Out of the castle. Olga Zhvan

it, but suddenly the girl felt detachment, hopelessness and full humility, and the only thought was in her mind: «Let it be». Aurelia saw that big black piece of cloth was falling lower and lower, and understood that it was not a cloth, but a big black dead bird with huge wings. It was falling sprawled the wings, and therefore before the girl thought it was cloth, which was planning in the wind. Bird scribbled the back and left hand of man and fell at Aurelia feet. The man turned to her and said, «Didn’t it stain me?». The girl was looking at one more black bird flying in the sky above them, and she barely managed to look up from it. Aurelia touched his forearm with her left hand, and saw under her hand bloody round spot on the raincoat. She took back her hand, looked at the palm and saw her fingers in the blood. Aurelia wiped them on her clothes, thinking at the same time that she stained herself.

* * *

      Waking up, the first thing Aurelia felt was an urgent need to go to the torture room, to touch his forearm, see the trace of bird. Hastily giving herself up, she tried to calm down and convince herself that it was just a dream, but the feeling of a true trouble did not leave her.

      Passing the huge hall, she raced along the corridors to the basement. Pushing open the door which suddenly became weightless, she flew into a little familiar room with a table in the center. Nothing had changed inside. There was almost alive prisoner, he was breathing quietly, peacefully closed his eyes. Candle on the window had already melted more than its half illuminating a small room. Echo of the corridor almost caught up Aurelia with endless repetition of steps approaching and departing, getting tangled in the hallways and hiding in dark corners. Catching her breath, she looked under the table and in the closet, inspected every corner. There was nobody. Tension did not go away, though, it seemed there was no reason for it. However, there was nothing to do anymore, and after standing for some time in silence and hesitation, she went to have breakfast.

      Something was definitely happening in the castle. Aurelia was having breakfast alone, for the first time the owner didn't honor the guest with the presence. Silent servants, as usual, didn't give any explanations. The girl started suspecting them of inability to produce any sounds. Extinguishing the irritation, she nevertheless decided to concentrate on food. However the bitterness of disappointment was added to all tastes, spoiling general impression. She didn't even suspect as far as their joint silent meals had become important for her. The mood was heavy as though the thick heavy, cloth with the smell of dust and time was put on her shoulders; it smothered, pressed shoulders, making to stoop a back, and didn't leave any forces for release.

      The girl quickly finished a meal and decided to go into the garden which was behind the castle. She wanted to add ease and freshness which only clean air filled with gentle flower aromas, a smell of the ripening fruits and a new-mown grass could give.

      Carefully interweaving flowers into a magnificent wreath, she admired the world around filled with sounds of the wind rustling in leaves of trees and talks of the birds and insects hurrying on the urgent business.

      Aurelia as though saw herself from outside: the thin girl in carelessly belted dress from softly falling cloth, with the warm dark brown raincoat on shoulders, with the dark hair hardly braided to the spit the girl who watchfully and delightfully was catching, absorbing and becoming the storage for a huge number of feelings and perceptions, filling herself with beauty and catching each slightest shade of the world, new to her, developing and living under own laws. Just then the girl got an idea that she had changed for that short time. Also she was surprised that even in that gloomy castle with silent servants, the executioner and his victim she felt easily and quietly.

      However, dramatically darkening sky threw her out of the appeasement, pulling flowers out from just made wreath. The wind was so strong that Aurelia opened her hands and a wreath crumbled beneath her feet with untidy heaps. Dense cloak didn’t let the cold in, but she felt a growing chill somewhere inside, and she realized that she would not be able to keep warm. Sun hastily hid behind a heavy cloud, not wanting to see what was happening on under it. And with the cold an anxiety crept into the consciousness of girls, making all other sensations fade and filling the whole of her soul.

      Obeying some internal rush, the girl ran through a garden and stopped at the last tree. From there she could see the landscape around. Nearby on the hill there was the burned spot with the charred land, in the center there was a man, and in the heavy gray sky rapaciously stretched wings, huge deep black bird was flying over him. But Aurelia wasn't near…

* * *

      He was weak. Shoulder and back were ripped to shreds and ached unbearably. Periodically Borg sank into the dark sticky abyss, sometimes got out briefly on the surface, and again went to the bottom. Acute pain from bandages brought him back, filling his whole being with rage, anger and irritation.

      He tried not to open eyes so as not to show his condition, his weakness and fear to the girl who silently and diligently was giving him her power. Only now, a man was thinking about what she felt when life was flowing from her into another person. What was the feeling? Did Aurelia feel the pain of those who had been returned to that world? Who would carry an exhausted girl to bed? Who would control the process and stop it in time?

      Gleams of thoughts his own and at the same time others, were formed in his head and were scattered on the sounds and feelings absorbed by black emptiness.

      Quiet moan took Aurelia from stupor. She had been sitting for two days near the wounded body. As though she was repeating unlearned lesson. The first was almost live in a small little room of the torture in the basement; the second was almost live in a huge light bedchamber upstairs. Woman had the feeling that she didn’t understand something. Would she be able to revive life in the second if the she could not do it for the first?! The fear sticky paws stirred her soul, nestling there, apparently, for a long time. Tears were falling down like lonely drops, without stopping in the sparkling, changing color eyes. «I wonder, what is the color of my eyes at this moment?» The thought which arose from nowhere, left in the same direction… She was very sorry for both the executioner and his victim.

      But she was not sorry for the fallen wounded, jet-black bird lying at Borg's body. Before Aurelia dragged him in the castle, she burned the bird, without waiting for its death. It was cruel. Cruelty was color too, a sound, feeling, and the picture which was always on the mind in which the shouting huge black bird dying on fire and the girl with a gleam of steel in the eyes.

      Over the next week Aurelia learned a lot of different feelings, from hope to hopelessness and despair, from anger to self-pity, and others, from a strong fear to indifference. There was such a palette and nobody to share with. Even the silent servant ceased to annoy woman, they aroused in her silent gratitude when, after sleepless nights, she fainted at the bedside of the dying, and woke up in her room in a soft bed.

      Nobody shook her shoulder in the mornings, but every time waking up, she saw a fresh breakfast and clear water on a table. For that period Aurelia forgot about her questions who was the executioner and who was his victim? As well as why Borg treated him so cruel? Why was he attacked by a black bird, and where did it come from? There was the only question how she would be able to recover two people? What she would need to do, understand, learn? But there was not the answer, and the girl continued to do what she was able to do best of all – to give the life to another people, those who silently asked her about the help.

* * *

      The story repeated, wounds healed, but Borg didn't recover consciousness. Staying with him day after day, she understood that she couldn’t give him anything anymore. His body was completely cured and filled with own vital forces. Even scars didn't remain. The pacification on a man's face bewitched, the smoothed lines made him younger and softer, but eyes remained closed. By that moment Aurelia had spent, without a sound, twenty days.

      The late fall gave all the fruits, covered with yellow leaves the yards and the woods, and promptly was going to say goodbye. There, in other world, she would have a birthday with a pie,