It is raining, there are shining puddles on the trail, entire streams running along it, soaking up the forest bedding, smelling of damp soil, stagnant moisture, something elusively fresh and at the same time too damp. The trees shake with naked branches.
When the next turn of the trail is followed by a sharp descent, one has to grasp the thorny branches of the growing bush, which are still decorated with darkened berries. But nothing, albeit scratched, I quite safely go down and freeze for a moment among the silent fir trees. Under their fluffy paws is much drier, only lonely droplets break off here and there.
Getting through the spruce tree, I almost forget that I can at any moment change the local uncomfortable world for some sunny and bright. In the end, there is also a charm in the rain.
Here are the fir-trees, and a new strong path appears in front of me. It leads to a brook, through which a good bridge is thrown, and then it runs over a rounded hill, because of which white smoke breaks through. It smells like hot oak logs.
Speeding up the step, I'm thinking about who I can meet in the cabin, lost in the wilderness. Whoever escapes from everyone there listens to the rain knocking on the roof, making tea and drowning the oven.
Here the door of the house, standing in the depths of a fenced plot, opens. There is a real shaman on the doorstep, looking at me and smiling at me. I boldly go further. My master is tidy, but wearing animal skins, his face has no age, and gray and long hair is woven into braids. His hands are dark, wrinkled and finely scraped, and I don't need to ask why.
While I'm settling at a wooden, roughly knotted table, the shaman is silent. I also have nothing to say, in some sense, we are as united as the forest and rain are now.
When I see tea on herbs with lingonberry berries in front of me, I look into the dark eyes of a shaman and say:
- Thank you for your hospitality.
- When I walk through your world, you will accept me back," he says. And we nod to each other. The next conversation does not make sense yet. Our communication should not sound in words. And the shaman pulls out a pan-flute. Now it's time to talk.
Deep down at midnight, I leave the house. The shaman is watching me afterward.
It's rained, the forest is looking at the clear skies, and I know it's time to leave one world and go to another. But I'm still in no hurry, turning over the hill, going to the bridge, and freezing for a moment, looking at the fast waters of the creek.
Later, I go east, the sun shines in my back, finally warming up, drying out the excess moisture from the forest. Ahead of me, there is a settlement waiting for me, were, I already know, I will have to walk on the edge of the worlds again. But for now I can stay here, and it's a great joy. Traveling is always a great happiness.
But the clover is replaced by a dense path filled with rounded blue stones, and I cover my eyes to be somewhere else.
And again I am standing over the sea.
So it turns out that this is where I find myself most often. Maybe it is this world that should be considered my own? Nowhere else have I felt like this.
But, of course, my dwelling is not here at all. I remember a cozy room, soft light, familiar objects. No matter how much I love the gray sea, no matter how much I adore these rocks, and still, having walked around the world, I will come there - to drink tea, look at the night sinking down on the city.
Our paths are so bizarre.
But what kind of world does a shaman friend from the past wants me to take him in?
With this?
Or will he go up on the porch of my house before going to the city, noisy and smoking in the sky?
Amazing question. But someday I'll deal with it, too.
I'm not in a hurry, I'm walking along the trail past a ridge of hills, on the other hand, very, very close to the cliffs, the waves are raging downstairs - today the mood of the local sea is not too good, and the heavy and gloomy clouds are crawling from the north. It seems that even here it wants to catch up with me in the rain.
And very soon the wind suddenly pulls me to the next world.
This time I'm almost at home, in one crossroads from my evening tea party. In the wind rustles a fescue, the sunset is already pouring, and the rain clouds do not smell. So, I was still ahead of this downpour, broke away from it.
I decide to climb the hill first, to look at the steppe here, and when I'm on the top - naked by the winds, polished, almost brilliant - I see that far away in the north there are still clouds of clouds. How strange it is to run away from the rain through the worlds!
But I continue this game, walking straight from the top forward and... standing on the porch of the house, persistently fighting with the keys tangled in my pocket. When I open the door, the first drops of water start drumming on the visor above the porch.
Still, in this race, I won, perhaps, in this, too, helped me with a familiar shaman. And smiling, I go into the kitchen and put the pot on the fire. I'm about to have visitors, and in this rain, they'll probably want to drink hot lingonberry tea. Not even one or two cups. That's how it always happens to travelers around the world.