Читать книгу An Old Letter from the Future - - Страница 3

The evening sun had almost drowned beyond the line of the sea. A red, heavy disc of molten light stretched across the surface, turning the water into slow, thick lava. But beneath that layer – darkness. Real, dense, cold.

And in this strange union – scalding surface and icy depth – the truth of nature emerged, a truth that never chooses one side. It is under no obligation to be whole. It carries fire and cold, light and abyss, stillness and disturbance – not blending them, but letting them stand beside each other like two worlds that do not argue over the right to exist.

What seemed like flame above turned into motionless night below. And the sea did not suffer from this contradiction – on the contrary, it lived by it. Water could be both refuge and threat, gentle and cruel, alluring and repellent. In it, there was no choice of “or” Only “and”

It is the union of the incompatible that creates the whole. Only where extremes meet is depth born.

Perhaps all living things are made this way: what seems irreconcilable is, in truth, two halves of the same whole. And real harmony arises not where opposites disappear, but where they look at one another without turning away.

The princess was already standing at the water’s edge, having left her dress lying on the sand. Her feet were washed by the smooth waves of a sea that was scaldingly cold yet calm. She looked at the path of light that began right at her toes, as though the rays of sunset knew exactly where to find a lost wanderer, to illuminate the way into the darkness.

After a few steps, the seabed dropped sharply into depth. As though the earth itself ended at this point. Drawing a breath, she slipped down and felt the water immediately grow denser, heavier, as if unwilling to release her from its upper layer. Every stroke of her arms required effort – it seemed the sea itself was asking:

“Are you sure?”

But she kept descending – stubborn as always. A few meters down, and the resistance became like a wall.

Then everything changed.

She exhaled the last of her tension, allowed her body to yield to the deep – and the water stopped resisting her. As if it had ceased its testing. It became pliant and accepting. The princess opened her fingers, loosened her muscles, and the descent turned into a fall – silent, smooth, bodiless.

She looked upward, toward the wavering boundary of the world, where the threads of sunset broke through the thickness of the water in shattered shards of red and orange. They shifted, trembled, turning into strange shapes – as if it were a language of light understood only by the lowlands of the sea.

The cold, sharp and merciless near the surface, quickly transformed into something else – a viscous, sluggish warmth, like the kind one feels in a dream when the body stops belonging to itself.

The mass of water accepted her completely. And for a moment it seemed that if she kept falling downward, she could reach a silence unknown to any person on land. The silence underwater was almost physical – it pressed against her temples and leveled her thoughts. Here her lungs reminded her of themselves for the first time, painfully. She slowed her movement, touching the bottom with the tips of her toes. Placing her feet on the smooth floor, which felt as though it had been made for walking, she sensed the dragon sitting calmly on the sand, guarding the air until her return, watching the surface of the sea that gave no hint of those it had taken in.

Clenching her palms and bending her knees, she closed her eyes – preparing to leap – and for one more second listened to the stillness of sound, as if she wished to take it with her. Around her was absolute darkness, and within it something breathed deeper than a human mind could conceive.

The princess pushed upward, cutting through the layers of water. She had strength, yet returning – back toward the light – was harder than descending into the depths.

When she finally broke the surface, the sun had already burned out, leaving her the heat of its last glow for that long-awaited breath. The saltwater on her lips tasted like the blood she had come to wash off – yet now innocent, evaporating from her skin without a trace.

Stepping onto the shore, she climbed onto the dragon at once. After such depth, she longed to feel height. The dragon, taking her dress in his teeth, rose skyward immediately, shaking droplets of water from her hair, which fell back to the sandy beach like a rainfall bidding it farewell. Home was close, and the dragon flew very slowly: wings spread wide, suspended in an almost imperceptible glide. He allowed her to savor the height of this early, newborn evening – just like the millions of evenings before it, just like the millions after.

On their way back to the castle, they stopped at the edge of the forest, where the dragon hunted to bring the princess her supper while she gathered berries.

Upon landing, the princess headed straight for a nearby thicket of blackberries. The dragon laid her dress on the ground and disappeared into the undergrowth at once, while the dress remained lying in the grass like a marker – not an object, but a coordinate. A point to which they both would return.

The dark berries, guarded by sharp, wickedly curved thorns – little warriors ready to defend their harvest at any cost – hid behind the night. Her gentle fingers seemed far too delicate for such work – made more for touching petals than for the prickly weave of branches. But it was precisely this delicacy that made her movements infallible. The sensitivity of her skin allowed her to anticipate the direction of each thorn, as if her fingers sensed the danger before they reached the tip. For her, gentleness was not a weakness but a weapon: sensitivity, refined into instinct, served as armor.

With two handfuls of berries, she walked back through the night forest, her bare feet sinking into the cool, damp bed of leaves. The soil beneath her felt warm and supple, as though it adjusted itself to her steps – like a forest that recognizes its own.

In the shadow of the roots, soft mushroom caps rose like small lanterns without light, moist with the early-night dampness. They grew in tight circles, as if discussing her gait and passing along news of the rare visitor who had disturbed the secrecy of the night.

Somewhere high above, owls called to one another softly – rarely, measuredly, as though checking their domain.

The air was filled with the ancient scent of the night: damp earth, bark, old leaves, and decaying grass.

She walked slowly, so the berries would not spill – and because the forest itself set the pace. Here one could not hurry; night did not tolerate sudden movements. It required immersion.

Having returned to the marked point, she poured the berries onto the dress, wrapping them up like a pouch. The dragon was already waiting for her with a large piece of meat in his teeth. He never took the whole carcass – only its finest part.

The remaining stretch of road to the castle caught them in a brief but intense downpour, in which they frolicked like children left unsupervised. The dragon tumbled through the air like a playful puppy, pretending to dodge the raindrops, while the princess laughed, pretending she was about to fall during those sharp turns – sometimes giving a small scream as if in fear, only to laugh even louder a moment later. Near the castle, it was dry: the rain had passed it by, not daring to disturb the giant’s peace.

Emptying the berries from the soaked dress into a bowl on the table, the princess hung the dress to dry on one of the towers – like a flag of surrender the castle had never known, and one that clearly did not suit it.

There was neither defiance nor vulgarity in her nakedness – it was so natural and innocent that it drew no attention at all, like nature itself baring its body to the dawn light: pure and untouched by shame.

Her supper was already steaming on the heated metal platter in the center of the table. Today she was unusually hungry. Her winged guardian, noticing her appetite, brought over a few more apple branches still heavy with fruit and laid them on the table. She ate with a smile, remembering the flight in the rain, and, glancing at her friend, realized how profoundly happy she was.