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

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 14^th 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.

      We quarreled in all these years only twice. Not even quarreled. I took offense. The first time I didn’t like his cynical words about… Or rather, the