alice reread the dusty stories written at the age of 13—17 and called Kidding U to arrange their meeting in a quiet place. Kidding U was her friend and a writer, who earned money on his literary work, so he could make an adequate verdict on Alice’s childish literature, to publish it or send in the trash.

***

a cozy coffeehouse

Alice and Kidding U met in a quiet place. She silently held out a printout of her childish stories about ghosts, in her opinion, somehow digestible for reading by third parties.

“Oh, what’s this?!” U exclaimed cheerfully.

“This is me as a kid. Well, I mean, I was young then.”

“I understand, now you are old!” U laughed.

“Let’s read them out loud to each other.”

“What for?”

“For you to tell me something.”

“And what to tell you?” U asked Alice in a conspiratorial voice.

“The truth.”

“Okay, Piglet! Until Friday, I’m completely free!”

U made himself comfortable in the chair, picked up the first story and started reading it aloud. He was very lucky, because all the stories were short. Periodically, he accentuated the crooked phrases. Alice underlined them with a red pen to edit them later. In the course of reading, U muttered, “Hmmm…”, “Wow!”, “A-ha!”, “Oh-hoo!”, “Ugh!” and suddenly exclaimed, “And this is Edgar Poe himself!”

White exchanged breaking news with U’s guardian. The latter, nodding at Alice, asked, “The transit Sun is in the 12th, or what?”

“Yes, Kidding, you guessed it right. During the May holidays, Alice will give out to the publisher 9 volumes of her survived poems, an edited novel about our reality and what they are reading now.”

“White, your Alice is a monster! How do you manage with her? My U will write only a story for May edition of a magazine, and just because they are rushing him. They have been waiting for a month already.”

“No, Kidding, she is a sheep, not a monster.”

“Why are you so upset then? A sheep is a good thing! You can cut some wool!” Kidding laughed.

“I can. There’s another problem. She’ll spend all her savings for the summing up. You know, bro, what’s the price of it in their literary world. And as soon as she pays for the books, she’ll urgently need money! I have no idea in my mind where to get it from then!”