Waldemar and the River Runner's Maps

More about Waldemar and the River Runner's Maps

The day began with the sound of water laughing over stones, and Waldemar followed the sound as if someone were calling him. The path led through ferns and mist until he reached a bank where the river was so clear that one could see the clouds beneath one's feet. There, an old man sat on a stone, his face weather-beaten, his hands wet with reflections. "Are you the River Runner?" Waldemar asked. The old man nodded without raising his eyes. "I read paths in the water. But today they dance too fast." Waldemar sat down next to him, his backpack set down, and watched the river curve as if drawing lines on an invisible map. "You don't see them, but they're there," the old man murmured. "Every current is a path, every wave a decision." He dipped his hand into the water, slowly pulled it out, and between his fingers shimmered thin, living lines—maps of water, constantly shifting. "You can read them," he said, "if you're still enough to hear the river thinking." Waldemar leaned forward, and in the lines he recognized paths he had already walked—Mill Hill, the village, the trail to the Wanderkrone. But there were others too: shimmering lines branching off into the unknown. One of them glowed greenish and stretched from the bank up into the forest. "That one wants you," said the river walker. "But be careful. Water shows you where you want to go, not where you should." Waldemar nodded, took his stick, and followed the flowing trail. On the forest floor, it glittered, barely visible, but tangible like breath. It led him through reeds, past dragonflies, over stones that sounded as if they had voices. The further he walked, the more the map changed: it contracted when he hesitated and expanded when he trusted. After a while, the path led to a clearing with a shallow puddle in the middle, round like an eye. In it, Waldemar saw a map made not of lines, but of memories. His own figure wandered over tiny images of paths he had already walked. But where he was now, the water was empty. "I'm writing myself in," he murmured, feeling a tingling sensation in his soles. Then, behind him, he heard the splashing of the river runner that had followed him. "You see it, don't you?" said the old man. "This is the map that only emerges when you walk. It doesn't reveal itself beforehand, otherwise there would be no adventure." He knelt down, placed a small shell in the water, and immediately the map began to change: new lines grew out of the puddle, as if it had understood something. "Will she stay?" asked Waldemar. The river runner shook his head. "Water remembers as long as you listen. Then it forgets, so there's room for something new." Waldemar smiled, pulled a piece of chalk from his pocket, and drew a symbol on the edge of the puddle—a small backpack with two drops next to it. "Then she should know I was there," he said.