Free Princess of Dhagabad, The by Anna Kashina Page B

stones,” the teacher
says.
    “ But how?” You still cannot forget the
vision of the transparent rainbow that just now shone before your
eyes in the place of a lifeless gray pile.
    “ You must manage to see the glow again,
Hasan. But do not stop this time. You must become familiar with
this glow, define for yourself the color of the glow originating
from each individual stone. Only then will you be able to do what
you want with them.”
    You relax, searching for the now-familiar
state of mind, making the white lines on the carpet diffuse before
your eyes, making the pile of pebbles become a single gray mass.
This time you manage to catch the moment when the stones in front
of you start to shine. At first you cannot determine which light
comes from each individual stone. Then you notice that the pebble
lying on top, the one shaped almost like a disk, is spreading
yellow light around it, and that the yellow on one side seems green
because of the overlapping blue glow coming from the elongated
stone closest to it, the one that bears a dimple on its smooth
side.
    “ Can you see it, Hasan?” the teacher
asks.
    “ Yes,” you whisper, afraid to move, afraid
to scare off this unbelievable sight. You feel as if you are
peering into something sacred, carefully hidden from the human
eyes, a quality of these simple stones that makes them seem almost
alive.
    “ Try to separate the glow of one stone
from the others, Hasan,” the teacher says.
    “Separate—how?” you ask, keeping all your
attention on the colorful radiance in front of you.
    “ Choose one stone and look at its glow
separately. Don’t let the glow of other stones interfere with it.
Make its color look pure to your eye.”
    You choose the elongated stone with the
dimple, carefully separating its blue light from the surrounding
yellows, reds, and greens. Gradually you start to feel that the
chosen stone is floating in a basket woven of blue light that
doesn’t let it touch other stones in the pile.
    “ Now lift it, Hasan,” the teacher
says.
    You suddenly realize that the teacher’s
request doesn’t raise any questions in your mind. You somehow know
that by simply pulling at the blue basket with your gaze you will
be able to make the stone float up from the pile and rise to any
height within this large room. Almost without thinking, completely
absorbed in your new perception, you gently pull the stone out of
the pile of others, so similar in looks and so different in their
essences, and make it float through the air straight to your
teacher, lowering the dim blue shape into his open hand.
    Tears of wonder fill your eyes, washing away
the colorful glow, bringing you back to the familiar airy room
covered with a worn carpet, where the specks of dust circle and
dance in the slanting beams of sunlight coming through the narrow
windows. Relieved, you lean back against the wall, looking at
Haannan with a smile.
    “ You are very talented, Hasan,” the sage
says. “If you study hard, you will achieve a lot.”
    “ I never knew inanimate objects could
glow.”
    “ There are many ways to make the objects
float. The glow is just a game meant to explain to you these
ways.”
    “ A game, teacher?”
    “ We just played that the stones can glow,
Hasan. And that game helped you lift the stone with your
gaze.”
    “ A game? But I saw them glowing with my
own eyes, teacher!”
    “ Maybe if I had offered you another game,
you would have seen something different.”
    Back then you didn’t understand him. But you
forever remembered the joy of seeing the many-colored spot in the
place of a pile of gray river pebbles, of making a simple rock
float up like a bubble of soap and easily fly into the teacher’s
outstretched hand. And from that day on, the basics of learning
magic forever linked in your mind with the word “game.” Playing
games, you studied under sage Haannan’s guidance, easily learning
things that seemed impossible to his other pupils. Perhaps