The Old Lantern Dreams. 8. Sky Ladder

"TALES OF GHOSTS"

about Love and Death from the Land of Mists
a collection of short stories
in the “Playing Another Reality” series

"The OLD LANTERN's DREAMS"

8. SKY LADDER

Olesya was waiting for her favorite holiday, the New Year, with bated breath, and really as a new one, so that it would radically change her life. The girl had been ill for a long time, but the doctors assured she was about to recover. And as a gift for the holiday, as always, she wanted to receive a book about the stars.

Why a book and why about the stars?

Firstly, Olesya was fond of reading, and she dreamed of finding in the very heart of the tattered pages some hints from the Cosmos, or from parallel Worlds, in the existence of which she believed as sacredly as children did in fairy tales. There were almost no books in the orphanage, and it took too long to wait for the next collective trip to the library.

Secondly, in sleep, Olesya often walked in space, exploring the stars and planets. And there, in the Cosmos, ships used to float everywhere. A lot of them and different ones: peaceful – with travelers, pirate – with sails, cannons and parrots, and just lonely boats – with nobody and nothing.

“But where would the boats come from?!” her friend Vadik used to mutter in bewilderment every time Olesya drew her dreams.

“As a matter of fact, there are cities and even countries on planets and stars!” that’s what Olesya’s father used to say, and one should trust him, because he had been a real astronaut, dead from overload – his heart gave out.

“Now he definitely lives on one of the planets in the Sky City!” that’s what Olesya’s mother used to say. She died under unclear circumstances a year after the death of her husband.

“They’ll take me home soon! To their City!” that’s what Olesya said when she ended up in the orphanage, where she got the most precious thing – a bed right by the window, through which one could sail to the stars at night.

However, Vadik, from the boys’ room, five minutes to the little prince, didn’t believe in anything and trusted absolutely no one, even Olesya! Probably because he had no dad at all, and his mother had abandoned him at the maternity hospital. Vadik told everyone that his parents had died in the war. The nanny didn’t argue with him, but Olesya heard her discussing Vadik’s tales with the headmaster in the canteen.

Olesya kept the truth, revealed to her, a secret, as from the five minutes to the prince, so as from other inhabitants of the orphanage.

“Sooner or later, Vadik will believe in my Sky City anyhow! I’ll sail away, and he’ll believe and become a real prince!” the girl thought.

One day Olesya passed by the guard’s room. On the TV screen, a woman who had been in contact with unusual people, supposedly from another planet, was describing their spaceship to a journalist. The aliens offered the woman to fly away with them, but she flatly refused.

“So, they will come for me soon!” Olesya rejoiced.

A few days later, the girl was appointed responsible for cleaning the floor. She caught sight of a crumpled newspaper, in which flowers for the headmaster had been wrapped a couple of minutes before, in a trash bin. Under the heading “Urgent!” Olesya read an announcement on behalf of the research center chief manager with a request to contact everyone who had seen an UFO.

At night, Olesya found herself in the usual Cosmos, where, as before, ships were floating, but that time, for some reason, all kinds of ladders were piercing the space – rope and cable, wooden and metal, even marble – ladders of various colors and sizes, as well as home ones.

A boat, guided by a girl with small white wings behind her back, approached Olesya silently.

“Hello!” the girl greeted Olesya. “I came for you! Have a seat!”

“Hey!!! Finally! And who are you?” Olesya asked, getting into the boat.

“I am almost you, but a local one. Although, it would be more correct to say, a winged one.”

“Where are we going?”

“Home, of course!” the Girl laughed, and the boat sailed away into Space.

“To my parents?”

“And to them too.”

“What are all these ladders doing here?” Olesya asked, still wondering what was going on there and carefully touching one or another from time to time.

“Ladders? That’s people! Almost everyone comes here with their own! So they leave the ladders, that hang out under our boats, making obstacles for sailing! And what’s the point of them? Just a temptation to go back downstairs!”

“Doesn’t anyone clean them up here? Don’t you have people on duty on the floors?” Olesya was surprised.

“It’s a difficult question,” the Girl answered thoughtfully and sighed. “We have a lot of gardeners, but the ladder cleaners can be counted on the fingers. There are some on duty, of course, but they are scrubbing the steps on the Real Staircase. These are personal illusions.”

“Listen!” Olesya exclaimed from an unexpected thought so that the boat almost capsized. “Is it possible to go down and up the ladders not alone, but with someone else? Well, uh… to bring someone with you here…”

“What for?” the Girl wondered.

“You see, we have Vadik in the orphanage. He wants to become a prince. And how can he become one if he doesn’t believe in his star, I keep telling him about?”

“He won’t believe it. But you can try anyway.”

“Why won’t?” Olesya asked offended.

“These ladders are not his, they belong to someone else. Everyone has to come here with their own!”

“So… what should he do?”

“Look for his own!”

“A ladder, you mean?”

“Well, yes.”

Olesya fell silent, immersed in heavy thoughts.

“Where to look for?” she sighed. “And how to look for? And most importantly, where to find it in the end?! Vadik himself won’t look for anything!”

Soon their boat docked at the pier.

“Here it is! This is one of the star cities,” the Girl commented.

On the pier, Olesya was met by her parents, and their joy was boundless!

The Girl with the wings told them to take Olesya in the morning to the Central Cathedral, where the ceremony of handing over the wings would take place.

“Wings? Will I get wings?” Olesya took her breath away.

“Yes, they are handed to everyone who believed! And you, of course, will be given them too!” the Girl smiled and sailed off.

The parents took Olesya to a cafe on the square, ordered her fizzy soda, ice cream and cakes, while they themselves drank coffee and asked her about all sorts of different things.

Already after midnight, Olesya found herself in the parents’ three-story castle. They built it themselves and equipped for her a room under the roof with a window into the Cosmos, billion stars and planets of which were studied in the Sky like mathematics at school on Earth. The parents said goodbye to Olesya and left for the bed-room.

However, the girl couldn’t fall asleep, being so excited by impressions which she wanted to share … with Vadik.

“Come what may!” she thought, and resolutely slipped out of the castle towards the pier.

Having swum to the nearest rope ladder, Olesya swiftly descended to Earth and entered through the half-open window into the boys’ room where Vadik was dozing.

“Vadik! Va-a-adik! Hey!” Olesya called her friend in a whisper.

“What’s up?” Vadik asked, reluctantly sitting down on the bed and unbelieving his eyes.

“Let’s go! Come with me! Hurry up!” the girl exclaimed happily.

“Where else?”

“Into the Sky!”

“It’s night! It’s dark and scary!”

“No, it’s not! It’s not scary at all! The Sky is very light for the stars!”

“And what are we going to do in the Sky?”

“To swim and look for your star so that you’ll find it and believe in it!”

“Is my star big?” Vadik asked incredulously.

“Certainly, it is! And I’ll show you the City where my parents live! They’ll feed you cakes and ice cream! And they’ll buy you lots of fizzy drinks!”

“Ice cream? Is it chocolate?” weighing the pros and cons, Vadik asked to clarify.

“And chocolate, yes! And lots of it!”

“And fizzy drinks?”

“Yes! Lemon, cherry, all kinds, whatever you want! Let’s go!”

“Wait,” Vadik got out of bed and backed away, “how will we get to the Sky?”

“By ladders! There are a dozen of them outside the window! Almost on every step! Let’s go!”

Vadik went to the half-open window, but suddenly stopped, as if finally and irrevocably awake.

“You’re lying to me! This ladder leads only to the roof!”

“No! Come on, and you’ll see all of them with your own eyes!”

“I don’t see any ladder, except for the one that leads to the roof! You are a liar!” Vadik shouted and, with difficulty struggling to keep from bursting into tears, added, “You've just decided to make fun of me!”

At the cry of the boy, the nanny peeked into the room, but found Vadik peacefully asleep in his bed. Olesya, hiding behind the curtain, waited for the nanny to leave and came up to Vadik.

“Sorry! I didn’t mean to offend you! It’s just because today in the Central Cathedral on the main square of the Star City, I’ll be given wings during a ceremony. I wanted you to be next to me in this dream. And then we would come back here together and wake up.”

“Go away!” the five-minute to prince muttered and covered his head with a blanket.

“Well,” Olesya said with difficulty, upset that the Girl with the wings had been right, Vadik didn’t believe the strangers’ ladders! So, it was no sense for her to return in the orphanage in the morning.

However, already at the window, Olesya turned to the boy.

“If one day you feel sad and lonely, come to visit me in dreams,” she said before leaving. “With your own ladder only. I can’t guarantee any wings, they are given to those who believed in them; but as for chocolate ice cream and fizzy drinks, I promise them to you in unlimited quantities…”

December 11, 1989 –
January 10, 1990