Free Crematorium for Phoenixes by Nikola Yanchovichin Page A

wings, revealing the charm of the southern waters leading
to Okinawa.
    This space has been crossed by generations
of traders, fishermen, and pirates, but it will sadly only be
briefly sketched, as sometimes happens on a trip in the
kaleidoscope of an unprecedented land.
    Because the course still pointed south, it
strained while lined with felt and decorated with garlands of salt.
The ropes vibrated from the air currents; they were stretched like
the bones around which petrels circled and lifted their melodious
song. The birds accompanied this journey through this piece of the
southern seas.
    Every moment the water waves were being
colored differently from the spectrum of light, creating a
uniqueness that fate has combined only in water or in a loved
one.
    There was nothing to disturb this
tranquility, which preserved the original slack that created the
world.
    And you must forgive us, reader, because
sometimes there are no great songs. There are just simple melodies
sung from a pure heart.
    It is because of these songs that what we
love is laying in the elms and emerald-green fields cut into the
land’s gates. Or perhaps it is being held ajar as noses in
chalk-white deserts that carry the haze of the sun. It may even be
found in the outlines and bristling pines of the mountain
slopes.
    But this is not always true, as you
know.
    Sometimes the pain we bear, hanging in our
souls, becomes too severe. It chases us with the words, “You have
nothing in this world except me.”
    Then all hell falls upon us. The dream
castles of sand are crushed by the heavy boot of reality.
    Then the densely written pages become
wrinkled, a crossed inability of sheets so that only dreams are
slammed from them.
    But at this point in our history,
tribulations are far ahead, covered by the miles, away from the
horizon, emerging as the oil-blue stripes around a ship.
    So as twisted fingers pass from one sea to
another, the sleeves and sleeveless water shall be imposed on each
other so that one as a blessed individual could travel to the end
of time and after a few days of the journey being shortened by
copyrighted storytellers, the ship approached the island of
Okinawa, which was rising on the water, smeared from adhered mud
and emerald salt spray.
    Chapter
Thirteen
    The underwater vessel surfaced like a
drowned man, weightless and submerged in the misty light that
penetrated the waters.
    The ice drifted while the snow precipitated
its pieces, tearing them open like crystals of wispy bubbles.
    Somebody opened the valves and strong air
hissed in morning freshness as the caterpillar train almost reached
the end of its trip.
    After a while, a few chilly people shivered.
The Leviathan’s engine started working with the sound of a fast
moving trolley that was splashing away from the ghost-white water
in a narrow strip. It shone like the trail of a comet.
    Iceland seemed again to plunge into the
misty landscape, scratching its limbs without giving up easily. It
was dragged like an animal into the den of a predator.
    During this time, Victor Drake, Amos Oz, and
the others emerged from several compartments reinforced by ladders
in the furnace room. They had started the auxiliary machines with
fatigue, like hunched over and limp servants in a dazzling chrome
laboratory.
    They were silent, each busy with his routine
and thinking through in his own way what happened thousands of
leagues under the sea.
    But as such things are examined, sometimes
an everyday person sees only emptiness and futility. But the worst
part is when he starts feeling those things when looking at
himself. Then he understands that in the face of evil and sorrow he
has lost a part of himself, a piece that will never be found.
    This is exactly the way the men were feeling
while looking at the surfaces of stainless steel that reflected
their inflated or oblong forms into soiled, frayed, denim
structures.
    They were straining in their minds and
looking for the blind, forgotten memories, the