Остров Харона. The Island of Charon. Премия им. А. де Сент-Экзюпери / A. de Saint-Exupery Award (Билингва: Rus / Eng). Александра Крючкова

Чтение книги онлайн.

      …Water, water, all around is water, and a panic horror seizes me. I try to float to the surface, but for some reason I can’t, and… I am suffocating!

      He woke me up. I opened my eyes and saw before me only the boundless starry Sky. It instantly got dark on that Island.

      «The Ocean comes here silently,» Alex said gloomily and held out his hand to me.

      I got up from the white sand, just a little bit more and the hide tide would have swallowed me. Yes, that wild Island of healers and black magicians was really very strange. Completely unlike Paradise, despite the divine names of the bays and the Internet descriptions, Camotes was scaring, but at the same time attracting. You couldn’t see or hear the locals, and it was suspiciously quiet in general. There were neither crowds of tourists on the shore, nor waves in the Ocean. By evening, a part of the Island used to go under water silently so that from the shore to the rock with a staircase, connecting the Ocean with the strawy hotel, as my companion had christened it, one could get only by swimming.

      «Wait!» I shouted to Alex, who was moving away into the distance.

      He turned around. I caught up with him, he took my hand, and we slowly wandered along the Ocean to the beach cafe of a local savage.

      «Someday I will come back here,» I said dreamily, sitting down at a wooden table by a shabby umbrella.

      «Crazy girl! What do you plan to do here? What the hell is this Paradise? No civilization! Aboriginal savages only! There is even no restaurant, and the only hotel doesn’t accept cards! If I had known where the ferry would take us, I would never have gone! You got me on an adventure! And now we have nothing but wait for the ferry back, which has no schedule at all! If it wants, it sails, but if it doesn’t?»

      «However, I really like it here! This Isle is full of magic! There is some hidden secret in it I would be pleased to reveal.»

      «The magic theurgy is, at best, a fairy tale for adults, and at worst it’s quackery! And don’t tell me that you believe in the afterlife!»

      «And you really don’t?» I chuckled.

      «A human being, Alice, is bones and meat! Everything else is from the evil one!»

      I. РЫБАК / The FISHERMAN

      1.1. Рыбачья сеть

      много лет спустя

      …Вода, вода, кругом – вода, и панический ужас охватывает меня – я пытаюсь всплыть на поверхность, но почему-то не могу и… задыхаюсь!