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

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!”

      Chapter 1. The FISHERMAN

      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,