Foreword
With a slightly awkward gait, inherent, probably, to many pregnant women, Dony slowly walked along the coast of the calm silver sea, wrapped from above, like a blanket, with a whitish fog. From time to time she bent down to pick up a shell or pebble she liked from the sand. And, when she looked a bit at it, she threw it back into the water with careless ease. Lazy waves barely licked the edge of the shore. But this was not always the case; lumps of seaweed and piles of broken shells thrown ashore reminded of this. Dony picked up a smooth matte pebble, it was green. She stroked its rounded edges and slightly rough surface:
“You were once a shard of glass,” Dony said. “Bright, transparent, with sharp dangerous edges, which could easy injure.”
She smiled a little sadly:
“How the sea rolled over you with its waves! You are no longer a sharp shard. You are now a harmless pebble. Like many others. And only your color reminds of your past.”
And, unlike all her other finds, she didn’t throw it away, but put it in her pocket. And she turned towards a house on a high hill.
At home, she put the green stone on the table.
“What is it?” Her husband asked.
“The sea gave me such an unusual stone today. A former shard of glass from a green bottle,” Dony replied. “You will bring me luck, right?” She smiled at the pebble. She opened her notebook:
“So… where did I stop?” She thought for a second. “Yeah…”
And, bending over the notebook, she quickly began to write. The words from under her hand folded into lines. She wrote as if someone was dictating to her, almost without crossing anything out. Page by page.
Chapter one. The rite
“Where is Karina? Where is this bitch?! This fucking creature!!!” Prince Arel shouted like mad. He literally flew into Lis’ room, and he could not answer him with a crippled tongue, only rolled his eyes in incomprehension and shook his head.
“I'll kill her! I will kill her! Do you know where she is?”
Lis shook his head negatively and, quickly fingering with two fingers, showed movement.
“Escaped? No such luck! She's at the old woman’s! At the witch's, I tell you!”
And seeing the lack of understanding in the eyes of Lis, who because of his swollen tongue could not utter a word, Arel grabbed him by the hand and dragged him along.
