Оглавление
Asia Khafiz. Beyond the Great Mist
Foreword
Part I. Kiar and Amalu
Chapter 1. The Gray Kingdom
Chapter 2. The Magic Valley
Chapter 3. The Gifts to Norna
Part II. Udr
Chapter 1. The Fruits of the Sun
Chapter 2. Udr and his Brothers
Chapter 3. Beyond the Borders of the World
Part III. Astar, Amalu and Aslaug
Chapter 1. The Daughters of Norna
Chapter 2. The Land of Hills
Chapter 3. Udr and Norna
Отрывок из книги
I was born and raised in Central Asia, at the crossroads of the Turkic, Persian and Arabic cultures. The gardens and vineyards bathed in the southern sun, the towering mountains with sharp peaks abutting the vast Central Asian sky, the bustling eastern bazaars with an endless assortment of condiments, oriental flat bread, fruit and vegetables – and filled with all of the sellers and unique aromas of spices – always inspired and fascinated me. And the tales of The Thousand and One Nights, the travels of Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta along the Silk Road, and the poetry of Omar Khayyam, Hafez and Rudaki, strongly influenced the formation of my world view. Indeed, my heart and soul are deeply rooted in the East, with its charm, slow pace and its overflowing energy – a spicy hot melting pot in which hundreds of nations and cultures have come together. At the moment, I work as a winemaker in Central Europe. Additionally, I travel frequently and enjoy studying the cultures and gastronomic specialities of different countries. I am particularly interested in folk epics, tales, myths and legends.
During long summer evenings under the Central Asian skies streaked with Milky Way constellations, and with a piala of green tea, my little sister in her insatiable curiosity demanded new tales to help her sleep better. And when all the famous stories had already been told, I felt like Scheherazade on the 300th night! It became clear that the time had come to ignite my imagination and create, create, create. Thus, the novel “The Great Mist” was born. It came together like a khan-atlas patchwork. Like a solid stained glass with a colored mosaic of legends from the East and West. In time, on paper, the novel began to live its own mysterious life. This fantasy tells the story of love and hate, of passion and longing, of dreams and reality – all on the edges of consciousness and subconsciousness. The prophetic components of the story have come true with an unobtrusive effect on the readers, changing the course of their lives in a mystical and unknown way.
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In those days of late autumn, dusk came early. And at night, when the fog fell on the village, the first frosts painted the windows with fancy curlicues. Soon, Kiar decided to go home; he did not want to be lost in this thick and sticky fog. His home was near, even closer to the rocks. It was small and abandoned. Almost all the time Kiar spent with Amalu, and he came home only to sleep. No one knew who his parents were; they have simply never been seen by anyone. According to the stories of Amalu’s grandmother, one gray afternoon at the age of three years, Kiar appeared in an abandoned house close to the rocks, where Amalu had found him. Because of this mysterious appearance, people disliked and feared Kiar. It was even said that the heath-elves had left him there. But, as reasonably questioned by Amalu, why would they leave the children if they stole them? So children decided that Kiar was too obnoxious and nasty a troll, so the elves had to return him back to the joy of Amalu.
Every evening, after chewing a piece of bread and drinking some warm milk, Kiar sat by the window and watched how the sea of mist descended from the sharp peaks of rocks, it eddied like the waves of a huge tide and flooded the village, slowly creeping up to his house and completely swallowing it. And no matter how much he tried to make out anything in the gray-black velvety gloom, at least the tiny lights of the heather elves, he could not.
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