Era Emilia E-Book

I. I. Mendor

• Herausgeber: Mendorli
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 369

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Strange creatures appear on the doorstep of Emilia's house, when the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explodes a few kilometers away. They remain in the town which is empty from the radiation and fear, raising the child as a Superhuman, and revealing to her the knowledge, which could change life on Earth forever.

But what happens if the creatures disappear as suddenly as they appeared? What happens if the Earth desperately defends its secrets? Will Emilia build a new Babylon?

When the apocalypse becomes yesterday, when the religion blesses sinners, and science – dreamers, when a miracle becomes commonplace, when birth becomes the end, and the end becomes the beginning, a new era will come. Era Emilia...

Leseprobe

ERA EMILIA

I. I. MENDOR

Mendorli

ERA EMILIA

by I.I. Mendor

© 2018, I.I. Mendor

Strange creatures appear on the doorstep of Emilia's house, when the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explodes a few kilometers away. They remain in the town which is empty from the radiation and fear, raising the child as a Superhuman, and revealing to her the knowledge, which could change life on Earth forever.

But what happens if the creatures disappear as suddenly as they appeared? What happens if the Earth desperately defends its secrets? Will Emilia build a new Babylon?

When the apocalypse becomes yesterday, when the religion blesses sinners, and science – dreamers, when a miracle becomes commonplace, when birth becomes the end, and the end becomes the beginning, a new era will come. Era Emilia...

ISBN: 978-1-91141-444-5 (eBook)

www.eraemilia.com

This book is in copyright. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

1

It was the twentieth year of my life and the tenth anniversary of my one-soldier war. The 3395th day, since they disappeared as suddenly as they appeared. They called me Era. However, I distinctly remember how Mom kissed both cheeks of her ‘little Emilia’ every morning. And I called them Heavens because there was not a single day when they all did not freeze as they were, raising up their bald heads with narrow-eyed pupils skyward. Those were the funniest thirty-two minutes of a day – you could check your watch by them – because for me, a little girl, every time, every single day, it seemed that every one of the seven Heavens emanated up to the farthest point of view an aigrette of coloured rays. When a random dull bird flew through it, its feathers shone with a green light for a while! Or blue, or red! But none of the Heavens shared my admiration – no sound was heard from them, no slightest movement was visible, their breasts did not raise with breath, and even the pouring rain could not make them shut those miraculous deep eyes of theirs even for just an instant. Later, while all seven aigrettes of my now vanished forever Heavens were still visible after rain, I ran to look for them and never could find them. Then I returned home to cry out my distress and take care of my fresh wounds. I remember how after my clumsy children’s games Mom took care of them. She got up from behind the table, leaving Daddy alone, washed my scratched knees, applied something thick and smelly from a white tube on them, dressed them with a bandage and then returned to the table. That table was a big mystery ... My parents sat at it as if charmed, during in the long evenings. When they sat down, they were sad and kind, and when they got up, they were already jolly and wicked. Sometimes, I spent the whole afternoon at that table, when nobody was at home but did not understand why my parents’ eyes became blurred, and their words were muddled. “My little Emilia... You do not need so much... And that is why you are so strong, my little one… And your father and I are so weak... Weak...” And in half an hour, with a sharp and powerful mother’s voice, she commanded me to go to bed. Until the sun went down, I invented names for the clouds outside the window and counted new voices in our kitchen. How many of them could such a small house hold? When the clouds and roars of laughter had disappeared in the dark, calm, soothing dreams came...

2

When, like flies on a hot day, airplanes swarmed over the town, I was four years and four days old. Suddenly, the creamy taste of festive cakes, which I still kept on my lips, was mixed with something cold and metal, like the rusty pipes in the backyard that we used to lick on a bet with neighbouring children. Mom told me not to imagine things... For a few odd seconds, the trouble shook the face of one or another of the almighty adults and just as quickly hid, leaving only a shade of shame for inappropriate thoughts. The evening news was watched, but not as usual - the tension held the backs of my parents unnaturally straight as if some unknown force pulled them by the tops of their heads upward, and their feet were firmly pressed to the floor - as if ready to instantly carry their master away from yet unknown danger. “My dear Emilia... This is just a little trouble at the big Station… They cannot deceive us…The TV tells us, Dad’s friends say... Why do I tell you that…? Why do I tell you that?” Mom was talking to herself. And I believed her, but still felt the metal sourness of the rusty pipes on my tongue and lips.

That night I saw the Heavens for the first time. They stood near our house, touching with their hairless heads the lower leaves of the tree. That particular tree was not too high, but apparently, neither Daddy nor Mom, let alone I could reach its branches, even dodging a little and bouncing. I saw them by chance because I came up to the window to look at how the lights of busy planes pierced the sky. And those two strange creatures, it seemed, deliberately did not avert their eyes from me. The pupils of their eyes were narrow, like a cat’s, when it blinked in the sun. In the artificial light of a distant lantern, I could easily see the perfectly flat but greyish skin of the Heavens, their narrow, almost invisible lips and even smaller, nearly absent, noses. I remember how I wondered, why they had such big heads with such small eyes, noses, and mouths. “What a waste”! Dad would exclaim. But he slept, so I had to be surprised alone. It seemed that I saw one of the two strangers smiling before I left. When they quickly vanished into the darkness of the night, I returned to my bed, and I did not see either them, the planes, or dreams that night.

On April 27, 1986, they announced the general evacuation in my dull and quiet Pripyat. “Here we have a little trouble, my dear Emilia…” Mom mumbled hectically, closing the front door behind a familiar militiaman.

The floor littered with sheets of paper did not want to accept Mom’s prayers and curses – finding the right documents among the jumble was a task worthy of gold seekers. They were ordered to take only the most necessary things – and who in the world knew what a Soviet citizen needed most outside his unchanging home? “But… what is it... What is it”? Dad repeated, indiscriminately pushing random clothes into bags. “We can live without it for several days at least… Luckily it’s almost summer and yet that we never took a cat!” Mom was somehow distracting herself. I was sitting on the floor in the middle of a small kitchen staring at a huge human carousel of fear. It was as clear as day to me that Mom was afraid in a different way, then when the old kitchen refrigerator broke down, buying a new one seemed a biblical miracle. Dad’s high forehead slouched all the way down to his eyes, and I was afraid that they would soon become invisible or that they would become so narrow as those of the two strangers beyond my window. The two of them ... A persistent knock on the door brought my parents to their senses. I was forbidden to listen to what adults say, so I was still sitting on a single island of calmness in the middle of the kitchen floor, which always smelled of fried oil and onions. A deep, quiet voice seemed to sweep like a tide across the entire apartment. It could sing lullabies to children or read the train schedule at the stations. Its sound seemed to lull me for a while into a sleep – into the one where you can sleep sitting up. I caught some words and entire phrases. ‘Chornobyl’, ‘you must go’, ‘radiation’, ‘Emilia will stay here’, ‘you have no choice’... How so? How could I be here without my Mom and Dad? I knew too well that that day had been still some good dozen years ahead! I am still too small and unable to cook for myself three times a day! Maximum – twice: once to pour boiling water into my oatmeal, and the second – to break eggs in a frying pan... And who would kiss me on my cheek every morning? And who would slouch his forehead down on his eyes if I were naughty?

I did not understand what that pleasant voice was rambling and waited for Dad to kick the living daylights out of him! Why did Dad keep silent? Mom? How could it happen that Mom was silent? I was harassed and dashed for the door – there were only two people there, and I did not know any of them. “Your parents had to leave town for a few days, they asked us to look after you because all your toys that you just cannot leave without them are here, and you will be able to play all day long and go to sleep whenever you want. And you will eat ice cream as much and as often as you wish. We will not abuse you, and we will teach you everything that we know”. I recognised them, those people who had one voice for two – they watched my window, touching the crowns of the trees with their heads.

“Just don’t kiss me on my cheek, because I don’t like you”, I agreed, realising that my Dad and Mom had decided everything without me.

“Deal. May we call you Era”?

“Weird strangers”, I thought and nodded.

“The Whole Era”, they said and smiled.

3

My native town knew neither peace nor people anymore.

A powerful blast at one of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant reactors had become the greatest catastrophe in the history of nuclear energy, but the world was still unaware of the danger. The invisible deaths over a few days covered half of Europe and Ukraine. Just a few kilometres away from my quiet home, the human-made concrete volcano silently threw out radiation that would have sufficed for three hundred Hiroshima. Hundreds of buses in an uneven nervous chain carried the inhabitants of my town away to safer places. I wondered if anyone had guessed that there were no more safe places? The thirty-kilometre contaminated area around the reactor, which would soon become my only decent home, was still inhabited and people were not warned about the danger for another two weeks. In private gardens and in main squares, thousands of people celebrated the spring, and several dozen kilometres from them, forests and woods became brown from radiation, and the firefighters fainted forever under the walls of the Station. Hundreds of liquidators of a terrible catastrophe were convinced by the supreme authorities that they were extinguishing, at any rate, a large but quite ordinary fire. They received lethal doses of irradiation within a few minutes of their last work. Many tons of uranium dioxide, iodine, cesium, tellurium, and inert gases emanated from the anthropogenic hell, descended to earth and penetrated forever into the ground, the water, and settled on the wool of animals, and infiltrated every cell of any weak human body. Thousands of them would become dust in the first months and years following the catastrophe. Hundreds of thousands of others would remain disabled until the end of their suffering days. And millions, upon millions of people for hundreds of years ahead would feel in themselves and their children the presence of a quiet, invisible killer.

The Heavens told me not to be afraid of the airplanes and of those people who almost always came to ask why during the evenings when our house lights were still turned on. I learned the phrase that worked on people in uniforms without fail.

“We need to be here. You will go away and never remember that you came here.”

The response was never pronounced, and only the dead sound of the closing door proved that the supervisors of the alienated area allowed us to stay in our home.

Every day I woke to see that the Heavens were not sleeping and went to bed when they did not even yawn before the night sleep. There were seven of them, and I am not sure that I knew which two of them compelled my parents to leave obediently, without money, and without their little Emilia. “Good morning, Emilia”, “Good night, Emilia”, I told myself every day so as not to forget my name. “Era will have a happy day”, “Era will have good dreams”, said one of the Heavens, so that I had no doubt about the carelessness of my easy-going childhood. I drank a cup of milk and took a sweet green triangular pill, which the Heavens carefully placed on the table every morning. “Now you have nothing to fear”, they said, and I had no fear.

We lived on the second floor of an ordinary Soviet five-storey ‘khrushchoba’ – ‘Khrushchev’s’ concrete-block house. They built thousands of such concrete slums, weak, loud, grey, ugly, and unreliable - as if temporary...

It seemed that the whole town was built only to perish gloomily, cursing the entire world. The rooms of our apartment, like everyone else’s, were so small that any Heaven could touch both opposite walls at once with his hands. In the largest country on this vast planet, there was no more place for a man than a hen in a chicken coop. Mom and Dad loved the Soviet Union so passionately that they did not want to know about those who lived elsewhere. It was a strange love – like that of an abandoned child to his never-known gone-astray mother...

The Heavens told me to believe that my parents were safe and still remembered me, and I believed. I did not know sorrow or despair. The disappearance of neighbouring children and their parents did not disturb my peace – I gained more instead – every day as if on cue, the dogs gathered around me – those poor sweet things left by their owners for several days at a time, which became an eternity. I touched their wet noses, and they nuzzled my wet cheeks ... We brought calmness and peace to one another.

I had no idea where the Heavens took all the delicious foods that they nourished me with and advised me to share with my new friends. For hours, I fed dogs with meat, bread, and sweets, played games with them and stroked the fluffy backs of those who were tired and needed a nap. Occasionally, I fell asleep with them in the cozy shade of barely living trees, and sweet tenderness was born somewhere deep in my throat. I felt how it warmed through my chest and fingertips and itched my eyes to tears. I loved those dogs as much as they loved me. Since then, nothing more honest happened in my life...

“Today Era will go for a walk”. It sounded so convincing in my ears that I was surprised why I was not there yet.

“If we are seen downtown, they will force me to leave my dogs and go away”, I tried to object.

“Why does Era think about what she does not want to think of”?

“I think about what can happen! - I was angry but not in a childish way.

“Only what you let happen can happen”.

The indignation was boiling in me like potatoes in a saucepan. How could such adult, self-assured, persuasive creatures not see the obvious things?

“The obviousness is an illusion, Era will understand”.

What was that trick? I did not say anything about what they heard! Could Heavens like dogs, understand me without words?

“Words are optional. Era will learn”.

Miracles ... Nevertheless indeed - I never noticed that the Heavens ever communicated with each other. At least aloud. It sometimes happened that two of them stared at each other for a long time, but none of the muscles in their faces showed tension or play. It seemed like the whole world was born in their narrow, deep-set eyes – now they lightened, then darkened, or they exploded in bunches of colours that I did not even know the names of. It was my personal mute theatre.

“Era gets acquainted with Nature”, a Heaven stirred me from my thoughts.

“Era has already got acquainted”. I monkeyed him and froze in anticipation of the punishment.

“Era sees only the shell”.

“For Era, it is enough”.

“Era will go for a walk”.

“Goodness gracious”! I remembered how Mom concluded difficult conversations and gave up.

It was on that very day that the true magic began.

4

Seven Heavens and one little human strolled along a dead Pripyat street in the opposite direction to the one leading to the Station. I never walked it to the end, but I knew that if I walked a long way, the city would finish, thrusting the empty outermost houses into a thin etiolated forest. Strange stray dogs joined our weird group, but as they did not get any attention or food, they quickly lost interest. There was no one around. None of those tired and annoyed souls who traipsed their boring route back and forth twice a day. Behind our backs, from time to time, we heard a loud roar of the machinery, desperately pouring concrete and loading sand onto the damaged nuclear reactor. The sky above it was always a dull grey from the smoke, dust, and fear, even on a fine day. The Heavens walked softly and confidently, so I only heard the noise of my steps. I honestly, and in a human-like manner, tried to elicit their names, but it did not make sense trying to distinguish them one from another. They considered their appearance perfect, honest, fair, and irrespective, but I considered it incredibly nauseating. The only certain thing was that they all were male. Their mutual voice was low and deep - like that of the handsome old musician who used to live in our neighbourhood. Now, only an old dog with an annoying hoarse bark was left in memory of him.

Now and then, I rubbed my teeth and tongue with my fingers, because something invisible with a sour metallic taste settled on them. It bunged up my nose and penetrated my lungs, so to inhale properly, I had to make a considerable effort. Eventually, I got accustomed to the pattern of two small and one deep gasp, and I felt much less dizzy. The farthest house could be seen a few hundred metres away. It seemed that I the Heavens smiled unanimously when we passed it and left it us. Then they rushed forward so abruptly as if some invisible device had enabled them to maximise their acceleration. In the next instant, the Heavens scattered imperceptibly and froze, pressing their heads against the trees – each one of them with their own tree. Their bald skulls pushed the trunks so powerfully as if they were competing in a strength contest. I saw their small narrow eyes closed for the first time. Their long hands with equally long fingers hung down next to their bodies and twitched a little as if they slept. Their usually straight backs bowed somewhat from their strange postures and even appeared weak and spasmodic from human backs.

The answer to my embarrassment was instantaneous – in sync, they released themselves from the trees and, with pleasant smiles, invited me to come closer.

“You are born with the same power, you are equally brought into this world, and you get sick and die the same. Come and greet your brothers”, the tender Heaven’s voice carried away all my fears.

I have no brothers, I thought but did not dare to deny it.

“Era does not know yet how many she has”, the gentle Heaven’s voice intrigued me.

“Ah, you heard everything, I think... Sorry”, I felt awkward and uninvitingly in front of them with my now completely naked thoughts.

I had to run for a while before I could catch up with the Heavens. One of them gestured me to my tree. When I approached, he advised me to close my eyes and touch the tree with the back of my head.

“Well, they did not die of this ...”

“And Era will not die”!

The Heavens became much more fun after they left the town… I once again mentally asked them for forgiveness and pressed my head against the tree. The rough oak-bark crushed into my skin, and I was afraid that dozens of furrows would be imprinted on my forehead forever. “Feel the smell, feel the texture, and feel where it comes from the earth and where it enters the sky…” What I felt was only a hard grating on my forehead. “Era can hug a tree and listen to how energy flows through it”. I embraced the tree without any further hesitation, feeling some sort of bitter despair and hiraeth for my mommy's gentle hands on my face... Hot tears rose from my chest instantly and burnt my long-not-kissed cheeks, but my silent giant immediately drank them to the last teardrop. The rough bark became softer than the silk wool of my dogs, and the earthy odour came into my nose, completely filling my lungs. Seemingly, I would not be able to breathe forever... A Heaven put his hand on my head, and I felt a strange vibration under my fingers – as if thousands of small birds were flying, fluttering their wings under the bark. I leapt back and saw something that, apparently, if I were older, I would have run away from – the brown trunk of the tall tree was covered with thin electric-like wires, and trickles that pulsated like waves from the foot to the top of the tree and back again. They emerged from the very soil, from the very roots, and by nearly invisible thousands of thin blue rivers, which went upwards – through each branch and leaf, carrying something that was breathing and moving...

“Now Era saw the very life”, the gentle Heaven’s voice made me happy.

“That’s what it is like... But Dad said that it was disgusting and sticky like tar”, I mumbled and again crouched to the tree. The gentle waves rolled through my hands, and it seemed even through me.

I woke up at home on a hard, granite-like stone, pillow...

Having closed two creaking doors behind me, I went to the courtyard to find the Heavens and make sure that the soft throbbing trees I saw were not a dream. However, everything was the same as yesterday: the crowns of the trees were green and fuzzy, and the trunks were brown and firm. The Heavens stood motionless as if frozen with their heads lifted skywards, emanating the coloured jets. I could not determine the source of the light. It was not from the eyes or the mouth, but as if, flowing from inside their strange bodies through a smooth greyish skin. It seemed that they had been standing for a good half hour already because they all lowered their heads, inhaled deeply and carried on with their affairs. All, except one. He noticed my thoughtful look and, squatting down next to me, asked: “What is your world like today”? Could he not see my world, this funny, jolly Heaven? Did the same heavy air not make his lungs increase, perhaps, ten times, so that they at least got a little saturated with oxygen? Could he not see that nearly every day some government emissaries rumbled to our door, and did he not always convince them to go away and forget about their visit? Did he or someone like him, not leave me in a poisoned city for certain death or some other unknown atrocity? Was his voice not telling me about impossible things?

“My world is getting on my nerves a bit”, I mustered, at last, answering as my mother would.

In fact, I still could not imagine where those ‘nerves’ lived inside me; I only sometimes felt how the anxiety tickled my stomach from the inside. Every morning, after taking the usual pill with milk and oatmeal cookies, I sat down on the uncomfortable sofa to listen to the uncomfortable stories of the Heavens. They talked about how they did not remember when they were born or how long they had lived. How they lived everywhere but at the same time, nowhere; that they were older than our whole planet because they existed before it appeared and would be after its disappearance. Weirdly, they explained about people for hours, as though I was not a human myself. They said that I would definitely see how myriads of underdeveloped creatures would quickly realise the existence of the mirror they live behind – and then the world would collapse, and a new era would rise. Moreover, by that time, I would have learned to feel, to see, to know, to research and create.

“Yes, I was told that school would not be a fun game”! Of course, I understood what the Heavens implied. Then, together with them, I roared out loud with laughter and secretly rejoiced that the boring conversation about the obvious things was over.

Obvious things were not found there, where I was looking for them.

When the Heavens offered me to fly, I was not in seventh heaven! “Fly where birds and clouds fly”?

“Much higher…”

I was ready, but instead of a white airplane, a hang-glider or whatever, the Heavens advised me to sit down on the ground. “Much higher is in the opposite direction, silly Heavens”, I did not even try to conceal my disappointment. None of my guardians were offended; they also sat down, crossing their legs in their own way. “Era should close her eyes and master her thoughts by herself”. I obeyed because I did not have any games planned for today. With one eye half-open, I saw that the Heavens had shut theirs and exhaled deeply. Then one of them spoke. I heard this voice inside my head – not any further. “Era breathes slowly and deeply, listening to how her heart beats. Era is relaxed but concentrated. Era hears all the sounds and feels all smells around her; she allows them to be within herself and beyond. Era is born of the Universe, and the Universe is born of Era. Era feels how the wind tenderly pets her skin. Era can fly with it wherever she wants. She is light as an autumn leaf, she sees the sky and wants to embrace it. Era does not feel the ground beneath her because it is already flying up. Flocks of birds, large and small surround Era. They are not surprised that the Era is here because they are able to fly. Era can see how the angels are walking on the clouds if Era believes in them. Era is not cold or frightened, she is not afraid of the Universe because Era is part of it. Era does not feel the wind and does not see the clouds anymore. She flies up and up, faster than any spacecraft. Era is more perfect. There is no air, only darkness surrounds her, but Era no longer needs to see or breathe anymore. Era is already something much more than a set of imperfect organs. She knows that her home is around her and sees a small blue sphere beneath her feet – so tiny, and that’s why – insignificant. Nothing is important anymore: neither the houses that Era saw nor the people who came to her house. Neither the tragedies shown on the TV nor the money that made her parents anxious. Neither the death, which the old neighbour woman from below feared of, nor the birth, which made the parents of the noisome toddle from above so happy. Era does not see the end of the darkness, but it does not frighten her, because now Era knows that after everything becomes unimportant, only she will remain important. Era is where nobody living on this planet was. Before Era, a star occasionally sparkles, flying for an eternity. Era has The Eternity. She realises that she no longer has a body. Era is invisible and therefore free. When Era’s journey on the Earth is over, she will return to this place and choose her new home. Era will fly back and forth until her soul wants to be not any more imprisoned in any of the worlds. Then Era will become the Universe itself. And now Era must return. She can go to any of the countries, seas, oceans or mountains, but she will return to us. Era is here!”!

Salt tears burned my face. I grabbed the grass on the ground so firmly that it seemed I probably plucked off hundreds of stalks. I was there! I saw that which I could not know! Can I fly? Am I able to fly now? I tried to bounce, but it did not work. I rose to my feet and jumped until I fell from fatigue. I still felt myself, the smoke (smoke?) that I used to be and could not believe that I saw my hands and my legs again. What was this real movie they were showing me? Was it just a part of the Heavens’ entertainment – to make you see that which does not exist? The wizards quietly sat and watched the hysteria of a small child, who certainly did not deserve such excitement.

“Era does deserve such excitement. This is a blessing, not a punishment. Humans will understand that they do not know everything. Humans will understand who they are, and then the New Era will reign. What we show is not magic. Era can fly without us. Everyone can but does not believe. Only believe in what they see, in what surrounds them, and forms the consciousness, but in fact, consciousness is to form what is around. Humankind has lost the initial conditions for the unification of reason and soul. Therefore, the genuineness has gone from this planet. There are too many humans, their perceptions of the world impose one on another, interfering with the world itself, and it decides to be somewhere in the middle between billions of representations. From the first day of life, humans learn to see, and not to grasp the surrounding. They say that the sky is blue, trees are green, diseases are incurable, God is invisible, life is finite, and it is not worth interfering with destiny. They call it experience. The fear of being ridiculed is stronger than the desire of being free. It takes possession of a human entirely, even when one does not know about it. The human chooses a road already trodden because in an unknown way one stumbles and tumbles without any guarantee of getting anywhere. So, one trots only to death, from time to time craving small attributes. Eventually one really dies, leaving the questions ‘what was it’ and ‘what for’, to the next generation, which already grows its offspring in stale, rather than true representations. Their suffering rings in our ears; they rock the air as a storm rocks an old ship. We hear them every second because they are part of one Universe. Our home is amazingly like the Earth, so we are amazingly, like people. One cannot fly to it as people try to do. Moreover, even after hundreds of years, local technology will only get us there, where we will overtake for a fraction of a second. But humans will still be sure that they have reached the edge of the Universe. When Era grows up, she will understand why we are here and why we tell all this to her. Era will understand when she learns to manage her thoughts and the whole world; when objects in her hands grow, and her eyes will see new colours; when her ears hear the thoughts of others, and her body – dissolves into thin air. When Era learns to see through Space and Time and merge into one with them, then she will understand why she has been sitting all day with us on a cold ground”.

I swear on all my dogs, I could not understand half of their words. However, that did not matter, because the Heavens were wrong – I did not learn the best half of what they were talking about.

5

“Late! We came too late”!

In a moment of despair, the Heavens broke into the earthly language. They probably wanted me to understand that I was helpless. It had been the third year since the making of human hands had swept its creators away from Pripyat. A sarcophagus, which resembled a futuristic grave, was pulled over a destroyed reactor, the usual humming fuss of the town had stopped long ago, and I only occasionally heard a roar of a heavy car or a buzz of a light aircraft. The Heavens went to the reactor every day; when they returned, their grey skin acquired a green phosphorescent tint, and their usually narrow eyes could hardly see the world at all. It took them an hour before they could get up from the armchairs and open their eyes, and their skin became again smooth like a river pebble. At that time, I entertained myself by taking care of the small garden, which the Heavens planted for me, and the first harvest that it brought that year. I was happy with every potato that I had dug up from the soil with a rough stick, and immediately fried it on an almost dry frying pan; the Heavens could not even imagine what kind of delicacy they refused to try.

My parents did not return to our house, and fewer dogs came to take a nap on its walls. I understood that they were dying of radiation. The Heavens had explained to me, that it was an invisible and merciless killer that would penetrate into every cell of my body if I did not take a small triangular pill every morning. I did not mind because they always gave me milk and cookies (who knows where they got them, because sellers from the nearest milk shop went by on the same bus that took away half of our neighbours, and I did not see any cow in the streets of our town).

Every day the Heavens showed me new countries. Most of all, I liked to stand on the very edge of the Portuguese land, where the ocean hit the steep cliffs, and its roar filled my ears – only then was there a real silence, and I felt the calmness in my heart. Several times, crowds of Germans or Britons passed by and did not even notice the seven-year-old girl half a step away from the cold Atlantic. I liked Africa – the men were lying, the women carried sheaves of some unknown grass high on their heads. The children, those younger, sat on the ground, and those who were older were annoyingly noisy, and nobody, except me, noticed the crazy, exuberant colours all around. The whole range of unseen animals and birds, clicking their teeth and fluttering their wings swarmed around me. They could neither bite nor sniff me, but for some reason, they tried to do it constantly, as if they knew that there was someone from another part of the planet with them. When a dark-skinned man noticed a gang of animals imperceptible surrounding me, he immediately burned a bunch of grass and smoked around himself and the entrance to his small untidy hut.

I could have appeared where I wanted, but at first, I did not know where I wanted to go. When I screamed ‘in any funny place’, it did not get me anywhere, but I ended up sitting on the grass near my house frustrated. “Era will not get anywhere if she does not know where she wants to go. If Era wants to go to China, she will not fall on the Great Wall, but into one of the dirty, noisy cities. If Era wants happiness, she will receive a free dessert and not a villa on the Italian lakeshore. Era has to know the exact coordinates – otherwise, she could be a hostage to the incident”.

What a hell of a system! It annoyed me every time when I did not know the exact coordinates. “Can I just not get to a nice place”? I sighed when, instead of coloured fields or tall waterfalls, I saw the same pebble faces of the Heavens. “You can commission”. “Goodness gracious! So omnipotent, and so unimaginative! Well, give me your Italian lake!” I puffed anxiously, and in a fraction of a second, I could not hold back the tears of happiness – deep, blue, Italian happiness. Tall, slender trees grew around it, and their crowns seemingly scraped other planets. Their fragrance tickled my nostrils, and the sharp branches scratched my fingers. It took me a whole day to stroll around the lake along a neat path. I felt no hunger, no thirst, and no fatigue. My feet were soaked in water, not as it would be if a tourist bus had brought me there, instead of the Heavens’ magic. I was precisely there, but my senses were muffled – as if only half the strength. However, I could accept such a price for the journey.

When I returned, I wanted everything at once – food, water, and sleep, and ‘thank heavens’, the Heavens always had enough supplies of everything. My sleep grew stronger, like my belief that I lived in the most wonderful of worlds.

That Sunday, I travelled without the help of the Heavens. Green surrounded me, and I smelled something nice, though, of course, for many kilometres there was nobody around who could have baked cakes or cookies. It smelled like home on during the school holidays when Mom was preparing to treat the guests, Dad, and me. I missed those holidays. And, my parents… What were they doing now? What had they been doing all these years? Did they remember their only daughter? Maybe, they gave birth to another baby, and kiss her? Or even two? I wanted to see them! I needed to look into the four dearest eyes of my family and understand why they had not yet returned to their Emilia. I sat comfortably in the shade of a tree, hugging my two favourite dogs. They gave me peace... My eyes were shut tight, and I could feel every blow of the tense wind. That was it; it would take me to my parents wherever they were. Wherever they were, I just wanted to be close to them! Or, at least, near one of them, if they were no longer together or spent their days off separately. That moment! At that moment, nothing happened... There was soft wool under my hands, and beneath me – hard cold ground. The world did not obey my command. Obviously, it obeyed only the Heavens. “Era has to try until it works out”, they said. Well, Era would try. Era had nothing to do. I sighed and closed my eyes again, and that time, easily and without pressure, almost not wanting and at the beginning of failure, I imagined myself with my parents. Something had changed... The wind was no more, and at first, I smelled the dust and then caramel – Mom’s caramel! She stood there, in an unfamiliar kitchen looking at the TV. She stirred melted sugar in a saucepan. She was smiling. How rarely she smiled at home, when she had me, her little Emilia... I approached and touched my mother’s hand. No, she did not know I was there. She did not hear me, and I almost did not feel her skin. The door slammed, and father entered the kitchen. He had become handsome and seemed to have grown a bit taller. For the first time, he held in his hands a long, beautiful flower, stretching it out to my mother and at the same time feeling shy as a boy. They were happy without me... After all, I was not miserable without them either. Tender sorrow before bedtime and sometimes in the morning – that was all I had left of them. An invisible wave rolled right at me and threw me out of the new parents’ apartment back under the very same Pripyat tree. That had never happened before! Apparently, my excitement was not so strong then... I should have wept with sadness and despair, but instead, I was joyful, as never before. My parents were alive and happy, Mom was baking something tasty for Dad, and Dad brought flowers to Mom. If I had to stay here for that, then let it be. As long as my dogs slept on my knees, I was sitting there without any movement, smiling with joy that warmed me from the inside and the warm wind caressed me from the outside.

The Heavens were happy with my story. However, they were not interested in my family drama, they were proud of me, my independent journey to where I should not be. “Now Era will learn more. Maybe it’s not too late”. On that same day, they educated me with a new force. The Heavens suggested imagining a stone in my hands, and then a mug, after that – a live sparrow, but everything was in vain. Even when I stopped laughing and took the matter quite seriously, nothing, except for trembling, appeared in my hands. The Heavens were more upset than I was, but they said we would repeat everything the next day. And we repeated: repeated imagining, fantasising, ordering, beckoning rain, chasing clouds, reading thoughts, seeing new colours, speaking in a foreign language, turning clay into stones, and stones into sand, levitation, repainting houses only with the force of thought... I could not do what they were able to do. No matter how much they told me about the human nature, the soul of the creator, my omnipotence, the desire and the intentions. I could not believe that all this concerned me. Even when I occasionally imitated one of the Heaven’s tricks I thought it was an accident because I did not know anybody who was capable of such miracles. “This fear and grief are caused by the search for the strange rather than one’s own. Era does not know who others are, but she must know who she is. Era should not believe in coincidence because the Universe has its own laws. There is a reason for everything: energy is not wasted in vain, it is always reborn into whatever Era honestly believes, what she is terribly afraid of, and from which she escapes. Moreover, everyday thought becomes a reality. An instant desire becomes only an echo, failing to catch on to any of the worlds. Era should know that reality is also an illusion, no more serious, and no more material than a dream. They are millions, myriads, an infinite number! If Era does not choose any one of them, randomness happens, like that from a deck of playing cards. Era has to choose”.