Zamorsk: Beyond the Sea
There is a fishing village, hidden between the cliffs and the edge of the inland sea, where the wind moves like a dragon over the waters and the days slip past like transparent smoke. The locals call it Zamorsk, though maps have long ceased to label it. Some say the name means “beyond the sea,” others claim it refers to something older, untranslatable, a word inherited from a forgotten tongue. The mountains behind it rise like sleeping giants, their ridges bluish with distance and eons of silence.
Zamorsk is beloved by those born there, though none can say quite why other than it is home. Children grow up barefoot in the summers, with pockets full of sea glass and nettle leaves, their skin weathered by salt air before adolescence. The old people—stooped, careful, reverent - speak in low tones and pause often, as if listening for something long gone that might still return. At sunset, the town takes on a strange glow: raspberry light tangling in the blue smoke from kitchen stoves, the scent of fish and firewood mixing with the sharper breath of mountain herbs. No one speaks during that hour if they can help it. It’s known as the hour of remembering.
In autumn, the maples rustle with whispering voices, and those who walk the forest paths swear they hear names spoken - not by wind, but by the trees themselves. Near the cemetery lies a wasteland of stones and rusted metal, remnants of some earlier time, maybe a war, a foreign occupation, maybe something stranger. Children are warned not to linger there, yet inevitably they do. All who live in Zamorsk carry some mark of the place: a habit of staring too long into fog, a tendency to dream vivid and wordless dreams, a soft ache in the chest that is never quite pain.
It is said that nothing ever happens in Zamorsk. And yet, those who stay long enough know this is untrue. The village holds a quiet kind of unfolding. Dreams are taken seriously here. If one dreams of a white fish or a burning book, the elders must be consulted. If a child speaks of someone who "walks without feet," the priest lights a candle, and the baker leaves bread at the cemetery gate.
The town remembers. Not just events, but the shape of thoughts, the weather of forgotten centuries. Here, one can feel time folding back on itself. The ruins don’t crumble. The air is thick with stories never told aloud. People live as though watched over by some unspoken force they regard with solemnity.
Many arrive hoping to leave. Most do. A few don’t. Those who stay are the ones who begin to dream the town's dreams, to walk its ancient rhythms, and to say, without irony or regret: No matter these empty dreams. What I dream will be.
In Zamorsk, the past is not behind. It is beside. In that place, the sea speaks in its sleep, and the wind smells of salt, of wild herbs crushed underfoot, of something eternal that only the soul remembers. Time slips past like a ghost; the present feels like memory, and memory feels like an ancient prophecy. There are rustling leaves in autumn, and the rustling is a kind of speech. I would sit for hours listening, doing nothing, saying nothing, yet hearing everything.
There was a man there who used to write, or try to. Every evening at his desk, raspberry jam and tea cooling beside a dish of oysters over ice and horseradish, he would wait for the Muse, who sometimes came, and more often did not. But he still waited, silently, with unspoken words filling the room like smoke. He stopped writing letters years ago. No Indian ink could hold what he wanted to say.
He wandered too. To the wasteland beyond the cemetery, to the wind-battered cliffs. He said he was looking for keys, though no one knew to what. Perhaps to some old gate that had long since rusted shut. He believed there was a boundary - one that could not be drawn, only crossed. The chime of distant bells guided him sometimes or misled him. He didn’t mind, knowing that each step landed exactly where it must.
People called him mad, but kindly. In that town, madness is a form of reverence. We are all a bit mad there. Luminous, too. Fire in the heart, yes - but a quiet fire, one that doesn’t consume. It warms the solitude.
He always said he’d leave, but he never did. He was always pensive yet quietly patient as if waiting for some distant call. It was hard to part with the peace, hard to let go of a place that understood you without asking you to explain. The town, too, was patient. It didn’t need to be remembered to go on existing.
And then one morning - dawn, sharp and beautiful - he stood still as if listening for some last instruction. The wind rose suddenly, wrapping around him like a final thought. And he said, quietly, “Now, I am going home.”
And whether he meant another place or that same town, no one knows. But we understood. We all understood.
They say he vanished that morning - not in the grand, theatrical way of novels, but simply stepped off the path near the cliffs and was never seen again. There were no signs of struggle, no trace of departure, only the soft indentations of his boots in the wet earth, ending at a place where the trail curved sharply and the mist began. And even those prints faded by noon.
Some claimed he walked into the sea. Others whispered he had crossed to “the other side” - not death exactly, but something adjacent to it. The librarian, a woman who never spoke above a whisper and always wore velvet gloves, said she found a page on her desk that morning, still damp with salt air. It wasn’t signed, but the handwriting was his. Only four words: “Shore reached. Keys found.”
That night, the town changed. Something subtle shifted. The bells from the abandoned chapel, long silent, rang once near midnight though no rope had been touched. A stray cat arrived, soaked to the bone, with seaweed curled around its tail like a ribbon. The air smelled more strongly of brine, and a pale green light was seen flickering beneath the waves, far offshore.
People began to remember dreams they had dreamt as children. One woman said she saw the man again, walking through the cemetery at dusk, his coat buttoned, a wildflower behind one ear. He didn’t speak, only nodded, as if everything was in order.
And then there was the child - the one who lived near the bakery and used to speak in riddles. She took to sitting on the library steps, humming tunes no one recognized. When asked where she learned them, she shrugged and said, “From the man in the raspberry sky. He says the door is now open.”
The townspeople did not discuss these things openly, of course. That would be improper. But candles were lit more frequently. Ink bottles were restoppered more carefully. Letters were begun but never finished. And every so often, someone would wander off the marked path, following some forgotten instinct, and disappear into the mist.
The town didn’t mind. It had always known it was a place of passage, not a destination. And those who remain still say, if you listen closely, you can hear it: the faint rustle of unfinished pages, the ancient chime of far-off bells, and a voice - barely audible - repeating a phrase as old as the sea:
“Now I am going home.”
Before the silence, before the town swallowed him into its soft, breathing quiet, he was a boy - not yet a poet, not yet a mystic, just a son of fishermen who preferred notebooks to nets. It happened in late spring, when the sky was still undecided and the sea flickered between calm and storm. He had wandered out alone to the old bell tower above the cemetery, carrying a tin lunchbox, a sketchbook, and a question that had been pressing on him for days: Why do I feel homesick, even when I’m home?
He never told anyone exactly what occurred there, not in full. But over the years, fragments slipped through his poems, his letters, the edges of his speech. From these, and from the ethereal atmosphere that clung to him ever after, people pieced together a kind of account.
Inside the tower while writing, he fell asleep - or maybe slipped into another realm. The bells above him, long rusted still, began to ring - not with the vibration of sound, but of light. Thin, threadlike tones that shimmered through his body and unstitched his thoughts. Time began to unwind. The tower was no longer stone but breath, and his own self was no longer confined to one shape. He felt himself dissolve and crumble into wind, into leaves, into sea spray. The inner world opened and he saw, with unbearable clarity, that everything was only one thing: luminous, aching, and alive.
He came back from the revelatory experience changed. The townspeople said he spoke more slowly after that, as if words had become delicate, almost dangerous things. He no longer ran, only walked. And when he looked at people he looked into them - as if he could see the inner flame they were hiding. People were often afraid what he might see, that he might see their secrets being laid bare. But he never said what he saw.
For a year, he didn’t write a single word. He wandered, listened, kept silence. But when the words returned, they did so in torrents - poems written in candlelight with trembling hands, pages filled with what seemed to be fragments of dreams, visions, memories from lives not his own. He no longer questioned whether imagination was real. He knew it was the membrane through which truth filtered.
He began speaking of “the Realm Beyond the Bridge,” though no one knew what bridge he meant. He said the Muse was not a metaphor. He claimed time was porous, and that sorrow, when endured properly, was a key.
People tolerated this, mostly because he was kind, and occasionally because what he wrote was beautiful in a way that unsettled even the skeptical. He never asked anyone to understand or believe him. He only lived as though what he’d seen was real and that his words were as true as words could be true. That the truth of them was in the quiet breath between them. No one was quite sure what he meant.
And that is why, years later, when he vanished into mist without fanfare, the town did not mourn him. Not because they didn’t love him - they did - but because they understood. He had always been halfway across that bridge he spoke of. They simply hadn’t expected he would cross it so quietly, or so soon.
There were some hand written papers on his desk that included the following poem. We all agreed that it must have been the last one that he wrote…
Zamorsk
O enchanting town of enigmas!
Like transparent smoke.
Beloved from childhood,
Bewitching the heart
the hour before sunset.
Wind from the sea.
Scent of the sea, pungent, fresh,
through endless years of
Listening to rustling leaves.
Autumn, whispering in the maples
a light fragrance of mountain herbs,
I’ll not forget.
Wasteland by the cemetery.
Marks of so ancient a tale
remembers the past
as if the years have not passed.
Nothing happens here.
Here years pass silently.
I’m silent. Silent - ready to be.
My soul’s no more of this world.
Oh, there’s no reason for sighs.
Today, and tomorrow, done.
The heart,
it is made of fire.
So simple it is, so innocent.
And filled with fiery delirium.
Here, we’re all drunkards
we who are mad and luminous
under a raspberry tinted sun.
Tangles of blue smoke…
Evening hours at the desk.
On an ice bed, a dish of oysters.
And raspberry jam with tea.
Finishing my unfinished page
with my still unspoken words.
My entry by moonlight uncertain.
The most tender of murmurings…
The barely audible voice of the Muse.
I won’t be penning letters
with Indian ink.
And a quiet, guarded waiting…
No matter these empty dreams,
what I dream will be.
I used to dream of such quiet,
with unutterable wonder.
Alone at last
in my solitude.
Be certain of my peace of mind
Everywhere, and always.
I find it hard to leave this sanctuary.
I’m at peace; but please, don’t talk.
Try to reach that boundary
that isn’t on the map.
On the un-travelled track.
The ancient chime of far-off bells.
In a world that’s beyond space.
Can you bear to cross its bridge...
into the realm of shadows
searching for keys?
If we can only reach that shore,
living on a wild coastline.
And the wind sweeps round,
always new and mysterious.
That place will never be vanquished.
The one enduring and true.
From dawn I’d anticipated
the moment I’d crumble.
No longer able to utter
The moment of farewell.
Now, I am going home…
