Читать книгу An Old Letter from the Future. A Journey Through the Inner Realm - - Страница 2

Sometimes the world folds in such a way that the boundary between what has passed and what is happening blurs, as if time itself has faded in the sun, leaving behind only its dry essence.

In such moments it becomes clear: there are places where history does not seek remembrance but simply continues to live, unaware of our presence.

Here, everything is arranged differently.

Here, the past is not finished, the present does not hurry, and the future feels like a heated seam beneath the skin – unseen, yet pulsing. This is a space where a person becomes a witness, even if they have come alone. And in this very silence, dense with the pressure of centuries, there arises the sense that the world is watching you, not you watching it.

In these lands, steeped in the scent of soil that holds within it the time-charred roots of old worlds, green fields press against the horizon, strewn with poppies like the blood of ancient battles spilled upon the earth and never washed away. Their colour is not merely vivid – it is disquietingly honest, like a memory that refuses to fade.

Light does not move here as it should. It does not fall – it prowls. It glides softly, as if testing the earth’s skin by touch, trying to reach places it has not entered for centuries. There is no directness in it, only a persistent attempt to discern what lies hidden beneath the surface.

When the mind is confronted with the castle, it does not reveal itself at once, like all things unexpectedly vast, lacking easily grasped boundaries. It feels not built but grown – not like a tree, but like a geological obstacle on the path to understanding the world.

There is such force in its architecture that its towers seem like columns holding up the sky. The rough texture of the darkened stone has locked within it the memory of an ocean where, millions of years ago, long before humanity appeared, this limestone was forming, gathering the dying life of ancient seas as its trophies.

The gates of this castle are always closed – not because it protects its inhabitants but, on the contrary, because it protects the world from them, striving to restrain the unrestrainable.

This fortress is like an old man returned from war, condemned to eternal life and weary of struggle, yet faithfully standing guard over long-forgotten ideals that have lost their worth. This place has become home to a princess without a kingdom, without a court or subjects.

It is not enforced solitude but the deliberate choice of one who has found freedom within it. In the silence, in a place where the echo of centuries becomes the only interlocutor. Here one can be oneself without knowing who one is; here there is no need to adapt or seek compromise. Here morality becomes a game, and the rules of that game can be kept secret even from oneself.

You step inside this vast castle, and the world contracts, as though the walls have absorbed space itself, whispering in the voices of drafts trying to tell you of the once-tumultuous lives of its inhabitants. The music of balls and the voices of departed generations, caught as echoes within the stone, cannot break free, struggling to recount their stories with the desperation of voicelessness.

Walking barefoot along the long corridors, the resident held up the hem of her worn linen dress as she moved soundlessly past countless rooms filled with garments and ornaments to which she felt no attachment. And her indifference was wholly justified, for no attire could add beauty to the natural, effortless confidence, the comfort and lightness that had become the sole arbiters of fashion here.

Stepping out onto the castle roof, where she spent most of her time, the princess released the hem of her dress, relaxing her fingers and turning her palms toward the wind. Its warm, gentle gusts carried to her the scent of flowers from the fields and wove it into her long, unbound hair – just as untameable as the wind itself. The fragrance of the blossoms caught in her hair was forced to compete with the smell of smoke from the sputtering torches her dragon dutifully lit at dusk.

It was neither a pet nor a monster. It was a part of her – the very inner strength with which she protected her fragile heart, the fury that allowed her to hold on to her solitude, the coldness with which she shielded her tenderness.

The dragon was her armour. Her shadow. Her second self.

Its wings covered half the sky, its scales shimmered in shades of obsidian, like shards of volcanic glass whose sharp, glossy surface knows how to disguise itself and deceive the eye. Its eyes were like bottomless oceans of lava, promising wisdom and ruin at once. Its very presence felt like the embodiment of primordial power, unbound by the laws of nature – a force that thickened the air with premonition, luring and repelling at the same time.

Slowly and deeply drawing in the summer evening air, the princess closed her eyes, catching the wind in her relaxed palms. She stood as though there were meaning in it – as in the solemn mystic ritual of a shaman for whom the spirit world has long been a commonplace. As if she greeted the universe, and the universe greeted her in return, untroubled by its own infinity, whose unfathomable nature unsettles only those who do not feel themselves a part of it.

It was an ordinary long evening after an ordinary long day – one that had passed like so many other days of so many other years, all merging into a single, seamless Now.

On the roof stood a massive wooden table, carelessly draped with a coarse, wind-tossed cloth. At its centre lay a large dish of meat, taken in the evening hunt and roasted by the flame of her fire-breathing dragon. To either side were small plates of forest berries and fragrant herbs.

In a dew-beaded clay jug was ice-cold water, tasting like the pure snow of mountain peaks unfit for life. And beside it – an angular, heavy goblet of mountain crystal, clouded by time, whose uneven shape cast glimmers of unpredictable life, flickering freely, appearing and vanishing as they pleased. Like a portal for souls weary of other world, stepping out for a brief stroll and trying to escape into freedom, only to fade quickly, as though their overseer – darkness – dissolved them, sending them back into oblivion.

The air above the roof was dense with scents: roasted meat, stone dust, the moist wind carrying the valley’s freshness. At the edge of the table a knife was stuck – its blade darkened, its handle made of deer horn. Not a kitchen knife, but a working one, suited equally for skinning a hide or slicing bread. Yet the princess never used it, nor any of the cutlery gathering dust somewhere in the kitchens on the lower floors of the castle, which she never descended to. She ate with her hands – with the dignity and grace of a royal who regards food as a tiresome amusement rather than salvation from hunger.

The torch flames arranged around the table barely wavered – the wind touched them cautiously, as if stepping aside, as though it respected this supper. From the height of the roof there opened a view of the distant forest where they had hunted not long ago, and of the fields that, for the night, switched off the redness of their poppies, turning into bottomless dark abysses.

The princess was already seated at the table, finishing her quiet, solemn meal to which none of the uninvited guests had come. Leaning back comfortably in the heavy wooden chair with its high backrest, she held between her fingers a large black berry that left violet-black stains on her fingers, as though she had smeared herself with the night sky while pinching off a piece of it.

The dragon sat on the edge of the roof not far from the table, gazing into the night and shimmering with its scales – whose flickering made it impossible to grasp its true size, confusing and captivating the eye.

Approaching silently from behind the dragon, the princess settled softly beside him on the very edge of the wall. He always felt her presence, knew where she was, and understood her thoughts. Thus they spent their nights in wordless conversation, gazing into the cosy abyss above and below.