In Year of Active Sun. Вадим Иванович Кучеренко

ose who dwell there are having even harder time. Sunrays like bullfighters’ swords are piercing through the ocean’s water penetrating into the hidden trenches and disturbing the deep–water creatures accustomed to the eternal darkness. They have to get to the surface, while a storm or a tide ruthlessly sweep them ashore. The great ocean engaged in a combat with the Sun does not care about their fate.

      After a tide the shore is often covered with seashells, either empty or with pearls inside. But there are snails in some of them. One can take a seashell to the ear and listen to what these tiny living creatures are talking about. To those who are able to understand them a whole fantastic world is being revealed. The snails’ memory keeps a lot of stories which they tell each other on the ocean bottom, while they are waiting for the storm to end locked in their shells.

      Here is one of such stories.

      …A girl is walking along the shore, leaving a chain of the tiny footsteps behind her, while the ocean is thirstily licking them off with its long tongues of waves. The girl is not looking back and can not see that. She does not care about the past – she lives with the present. She is picking up the shells thrown at the shore in order to decorate her hut with them. The hut itself with a roof of palm leaves is also made of seashells. The girl is throwing seashells with the snails back into the sea. Born with one of the sunrays in the year of the extremely active sun, she understands the snails’ whisper.

      The beautiful azure lagoons full of colorful fishes and the island flourishing with mangrove clumps were her own world, where she was born and grew up. There were neither predatory fishes in the water nor wild animals in the forest, and therefore the girl didn’t know what fear is and has never faced the evil. She was almost happy.

      Almost… She only missed quite a trifle – to share her happiness with someone. At times, even sunrise didn’t bring joy to her which was an alarming symptom. She needed a friend. Fussy monkeys, talkative parrots and fearful birds were just the playmates, capricious and fickle. They didn’t know what real friendship is. But there were no one on the island beside them.

      So, ones the girl decided to make a raft and take a voyage to the ocean. She was hoping to meet someone who probably lived on one of the surrounding islands. Indeed, she couldn’t be the only one in the whole world! This thought seemed to be so painful, that the girl was pushing it away, tying together the trunks of palm trees with the strong vines. She has already scheduled a date of departure.

      At dawn there was a storm on the island. Born somewhere in the ocean it was moving rapidly from north to south seizing everything on its way. A thousand miles away from the island the storm has picked up an air-balloon. For a long time it has been playing with the balloon, throwing it up and down, despite the loud coursing of its pilot. The boy sitting in the basket made of willow rods, fastened to the balloon with a rope net, was very angry with the storm for it has changed his planned route of the flight. He was fearlessly shaking his fist at the storm.

      Flying over the island, the aerostat subdued by the strong blast of wind has abruptly got down, touching top of a palm tree. The next moment it has fallen down on the sand shallow, raising a fountain of sand and water. A cover of the balloon has cracked with a loud bang, scattering the pieces of silk cloth on the whole shallow. However, the pilot was alive. He got out of the basket, shook off the sand and looked at the remnants of his aerostat with regret. Then, he looked around and saw the raft swinging on the waves and fastened to the palm tree with the vine, so that it couldn’t be swept out to the ocean. The boy came up to the raft and started inspecting it with great interest. He didn’t even notice a girl who was watching him from behind the mangrove bushes not daring to come out.