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

0.1. The Girl and the Sea

Аmmouliani4,

Greece

“She used to sit for a long time by the Sea at sunset, the Girl in a pink dress. Lost in thoughts about something, she was gazing into the Sky. There was a Mysterious Land in the clouds, where winged people lived. Lilac castles beckoned her to them, in their quaint gardens fabulous flowers were fragrant and magical birds were singing. The wind carried unusual aromas and echoes of enchanting melodies to the Girl. And she also saw familiar faces there, they smiled and called the Girl to their Heavenly Country, to the City of the Sun. She dreamed of getting to them, but did not know how to do it, because she had no wings.

The Sun was setting into the Sea. Warm waves caressed her legs, singing a quiet kind song that she had heard from her mother when she was still a baby. The Girl looked around, but there was no one on the shore, and she felt completely lonely. The gloomy Rocks did not understand her, because they couldn’t feel anything, however, that was the reason they would never die. The Rocks, as usual, were only watching silently the picture at sunset: the Girl and the Sea.

The Sun was approaching the horizon. The waves were whispering louder and louder. The Magic Country floated away, losing its outlines. The Girl was standing by the Sea, and her tears fell onto the waves, and the Sea became salty…

The seagulls that flew to the seashore in the evening did not find anyone there. The Sun sank behind the horizon, and the Night came. Somewhere far away in the Sky, the seagulls noticed the outlines of an unknown City. They wondered, what kind of City it was, being situated not on Earth, but in the Sky. They had never seen such cities before! And the two most curious seagulls decided to make a flight to the mysterious City, but they had not enough strength to reach it.

And the Girl disappeared. The Rocks no longer saw her there, on the seashore, at sunset. Only the book left by the Girl on the coastal stone reminded them of her existence…”

“Hmmm…” I closed the book and put it aside. The miniature was written by me at the age of twelve, but sometimes I was drawn to read it again. Every time after returning to reality it seemed to me that I remained the little Assol5, who still didn’t lose hope for…

I was waiting for his letter… I constantly visited my Internet page to check if he had looked at my last post to him…

Yes, yes, yes… At first completely unconsciously and then purposefully, I began to post more and more expressive pictures, signing them briefly, but with a hidden meaning…

My hands were trembling, I was closing my eyes at seeing his name in the list of viewers – oh, he hadn’t given me even a like! – but I was jumping, I squealed, “You have not forgotten me! You want me! Well, tell me you want me, too!!!”

That day I made a post with a photo of two waves running towards each other, and I signed it, “Meet?!” And…

He commented the photo, answering me in a private chat, “Yes”.

These three letters made me scream at the whole Universe! Yes, I screamed, “I want you, too!”, but after thinking a little, I wrote,

“I want that, too.”

“What do you want?”

“…to see you…”

It was madness! I understood everything, but appealing to reason at such moments was completely useless! Of course, he was not the captain of the ship “Scarlet Sails”, and I mostly felt us the main characters of the movie “Titanic”.

Weren’t you attracted by bad boys/girls?! And did you think at such moments that your “Titanic” was already doomed?! Neither did I, being ready to drown… sometime later… not then…

0.2. The Isle of Black Magicians

Camotes6,

The Pacific Ocean

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

He woke me up. I opened my eyes and saw before me only the boundless starry Sky.

It instantly got dark on that Island.

“The Ocean comes here silently,” Alex said gloomily and held out his hand to me.

I got up from the white sand, just a little bit more and the hide tide would have swallowed me.

Yes, that wild Island of healers and black magicians was really very strange. Completely unlike Paradise, despite the divine names of the bays and the Internet descriptions, Camotes was scaring, but at the same time attracting. You couldn’t see or hear the locals, and it was suspiciously quiet in general. There were neither crowds of tourists on the shore, nor waves in the Ocean. By evening, a part of the Island used to go under water silently so that from the shore to the rock with a staircase, connecting the Ocean with the straw hotel, as my companion had christened it, one could get only by swimming.

“Wait!” I shouted to Alex, who was moving away into the distance.

He turned around. I caught up with him, he took my hand, and we slowly wandered along the Ocean to the beach cafe of a local savage.

“Someday I will come back here,” I said dreamily, sitting down at a wooden table by a shabby umbrella.

“Crazy girl! What do you plan to do here? What the hell is this Paradise? No civilization! Aboriginal savages only! There is even no restaurant, and the only hotel doesn’t accept cards! If I had known where the ferry would take us, I would never have gone! You got me on an adventure! And now we have nothing but wait for the ferry back, which has no schedule at all! If it wants, it sails, but if it doesn’t?”

“However, I really like it here! This Isle is full of magic! There is some hidden secret in it I would be pleased to reveal.”

“The magic theurgy is, at best, a fairy tale for adults, and at worst it’s quackery! And don’t tell me that you believe in the afterlife!”

“And you really don’t?” I chuckled.

“A human being, Alice, is bones and meat! Everything else is from the evil one!”

1.1. Fishing nets

many years later

…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!

He woke me up. I opened my eyes and saw before me only the boundless starry Sky.

It instantly got dark on that Island.

“The Ocean comes here silently,” said the man grimly and held out his hand to me.

I got up from the white sand, just a little bit more and the hide tide would have swallowed me.

Besides…

“What’s this? Brrr! Whoo! What a nightmare! The Ocean threw a… fishing net on me?!”

I twitched and squeamishly threw it off.

“Hey!” I shouted to the man, who was moving away into the distance.

He turned around. I ran up to him and…

“Sorry! It seemed to me…”

He smiled. It was a strange feeling that I’d seen him somewhere… before. Probably… A familiar face? Or even a look? Otherwise, nothing special: tall, thin, black-eyed… without distinctive features. In a light shirt and blue shorts, with rosaries on his wrists and a pirate bandana on his head…

“Do you speak English?” I asked the stranger, and he nodded.

We slowly wandered along the Ocean to the beach cafe.

“I was on this Isle once upon a time,” I said. “I happened here accidentally, although… there are no accidents in life. I went on vacation to Cebu, met a compatriot, he spent winters there, and we decided to take a walk around the neighborhood. We got on the ferry. We didn’t even know where it was sailing us. But I liked Camotes. There is some mystery in this Island!”

“Have you been dreaming of coming back for all your life?”

“Yes, but not for all my life.”

“So, the man decided not to come back, didn’t he? That’s why you’re sad here all alone. Did you love him?”

“No, we had no affair, although, oddly enough, he felt something for me in his soul,” I smiled. “But did he have a soul? It’s a big question. He reminded me of the main character of the ‘Christmas Carol’ by Charles Dickens.”

“I haven’t read it.”

“An old man, an avid atheist and former financier. Many people called him a ‘secret millionaire’. He considered himself a brave Robinson, because after retirement he leased a cool apartment in the center of our city, while traveling abroad around Asia: Thailand, Indonesia, Bali, Philippines and so on. He aspired to female companionship. I think he felt very lonely. His parents had died long ago, he’d got a divorce, his only daughter had emigrated to Italy. He certainly lacked love, care and attention. Perhaps, because of the internal conflict ‘I want to, but for my age I can’t’, he became so angry and intolerant towards the opinions of others. Everyone around annoyed him, everything went wrong. By the way, his name was Alex. And what’s your name?”

The man stopped and looked into my eyes.

“Yanis. And yours?”

For some reason, his gaze made me feel uneasy.

“Alice. Is your name a Greek one?” I asked, and Yanis nodded smiling, and I supposed, “So, you moved here from Greece, didn’t you?”

“Yes…”

“I often spent my holidays in Greece, on the islands. It’s your cafe on the beach, isn’t it?”

Yanis nodded again and offered to come in for a bite to eat. I sat down at a table, he brought me his fish menu.

“Are you a fisher or just buying fish in the market?”

“I fish myself,” Yanis grinned.

“So, was it your net that the Ocean threw over me!?” I laughed.

“Correct! I set up nets around the Island every night!”

“Isn’t the net too big for fishes? Do you catch mermaids?” I joked and thought that I wasn’t hungry. “Would you bring me some shrimp to try?”

Yanis nodded again, and at the same moment I heard children’s sobs.

1.2. The Girl who was looking for her mother

I turned around and noticed, as if from nowhere, a dark-haired small girl of about five in a translucent pink dress appeared on the shore. She looked out to the Ocean, but no one was near her.

“MU-MM-Y!!!” her heart-rending scream rang out.

I looked at Yanis. His face seemed to get darkened, but he didn’t even move.

I jumped up from the table and ran to the Girl.

“Hey!” I hugged her by the shoulders. “What’s happened?”

The Girl sobbed, repeating just one word “Mom!”, but paying no attention to me.

“What’s about your mom?” I asked. “Where is she? In the Ocean? What’s your name?”

The Girl either did not understand, or did not hear me, she continued to sob. And the Ocean was still quiet and completely empty. Not a soul. Neither in it, nor on the shore. Except us, of course.

I returned to the Yanis’ cafe, but he had disappeared, apparently, he had left for shrimps.

The Ocean had already flooded part of the shore, and I rushed to the stairs by swimming. I climbed up the rock, ran to the reception of the straw hotel and rang the bell, but no one showed up.

“Hey!” I screamed. “Is anybody here? Help! There’s a small girl on the shore! She’s lost her mother!”

But an ominous silence was rising in answer.

I ran back to the stairs.

“Poor Girl! And what if she became food for fishes in this Pacific – from all points of view – Ocean after her mother?! God forbid!”

However, when I got out of water to a piece of the not yet flooded shore, the Girl was nowhere to be seen…

Shocked, I stood on the shore and looked into the Ocean. It continued to swallow the Island silently, when the voice came suddenly from right behind me.

“Shrimps?”

“The Girl…” I whispered in despair.

“She’ll be back!”

Yanis gently touched my hand and led me away.

***

1.3. The Boy who asked for a Lantern

By 10:00 p.m. I became definitely alive. Firstly, the 12-hour time difference between the Island and my country affected. Secondly, during the day it was incredibly hot there and absolutely unbearable to stay out on the Sun.

It seemed that life on the Island had not changed at all over the years, as well as the straw hotel, consisting of small guest houses, in one of which I had spent the night waiting for the ferry to Cebu during my previous visit. But that time, following Alex, I was ready to call the guest house a “hut”.

Thatched roof, bare walls, a small window, a table with a candlestick, a tiny bed and a narrow wardrobe… I had noticed even then there were no light bulbs in the lamps, and so far no one guessed to insert them!

As before, there was no tap for hot water in the shower, although the cold water got warmed naturally under the scorching Sun in some storage tanks outside the house.

And what to say about air conditioners! – I found only an ancient fan in the room, but the electricity in the network had disappeared somewhere.

And more! I double-checked, including the reception, there was still no Internet there.

However, perhaps the charm of the lost in the Ocean Island, the riddle of which I had to solve, was precisely in such wildness and complete isolation from civilization…

Planning my vacation, I decided to explore Camotes thoroughly, because the first time we had had to escape from the Island the very next morning for having no cash. By the way, no cards were still acceptable there.

I stepped out of the hut into the deep darkness and wandered towards the light of a torch burning at the reception like an eternal flame.

In fact, several torches were always available there so that any tourist could take one out if felt like walking around the Island at night.

I got the opportunity to light my path and stepped out the gates to a dirty road, on both sides of which long-legged palm trees towered, piercing the black-book Sky.

Turning to the left, I walked towards the pier, getting used to the darkness. Suddenly a boy jumped out of unknown to me species of the tropical thickets. He seemed to be about seven years old and looked like a homeless grimy beggar, easily found along the streets of big cities. The Boy grabbed my hand and began to beg, shouting out the same word in almost all languages of the world. And that word was…

“Lantern!”

Understanding nothing, I took a couple of coins out of my pocket and handed them to the Boy.

However, to my greatest surprise, having seen the coins, the beggar squeamishly threw them into the thickets, twisted his finger at his temple giggling, and then he shouted out again,