MAGI

A dazzling white disk shattered into a million of splashing shards after a chubby duckling dived down into the river for a midge. It was extremely hot afternoon in July, whose drowsy silence was but occasionally disturbed by the dragonflies’ lazy buzz, rising in reply to a distant whirr of lawnmowers, cutting the grass. And still the harmony and rhythm of another, unheard melody reigned in the silence. The fresh-cut grass notes, followed by a deep melody of the terrace heated wooden steps, were played by the country horn somewhere in the distance. The reed pipe took up the melody, interweaving it with the honeyed aroma of clover milk, the sweet piece reaching the climax with the bursting raspberries four-note motif. Gradually, the music slowed down and July quietly ran its fingers over the strings of a human soul… Sweet scent of the childhood… The symphony of torrid heat...

A milky-white Butterfly was sitting as a luxuriant flower at the Uncina’s panicle at the edge of the water mirror, when its reflection was crossed by the straight line of ducklings, marshaled stately by a mother-duck. The last duckling in the line lagged behind, deviated from the course and ran for a water lily leaf, twice big as him. He climbed to it with effort and trotted along its wide and freshly-green surface with his thin legs, when all of a sudden the leaf started slipping under his feet and to the horror of all the river dwellers stood vertically, making tiny duckling fall down from it with a splash! But our brave hero surfaced immediately and swam further again, catching up with the hatch, as if nothing had happened.

Meanwhile the Butterfly flushed and hovered along the wooden bridge, spanned across the greenish water to the opposite bank, where on the valley-side fine houses huddled up, holding up their tiled roofs to the summer sun. Long white ears were sticking out of the cabbage patch, growing in one of the gardens, as their owner was stealthily looking out for the garden’s Missis. Having noticed the edge of the Missis apron, the white fluffy thief sprinted to the hole in the fence…

The Butterfly flew high under the blazing sun over the line of sleepy ancient oaks, still remembering the former glory of a small town old school and towering majestically along the carved fence of a football stadium. She landed on an oak leaf, spread out her wings and glued down to the green surface, stock-still, as not a leaf was stirring.

If you could come nearer and get a closer look at her, my dear reader, you could see that this lovely Butterfly herself looked much like a leaf, with golden streaks imbuing her wings, silky-smooth and sleek. Having been almost lulled, the Butterfly suddenly twitched and glanced upwards. Tiny mosaic patches of dazzlingly blue sky sparkled through the canopy of emerald green leaves, luring to the eternal blue depth, calling up childhood dreams…

A teenage boy sprinted to the centre of the empty football stadium from the near-by house and hurled himself down on the ground. He lay sprawled on the grass for a few seconds. Then he rolled over onto his back, his hands beneath his head and his knees bended and crossed. Lying in the very blaze of the sun, he sucked on a blade of grass and talked to himself, waving his right leg in a sneaker in the air.

Under summer’s scorching glow the air resembled в transparent jelly, slightly rippling in the absence of the wind, blurring the shapes of the objects. The Butterfly squinted her eye to the boy and then attracted by his voice, left the tranquil emerald coolness and flittered to him to perch on the waving sneaker as at the swing. And that is what she had heard:

I have just sat the exams and consider not to proceed with A-levels. At least this year… And to find a job. I live in my grandaunt’s tiny house. She has no her own children. Grandauntie agrees that extra money would help, as her pension is the only source of money for us to live on. Five years ago my parents went missing in the mountains. The police told they must had been lost under the rock avalanche. But grandaunt says they fell in the battle with the Stone Men at the Orkney Islands. The first time I have heard about the Stone Men I got realized that all what has happened, and this newly-obtained responsibility to grow me up… in short, all this was altogether too hard for her and she went a bit “mental”.

Usually she minces along, mumbling something to herself under her breath and waving her arms like the wings of a windmill. She talks to me only to call me for the meals and to allocate household duties. And as we both don’t bother cleaning the house, therefore we live in perfect harmony and I would have forgotten English, if I wasn’t attending school.

She has lived all her life alone and used to talk to herself, her second important interlocutor being “the box”. She is passionate of watching soap operas in the night as a means of soporific. I adore them either. Oh, I almost forgot, she has a remarkable ability to put the house in ruins while I am at school. So when I come home in the evening and see ghost blue shadows, flickering through the curtains, I halt and look at the stars, being thankful that today we would have a fascinating dreamless night with TV zombies instead of restoring the walls, having got damaged from sheer touch and cleaning away the crushed stone. Still prepared for the unexpected I come in with a smile glued to my lips.

She loves to sleep, clutching at the TV remote. But with the lapse of time I got the hand of crawling stealthily to her bed and pressing the power button without unclutching the tenacious grip of her forepaws.

When she awakes in the night with the remote in her hands switched off, she considers this to be the dirty tricks of zombies and starts switching on the lights throughout the house and checking whether the windows are tightly shut and doors securely locked. The windows turn to be opened as I can’t stand the stuffiness from the radiators, working at full capacity and seething with heat. Then she has to choose between zombies and me, being the reason of the windows openness, and definitely preferring it being me, she stretches in a sugary voice, “Are you suffoca-a-a-ting, dear?”

She’s got a thing about this. Like a bird of prey, she hovers over me, looking out for the slightest signs of any illness. But I cough only if I choke on the water. Though as a child I could not scramble out of colds, during last five years I have neither fallen ill, nor even scratched my knees, playing football. Contagion simply does not stick to me!

The third and last member of our family is Mia, our cat – a pair of blue eyes, edged with white fir, constantly playing football or more exactly “pawpotato” in the hall.

She loves to make ambush round the corner and leaps at me with gaping red mouth and sharp bared fangs when I turn. But I’m constantly on the lookout, full of suspicions and premonitios, and turning around the corner I usually make a big leap to the side, making her claws grab empty air.

From time to time I conclude the Non-Aggression Pact with my cat, which she treacherously breaks. Then I play the offended one, and she rolls the potato (as you can guess by that time the ball is already hidden by me) across the carpet like a mythical elusive ghosty forward, playing football in the prairie, and the wind ripples her fur…

At that place the boy halted, as his eyes flitted to the sky, where a cat-shaped fluffy cloud was pursuing in great leaps the mouse, skedaddling pell-mell along the blue sky. The boy sat up at the grass, staring at the trail of clouds, rushing with great speed across the windless sky. Three pig-shaped clouds galloped, hopping and hipping, to the horizon, followed by little bears, somersaulting in the raspberry tangles, replaced then by a fox, turning wildly on the spot, pursuing its tail.

The boy rubbed his eyes to shake off illusion. Obviously, it was a mirage, roused by abnormal heat, the haze blurring the shimmering sky. With closed eyes the boy went on with his story.

In the early childhood I had some friends of mine, but after they had also heard about the “Stone Men of the Orkney”, they never showed up again…

When the boy opened his eyes and raised his head and looked at the sky again, he saw seven little milky-white cloud goatlings, butting each other. Stunned, he stared open-mouthed at the fairytale play, performed above his head, when –

“Robin, come get your lunch! It’s served!” an old woman’s voice called from out the house behind the football stadium. The boy jumped to his feet and rushed home, while the Butterfly flushed and hovered to the north, to London…

At the 55th floor of the glass office tower there was opened a floor-to-ceiling window. A man of nearly thirty years was sitting on the floor with his back to the open space, swinging his legs, which were dangling above the abyss. He was dressed in dark blue jeans shorts, red T-shirt and sneakers… and a huge ruby hung down from his neck on a massive silver chain. And this was not the only weird thing about him, my dear reader, as the eyes in his face were of incredible amber colour!

He was snapping his fingers in the regular beat of some self-invented melody, he was humming under his breath, observing the clouds, crossing the brightest blue sky. With every snap of his fingers one of the clouds swelled and stretched to a fluffy cloudy shape to stand still for an instant as if gaining consciousness and then sprint on all its paws across the sky. Snap… A hare, pinned under the weight of a backpack, stuffed with carrots so tightly that they protruded from under the clasp, was running his file, trying to foil the dogs… Snap… A flying squirrel glided on a parachute… Snap… A snowy owl hooted, flapping her fluffy wings in the flight…

The milky-white Butterfly with golden streaks sat on his knee and set observing the clouds with the same curiosity as the amber-eyed man did…

The low velvet voice, strangely drawling the words in some unknown accent, belonging to a man in a flat, round-based dark blue tubatay, stitched with silver almonds, and dark blue cashmere kaftan, embroidered in silk archers, standing at impenetrable gates, said, addressing the amber-eyed man’s back, “Robin Orion has successfully passed the first test today and he would be interviewed by Love tomorrow. Do you want to talk to him yourself?”

There followed long silence. Shoulder-length black hair was getting in the eyes of the amber-eyed man as he lowered his head. When he raised it again, his bright eyes flashed, “I suppose there is no doubt that he would pass the interview…”

“I’m sure, he would.”

“Then you know my answer.”

“Okay,” answered his vis-à-vis and retired silently.

The amber-eyed man picked up his legs to the floor, stood up and turned the handle, closing the window, and when he turned to it with his back, the handle melted in the air, having left the solid glass wall, the outward side of which the Butterfly remained glued to.