The Daughters of Autumn

For everyone who at least once thought

they are too weak, shy or lonely.

Do not forget: you will always have a friend

who is ready to reach out to you.

Sometimes the storyteller has more than one story to tell. If both are equally important and their desire to come true is equally strong, none of them will be brought to life. Thankfully, it could also happen that these stories would intertwine, like two threads of different colours, and earn the right to be realized.

This is a story about two places, one with too much light, and the other covered in darkness. Though they could very well be one and the same, those who in them there only saw the parts they were willing to see.

This is also a story about two young girls. If they were to look in the mirror, it would show them the same reflection: a pale freckled face with wide cheekbones and bushy hair in all shades of autumn. Still, there are two girls and two names — and soon you will find out why.

One of them was called Alice, and the other — Kira.

Alice lived in the most dreamy city in the world. Let's call it Amber City. After all, amber is incredibly pretty, as are the unfortunate insects who drowned in tar before it solidified. But what is the point in thinking about these poor creatures? Their life ends in a blink anyway.

This city was a trove of the most exciting things, limited only by human imagination. It had everything: cobbled streets, tiled roofs, fountains made of turquoise and lazurite, carriages pulled by mechanical horses, narrow alleys, bridges hunching over the rivers, street lamps, towers and clocks, stained glass windows that remind you of dragonflies' wings — you won't believe how beautifully they sparkled in sunlight, dripping with thousands of colours! — and bookstores, cafes, workshops housing fascinating wind-up toys. Many people lived there, especially children: cute, funny, talented, adorable.

There were many small wonders in the city: streets that always lead you to the new places, houses that only appear once and you can't ever find them again. The owner of Amber City enjoyed playing with his little kingdom and its people.

And there was a Wall surrounding the city.

Nobody knew for sure what lies beyond that Wall, but many thought it must be the widest bellflower fields stretching all the way to the skyline. Or maybe other cities and countries. Amber City was perfect, so not even once any of its residents thought of crossing that Wall and leaving the city for another place.

Amber City is a bit of every magical place you saw on the pages of children's coloured books. Maybe you even tried imagining and drawing it yourself when you were little. Maybe missed it in your older years, when in a dark moment you felt like you were living in a wrong place, surrounded by wrong people, and your life consisted solely of sitting on your luggage, endlessly waiting to return home.

It invaded my dreams too, but please, next time you think about its cobbled streets and delicate towers, ask yourself — don't you think it is a bit too boring?

Also — think about insects drowned in amber.

There is a flip side for everything, and Amber City is not an exception. A dress has stitches and other details that best remain hidden, for example. The underside of a place is a little more intricate, but the idea is the same.

Once the war had to ravage the world where Kira lived, and it left only darkness and sorrow in its wake. Not many survived, and so it is hard to say who fought who and which side won. Magic and technology merged so seamlessly that it was hard to tell reality from dreams and fantasies. There was no Wall, as there was nothing permanent, since this world was ever-changing and flimsy, as night visions, as the mist. Little ponds of magic, stale and stagnant as swamp water, had the power to create monsters and revive the dead. This was the world of chaos, full of ruins, junkyards, bones-ridden battlefields and evil spirits. Even the hideouts of the last survivors, dwellings that were a subtle reminder of peace and normality, looked rather creepy. People rarely left the safety of their homes. The rest of the world was too dangerous and bizarre, and no ordinary person could survive out there. They would either die from the poisonous air or go mad, or possibly even transform into something unthinkable. Parents rarely entertained their children with fairy tales, but if they did, the stories usually ended not with the usual "and they lived happily ever after" but "and they died peacefully and painlessly".

That said, not many humans were still alive. Though there were a lot of creatures that you could hardly call human or that were not human at all.

As you can see, it is hard to imagine these places could be one and the same. Alice's world was small and closed-in, as a toy city in a small and ornate chest, as a nutshell that served as a bed for the tiny Thumbelina from a fairy tale and later for the well-known Danish prince, who suffered there from terrible nightmares. Kira's world was vast and full of freedom, but overwhelmingly dangerous and dreadful. Thus let us presume that there were two different places and, respectively, two girls.

Alice's father was the owner of Amber City himself.

His name... well, he had one, but it happened so everyone called him differently. Anyway, things often lose their flair when you learn how they are named, and even more often these names do not suit them at all. It is the same with people— though Alice's father was not quite human. Usually, he was simply called the Wizard. Are you curious about how he looked? This is also not an easy question. Some thought him young, some — old. Everyone in the city saw him in a different light. He liked wearing a top hat and a fur cape and frequently took books with him wherever he went. He had long hair down to the small of his back, white as moonlight. Though what does it matter when you can recognize a person anyway? And you couldn't mistake the Wizard for anyone else.

Since he was in charge of Amber City, his daughter could be considered a princess, and as a princess, she wore beautiful dresses. Sometimes dark as sorrow and high-necked, with stand-up ruched collar, sometimes — white and corseted, embroidered with berries and leaves. Her two servants wove ribbons through Alice's hair, plaited them into braids or intricate buns and decorated with pearl nets. At a very young age, Alice has learned how to be polite and smiling even when your head hurts from tight braids, a high collar squeezes your neck and corset crushes your chest, making it hard to breathe. After all, that is how a princess was supposed to behave.

Her father was quite strict, but only with Alice, while he was friendly and cheerful with all the other citizens. At the same time, she was the only one who was sometimes allowed to help him in the Library, the heart of Amber City, where he spent most of his days.

These visits to the Library were the happiest moments in Alice's life. She never ventured there on her own accord, without her father's invitation, and she always entered the doors timidly, as if scared of something. Usually, the Wizard welcomed her and spent time with his daughter, teaching her arithmetics and how to write and telling her stories, but then he suddenly closed up as if suddenly confronted with unhappy memories, and turned cold again. Alice didn't understand how one's attitude can change like that and it upset her every time.

Even when he was in an especially good mood, the Wizard never allowed his daughter to touch books in the Library. She assisted him only by bringing tea and dusting the shelves. Alice would like to consider herself a Wizard's apprentice, not just some kind of servant (she didn't even want to be a princess, to be honest), but alas, she wasn't much of an apprentice.

It would only be fair to tell you a bit more about Kira as well, but it's not that easy. After all, life in her world was flowing in its own way that was hard to understand for people like you and me. If I try to retell her story, it would look like a jumble of incoherent and unrelated events. Even the birth of a new life in this world couldn't be explained definitely and conclusively. Some came from a womb, but some appeared from artificial chrysalides wrapped in wires or even fantasies or time-lapses. Sometimes it was enough to call a person by their real name to make them appear. Some went through life backwards, getting younger, not older. However, Kira was not like that at all. Her life started simply, in a body of a tiny red-faced girl, as unpretty as any baby.

Alice's appearance was foretold by card readers. Gloomy and dark Arcana cards of the night, The Witch, The Mauve Moor, The Hanged Man, The Black Unicorn and The Stellar Cobweb led the way to the forest, where she was found in a bright spot full of silver and lavender herbs. She might have had human parents, but nobody knew who they were.

After that Kira was brought to a beetle hideout. The remaining inhabitants of this world sought any relatively safe home. The fortunate ones occupied magical houses, much more spacious inside than it may seem from the outside (old bookworms used to say that these places were called "hollow hills" before the war and beasts lived in them). There were many other hideouts, some immobile, some with wings or on the wheels made by humans. Kira's house looked like a giant beetle and was part living creature part machine, but still — alive, and it was always on the move.

The first thing she learned, before anything else, was to be stealthy. How to put on a dark protective suit and a mask so she could breathe outside her hideout. Everything brought danger in this world, even air.

The second was speech because even the most absurd world can't exist without words.

The third was spirit hunting. Along with other children, she entered their lair, wearing a ceremonial circlet of scarlet flowers, holding a bronze sickle in one hand, to battle these incorporeal, blindingly bright creatures that were swirling around the nest. (That seemed quite fun at the beginning, but soon the sickle grew heavy, her face started dripping with sweat, and the mask became suffocating).

The fourth was playing Go. The inhabitants of the beetle hideout spent half of their lives figuring out different combinations in this board game. Just as card reading, it greatly influenced their decisions.

Later Kira learned to steal life from creatures blessed with flesh, blood, breath. She learned to kick, bite, scratch, to keep fighting no matter how big or scary your enemy appears to be. There was no other way of living in her world.

And like that, her childhood passed. There were no seasons in this place; eleven hot waves went by, twenty-eight cold periods filled with snow, once or twice the beetle hideout got sucked in time storms... How do you count your years in a world like this? But at that point, Kira was almost as tall as her older neighbours, and her previously flat chest has grown fuller. The day of name choosing came, and that is when she got hers — Kira. In old ideographic symbols, it was written as "a child who brings change".