Out of the castle. Olga Zhvan

does not have enough time to get frightened; instead, she curiously studies her finding. The man approaches her and asks if she has found any metal balls. She replies that they are not balls they are skulls. He smiles back at her and adds, «Remember, Aurelia, these are reflexive verbs. The fact that you could see the skulls means they belong to you. You have to bring them to the castle and give them to…»

      The young woman was following the man down the street. She tried to remember whom she was supposed to give the balls to, but at the same time, it was clear to her that it would be impossible to remember all the names she got. Everything she could think of at that moment was the mysterious man’s eyes, which did not seem to blink even once during the whole conversation. His eyes appeared to have the power that pulled her into some hypnotic gray abyss, which was impossible to resist. When the man took the skulls from Aurelia’s hands, they turned into stone plates with engravings on them. He carefully wrapped the plates into the leaves that came from nowhere and gave them back to her. While carrying the plates in her right hand she rather felt than knew their significance. Lost in the labyrinth of her hazy thoughts and sensations, she did not notice that she was again alone on the street.

      The road was long and tiresome despite that it went downhill. The street was not deserted any more: there appeared several equestrians every here and there. Aurelia noticed only now that she was wearing a long puffy skirt and a corset, which made it difficult to breathe when walking fast. Besides, the epoch she found herself in was definitely not her own, but rather somewhere in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. When reached the tavern, she stopped, looked up at the lightened windows and the stairs that led up and in, but she did not feel a desire to come inside, so she continued her journey. Her only thought was reaching the castle and delivering the plates for which she had become responsible.

      When she reached the castle, she also reached far beyond the limits of exhaustion. She meekly followed a guardian in, when suddenly realized that the plates, she had been carrying so carefully all this time, vanished. However, her mind confronted with hunger and overtiredness, refused to think about that problem that moment. She was shown to a small dark room; the walls there were dull and wet, lit with only a hint of a candle light. In the center of this room, there was a table with a body outstretched on it. An executioner towered above the table. The inquisition seemed to use this castle for its own stealthy purposes. Aurelia looked like entranced at the tools that were cutting the legs of the poor human on the table. For some strange reason she saw everything with the victims eyes. At the same time, she clearly cognized that he felt no pain. Not a single sound came from the lips of this still alive person. In the corner to the left stayed the executioner’s servant and read aloud from some document. The executioner took an axe. Sweep. From the fainting consciousness Aurelia heard a thundering voice, «A little longer and I would cut his face off! You should have predicted me earlier!» And one second from oblivion she realized that the victim was innocent.

      When she came back to senses, she found herself sitting beside the young person lying on the table. She had an urge to put her right hand on his head and the left on his chest. Therefore, she does just that. Aurelia hears her own voice from aside, «Sleep, sleep, hush, hush» together with the light mourning of a dying person. However, she feels that if she gives her strength to this person he will continue living: she realizes now that she has a gift of healing. In order to be able to provide her warmth to him, to save his life, she must feel a high level of intimacy with him, or may be even love. Young woman desperately tries to wake up a warm feeling, a feeling that could safe him, in her soul by studying this man’s exhausted face. She does not even try to understand what is she doing and why is she doing that… The only thing she feels sure about is that his wakening is enormously important, and not for herself only. In the deepest of her soul, there is an understanding of the situation born: that all this must have gone wrong, that this man must live not die, that he is meant to do something so important that her powers and even her own life mean nothing compared to it. Vanished in the labyrinth of her new feelings and thoughts, she falls asleep still pouring her strength into him.

      Being asleep, she lost sense of time. The anticipation of an acute danger woke her up; she decided to trust it and jumped from the table with plenty of torture tools laying on it, to hide herself underneath its surface. Already from there, she saw an axe landing on the exact same spot that she occupied just a second ago. The servant who held it screamed, «If not killing him, then at least you!» The wave of hatred hit the torture chamber, and the young woman was thrown into another dark room. Having opened the door, she found herself in the huge bedroom, which apparently belonged to the executioner. That big table in the torture chamber on one side and the wardrobe in the executioner’s room on another appeared to be the two ends of one teleportation portal, in which the innocent young woman found herself. The executioner was performing not a wholly holy duty with his female guest when he saw Aurelia’s scared face in front of him. He hurriedly sent his company away, gripped Aurelia by the sleeve and stepped into the darkness.

      They came out of the portal just in time to grab the servant’s hand, which held the axe above the dying man on the table. The servant was imprisoned directly. The executioner pulled the cover away from the dying man, having seen the victim’s mushed limbs, he began to press them in order to stop bleedings. He demanded from Aurelia to save the man on the table; it was vital to save him. The executioner’s face looks serious and concentrated. It did not show a sign of fear or doubt, no mercy either, only the determination to revive the man. Aurelia was thinking that only a while ago he had been just as resolved to kill the person he tried to save now. Another thought was that this gloomy man seemed to know how exactly she could help the dying man, but did not bother to explain it to her. Besides all that she realized that it was short time ago, she simply went along the street, yet by now she tackled the whole range of strong emotions – fear, compassion, intimacy, anxiety, exhaustion, fear again – and even managed to fancy for a while the executioner’s gloomy face features, which so painfully reminded her of the victim’s.

      Still drown in her thoughts; she lifted her head to see the hole in the ceiling and the two balls falling through it, the balls that she had lost some time before. They hit the floor voicelessly. Having lifted them, Aurelia saw that these were two small skulls. At that moment, she realized that these things belonged in her hands, but she still did not why.

      The executioner took her by the elbow and put her at her earlier place and she automatically stretched her hands towards the dying man.

      Aurelia continued holding her hand on the head of the dying man, despite that she was on the edge of fainting of exhaustion. The executioner saw it, took her by the elbow and led her to his own room. There he unceremoniously opened her tight dress, took off the corset, lifted the young woman who could not walk because of the long loose underdress from the floor and put her to bed, he peculiarly carefully wrapped her body in a blanket. He left her there and went towards his roughly made table in the corner that had some writing materials on. He made himself comfortable by the table, which had a lit candle on, and started scribbling a letter. The pen squeaked when scratching the rough surface of the paper. However, she did not hear it anymore; she fell into a deep sleep of a weary wanderer.

* * *

      Winter, lonely girl wandered through the snow by a large number of small round lakes, plunging into some of them and feeling hot water, she came out of the water completely dry. Around one could see the snow-covered forest. Coming to one small lake, she wanted to enter the water, but something stopped her. She looked into the water, she saw through the murky ripples sharp stick sticking out of the bottom just in the place of entering the lake, if she went into the water, it would certainly get hurt. Aurelia thought that the water was muddy, and most likely cold, but it took the attention of the girl and brought her into the open ocean.

      Having regained consciousness, the girl understood she was standing on a raft, among the same frightened and confused people. Storming waves knocked them down, but they desperately were trying to resist.