Wandering Spark - Part 52
"Red tree. Pink tree. Rosewood. Juniper. Nut. Oak. Pear. Chestnut…"
Varan was lying on the floor and moving his finger through warm, convex paths. Through the stems of a tree that has been growing for decades.
"...One can go day and night, and even hundreds of days. One can fly or go, but there won’t be any sea, only lakes, rivers... Do you know what a river is?"
"Flowing water. The rafts told me."
"The wood what is brought to you by rafters can only go into the stove."
"We don’t need more."
"And I like wooden things. There, on the mainland, all the furniture is made of wood."
"Rich men."
"No... Poor people too have wood."
"I say, all the people on mainland are rich..."
Silence.
In the off-season the tower was completely different. Window glass was tightly closed, and on each - a silver mesh, protecting from the sun. The grid moved from the wind. Shadows and glare shone on the wooden panels. A fire was burning in the hearth.
"I thought that it always hot here in the offseason."
"It’s cold. Sometimes is very cold. And the sun burns. If you stay without a roof - you'll freeze and get roasted at the same time... But it's still better than the endless rain."
"You can get used to the rain," said Varan.
"Human can get used to anything," answered after a pause Lereala… or whatever his name was. And it seemed to Varan that he had put a completely different meaning into these words. What he was saying wasn’t about the rain.
Their conversation lasted many hours. It moved in a circle as if winding a spring for a mechanism. Or spirally, like a ladder in the tower. They had time to talk about a lot of wonderful things, and again returned to them, and again repeated the same words - as if trying to taste them.
"Sometimes we entered the live lands," said the magician. Varan has already managed to understand from the conversation that the mage doesn’t have a father or don’t want to speak about him. And that he spent his childhood with his mother and for some reason in northern places. And he managed to see with my his eyes if not the whole world, then, at least, a significant part of it. "Imagine, a fertile field... Such that gives four crops a year without much difficulty... but under it must necessarily lie human bones. Man, woman, child - all the same. And everyone treats this quite calmly – like your seasons..."
"It's completely different," Varan protested.
"Maybe," the mage agreed easily. "Or here's the forest... Which is very nice, but from time to time it, um, starts to wonder. And it just takes off and goes. Looks for... another forest. I don’t quite understand if they have sex, but I swear to you, Varan when they come together, this begins! If there are people in their place of meeting - they just run away, throwing their homes, cattle, leave everything!"
"No way," Varan said. "You are joking at me!"
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