On the day before, seven years after the myth collector Egle told Assol the story about a ship with scarlet sails, she returned home from her weekly trip to the town's toy shop with a very sad face. She brought back home all her toys and was so upset, she couldn't even say anything at first. Only after guessing by Longren's troubled expression that he was expecting something much worse than reality, she began to talk, absently gazing at the sea, while her finger doodled on the window pane.

The toy shop's owner had started by showing her his ledger, and she shuddered at seeing an impressive, three-digit number of their debt. "That's how much you owe since December," he had said. "And that's how much was sold." He had planted his finger on the other number with only two digits. "Pity, isn't it?" She saw by the merchant's face that he was angry. She would have run away gladly, only her shame wouldn't let her.

She continued her recital: "He said, 'My dear, it's not profitable anymore. Nowadays, only foreign goods are fashionable; people don't buy your simple toys.' He told me more, but I don't remember everything. He probably felt sorry for me because he advised me to try the Children's Bazaar and the Aladdin's Magic Lamp." After letting out the most important news, she turned her head, looking timidly at her father.

Elbows braced on his thighs, Longren hunched over his hands, fingers interlaced tightly between his knees. Sensing his daughter's regard, he lifted his head and sighed.

The girl fought off her own heavy mood and ran up to him, snuggling at his side and slipping her small hand under the leather sleeve of his coat. Laughing and glancing at her father's face, she continued with pretended vivacity.

"Now, listen. I went to the Children's Bazaar. It was huge, with lots of people. They pushed and shoved me, but I jostled through them towards a manager, a black man in glasses. I don't remember what I told him. He looked at my toys, but he didn't take anything, just wrapped them all as they were and gave them back."

Angrily, Longren listened. He could almost see his dumbfounded daughter in that rich crowd at the counter, which was heaped with expensive toys. A neat man in glasses condescendingly explained to her that he would bankrupt himself if he started selling Longren's unsophisticated toys. Adroitly, he presented to her the new construction models of buildings and bridges, miniature automobiles, and electrical airplanes. They all smelled of paint and school. According to his words, children in their games only mimicked the adults.

Assol had also visited the Aladdin's Magic Lamp and two other toy shops, but she didn't sell anything.

After their supper and a mug of strong coffee, Longren said, "If the toys don't sell, then we have to find something else. Perhaps, I'll sail again, on the Fitzroy or Palermo. Of course, they're right," he continued thoughtfully, thinking about the toys. "Children don't play now. They only study. They study and study, but they never start living. That's a shame, really. Will you manage without me for one voyage? It's unthinkable, to leave you alone."

"I could serve with you, in a buffet perhaps."

"No!" Longren nailed the word, hitting the shuddering table with his hand. "While I live, you won't serve. But we still have time to think." He fell into a grim silence.

Assol settled beside him, on a corner of a stool, and he knew without turning that she was readying to calm him down. He almost smiled but restrained himself, so not to frighten or embarrass her. Murmuring something under her breath, she smoothed his tangled grey hair, kissed his mustache, and plugged her father's fuzzy ears with her thin fingers, saying, "Now, you don't hear that I love you."

While she beatified him, Longren sat frowning, as if he didn't want to inhale smoke, but hearing her words, he burst into his bass laughter. "You dear," he said simply, caressed the girl's cheek, and went out to check on his boat.

Assol stood in the middle of the room, hesitating between quiet and sad idleness and the need to do her chores. At last, she washed the dishes and checked what was left of their food supplies. Without weighing or measuring, she saw that flour would run out before the end of the week, that the bottom shined in the sugar can, and tea and coffee packs were almost empty. They had no oil, and the only vexing exception that gladdened the eye was a sack of potatoes.

Finished with her inspection, she washed the floor and sat down to sew a skirt from old discards, but remembering that her scrap bundle lay behind the mirror, stood up again to reach for it. Then, she looked at her reflection.

Behind the walnut frame, in the crystalline emptiness of the reflected room, stood a slim petite girl in a cheap white dress with pink flowers. Grey silk handkerchief was tied around her shoulders. Her face, half-childish and slightly tanned, was vivid and expressive. Beautiful eyes, too serious for her age, gazed at her with a shy concentration of deep souls. Her features, although not that of a classical beauty, had the delicate, clear lines that separately could belong to any woman, but combined created a portrait graceful and charming, and uniquely hers.

The reflected girl smiled as sadly as Assol did, and that troubled her, as if she watched a stranger. Pressing her cheek to the mirror, she closed her eyes and quietly caressed the spot with her reflection. A swarm of vague, tender thoughts flashed through her mind; she straightened, laughed, and sat down to sew.

***

While she is sewing, let's look at her closer, or better yet—inside. There are two girls, two Assols, blended together in an amazing and lovely irregularity. One is a sailor's daughter, a tradeswoman, a toymaker; another—a living poem, with all the miracles of its rhymes and images, with all the secrets of the words and all their interconnected lights and shadows. She knew life in the limits allotted by her life experience, but she perceived common things from a different perspective; saw inside the visible. Everything trite was alien to her. She liked reading, but in a book, like in her life, she read between the lines. Unconsciously, as if by inspiration, she made multiple discoveries, ephemeral and inarticulate but important like cleanness and warmth.

Sometimes, she even felt reborn for a few days; on those days everything mundane plummeted away like silence under a violin bow; everything around her became a lace of enigmatic. Many times, excited and timorous, she went at night to the seashore and waited for dawn, seriously expecting a ship with the Scarlet Sails to appear. Those moments were pure happiness to her. We would have trouble immersing so completely into a fairy tale; she had trouble escaping the tale's power and charm.

At other times, she sincerely marveled at herself; unable to believe that she believed, forgiving the sea and sadly returning to life.

Now, stitching carefully, the girl contemplated her life: simple and frequently boring. Her loneliness together with her father often oppressed her, but a wrinkle of inner shyness, having already formed in her soul, prevented ebullience. Many mocked her as a halfwit, and she was used to this pain. Nevertheless, sometimes her chest hurt from the insults, as if they were blows.

She was unpopular as a woman, although a few men of Kaperna suspected, wildly and incoherently, that she possessed much more than met the eye, only in another language. Men of Kaperna loved their women heavy and large, with oily skin of wide ankles and strong arms. They courted by slapping backs and shoving at each other, as in a public market. Their affections resembled an artless simplicity of a roar. Ethereal Assol was as unfit to such surroundings as a ghost. The same way, while a military bugle calls soldiers into action, a violin's lovely sadness can't affect their straight attacking lines.

***

Humming her little song, Assol worked, her small hands stitching as quickly and neatly as a sewing machine. She didn't worry about her absent father: recently, Longren often went fishing at night. She knew no fear either; sure nothing wrong could happen to him. In that respect, she was still the same young girl Assol who prayed in her friendly way by saying, 'Good morning, god,' in the morning and 'Good night, god,' in the evening. In her opinion, such familiarity with god was enough for him to avert a disaster. She could understand him easily: the god was always busy with millions of problems. One should just endure everyday's inconveniences and wait for the god to find a moment; like a guest coming into a house full of people should wait patiently until her host found a moment for her.

Done with sewing, Assol folded her work on a side table, put down the fire in the hearth, undressed, and went to bed. But she wasn't sleepy. Her mind was clear as in the middle of the day; darkness seemed artificial; even her body, like mind, felt weightless, diurnal. Her heart beat like a pocket watch between her pillow and her ear.

Frustrated, she tossed and turned, alternately throwing off her blanket and covering her head with it. At last, she managed to call up a picture that usually helped her sleep: in her mind, she threw rocks into translucent water and watched the ripples spreading in feather-light circles. Slumber, as if waiting for this snack, came. Assol fell asleep.

She dreamed her favorite dream: blooming trees, melancholy, enchantment, songs, and miracles, but when she woke up, she only remembered glistening blue water lapping her from her feet to her heart. Admiring its cold magnificence, she stayed in that impossible place for a while before awakening completely and sitting up in bed.

Sleep vanished as if it never came. The sense of novelty uplifted Assol, prompting her into action. She gazed around, as if she was in a new place. Predawn trickled into the room like sympathy. The bottom of the window was still black, but the top lightened up. Outside, near the edge of the frame, the morning star gleamed. Realizing she wouldn't sleep again, Assol dressed up and pattered to the window, opening the shutters. Attentive, crystal-clear silence cloaked everything around. In the blue twilight, bushes shimmered; farther ahead, the trees dozed, and the air smelled of heat and soil.

Holding the top of the frame, Assol smiled. Suddenly, something like a distant clarion call stirred up her essence, waking her again, this time from a corporeal existence to a plane of clarity and awareness. From that moment, the jubilant wealth of recognition didn't leave her.

Grabbing her old silk handkerchief, she tied it under her chin, locked the door, and darted toward the road barefooted. Hurrying along the empty street, she felt as if she sounded like an orchestra, as if people could hear her. Everything was delightful, everything pleased her. Warm dust tickled her bare feet; she breathed deeply and merrily.

Dark roofs and clouds silhouetted on the dusky sky; slumbered palisades, rosehip, gardens, and the road. Everything was different than in the daytime, obedient to a different order. Everything slept with open eyes, secretly studying the passing girl.

Increasing her pace, she hurried to leave the village behind. Beyond Kaperna stretched the meadows, and beyond them, on the slopes of the coastal hills, grew hazelnuts, poplars, and chestnut trees. As the road turned into a murky path, a furry black dog with white chest and speaking eyes started weaving its way around Assol's legs. The dog knew Assol. Yapping quietly, it followed her for a while, and Assol, looking into the dog's intelligent eyes, felt sure it could talk if it didn't have a secret reason to stay quiet. Noticing the girl's smile, the dog wiggled its tail, sat down to scratch its ear, bit by his mortal enemy, and then headed back towards the village.

Assol stepped into the tall grass of the meadow, sprinkled with dewdrops. Holding her palm over the wet panicles, she walked, smiling at their floating touch. Gazing into the faces of flowers, into the tangle of stems, she discerned there almost human hints—poses, movements, features, and stares. She wouldn't be surprised at a royal procession of mice or a susliks' ball, or even at the rough merriment of a hedgehog teasing a gnome. Right on cue, a grey hedgehog rolled in front of her on the path. "Fook-fook," it said, irritated like a coachman by a pedestrian.

Assol talked to those she saw and understood. "Hello, sick fellow," she said to the lilac iris, half-eaten by worms. "You have to stay home," she said to a small bush, growing in the middle of the path and tattered by the passersby's clothes. A big beetle tried to settle on a bluebell, bending the flower but clutching it nonetheless. "Shake off the fat passenger," Assol recommended. The beetle, unable to hold on, flew aside, clattering noisily.

Agitated, trembling, and glowing, Assol reached the base of the hill, hiding in its thick woods from the meadows, surrounded by her true friends that spoke with bass voices. They were old trees, growing alongside hazelnut and honeysuckle. The trees' drooping branches touched the top leaves of the shrubs. Among the heavy, tranquil foliage, white clusters of blossoms nestled; their aroma blending with the smells of dew and tar. Littered with slimy hunches of roots, a path dipped and climbed up the hill.

Assol felt at home here, greeting the trees like people, shaking their wide leaves. "I love you, my brothers, but I'm in a hurry now," she whispered. The 'brothers' caressed her with their leaves and creaked like relatives. Finally, feet stained by soil, Assol broke out of the woods and stopped on the edge of the cliff over the sea, panting from her fast journey. As unconquerable as joy, the bottomless belief bubbled and rang in her soul. Her gaze tossed it to the sky, where it soared, rejoicing and proud, before returning with the light coastal waves.

The sea, highlighted by a golden thread along the horizon, still slept; only under the cliff, water rose and dropped steadily. Steely grey near the shore, the sleeping ocean changed its color farther away, becoming blue and black. Behind the golden thread, the sky flickered, blazing like a huge fan of light. The clouds blushed, and the delicate, divine colors glimmered in them. In the black distance, tremulous, snow-white foam glittered, and then a crimson gap exploded from the golden thread, throwing scarlet ribbons over the ocean towards Assol.

She sat down, hugging her knees and staring at the sea with her big eyes, the eyes of a child. Everything she waited for so patiently was happening there, at the edge of the world. From the deep underwater country, curling seaweed climbed to the surface; its exotic flowers glittering among the round leaves. The top leaves twinkled on the surface of the ocean, but those who didn't know, as Assol did, could only see tremors and gloss.

From the thicket of those flowers, rose a ship, halting in the middle of dawn. She could see the ship as clearly as clouds. Splattering joy around, the ship sailed like wine, rose, blood, lips, scarlet velvet, and crimson fire. It swooped straight at Assol, the foamy wings fluttering under the powerful thrust of the bowsprit. Standing up, she pressed her hands to her chest, but the fantastic play of light changed into hazy ripples, the sun rose, and the brightness of the morning pulled off the veils from everything that still stretched and yawned on the sleepy earth.

The girl sighed and looked around. The music stopped, but Assol still vibrated from the notes of its ringing chorus. The impression gradually weakened though, became a memory, and at last metamorphosed into fatigue. Assol lay down into the grass, closed her eyes, and fell asleep—a sleep as hard as a young nut, without dreams or worries.

A fly traveling around her bare foot woke her up. Assol jerked her leg and opened her eyes. Sitting up, she smoothed her tousled hair, so Gray's ring reminded her of itself. Considering it a grass stem trapped between her fingers, she straightened them. As the hindrance didn't disappear, she impatiently brought her hand in front of her eyes, and shot up as a spurt from a fountain. On her finger, Gray's shining ring made it seem a finger of a stranger.

"Whose joke is it?" she shouted. "Am I still asleep? Maybe, I found it and forgot?"

In astonishment, holding her right hand with the ring by her left hand, she studied her surroundings, examining the sea and the greenery, but nobody stirred in the bushes, and the distant blue waters under the morning sky didn't display any signs. Blushing, Assol heard her heart saying, 'Yes.' There were no explanations, but even without words and thoughts, she found reasons in her strange feelings, and the ring had become precious to her.

Trembling, she pulled it off her finger and held in her palm like water, looking in wonder with all her soul, heart, delight, and youthful trust. Then she put it inside her bodice, hid her face behind hands, from under which a smile unchecked struggled out, lowered her head, and slowly went back home.

That's how Assol and Gray found each other in the morning of the summer day full of destiny.