Читать книгу The Star Riders and the Mystery of the Fairy Circles - Peter Kerry - Страница 7

The young monk sat alone by the campfire in front of his hut. His simple monk's habit was radiant white, unlike that of his brothers in distant Ireland, who always wore brown ones, and the material was not made of the usual coarse sheep's wool, but of the finest light linen, which was much better suited for this dry, hot region. If his abbot knew of such luxuries, he would surely have been in trouble. But it was the abbot who had entrusted him with this mission, so he should be allowed that little bit of luxury.

You could only rarely see that he was just 25 years old, since the many hardships and the often sapping weather had left their mark on his young face.

He had been traveling around the world for 7 years and, as he believed, had reached the end of his journey for the time being. He only wanted to stay one last week to finish studying the stars, which were particularly visible in this sparsely populated corner of the world. After that he wanted to make his way back home to Ireland, even though he knew that his home was no longer there alone, but encompassed the whole wide world.

He had settled here three weeks ago and built himself a thatched-roof wooden hut in the local style, but mostly used it as storage for supplies and his few belongings, preferring to sleep under the open sky.

Five days after he had settled here, three young, immature snow-white horses had joined him. The stallions were so trusting that he built them a shelter against the strong sun, which they could enter and leave as they pleased. Mostly they grazed near his hut or trotted to quench their thirst only a few steps away from the watercourse of an almost dried up river, which at this point formed several pools in which

the water caught before it dropped a few meters into a valley where it formed another larger pool with a small cave behind a waterfall.

So there was plenty of wonderfully clear fresh water. Only when heavy rain fell in the highlands could this trickle briefly turn into a mighty torrential river.

Today he was too tired to calculate the stars, he just let his thoughts drift away from the beautiful night sky.

He was snapped out of his dreams with a bang. For a second the vast landscape was lit up by a huge ball of fire, followed immediately by a deafening roar of thunder.