The Island of Charon. 5. 3. The Stargazer

THE ISLAND OF CHARON

a novel in the series
"PLAYING ANOTHER REALITY"

CHAPTER 5. THE WISH TREE

5.3. THE STARGAZER

Falling asleep, I remembered Michael. Being a head above me in creativity, he always supported me at the right time in the right place.

Once I was on live TV. While all sorts of guys and flatterers, beating their chests “Always yours!” and “Oh, our Queen!”, were coming up with reasons to avoid watching the show even on the record, Michael, whom I didn’t bother with such a trifle, watched the live broadcast and commented it not in the open general chat to become famous, but directly on my phone lying in front of me on the table in the studio.

He “led me by the hand” through that rather painful test, starting from the very beginning with “You are the best! Show them who’s who!” and finishing, when I reported in the last round, with “Super! You have won! Good girl! No voting matters anymore. Those who are good at it, understood everything, and the rest of the crowd are not our judges! Now relax and do something nice for yourself!”

Actually, no matter what a graphomaniac I really was, and no matter how I recited my poems in fact, Michael would have written to me the same words, as a real man, supporting his girlfriend at such moments.

“MU-MMYYY!!!”

I reluctantly returned from my dream to reality…

“God! What does her mother allow herself? Unfortunate Girl! Her cries and screams drive me crazy! If I am still in my mind.”

However, the opening door didn’t allow me to develop my thoughts.

“The sun has set!” the Stargazer announced cheerfully. He was already dressed in a dark blue robe with silver stars embroidered on it.

I got up and followed him upstairs. The room at the top of the tower was plunged into darkness. Only the natural light of the night Sky penetrated there through the windows in the walls and a small one in the roof. In the center of the room there were some chairs and a table, on which a globe occupied the honorable place, towering over a multitude of old maps and books.

“It turns out, there is no light anywhere here!” I said to clarify just in case.

“On the Island, you mean? You all need lanterns, don’t you?” the Stargazer smiled.

“Why doesn’t the lighthouse shine at night? Does it happen? Why then…”

“It’s an abandoned lighthouse, not an ordinary one! Besides, as you already know, I’m Stargazer, not a lighthouse keeper. And the stars are watched in pitch darkness! Ordinary light only distracts from the real one!”

The Stargazer sat down at the table and invited me to follow his example.

“At night,” I persisted, “ships and ferries need lights! Otherwise, they risk crashing! Is it possible to live on an island without a lighthouse?”

“You see, Alice, the real lighthouse of this Island is the Wish Tree,” the Stargazer smiled. “As for me, I can’t imagine a better place than this tower, it’s almost the Babylonian one!”

“Does the Wish Tree really make wishes come true?” I asked quite in a whisper.

“If a bulb burns out, it won’t,” the Stargazer answered seriously, but then he laughed. “You came for the lanterns, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” I nodded. “Or rather, I was going to the Wish Tree, perhaps someone there could have told me where and how to get lanterns… To be honest, I still don’t understand the connection between the lanterns and the stars!”

“You catch a shooting star, put it into a lantern and hang it on the Tree! How many grades did you complete at school?” the Stargazer chuckled.

“I have two Universities degrees, and both with honors,” I admitted and sighed. “However, I don’t understand anything, not only about stars and lanterns, but about all what is going on here, on the Island!”

“Sorry, I’m joking, Alice! Perhaps you don’t need, or even it can be harmful for you… to get know all at once. The elephant is eaten in pieces. Besides, everyone sees elephants through the prism of one’s own stars!”

“How is it?” I got surprised.

“The fate of a person is quite strongly predetermined by the Sky. Not 100%, but in the matrix of one’s Earth journey the corridors are narrow enough. Who should be drowned, according to the Creator’s decision, will never be burned on the fires of the Inquisition.”

“Water… water is all around me,” flashed through my head, and I shuddered involuntarily.

“Do you mean,” I continued the conversation, “that each Victim has its own Executioner beforehand?”

“Sometimes there are variations with the Executioner, which one will cut off the head of a given Victim, but if the head should be cut off…”

“And the date… when the head…?”

“There are several potential dates usually, one of them…”

“And do you know your own?”

“What a strange question!” the Stargazer got surprised.

“Is it all written in the stars?”

“In the Sky passports. Certain stars and planets make their stamps in the Sky passports at the moment of soul’s incarnation on Earth. This moment is as well in advance predetermined by the Creator!”

“Can you read such passports and tell the truth?!” I asked incredulously.

“No one, even a professional Stargazer, can get and tell you the whole truth, because a Stargazer is not the Creator. I can’t know, for example, why someone’s head should be cut off.”

“You mean, why some soul appears on Earth, already predestinated to become Victim and not Executioner?”

“Correct! This is exclusively the Creator’s prerogative. It is possible, but completely useless, to speculate about the causes of human fate. Astrology, by the way, is a mathematically exact science, this is not a finger in the Sky!”

I suddenly noticed on the table of the Stargazer the same books as in the Cave of Magicians, the Moon Book and the Sun Book.

“Are they about the stars, too?” I asked, glancing at each book in turn.

“Not only,” the Stargazer sighed. “By the way, on this Island everyone sees always either the Full Moon, or the New Moon. What about you?”

I hesitated, because I couldn’t remember! But I remembered the potion! It had its expiry date, meanwhile I hadn’t got a single lantern yet!

“I am sorry, it’s very interesting, but…”

“But you need lanterns… How many?”

“Two,” I answered instantly and remembered the Boy. “No, let’s make them three!”

“What do you mean by „let’s make“?” the Stargazer was surprised. “I neither make nor distribute stars to anyone!”

“What’s?!” I exclaimed.

“I can only suggest you the place where they are falling down now, and you will catch them yourself!”

My consciousness became like an unhappy kettle, the water in which was about to boil out, and clearly there was no one to take it off the stove.

“Listen to me, please… I do understand nothing!”

The Stargazer delved deeper into his Sky maps, then came up to the window and returned to me smiling.

“Athos in Greece!”

“What do you mean?!” I asked.

“The stars are falling down there. They’ve been falling for a week, by the way, and will be over soon!”

I looked helplessly out of the window. The Stargazer hugged me.

“Stand on the edge of the Wish Tree rock,” he said. “Look into the Sky, where the heaven lanterns are hanging. Imagine them falling down and visualize your own, already caught, in the palm of your hand. Then, by the power of your thought, meditating on the cherished wish, light it and hang it up on the Tree. Understand?”

I walked out of the tower of the Abandoned Lighthouse, turned left and, likely, immediately noticed a lonely rock beyond the bay, illuminated by many lights! Almost at the same time, however, I sensed someone watching me.

I turned around and…

The figure instantly disappeared into the thickets! Goose bumps ran through my body! It seemed to me that it was not just a figure of some stranger…

It wasn’t even Yanis, but… the Beekeeper!