She didn't even know herself where the tiredness that had driven her to oversleep almost every hour of the trip to the Green Island had come from. What Marja knew - and that was really more than regrettable when she recalled what a long journey they would still have ahead of them (after all they still had to travel all the way to Finland from here) - was that she would not sleep that night. She didn't even try, she was too awake for it.

"Good," Bastian had said when Marja told him, and stretched his feet far from himself, after he had made himself comfortable on the forest floor covered in leaves and lush green grass. "That's actually quite positive, isn't it? Then you can stand vigil while I finally get some rest." The contemplation on his face disappeared for a moment and he looked Marja in the eye with concerned seriousness. "After all, a night watch can't be so wrong for all the creepy stories they tell themselves about the Green Island."

And with the worst fantasies he left Marja alone in this strange, suddenly so hostile and dark looking forest while he travelled to the distant land of dreams. What the hell was that supposed to mean? Were the creatures who were supposed to live here not only the imaginations of the inhabitants?

Elves and fairies were an hostile folk. You look at them wrongly and are going to live the rest of your life without sight, Marja thought bitterly and wrapped her bent legs, her back leaning against the dirty, damp bark of a tree. Hadn't she just been eagerly awaiting a meeting with these mystical beings? Now she was only afraid of them. But the repression protected her from the really bad things that lurked in the farthest corner of her mind to finally come back to light as a memory. That didn't happen that night. Not by itself.

She was thinking about Kirka's stories. About the beggar. Bastian. Was it really him she described there? And if so, why did he claim not to know Kirka? It was strange - probably a coincidence, but still strange. And what about the rest? Yes, the second story had been about the ghostly woman who was sent by death personally, probably for no direct reason. Or to scare the crap out of humanity. Unfortunately, she could no longer ask Kirka that. And as for the other people - the flower girl and the elf apprentice - Marja would have liked to see them once. Were they all real, or was it just the beggar?

She startled when she heard the harmless scream of an owl. Was it true that every time someone died, one of them would scream? Probably not. Because then the poor animals would have to scream day and night for the soldiers, for stillbirths, for terrible accidents, for those who succumbed to their diseases, for those who had even been killed by someone else and for those who had simply ended their lives after many years. And so many cries the tender throat of an owl could not stand.

Yet, Marja held her legs wrapped around her, looking straight ahead. She saw the dark green blades of grass, slightly silverish, moving in the wind, the silhouettes of the trees, which bent over her almost ghostly with their long thin arms as if they wanted to take her with them into their own world. And finally, of course, she saw the sea shimmering between a few densely overgrown bushes, the almost half-filled moon reflected in the water and seemed to dance in it, together with the stars that had settled on the water surface like small dots of light.

Spooky, scary, magnificent.

It was a miracle how starry that night was, although the dark clouds in the twilight had announced so much disaster. But they had left the night sky in full splendour, as if they had been nothing but a curtain that had now been drawn for the performance.

Not even Bastian's even snoring, which occasionally drowned out the lament for the dead of the owls, could take some of the idyll of this imagination in any way. Yes, Marja thought, while she gave the sky an appreciative smile. I'm really happy - and I didn't even have to pay for admission!

At first she did not notice the white light that flashed briefly between the blacked-out trunks of the trees. Like a will-o'-the-wisp that gives you untenable promises. But when she saw it, her blood almost froze in her veins.

What was that? Was it all in Marja's head? She slapped her hands in front of her face when the light unexpectedly appeared on the other side. Then in front of her. Above her. Even as she turned around, she saw the light disappear between the trees as if it were full of hecticness.

Marja wondered what that could be, although she already suspected the answer.

"Am I dying?" she whispered hoarse and shaky as if death was already on her heels. Then she gave Bastian an anxious look, but he was still breathing calmly and evenly, while a death light sneaked around her, which was probably already looking for his victim.

This must have been how the traders in Kirka's story felt when they wanted to walk home at night from the market through the gloomy forest and suddenly saw the light they had heard so much about. As it approached its victims, ambushed them like the predator it was.

The Lady in White. Messenger of Death.

In Kirka's story, unlike the gruesome ultimacy of her cold master, she was only supposed to take the people with her so that they would become her eternal servants. No. No, just no! I promised Freddie I'd come back, Marja thought, while her shaky knees threatened to give in as she tried to lift herself up.

She wanted to call out to Bastian, go to him and wake him up, but all she managed was a hoarse whisper. Shaky and whiny. You stupid fool, she insulted herself. Maybe she doesn't want to take you, but Bastian with her...

And for this thought she actually slapped herself, it hardly hurt, but punishment had to be. Guilty, she looked over at the sleeping beggar as if he could read every word of her thoughts in his dream. Of course, she didn't know if he could really read at all. Marja suppressed a hysterical laugh. Yeah, she was was starting to go totally insane.

"Marja..." She did not dare to turn around, even if the quiet female voice, as if of a woman who had lived on earth for many decades, sounded bewitching. "Come here, don't be shy..."

"I've read about you," Marja replied sharply and so loudly that she was shocked herself. "I wouldn't be afraid to turn around, I just don't begrudge you this triumph!"

" Not?" the disappointmen in her voice sounded like pure mockery.

Marja could almost feel it, the cold breath. She heard a snort. As quietly as the hooves moved on the forest floor, she had almost forgotten the horse. But of course it was there, the eternal, storm-loving companion of the Lady in White. Marja shivered as the ice-cold tactile hairs of his nostrils touched her neck.

"Come with me," whispered the voice, but this time gentle, soothing. Marja almost would have been willing to follow her just to be able to continue listening to her. She transformed the cold into a pleasant warmth that enveloped her and sang her lullabies, without words, without melody. Is that what Bastian meant when he talked about the singing lights?

Awesome. "Now come," the Lady in White said. Marja smiled. Yeah, why not? she thought. It's so cold in this world. Why shouldn't I follow the warmth?

So she turned around, very slowly, to enjoy this warmth every moment. So much in her said that it would not weaken. It would radiate forever. The warmth came from her, the Lady in White, who had just been so cold.

But this blissful warmth was suddenly suppressed, by a feeling that began to boil out of nowhere inside Marja, by pure hatred. The hatred that suddenly flared up in her wanted to burn her when Marja was suddenly pushed back so harshly that she hit the forest floor, which fortunately alleviated her fall.

"What...?!" she shouted, but interrupted herself. What had happened? Where did this hate suddenly come from? Bastian held a stick pointed at the gleaming white phantom, composed of a horse and its rider, who angrily distorted her snow pale face.

It appeared to Marja that her glowing darkened as if the darkness of the night was infesting her like a disease covering her face with shadows. Dark spots crept into the coat of her horse, which shone unreal white until just a moment ago, as it put on its ears and tinged its dangerously brightly shining teeth. Only these kept the white that Kirka's words promised.

Her blazing fury, during which Marja had to suck it up so as not to turn her face away, did not seem to impress Bastian. Did he know he had no chance with a stick against the Messenger of Death? Sadly, reason is a gift not many people possess.

"You miserable mortal! I always thought one couldn't be that stupid, and I've just been taught otherwise!" Marja did not understand the words that followed. She spoke it in another language, a language she had not listened to before but there were many languages she had never heard of before. Only that this one sounded different. Unlike any language spoken by humans.

Bastian remained unimpressed by the curses of the Messenger of Death, pointing his stick at her, which he had probably picked up in a hurry somewhere on the forest floor, barely lit by starlight, with an inexpressive expression

"Just leave her alone," he said with a nodding gesture in the direction in which the dark, ominous, densely overgrown forest, between whose bare tree trunks the light of her veil had first shone, began.

The woman fell silent instantly. The darkness still enveloped her like a swarm of bees. Her horse breathed in dangerously deeply and slowly, its nostrils inflating and becoming smaller again in a steady rhythm, but the murderous desire in its dark, ice-cold eyes, which actually always seemed gentle and good-natured with other horses, did not weaken.

Suddenly it blecked its teeth, showed their sharpness in full splendour, and made a hissing sound as if the air squeezed through them. Frightened, Marja took another step back, while Bastian's hand twitched. The woman's face, stained with shadows, turned into an ugly grin. Her iris turned so light blue that she almost turned white, while the eyeball was streaked with fine red veins, as if she had suddenly turned into a human being who had slept just as few nights as Marja herself.

"I don't know," she sizzled, and Marja had the impression that a snake was speaking to her, "whether what you're doing is brave, foolhardy or the stupidest thing I've ever had to see of a human being. Yes, I think it is. Stupid." She hissed like only a cat can do.

Bastian lowered the stick, breathed deeply and built up in front of her. "Your master would be unpleased if he knew how you played with man. Very unpleased. And you know what? Your master is Death, but also Death is fair," he said, bowing so deeply to her that the mockery could not be overlooked.

The beast, on which the White Lady sat, stood on its hind legs and wagged its front hooves in the air, as if it were beating around blindly hoping to hit the head of the cheeky beggar. The woman clasped her delicate hands around the reins and tore so roughly that the corners of the animal's mouth were brutally pulled backwards. Staggering it came to a safe stop again on all fours.

"Death -" She whispered so that Marja had to suck it up and take a cautious step forward to understand her. "- does not listen to ordinary people." Lost in thought, she stroked through her mount's mane, which fell down spider-weaved and without any felting on its long, narrow neck, as if the wrath that had caused the shadows had left her and took away all the darkness that her furious blindness had previously caused.

To speak in the name of her cold master, the female figure bent forward. She whispered hoarsely: "And he certainly does not listen to beggar-poor tramps like you."

"I am not a vagabond," Marja protested and took a determined step forward, because with darkness the scary had also departed from the deadly woman. "I live on the North Sea island of Märcken, together with my parents, and I've been going to school there for six years!" Only after she had spoken she realised Bastian's look, which made her lower her head embarrassed.

But Bastian didn't respond to it any further. "You heard the girl - and Death will listen to her the same way. Now let's move on. Morning is almost upon us and we must leave the forest under cover of darkness before the Elves of Light discover us." He shuddered.

With a stone face, the woman restrained her dancing horse. "Which way are you going to take? And where shall it lead to?" The horse, which again showed the unreal white like an additional layer on the pure coat, snorted and lowered its elegant head. Dark hair of the silk mane fell over his eyes, which radiated a temperament that was obscured by rage until just now.

Bastian didn't answer, even though Marja couldn't tell what took his breath away. Maybe it was the angel-like beauty of the face of the White Lady, unless it had become a rage-distorted grimace.

So Marja said what was to be said: "We will go to the land of the Singing Lights! To Finland, if that tells you more, and... Yes, our boat is at the coast and we were going on today, right? Weren't we? "I have no idea what we're doing on this island here for such a long time."

"Ireland is not just an island," the Lady in White hissed, whereupon her horse began to dance so joyfully as if it could finally feel the ice-cold hatred in its heart again. "It is home to so many creatures more valuable to it than a human could ever be, you understand?"

"Copy that," confirmed Bastian and nodded with an important air.

And when the woman actually managed something like a smile - albeit empty and unreal like burning ice - Bastian was speechless again. It was a shame that such a creature had been given such beauty.

"But I still have one question," she said, pointing in the direction in which the waves of the sea flooded the beach. "What boat were you talking about?"