– What lies ahead for me?
– Forty two years of solitude…
– Why solitude?
– Because we are all lonely, engulfed in our own knowledge and spirits in the world of reality.
– Is it possible to sail there?
– You will sail there. It is your path.
– And if I don’t want to?
– Well, you do want to live?…
~~~
This is what he told me eleven years ago, standing on the deck of a four-floor ship. He looked through the distance, on that line where two colors of blue blend, the sea and the sky. It seemed to me that forty two years is a very long time. And now, I understand with despair that dying at the age of sixty four is very sad.
I clear the clouds with my hand. It’s too cloudy. Having more light around will clean the gray smudge that splashes inside of my soul. People have completely forgotten their ancient connection with the world.
I write a book of memories. About how to create magic. No, it’s not my memories, I am not experienced enough for this. Long lost souls come to me and dictate the words to me. Many words that form a mysterious pattern of knowledge all by themselves. Not long ago, one of these words looked at the draft and got startled, as if it was a cloud of smoke being swayed by a strong wind, and said:
– No, not like this.
She brushed the written words with her sleeve, and so a white paper was left undisturbed.
I help people with their lack of knowledge. But they require little from what I can give. They are more interested in magic potions, future telling and amulets. Everything that will be useful in this life. They are not interested in eternity.
She came to me at sundown of that day, when the sky stopped being blue and became reddened in a pink color. She sat on the couch of my cabinet and said:
– Father sent me to you.
Back then I didn’t know what it would mean in her life and in mine. She was his daughter. She was as old as I was when he foretold the future of my life, back there on the deck.
And we began to explore the world. It seemed that my studies were meant for her. She easily inserted lost cubes into the mosaic of ancient knowledge and heard the voices of eternity and read the thoughts of nature. I taught her to dissolve in the wind and come to life from drops of rain. We easily changed the order of day and night, sun and moon, sky and sea. And in this unordered world we understood everything better than before.
We left after a year. Our quest has been through all materials and oceans. We lived in Africa, Australia, America, India and China. We studied the writings of different times, mysteries of herbs, language of birds and noise of the underwater world… Our path led us far ahead, and we kept following it year by year.
But then everything changed. After five years she settled in a small village in the south of Indonesia. She told me:
– I need to stay here.
And I continued on alone.
I still had pupils. Each of them got what they were destined to, and we parted ways. The book of memories was long completed. I’ve left two drafts as heritage to people. My path has been coming to an end. And then I met her again. I sailed on a white ship towards my last journey. There, at the tip of the world, I will leave life’s orbit. I stood on the deck while she stood near me, as her father in the past. She has seen and done a lot, and there was no mage to reach her levels in our time. Only I reached farther levels than her.
She looked at the border of sea and sky and asked:
– How many types of blue do you know?
– One more than you.
– Which is it?
– It is the color of the other side of light. The dead see it.
Then she asked:
– What lies ahead for me?
– Your path.
– I know. How long will it last?
Mages do not know when their time comes. She wanted to know how long she has left, just as her father told me how long I have left in the past. But I won’t do it. I don’t want her to bear the great burden of knowing.
I looked ahead where her path was written – ten years of her solitude. One year less than mine. But I didn’t say it.