The pantry of the sun. Motherland

Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin

For those who do not want to read or do not have time for this, we offer

Part 1

In one village, near Bludov swamp, near the city of Pereslavl-Zalessky, two children were orphaned. Their mother died of an illness, their father died in World War II.
We lived in this village just one house away from our children. And, of course, we also, together with other neighbors, tried to help them in any way we could. They were very nice. Nastya was like a golden Hen on high legs. Her hair, neither dark nor blond, shone with gold, the freckles all over her face were large, like gold coins, and frequent, and they were crowded, and they climbed in all directions. Only one nose was clean and looked up.
Mitrasha was two years younger than his sister. He was only ten years old with a ponytail. He was short, but very dense, with foreheads, the back of his head was wide. He was a stubborn and strong boy.
"The little man in the bag", smiling, called him among themselves teachers at school.
"The little man in the bag", like Nastya, was covered in golden freckles, and his nose, also clean, like his sister's, looked up.
After their parents, all their peasant farming went to the children: a five-walled hut, a cow Zorka, a heifer Daughter, a goat Dereza. Nameless sheep, chickens, the golden rooster Petya and the pig Horseradish.
Along with this wealth, however, the poor children also received great care for all living beings. But did our children cope with such a misfortune during the difficult years of the Patriotic War! At first, as we have already said, their distant relatives and all of us, neighbors, came to help the children. But very soon smart and friendly guys learned everything themselves and began to live well.
And what smart kids they were! If possible, they joined in community work. Their noses could be seen on the collective farm fields, in the meadows, in the barnyard, at meetings, in anti-tank ditches: such perky noses.
In this village, although we were newcomers, we knew well the life of every house. And now we can say: there was not a single house where they lived and worked as amicably as our pets lived.
Just like her late mother, Nastya got up far before the sun, in the predawn hour, along the shepherd's trumpet. With a stick in her hand, she drove out her beloved herd and rolled back into the hut. Not going to bed anymore, she kindled the stove, peeled potatoes, seasoned dinner, and so busied herself with housework until night.
Mitrasha learned from his father how to make wooden utensils: barrels, bowls, tubs. He has a jointer, got along more than twice his height. And with this fret, he adjusts the boards one by one, folds and wraps them with iron or wooden hoops.
When there was a cow, there was no such need for two children to sell wooden utensils on the market, but kind people ask who needs a bowl for a washbasin, who needs a barrel under the drops, who needs a tub to pickle cucumbers or mushrooms, or even a simple dish with cloves - to plant a home flower .
He will do it, and then he will also be repaid with kindness. But, besides cooperage, the entire male economy and public affairs lie on it. He attends all meetings, tries to understand public concerns and, probably, is smart about something.
It is very good that Nastya is two years older than her brother, otherwise he would certainly become conceited and in friendship they would not have, as now, excellent equality. It happens, and now Mitrasha will remember how his father instructed his mother, and decides, imitating his father, to also teach his sister Nastya. But the little sister obeys little, stands and smiles. Then the "Man in the Pouch" begins to get angry and swagger and always says with his nose up:
- Here's another!
- What are you bragging about? the sister objected.
- Here's another! brother gets angry. - You, Nastya, are bragging yourself.
- No, it's you!
- Here's another!
So, having tormented the obstinate brother, Nastya strokes him on the back of the head. And as soon as the little hand of the sister touches the wide back of the head of the brother, the father's enthusiasm leaves the owner.
“Let’s weed together,” the sister will say.
And the brother also begins to weed cucumbers, or hoe beets, or spud potatoes.

Part 2

Sour and very healthy cranberries grow in swamps in summer and are harvested in late autumn. But not everyone knows that the very best cranberries, sweet, as we say, happen when they spend the winter under the snow.
This spring, the snow in the dense spruce forests was still there at the end of April, but it is always much warmer in the swamps: there was no snow at all at that time. Having learned about this from people, Mitrasha and Nastya began to gather for cranberries. Even before the light, Nastya gave food to all her animals. Mitrasha took his father's double-barreled gun "Tulku", decoys for hazel grouse and did not forget the compass either. Never, it happened, his father, going to the forest, will not forget this compass. More than once Mitrasha asked his father:
- All your life you walk through the forest, and you know the whole forest, like a palm. Why do you still need this arrow?
“You see, Dmitry Pavlovich,” answered the father, “in the forest, this arrow is kinder to you than your mother: it happens that the sky will close with clouds, and you can’t decide by the sun in the forest, you go at random, make a mistake, get lost, starve. Then just look at the arrow - and it will show you where your house is. You go straight along the arrow home, and you will be fed there. This arrow is truer to you than a friend: it happens that your friend will cheat on you, but the arrow invariably always, no matter how you turn it, always looks to the north.
Having examined the wonderful thing, Mitrasha locked the compass so that the arrow would not tremble in vain on the way. He well, in a fatherly way, wrapped footcloths around his legs, adjusted them into his boots, put on a cap so old that his visor was divided in two: the upper crust lifted up above the sun, and the lower went down almost to the nose. Mitrasha dressed himself in his father's old jacket, or rather, in a collar that connected the strips of once good homespun fabric. On his tummy the boy tied these stripes with a sash, and his father's jacket sat on him like a coat, to the very ground. Another son of a hunter stuck an ax in his belt, hung a bag with a compass on his right shoulder, a double-barreled "Tulka" on his left, and thus became terribly scary for all birds and animals.
Nastya, starting to get ready, hung a large basket over her shoulder on a towel.
Why do you need a towel? Mitrasha asked.
– But how? - answered Nastya. - Don't you remember how your mother went for mushrooms?
- For mushrooms! You understand a lot: there are a lot of mushrooms, so the shoulder cuts.
- And cranberries, maybe we will have even more.
And just as Mitrasha wanted to say his "here's another!", he remembered how his father had said about cranberries, even when they were gathering him for the war.
“You remember that,” Mitrasha said to his sister, “how our father told us about cranberries, that there is a Palestinian woman in the forest.”
“I remember,” Nastya answered, “he said about cranberries that he knew the place and the cranberries were crumbling there, but I don’t know what he was talking about some Palestinian woman. I still remember talking about the terrible place Blind Elan.
“There, near the elani, there is a Palestinian woman,” Mitrasha said. - Father said: go to the High Mane and after that keep to the north and, when you cross the Zvonkaya Borina, keep everything straight to the north and you will see - there a Palestinian woman will come to you, all red as blood, from only one cranberry. No one has been to this Palestinian yet.
Mitrasha said this already at the door. During the story, Nastya remembered: she had a whole, untouched pot of boiled potatoes from yesterday. Forgetting about the Palestinian woman, she quietly darted to the stump and dumped the entire cast-iron into the basket.
"Maybe we'll get lost, too," she thought.
And the brother at that time, thinking that his sister was still standing behind him, told her about a wonderful Palestinian woman and that, however, on the way to her was Blind Elan, where many people, cows, and horses died.
“Well, what kind of Palestinian is that?” – asked Nastya.
"So you didn't hear anything?" he grabbed.
And patiently repeated to her already on the go everything that he heard from his father about a Palestinian woman unknown to anyone, where sweet cranberries grow.

Part 3

The swamp of fornication, where we ourselves also wandered more than once, began, as a large swamp almost always begins, with an impenetrable thicket of willow, alder and other shrubs. The first man passed this swamp with an ax in his hand and cut a passage for other people. The bumps settled under the human feet, and the path became a groove through which water flowed. The children easily crossed this swamp in the predawn darkness. And when the bushes ceased to obscure the view ahead, at the first morning light, a swamp opened up to them, like a sea. And by the way, it was the same, it was the Fornication swamp, the bottom of the ancient sea. And just as there, in a real sea, there are islands, as in deserts there are oases, so there are hills in swamps. Here in the Fornication Swamp, these sandy hills, covered with high pine forests, are called borins. Having passed a little by the swamp, the children climbed the first borina, known as the High Mane. From here, from a high bald spot in the gray haze of the first dawn, Borina Zvonkaya could barely be seen.
Still, before reaching the Zvonka Borina, almost near the very path, individual blood-red berries began to appear. Cranberry hunters initially put these berries in their mouths. Whoever has not tried autumn cranberries in his life and immediately had enough spring ones would take his breath away from acid. But the brother and sister knew well what autumn cranberries were, and therefore, when they now ate spring cranberries, they repeated:
- So sweet!
Borina Zvonkaya willingly opened her wide clearing to the children, which, even now, in April, is covered with dark green lingonberry grass. Among this greenery of the previous year, in some places, new white snowdrop flowers and lilac, small and fragrant flowers of wolf's bark were visible.
“They smell good, try picking a wolf’s bark flower,” Mitrasha said.
Nastya tried to break the twig of the stalk and could not.
- And why is this bast called a wolf's? she asked.
“Father said,” the brother answered, “they weave baskets out of it.”
And laughed.
“Are there any more wolves around here?”
- Well, how! Father said there is a terrible wolf here, the Gray Landowner.
“I remember the same one that slaughtered our herd before the war.
- Father said he lives on the Dry River in the rubble.
- He won't touch us?
“Let him try,” answered the hunter with the double visor.
While the children were talking like that and the morning was moving closer and closer to dawn, Borina Zvonkaya was filled with bird songs, howling, groaning and crying of animals. Not all of them were here, on the borin, but from the swamp, damp, deaf, all the sounds gathered here. Borina with a forest, pine and sonorous in dry land, responded to everything.
But the poor birds and little animals, how they all suffered, trying to pronounce something common to all, one beautiful word! And even children, as simple as Nastya and Mitrasha, understood their effort. They all wanted to say only one beautiful word.
You can see how the bird sings on a branch, and each feather trembles from her effort. But all the same, they cannot say words like we do, and they have to sing, shout, tap out.
- Tek-tek! - A huge bird, Capercaillie, taps a little audibly in a dark forest.
- Swag-shvark! - a wild Drake flew over the river in the air.
- Quack-quack! - wild duck Mallard on the lake.
– Gu-gu-gu! - a beautiful bird Bullfinch on a birch.
Snipe, a small gray bird with a nose as long as a flattened hairpin, rolls in the air like a wild lamb. It seems like "alive, alive!" shouts Curlew the sandpiper. The black grouse is muttering and chuffing somewhere. The White Partridge is laughing like a witch.
We, hunters, for a long time, from our childhood, both distinguish, and rejoice, and understand well what word they are all working on and cannot say. That is why, when we come to the forest in early spring at dawn and hear, we will tell them, as people, this word.
- Hello!
And as if they would then also rejoice, as if they, too, would then pick up the wonderful word that had flown from the human tongue.
And they will quack in response, and zachufikat, and zasvarkat, and zatetek, trying with all their voices to answer us:
- Hello, hello, hello!
But among all these sounds, one escaped - unlike anything else.
– Do you hear? Mitrasha asked.
How can you not hear! - answered Nastya. “I’ve heard it for a long time, and it’s kind of scary.
- There is nothing terrible. My father told me and showed me: this is how a hare screams in spring.
- What for?
- Father said: he shouts "Hello, hare!"
- And what is it that hoots?
“Father used to say that the bittern is hooting, the water bull.
- And what is he whining about?
- Father said he also has his own girlfriend, and he also says to her in his own way, like everyone else: "Hello, drunk."
And suddenly it became fresh and cheerful, as if the whole earth was washed at once, and the sky lit up, and all the trees smelled of their bark and buds. It was then that a special, triumphant cry seemed to break out above all sounds, flew out and covered everything, similar as if all people could shout joyfully in harmonious harmony.
- Victory, victory!
- What is it? - asked the delighted Nastya.
“Father used to say that this is how cranes greet the sun. This means that the sun will rise soon.
But the sun had not yet risen when the sweet cranberry hunters descended into the great swamp. The celebration of the meeting of the sun had not yet begun at all. Over the small, gnarled fir-trees and birch trees, a night blanket hung in a gray haze and drowned out all the wonderful sounds of the Ringing Borina. Only a painful, aching and joyless howl was heard here.
“What is it, Mitrasha,” Nastenka asked, shivering, “howling so terribly in the distance?”
“Father said,” Mitrasha answered, “these are wolves howling on the Dry River, and, probably, now it’s the gray landowner’s wolf howling. Father said that all the wolves on the Dry River were killed, but it was impossible to kill Gray.
“So why is he howling terribly now?”
- Father said wolves howl in the spring because they have nothing to eat now. And Gray was still alone, so he howls.
The swamp dampness seemed to seep through the body to the bones and chill them. And so I did not want to go down even lower into the damp, marshy swamp.
– Where are we going? – asked Nastya.
Mitrasha took out a compass, set north and, pointing to a weaker path going north, said:
We will go north along this path.
- No, - Nastya answered, - we will go along this big path, where all people go. Father told us, do you remember what a terrible place it is - Blind Elan, how many people and livestock died in it. No, no, Mitrashenka, let's not go there. Everyone goes in this direction, which means that cranberries grow there.
- You understand a lot! - the hunter interrupted her - We will go north, as my father said, there is a Palestinian woman where no one has been before.
Nastya, noticing that her brother was beginning to get angry, suddenly smiled and stroked him on the back of the head. Mitrasha immediately calmed down, and the friends went along the path indicated by the arrow, now not side by side, as before, but one after another, in single file.

Part 4

About two hundred years ago, the wind-sower brought two seeds to the Fornication swamp: a pine seed and a spruce seed. Both seeds fell into one hole near a large flat stone. Since then, for perhaps two hundred years, these spruce and pine have been growing together. Their roots have intertwined since childhood, their trunks stretched up close to the light, trying to overtake each other. Trees of different species fought among themselves with roots for food, with branches for air and light. Rising higher, thickening their trunks, they dug dry branches into living trunks and in places pierced each other through and through. An evil wind, having arranged such an unhappy life for the trees, sometimes flew here to shake them. And then the trees groaned and howled at the whole Fornication swamp like living creatures, that the fox, curled up on a moss tussock, lifted its sharp muzzle up. This groan and howl of pine and spruce was so close to living beings that a feral dog in the Fornication swamp, hearing it, howled from longing for a person, and a wolf howled from inescapable malice towards him.
The children came here, to the Lying Stone, at the very time when the first rays of the sun, flying over the low, gnarled swamp fir-trees and birch trees, illuminated the Ringing Borin and the mighty trunks of the pine forest became like lit candles of the great temple of nature. From there, here, to this flat stone, where the children sat down to rest, faintly flew the singing of birds, dedicated to the rising of the great sun.
It was quite quiet in nature, and the children, who were cold, were so quiet that the black grouse Kosach paid no attention to them. He sat down at the very top, where the boughs of pine and boughs of spruce formed like a bridge between two trees. Having settled down on this bridge, which was rather wide for him, closer to the spruce, Kosach seemed to begin to bloom in the rays of the rising sun. On his head, a scallop lit up like a fiery flower. His chest, blue in the depths of black, began to pour from blue to green. And his iridescent, lyre-spread tail became especially beautiful.
Seeing the sun over the miserable swamp fir-trees, he suddenly jumped up on his high bridge, showed his white, purest linen of undertail, underwings and shouted:
- Chuf, shi!
In grouse, "chuf" most likely meant the sun, and "shi" probably had our "hello".
In response to this first chirping of Kosach-tokovik, the same chirping with flapping wings was heard far across the swamp, and soon dozens of large birds began to fly in and land near the Lying Stone from all sides, like two drops of water similar to Kosach.
With bated breath, the children sat on the cold stone, waiting for the rays of the sun to come to them and warm them at least a little. And now the first ray, gliding over the tops of the nearest, very small Christmas trees, finally played on the children's cheeks. Then the upper Kosach, greeting the sun, stopped jumping up and down. He squatted low on the bridge at the top of the tree, stretched his long neck along the bough, and began a long, brook-like song. In response to him, somewhere nearby, dozens of the same birds sitting on the ground, too - every rooster - stretched out their necks and began to sing the same song. And then, as if already quite a large stream, muttering, ran over invisible pebbles.
How many times have we, the hunters, after waiting for the dark morning, at the chilly dawn listened with trepidation to this singing, trying in our own way to understand what the roosters are singing about. And when we repeated their mumbling in our own way, we got:

cool feathers,
Ur-gur-gu,
Cool feathers
Obor-woo, I will break off.

So the black grouse muttered in unison, intending to fight at the same time. And while they were muttering like that, a small event happened in the depths of the dense spruce crown. There a crow sat on a nest and hid there all the time from Kosach, who was swimming almost near the nest itself. The crow would very much like to drive Kosach away, but she was afraid to leave the nest and cool the eggs in the morning frost. The male crow guarding the nest at that time was making its flight and, probably, having met something suspicious, lingered. The crow, waiting for the male, lay in the nest, was quieter than water, lower than grass. And suddenly, seeing the male flying back, she shouted her own:
- Kra!
This meant for her:
- Rescue!
- Kra! - the male answered in the direction of the current in the sense that it is still unknown who will cut off the twisted feathers for whom.
The male, immediately realizing what was the matter, went down and sat down on the same bridge, near the fir tree, at the very nest where Kosach was lekking, only closer to the pine tree, and began to wait.
Kosach at this time, not paying any attention to the male crow, called out his own, known to all hunters:
- Kar-kar-cake!
And this was the signal for a general fight of all the current roosters. Well, the cool feathers flew in all directions! And then, as if on the same signal, the male crow, with small steps along the bridge, imperceptibly began to approach Kosach.
Motionless as statues, hunters for sweet cranberries sat on a stone. The sun, so hot and clear, came out against them over the swamp fir trees. But there was one cloud in the sky at that time. It appeared like a cold blue arrow and crossed the rising sun in half. At the same time, suddenly the wind blew once more, and then the pine pressed and the fir roared.
At this time, having rested on a stone and warmed up in the rays of the sun, Nastya and Mitrasha got up to continue on their way. But near the stone itself, a fairly wide swamp path forked: one, good, dense path went to the right, the other, weak, went straight.
Having checked the direction of the paths on the compass, Mitrasha, pointing out the weak path, said:
“We need to go north along this one.
- It's not a trail! - answered Nastya.
- Here's another! Mitrasha got angry. - People were walking - that means the path. We need to go north. Let's go and don't talk anymore.
Nastya was offended to obey the younger Mitrasha.
- Kra! - shouted at this time the crow in the nest.
And her male with small steps ran closer to Kosach for half a bridge.
The second sharp blue arrow crossed the sun, and a gray cloud began to approach from above.
The "Golden Hen" gathered her strength and tried to persuade her friend.
“Look,” she said, “how dense my path is, all people walk here. Are we smarter than everyone?
“Let all people go,” the stubborn “Peasant in a Pouch” resolutely replied. - We must follow the arrow, as our father taught us, to the north, to the Palestinian.
“Father told us fairy tales, he joked with us,” said Nastya. - And, probably, there is no Palestinian at all in the north. It would be very stupid for us to follow the arrow: just not on the Palestinian, but on the very Blind Elan.
- Well, all right, - Mitrasha turned sharply. - I won’t argue with you anymore: you go along your path, where all the women go for cranberries, but I will go on my own, along my path, to the north.
And he actually went there without thinking about the cranberry basket or the food.
Nastya should have reminded him of this, but she herself was so angry that, all red as red, she spat after him and went for cranberries along the common path.
- Kra! the crow screamed.
And the male quickly ran across the bridge the rest of the way to Kosach and beat him with all his might. As if scalded, Kosach rushed to the flying grouse, but the angry male caught up with him, pulled him out, let a bunch of white and rainbow feathers fly through the air and drove and drove away.
Then the gray cloud moved in tightly and covered the entire sun with its life-giving rays. The evil wind very sharply pulled the trees woven with roots, piercing each other with branches, they growled, howled, groaned all over the Fornication Swamp.

Part 5

The trees moaned so plaintively that his hound dog Travka crawled out of the half-collapsed potato pit near Antipych's lodge and, in exactly the same way, in tune with the trees, howled plaintively.
Why did the dog have to get out of the warm, well-kept basement so early and howl plaintively, answering the trees?
Among the sounds of moaning, growling, grumbling, howling in the trees this morning, sometimes it came out as if somewhere in the forest a lost or abandoned child was crying bitterly.
It was this weeping that Grass could not endure and, hearing it, crawled out of the pit at night and at midnight. The dog could not endure this weeping of forever woven trees: the trees reminded the animal of his own grief.
Two whole years have already passed since a terrible misfortune happened in the life of Grass: the forester she adored, the old hunter Antipych, died.
For a long time we went hunting to this Antipych, and the old man himself, I think, forgot how old he was, he lived on, lived in his forest lodge, and it seemed that he would never die.
- How old are you, Antipych? we asked. - Eighty?
“Not enough,” he replied.
- One hundred?
- A lot of.
Thinking that he was joking with us, but he himself knew well, we asked:
- Antipych, well, stop your jokes, tell us the truth, how old are you?
“In truth,” the old man answered, “I’ll tell you if you tell me ahead of time what the truth is, what it is, where it lives, and how to find it.”
It was difficult for us to answer.
“You, Antipych, are older than us,” we said, “and you probably know better than we do where the truth is.”
“I know,” Antipych grinned.
- So, say.
- No, while I'm alive, I can't say, you yourself are looking for. Well, when I'm going to die, come: then I'll whisper the whole truth into your ear. Come!
- Okay, let's go. What if we don’t guess when it’s necessary, and you will die without us?
Grandfather squinted in his own way, as he always squinted when he wanted to laugh and joke.
“You little children,” he said, “are not small, it’s time to know for yourself, but you keep asking. Well, okay, when I get ready to die and you won't be here, I'll whisper to my Grass. Grass! he called.
A large red dog with a black strap all over his back entered the hut. She had black curved lines under her eyes, like glasses. And from this, her eyes seemed very large, and with them she asked: "Why did you call me, master?"
Antipych somehow looked at her in a special way, and the dog immediately understood the man: he called her out of friendship, out of friendship, for nothing, but just like that, to joke, to play. Grass waved its tail, began to descend lower and lower on its feet, and when it crawled up to the old man's knees, lay on its back and turned up its light belly with six pairs of black nipples. Antipych only held out his hand to stroke her, she suddenly jumped up with her paws on her shoulders - and smacked and smacked him: on the nose, and on the cheeks, and on the very lips.
“Well, it will, it will,” he said, calming the dog and wiping his face with his sleeve.
He stroked her head and said:
- Well, it will, now go to your place.
The grass turned and went out into the yard.
- That's it, guys, - said Antipych. “Here’s Grass, the hound dog, understands everything from a single word, and you, silly ones, ask where the truth lives. Okay, come on. And let me go, I'll whisper everything to Grass.
And then Antipych died. Shortly thereafter, the Great Patriotic War began. No other watchman was appointed to replace Antipych, and his guardhouse was abandoned. The house was very dilapidated, much older than Antipych himself, and was already supported on props. Once, without an owner, the wind played with the house, and it immediately fell apart, as a house of cards falls apart from the mere breath of a baby. In one year, the tall grass willow-chai sprouted through the logs, and from the whole hut a mound covered with red flowers remained in the forest clearing. And Grass moved to a potato pit and began to live in the forest, like any other animal. Only it was very difficult for Grass to get used to wild life. She chased animals for Antipych, her great and gracious master, but not for herself. Many times it happened to her on the rut to catch a hare. Having crushed him under her, she lay down and waited for Antipych to come, and, often completely hungry, did not allow herself to eat a hare. Even if Antipych did not come for some reason, she took the hare in her teeth, lifted her head high so that it would not hang out, and dragged it home. So she worked for Antipych, but not for herself: the owner loved her, fed her and protected her from wolves. And now that Antipych had died, she, like any wild animal, had to live for herself. It happened more than once in a hot race she forgot that she was chasing a hare only to catch it and eat it. Grass was so forgotten on such a hunt that, having caught a hare, she dragged him to Antipych, and then sometimes, hearing the groan of trees, she climbed a hill that was once a hut, and howled and howled.
The wolf Gray landowner has long been listening to this howl.

Part 6

Antipych's gatehouse was not far from the Dry River, where several years ago, at the request of local peasants, our wolf team came. Local hunters found out that a large wolf brood lived somewhere on the Dry River. We came to help the peasants and got down to business according to all the rules of the fight against a predatory beast.
At night, having climbed into the Fornication swamp, we howled like a wolf and thus caused the response howl of all the wolves on the Dry River. And so we knew exactly where they live and how many there are. They lived in the most impenetrable blockages of the Dry River. Here, a long time ago, the water fought with the trees for its freedom, and the trees had to fix the banks. The water won, the trees fell, and after that the water itself fled into the swamp. Many tiers were piled with trees and rot. Grass broke through the trees, ivy creepers curled frequent young aspens. And so a strong place was created, or even, one might say, in our way, in a hunting way, a wolf fortress.
Having determined the place where the wolves lived, we walked around it on skis and on a skier, in a circle of three kilometers, hung flags, red and odorous, in the bushes on a string. The red color frightens the wolves, and the smell of the calf is frightening, and they are especially fearful if the breeze, running through the forest, stirs these flags here and there.
How many shooters we had, how many gates we made in a continuous circle of these flags. A gunslinger stood somewhere behind a dense fir-tree against each gate.
Cautiously shouting and tapping with sticks, the beaters stirred up the wolves, and at first they quietly went in their direction. The she-wolf herself walked in front, behind her - young pereyarki and behind, to the side, separately and independently, - a huge foreheaded seasoned wolf, a villain known to the peasants, nicknamed the Gray Landowner.
The wolves walked very carefully. The beaters pressed. The she-wolf went at a trot. And suddenly.
Stop! Flags!
She turned the other way and there too:
Stop! Flags!
The beaters pushed closer and closer. The old she-wolf lost her wolf sense and, poking back and forth as she had to, found her way out, and in the very gates she was met with a shot in the head just a dozen steps from the hunter.
So all the wolves died, but Gray had been in such troubles more than once and, having heard the first shots, he waved over the flags. On the jump, two charges were fired at him: one tore off his left ear, the other half of his tail.
The wolves died, but in one summer Gray slaughtered cows and sheep no less than a whole flock had slaughtered them before. Behind a juniper bush, he waited for the shepherds to leave or go to sleep. And, having determined the right moment, he burst into the herd and slaughtered the sheep and spoiled the cows. After that, grabbing one sheep on his back, he raced it, jumping with the sheep over the fences, to himself, to an inaccessible lair on the Dry River. In winter, when the herds did not go out into the fields, he very rarely had to break into any barnyard. In winter, he caught more dogs in the villages and ate almost exclusively dogs. And he became so insolent that one day, chasing a dog running after the owner’s sleigh, he drove it into the sleigh and pulled it right out of the owner’s hands.
The gray landowner became a thunderstorm of the region, and again the peasants came for our wolf team. Five times we tried to flag him, and all five times he waved through our flags. And now, in early spring, having survived a harsh winter in terrible cold and hunger, Gray in his lair waited impatiently for the time when, at last, real spring would come and the village shepherd would blow his trumpet.
On that morning, when the children quarreled among themselves and went along different paths, Gray lay hungry and angry. When the wind clouded the morning and howled the trees near the Lying Stone, he could not stand it and crawled out of his lair. He stood over the rubble, raised his head, drew up his already thin stomach, put his only ear to the wind, straightened half of his tail and howled.
What a plaintive howl! But you, a passer-by, if you hear and a reciprocal feeling rises in you, do not believe in pity: it is not a dog howling, man’s truest friend, it is a wolf, his worst enemy, doomed to death by his very malice.

Part 7

The dry river goes around the Bludovo swamp in a large semicircle. On one side of the semicircle a dog howls, on the other a wolf howls. And the wind presses the trees and spreads their howls and groans, not at all knowing whom it serves. He doesn't care who howls - a tree, a dog - a man's friend, or a wolf - his worst enemy - as long as he howls. The wind treacherously conveys to the wolf the plaintive howl of a dog abandoned by man. And Gray, having disassembled the living groan of the dog from the groan of the trees, quietly got out of the rubble and, with a wary single ear and a straight half of the tail, rose on his crotch. Here, having determined the place of the howl near the Antipova Gatehouse, he set off from the hill right on wide swings in that direction.
Luckily for Grass, a severe hunger forced her to stop her mournful crying, or perhaps calling for a new person. Maybe for her, in her canine understanding, Antipych did not even die at all, but only turned his face away from her. Maybe she even understood that the whole person is one Antipych with many faces. And if one of his faces turned away, then perhaps soon the same Antipych would call her to him again, only with a different face, and she would serve this face just as faithfully as that one.
So it most likely happened: Grass called Antipych to her with her howl.
And the wolf, having heard this hated dog's prayer for a man, went there on the swings. If she had been another five minutes, Gray would have grabbed her. But, having prayed to Antipich, she felt a strong hunger, she stopped calling Antipich and went for herself to look for the hare's trail.
It was at that time of the year when the nocturnal animal, the hare, does not lie down at the first dawn of the morning, to lie in fear all day long with open eyes. In spring, the hare wanders openly and boldly through the fields and roads for a long time and in white light. And then one old hare, after a quarrel between the children, came to where they parted, and, like them, sat down to rest and listen on the Lying Stone. A sudden gust of wind with the howling of trees frightened him, and, jumping from the Lying Stone, he ran with his hare leaps, throwing his hind legs forward, straight to the place of the Blind Elani, which is terrible for a person. He had not yet shed well and left traces not only on the ground, but also hung his winter fur on the bushes and on the old, last year's tall grass.
Quite a while had passed since the hare sat on the stone, but Grass immediately recognized the trail of the hare. She was prevented from chasing him by the footprints on the stone of two little people and their baskets, smelling of bread and boiled potatoes.
And so Travka faced a difficult task - to decide: should she follow the trail of the hare to the Blind elan, where the trail of one of the little people also went, or follow the human trail going to the right, bypassing the Blind elani.
The difficult question would be solved very simply if it were possible to understand which of the two little men carried the bread with him. I wish I could eat a little of this bread and start the race not for myself and bring a hare to the one who will give the bread.
Where to go, in which direction?.. In such cases, people think, and the hunters say about the hound dog: the dog is chipped.
And so the Grass fell off. And, like any hound, in this case she began to make circles, with her head held high, with her instinct directed both up and down, and to the sides, and with an inquisitive strain of her eyes.
Suddenly a gust of wind from the direction where Nastya went, instantly stopped the dog's rapid movement in a circle. The grass, after standing a little, even rose up on its hind legs, like a hare.
It happened to her once during Antipych's lifetime. The forester had a difficult job in the forest to sell firewood. Antipych, so that Grass would not interfere with him, tied her up at the house. Early in the morning, at dawn, the forester left. But it wasn't until dinner time that Travka realized that the chain at the other end was tied to an iron hook on a thick rope. Realizing this, she stood on the mound, rose on her hind legs, pulled up the rope with her front paws and kneaded it in the evening. Immediately after that, with a chain around her neck, she set off in search of Antipych. More than half a day has elapsed since Antipych passed, his trail got cold and then was washed away by a fine drizzle that looked like dew. But the silence in the forest all day was such that during the day not a single wisp of air moved, and the finest odorous particles of tobacco smoke from Antipych's pipe hung in the still air from morning until evening. Realizing at once that it was impossible to find Antipych by following the tracks, making a circle with her head held high, Grass suddenly fell on a tobacco stream of air and little by little, losing the air trail, then meeting him again, finally got to the owner.
There was such a case. Now, when a strong and sharp gust of wind brought a suspicious smell to her senses, she petrified, waited. And when the wind blew again, she stood, as then, on her hind legs like a hare and was sure: the bread or potatoes were in the direction from which the wind flew and where one of the little men had gone.
The grass returned to the lying stone, checked the smell of the basket on the stone with what the wind had brought. Then she checked the footprint of another little man and also a hare footprint. You can guess, she thought so:
"The hare-hare went straight after to the daytime bed, he is somewhere right there, not far, near the Blind Elani, and lay down for the whole day and will not go anywhere. And that little man with bread and potatoes can leave. Yes, and what could be comparison - to work, toil, chasing a hare for yourself in order to tear it apart and devour it yourself, or to receive a piece of bread and affection from the hand of a person and, perhaps, even find Antipych in it.
Glancing once more attentively in the direction of the direct track at the Blind Spruce, Grass finally turned towards the path that bypassed the Blind Spruce on the right side, once again rose on her hind legs, confidently wagged her tail and ran at a trot there.

Part 8

The blind spruce, where the compass needle led Mitrash, was a disastrous place, and here for centuries a lot of people and even more cattle were dragged into the swamp. And, of course, everyone who goes to the Fornication Swamp should know well what it is, Blind Elan.
This is how we understand it, that the entire Fornication swamp with all the huge reserves of fuel, peat, is a pantry of the sun. Yes, that's exactly how it is, that the hot sun was the mother of every blade of grass, every flower, every marsh bush and berry. The sun gave its heat to all of them, and they, dying, decomposing, in fertilizer passed it on, as an inheritance, to other plants, bushes, berries, flowers and blades of grass. But in swamps, water prevents plant parents from passing on all their goodness to their children. For thousands of years, this goodness has been preserved under water, the swamp becomes a pantry of the sun, and then all this pantry of the sun, like peat, goes to a person as an inheritance.
The fornication swamp contains huge reserves of fuel, but the peat layer is not everywhere the same thickness. Where the children sat at the Lying Stone, the plants lay layer upon layer on top of each other for thousands of years. Here was the oldest layer of peat, but further, the closer to Slepaya Elani, the layer became younger and thinner.
Little by little, as Mitrasha moved forward at the direction of the arrow and the path, the bumps under his feet became not only soft, as before, but semi-liquid. He steps with his foot as if on solid ground, and the foot goes away and it becomes scary: isn’t the foot completely going into the abyss? Some fidgety bumps come across, you have to choose a place where to put your foot. And then it went like that, that you set foot, and under your foot from this, suddenly, as in your stomach, growl and run somewhere under the swamp.
The ground beneath my feet became like a hammock suspended over a muddy abyss. On this moving land, on a thin layer of plants woven together by roots and stems, there are rare, small, gnarled and moldy Christmas trees. The acidic swamp soil does not allow them to grow, and they, so small, are already a hundred years old, or even more. Old Christmas trees are not like trees in a forest, they are all the same: tall, slender, tree to tree, column to column, candle to candle. The older the old woman in the swamp, the more wonderful it seems. Then one bare bough raised like a hand to hug you on the go, and the other has a stick in her hand, and she is waiting for you to clap, the third crouched down for some reason, the fourth, standing, knits a stocking, and so everything: whatever Christmas tree, it certainly looks like something.
The layer under Mitrasha's feet became thinner and thinner, but the plants were probably very tightly intertwined and held the man well, and, swaying and swaying everything far around, he walked and walked forward. Mitrasha could only believe in the person who walked ahead of him and even left the path behind him.
The old Christmas trees were very worried, passing between them a boy with a long gun, in a cap with two visors. It happens that one of them suddenly rises, as if he wants to hit the daredevil on the head with a stick, and will close all the other old women in front of him. And then it will descend, and another sorceress pulls a bony hand to the path. And you wait - just about, as in a fairy tale, a clearing will appear, and on it is a witch's hut with dead heads on poles.
A black raven, guarding its nest on a borin, flying around the swamp in a guard circle, noticed a small hunter with a double peak. In spring, the raven also has a special cry, similar to how if a person shouts with his throat and nose: "Dron-ton!" There are shades in the main sound that are incomprehensible and elusive to our ear, and therefore we cannot understand the conversation of ravens, but only guess as deaf-mutes.
- Drone-tone! - shouted the guard raven in the sense that some small man with a double visor and a gun was approaching the Blind Elani and that, perhaps, soon there would be a life.
- Drone-tone! - the female raven answered from afar on the nest.
And that meant to her:
- Listen and wait!
The magpies, who are closely related to the ravens, noticed the call of the ravens and chirped. And even the fox, after an unsuccessful hunt for mice, pricked up its ears to the cry of a raven.
Mitrasha heard all this, but he was not afraid at all - what was he to be afraid of, if there was a human path under his feet: a man like himself was walking, which means that he himself, Mitrasha, could boldly walk along it. And, hearing the raven, he even sang:

- Do not wind, black raven,
Over my head.

The singing cheered him up even more, and he even figured out how to shorten the difficult path along the path. Looking under his feet, he noticed that his foot, sinking into the mud, immediately collects water into the hole. So every person, walking along the path, lowered the water from the moss lower, and therefore, on the drained edge, next to the stream of the path, on either side, tall sweet white-haired grass grew in an alley. From this, not yellow, as it was everywhere now, in early spring, but rather the color of white, one could understand far ahead of oneself where the human path passes. Then Mitrasha saw: his path turns sharply to the left and goes far there and there it completely disappears. He checked the compass, the needle was pointing north, the path was going west.
- Whose are you? – shouted at this time the lapwing.
- Alive, alive! Kulik answered.
- Drone-tone! the raven shouted even more confidently.
And magpies crackled all around in the fir-trees.
Looking around the area, Mitrasha saw right in front of him a clear, good clearing, where the bumps, gradually descending, turned into a completely level place. But the most important thing: he saw that very close on the other side of the clearing, high white-beard grass snaked - a constant companion of the human path. Recognizing in the direction of the white-bearded path that does not go straight to the north, Mitrasha thought: "Why should I turn left, onto the bumps, if the path is just a stone's throw away - you can see it there, beyond the clearing?"
And he boldly went forward, crossing a clean clearing.

"x x x" Mitrasha walked along the yelani at first better than even before through the swamp. Gradually, however, his foot began to sink deeper and deeper, and it became more and more difficult to pull it back out. Here the moose is fine, he has terrible strength in his long leg, and, most importantly, he does not think and rushes the same way in the forest and in the swamp. But Mitrasha, sensing danger, stopped and thought about his situation. In one moment of stopping, he plunged to the knee, in another moment he was above the knee. He could still, having made an effort, escape from the elani back. And he made up his mind to turn around, put the gun on the swamp and, leaning on it, jump out. But right there, not far from me, in front, I saw tall white grass on the trail of a man.
“I'll jump,” he said.
And rushed.
But it was already too late. In the heat of the moment, like a wounded man - to disappear, so disappear - at random, he rushed again, and again, and again. And he felt himself tightly embraced from all sides to the very chest. Now he could not even breathe heavily: at the slightest movement he was drawn down. He could do only one thing: lay the gun flat on the swamp and, leaning on it with both hands, not move and calm his breath as soon as possible. And so he did: he took off his gun, put it in front of him, leaned on it with both hands.
A sudden gust of wind brought him Nastya's piercing cry:
- Mitrasha!
He answered her.
But the wind was from the side where Nastya was. And his cry carried away to the other side of the Fornication swamp, to the west, where there were only Christmas trees without end. Some magpies responded to him and, flying from fir tree to fir tree, with their usual anxious chirping, little by little surrounded the entire Blind spruce tree, and sitting on the upper fingers of the fir trees, thin, slanting, long-tailed, began to crackle.
Some like:
- Dri-ti-ti!
Other:
- Dra-ta-ta!
- Drone-tone! the raven called from above.
And, being very smart for every filthy deed, the magpies realized the complete impotence of the little man immersed in the swamp. They jumped from the top fingers of the trees to the ground and from different sides began their magpie attack with jumps.
The little man with the double visor stopped screaming.
Tears streamed down his tanned face, down his cheeks.

© Krugleevsky V. N., Ryazanova L. A., 1928–1950

© Krugleevsky V. N., Ryazanova L. A., preface, 1963

© Rachev I. E., Racheva L. I., drawings, 1948–1960

© Compilation, design of the series. Publishing house "Children's Literature", 2001

All rights reserved. No part of the electronic version of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet and corporate networks, for private and public use, without the written permission of the copyright owner.

© Electronic version of the book prepared by Litres (www.litres.ru)

Through the streets of Moscow, still wet and shiny from watering, well rested during the night from cars and pedestrians, at the very early hour, a small blue Moskvich slowly drives by. An old chauffeur with glasses sits behind the wheel, his hat pushed back to the back of his head, revealing a high forehead and tight curls of gray hair.

The eyes look both cheerfully and concentratedly, and somehow in a double way: both at you, a passer-by, dear, still unfamiliar comrade and friend, and inside yourself, at what the writer’s attention is occupied with.

Nearby, to the right of the driver, sits a young, but also gray-haired hunting dog - a gray long-haired setter is a pity and, imitating the owner, carefully looks ahead of him through the windshield.

Writer Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin was the oldest driver in Moscow. Until the age of more than eighty, he drove a car himself, inspected and washed it himself, and asked for help in this matter only in extreme cases. Mikhail Mikhailovich treated his car almost like a living creature and called it affectionately: "Masha."

He needed the car solely for his writing work. After all, with the growth of cities, untouched nature was moving away, and he, an old hunter and walker, was no longer able to walk for many kilometers to meet her, as in his youth. That is why Mikhail Mikhailovich called his car key "the key to happiness and freedom." He always carried it in his pocket on a metal chain, took it out, tinkled it and told us:

- What a great happiness it is - to be able to find the key in your pocket at any hour, go to the garage, get behind the wheel yourself and drive off somewhere into the forest and mark the course of your thoughts with a pencil in a book.

In the summer, the car was in the country, in the village of Dunino near Moscow. Mikhail Mikhailovich got up very early, often at sunrise, and immediately sat down to work with fresh strength. When life began in the house, he, in his words, having already “unsubscribed”, went out into the garden, started his Moskvich there, Zhalka sat next to him, and a large basket for mushrooms was placed. Three conditional beeps: "Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye!" - and the car rolls into the forests, leaving for many kilometers from our Dunin in the direction opposite to Moscow. She will be back by noon.

However, it also happened that hours passed after hours, but there was still no Moskvich. Neighbors and friends converge at our gate, disturbing assumptions begin, and now a whole brigade is going to go in search and rescue ... But then a familiar short beep is heard: “Hello!” And the car pulls up.

Mikhail Mikhailovich gets out of it tired, there are traces of earth on him, apparently, he had to lie somewhere on the road. Face sweaty and dusty. Mikhail Mikhailovich carries a basket of mushrooms on a strap over his shoulder, pretending that it is very hard for him - it is so full. Slyly glint from under the glasses invariably serious greenish-gray eyes. Above, covering everything, lies a huge mushroom in a basket. We gasp: "Whites!" We are now ready to rejoice in everything from the bottom of our hearts, reassured by the fact that Mikhail Mikhailovich has returned and everything ended happily.

Mikhail Mikhailovich sits down with us on the bench, takes off his hat, wipes his forehead and generously confesses that there is only one white mushroom, and under it every insignificant trifle like russula - and it’s not worth looking at, but then, look what a mushroom he was lucky to meet! But without a white man, at least one, could he return? In addition, it turns out that the car on a viscous forest road sat on a stump, I had to cut this stump under the bottom of the car while lying down, and this is not soon and not easy. And not all the same sawing and sawing - in the intervals he sat on the stumps and wrote down the thoughts that came to him in a little book.

It's a pity, apparently, she shared all the experiences of her master, she has a contented, but still tired and some kind of crumpled look. She herself cannot tell anything, but Mikhail Mikhailovich tells us for her:

- Locked the car, left only a window for Pity. I wanted her to rest. But as soon as I was out of sight, Pity began to howl and suffer terribly. What to do? While I was thinking what to do, Pity came up with something of her own. And suddenly he appears with apologies, exposing his white teeth with a smile. With all her wrinkled appearance, and especially with this smile - her whole nose on her side and all the rag-lips, and her teeth in plain sight - she seemed to say: “It was difficult!” - "And what?" I asked. Again she has all the rags on her side and her teeth in plain sight. I understood: I climbed out the window.

This is how we lived during the summer. And in winter the car was in a cold Moscow garage. Mikhail Mikhailovich did not use it, preferring ordinary public transport. She, along with her master, patiently waited out the winter in order to return to the forests and fields as early as possible in the spring.

Our greatest joy was to go somewhere far away together with Mikhail Mikhailovich, only without fail together. The third would be a hindrance, because we had an agreement: to be silent on the way and only occasionally exchange a word.

Mikhail Mikhailovich kept looking around, pondering something, sitting down from time to time, writing quickly in a pocket book with a pencil. Then he gets up, flashes his cheerful and attentive eye - and again we walk side by side along the road.

When at home he reads to you what was written down, you marvel: you yourself walked past all this and seeing - you didn’t see and hearing - you didn’t hear! It turned out that Mikhail Mikhailovich was following you, collecting what was lost from your neglect, and now he brings it to you as a gift.

We always returned from our walks loaded with such gifts.

I’ll tell you about one campaign, and we had a lot of such people during our life with Mikhail Mikhailovich.

The Great Patriotic War was on. It was difficult time. We left Moscow for the remote places of the Yaroslavl region, where Mikhail Mikhailovich often hunted in previous years and where we had many friends.

We lived, like all the people around us, by what the earth gave us: what we grow in our garden, what we gather in the forest. Sometimes Mikhail Mikhailovich managed to shoot a game. But even under these conditions, he invariably took up pencil and paper from early morning.

That morning, we gathered on one business in the distant village of Khmilniki, ten kilometers from ours. We had to leave at dawn to return home before dark.

I woke up from his cheerful words:

“Look what is happening in the forest!” The forester has a laundry.

- Since morning for fairy tales! - I answered with displeasure: I did not want to rise yet.

- And you look, - Mikhail Mikhailovich repeated.

Our window overlooked the forest. The sun had not yet peeked out from behind the edge of the sky, but the dawn was visible through a transparent fog in which the trees floated. On their green branches were hung in a multitude of some kind of light white canvases. It seemed that there really was a big wash going on in the forest, someone was drying all their sheets and towels.

- Indeed, the forester has a wash! I exclaimed, and my whole dream fled. I guessed at once: it was a plentiful cobweb, covered with the smallest drops of fog that had not yet turned into dew.

Antipych's gatehouse was not far from the Dry River, where several years ago, at the request of local peasants, our wolf team came. Local hunters found out that a large wolf brood lived somewhere on the Dry River. We came to help the peasants and got down to business according to all the rules of the fight against a predatory beast.

At night, having climbed into the Fornication swamp, we howled like a wolf and thus caused the response howl of all the wolves on the Dry River. And so we knew exactly where they live and how many there are. They lived in the most impenetrable blockages of the Dry River. Here, a long time ago, the water fought with the trees for its freedom, and the trees had to fix the banks. The water won, the trees fell, and after that the water itself fled into the swamp.

Many tiers were piled with trees and rot. Grass broke through the trees, ivy creepers curled frequent young aspens. And so a strong place was created, or even, one might say, in our way, in a hunting way, a wolf fortress.

Having determined the place where the wolves lived, we walked around it on skis and on a skier, in a circle of three kilometers, hung flags, red and odorous, in the bushes on a string. The red color frightens the wolves and the smell of the calf is frightening, and they are especially fearful if the breeze, running through the forest, stirs these flags here and there.

How many shooters we had, how many gates we made in a continuous circle of these flags. A gunslinger stood somewhere behind a dense fir-tree against each gate. Cautiously shouting and tapping with sticks, the beaters stirred up the wolves, and at first they quietly went in their direction. The she-wolf herself walked in front, behind her - young pereyarki and behind, to the side, separately and independently, - a huge foreheaded seasoned wolf, a villain known to the peasants, nicknamed the Gray Landowner.

The wolves walked very carefully. The beaters pressed. The she-wolf went at a trot. And suddenly...

Stop! Flags!

She turned the other way, and there too.

Stop! Flags!

The beaters pressed closer and closer. The old she-wolf lost her sense of the wolf and, poking back and forth as she had to, found her way out and in the very gates was met with a shot in the head just a dozen steps from the hunter.

So all the wolves died, but Gray had been in such troubles more than once and, having heard the first shots, he waved over the flags. On the jump, two charges were fired at him: one tore off his left ear, the other half of his tail.

The wolves died, but in one summer Gray slaughtered cows and sheep no less than a whole flock had slaughtered them before. Behind a juniper bush, he waited for the shepherds to leave or go to sleep. And, having determined the right moment, he burst into the herd and slaughtered the sheep, and spoiled the cows. After that, grabbing one sheep on his back, he raced it, jumping with the sheep over the fence to himself, to an inaccessible lair on the Dry River. In winter, when the herds did not go out into the fields, he very rarely had to break into any barnyard. In winter, he caught more dogs in the villages and ate almost exclusively dogs. And he became so insolent that one day, chasing a dog running after the owner’s sleigh, he drove it into the sleigh and pulled it right out of the owner’s hands.

The gray landowner became a thunderstorm of the region, and again the peasants came for our wolf team. Five times we tried to flag him, and all five times he waved through our flags. And now, in early spring, having survived a harsh winter in terrible cold and hunger, Gray in his lair waited impatiently for the real spring to finally come and the village shepherd would blow his trumpet.

On that morning, when the children quarreled among themselves and went along different paths, Gray lay hungry and angry. When the wind clouded the morning and howled the trees near the Lying Stone, he could not stand it and crawled out of his lair. He stood over the rubble, raised his head, pulled up his already thin stomach, put his only ear to the wind, straightened half of his tail and howled.

What a plaintive howl! But you, a passer-by, if you hear and a reciprocal feeling rises in you, do not believe pity: it is not a dog howling, man’s truest friend, it is a wolf, his worst enemy, doomed to death by his very malice. You, passer-by, save your pity not for the one who howls about himself like a wolf, but for the one who, like a dog that has lost its owner, howls, not knowing whom to serve after him now.

Current page: 1 (total book has 4 pages)

Font:

100% +

Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin
pantry of the sun
fairy tale

"I"

In one village, near Bludov swamp, near the city of Pereslavl-Zalessky, two children were orphaned. Their mother died of an illness, their father died in World War II.

We lived in this village just one house away from our children. And, of course, we also, together with other neighbors, tried to help them in any way we could. They were very nice. Nastya was like a golden Hen on high legs. Her hair, neither dark nor blond, shone with gold, the freckles all over her face were large, like gold coins, and frequent, and they were crowded, and they climbed in all directions. Only one nose was clean and looked up.

Mitrasha was two years younger than his sister. He was only ten years old with a ponytail. He was short, but very dense, with foreheads, the back of his head was wide. He was a stubborn and strong boy.

“The little man in the pouch,” smiling, teachers at school called him among themselves.

“The little man in the pouch,” like Nastya, was covered in golden freckles, and his nose, also clean, like his sister’s, looked up.

After their parents, all their peasant farming went to the children: a five-walled hut, a cow Zorka, a heifer Daughter, a goat Dereza. Nameless sheep, chickens, the golden rooster Petya and the pig Horseradish.

Along with this wealth, however, the poor children also received great care for all living beings. But did our children cope with such a misfortune during the difficult years of the Patriotic War! At first, as we have already said, their distant relatives and all of us, neighbors, came to help the children. But very soon smart and friendly guys learned everything themselves and began to live well.

And what smart kids they were! If possible, they joined in community work. Their noses could be seen on the collective farm fields, in the meadows, in the barnyard, at meetings, in anti-tank ditches: such perky noses.

In this village, although we were newcomers, we knew well the life of every house. And now we can say: there was not a single house where they lived and worked as amicably as our pets lived.

Just like her late mother, Nastya got up far before the sun, in the predawn hour, along the shepherd's trumpet. With a stick in her hand, she drove out her beloved herd and rolled back into the hut. Not going to bed anymore, she kindled the stove, peeled potatoes, seasoned dinner, and so busied herself with housework until night.

Mitrasha learned from his father how to make wooden utensils: barrels, bowls, tubs. He's got a jointer, got along 1
Ladilo is a cooperage instrument of the Pereslavsky district of the Yaroslavl region.

More than twice his height. And with this fret, he adjusts the boards one by one, folds and wraps them with iron or wooden hoops.

When there was a cow, there was no such need for two children to sell wooden utensils on the market, but kind people ask who needs a bowl for a washbasin, who needs a barrel under the drops, who needs a tub to pickle cucumbers or mushrooms, or even a simple dish with cloves - to plant a home flower .

He will do it, and then he will also be repaid with kindness. But, besides cooperage, the entire male economy and public affairs lie on it. He attends all meetings, tries to understand public concerns and, probably, is smart about something.

It is very good that Nastya is two years older than her brother, otherwise he would certainly become conceited and in friendship they would not have, as now, excellent equality. It happens, and now Mitrasha will remember how his father instructed his mother, and decides, imitating his father, to also teach his sister Nastya. But the little sister obeys little, stands and smiles. Then the “Peasant in the Pouch” begins to get angry and swagger and always says with his nose up:

- Here's another!

- What are you bragging about? the sister objected.

- Here's another! brother gets angry. - You, Nastya, are bragging yourself.

- No, it's you!

- Here's another!

So, having tormented the obstinate brother, Nastya strokes him on the back of the head. And as soon as the little hand of the sister touches the wide back of the head of the brother, the father's enthusiasm leaves the owner.

“Let’s weed together,” the sister will say.

And the brother also begins to weed cucumbers, or hoe beets, or spud potatoes.

"II"

Sour and very healthy cranberries grow in swamps in summer and are harvested in late autumn. But not everyone knows that the very best cranberries, sweet, as we say, happen when they spend the winter under the snow.

This spring, the snow in the dense spruce forests was still there at the end of April, but it is always much warmer in the swamps: there was no snow at all at that time. Having learned about this from people, Mitrasha and Nastya began to gather for cranberries. Even before the light, Nastya gave food to all her animals. Mitrasha took his father's double-barreled gun "Tulku", decoys for hazel grouse and did not forget the compass either. Never, it happened, his father, going to the forest, will not forget this compass. More than once Mitrasha asked his father:

- All your life you walk through the forest, and you know the whole forest, like a palm. Why do you still need this arrow?

“You see, Dmitry Pavlovich,” answered the father, “in the forest, this arrow is kinder to you than your mother: it happens that the sky will close with clouds, and you can’t decide by the sun in the forest, you go at random, make a mistake, get lost, starve. Then just look at the arrow - and it will show you where your house is. You go straight along the arrow home, and you will be fed there. This arrow is truer to you than a friend: it happens that your friend will cheat on you, but the arrow invariably always, no matter how you turn it, always looks to the north.

Having examined the wonderful thing, Mitrasha locked the compass so that the arrow would not tremble in vain on the way. He well, in a fatherly way, wrapped footcloths around his legs, adjusted them into his boots, put on a cap so old that his visor was divided in two: the upper crust lifted up above the sun, and the lower went down almost to the nose. Mitrasha dressed himself in his father's old jacket, or rather, in a collar that connected the strips of once good homespun fabric. On his tummy the boy tied these stripes with a sash, and his father's jacket sat on him like a coat, to the very ground. Another son of a hunter stuck an ax in his belt, hung a bag with a compass on his right shoulder, a double-barreled "Tulka" on his left, and so became terribly scary for all birds and animals.

Nastya, starting to get ready, hung a large basket over her shoulder on a towel.

Why do you need a towel? Mitrasha asked.

– But how? - answered Nastya. - Don't you remember how your mother went for mushrooms?

- For mushrooms! You understand a lot: there are a lot of mushrooms, so the shoulder cuts.

- And cranberries, maybe we will have even more.

And just as Mitrasha wanted to say his “here's another!”, he remembered how his father had said about cranberries, even when they were gathering him for the war.

“Do you remember this,” Mitrasha said to his sister, “how our father told us about cranberries, that there is a Palestinian 2
Palestine is popularly called some excellently pleasant place in the forest.

In the woods.

“I remember,” Nastya answered, “he said about cranberries that he knew the place and the cranberries were crumbling there, but I don’t know what he was talking about some Palestinian woman. I still remember talking about the terrible place Blind Elan. 3
Yelan is a swampy place in a swamp, it's like a hole in the ice.

“There, near the elani, there is a Palestinian woman,” Mitrasha said. - Father said: go to the High Mane and after that keep to the north and, when you cross the Zvonkaya Borina, keep everything straight to the north and you will see - there a Palestinian woman will come to you, all red as blood, from only one cranberry. No one has been to this Palestinian yet.

Mitrasha said this already at the door. During the story, Nastya remembered: she had a whole, untouched pot of boiled potatoes from yesterday. Forgetting about the Palestinian woman, she quietly darted to the stump and dumped the entire cast-iron into the basket.

“Maybe we’ll get lost,” she thought. “We have taken enough bread, there is a bottle of milk, and potatoes, maybe, will also come in handy.”

And the brother at that time, thinking that his sister was still standing behind him, told her about a wonderful Palestinian woman and that, however, on the way to her was Blind Elan, where many people, cows, and horses died.

“Well, what kind of Palestinian is that?” – asked Nastya.

"So you didn't hear anything?" he grabbed.

And patiently repeated to her already on the go everything that he heard from his father about a Palestinian woman unknown to anyone, where sweet cranberries grow.

"III"

The swamp of fornication, where we ourselves also wandered more than once, began, as a large swamp almost always begins, with an impenetrable thicket of willow, alder and other shrubs. The first man passed this swamp with an ax in his hand and cut a passage for other people. The bumps settled under the human feet, and the path became a groove through which water flowed. The children easily crossed this swamp in the predawn darkness. And when the bushes ceased to obscure the view ahead, at the first morning light, a swamp opened up to them, like a sea. And by the way, it was the same, it was the Fornication swamp, the bottom of the ancient sea. And just as there, in a real sea, there are islands, as in deserts there are oases, so there are hills in swamps. Here in the Fornication Swamp, these sandy hills, covered with high pine forests, are called borins. Having passed a little by the swamp, the children climbed the first borina, known as the High Mane. From here, from a high bald spot in the gray haze of the first dawn, Borina Zvonkaya could barely be seen.

Still, before reaching the Zvonka Borina, almost near the very path, individual blood-red berries began to appear. Cranberry hunters initially put these berries in their mouths. Whoever has not tried autumn cranberries in his life and immediately had enough spring ones would take his breath away from acid. But the brother and sister knew well what autumn cranberries were, and therefore, when they now ate spring cranberries, they repeated:

- So sweet!

Borina Zvonkaya willingly opened her wide clearing to the children, which, even now, in April, is covered with dark green lingonberry grass. Among this greenery of the previous year, in some places, new white snowdrop flowers and lilac, small and fragrant flowers of wolf's bark were visible.

“They smell good, try picking a wolf’s bark flower,” Mitrasha said.

Nastya tried to break the twig of the stalk and could not.

- And why is this bast called a wolf's? she asked.

“Father said,” the brother answered, “the wolves weave baskets out of it.”

And laughed.

“Are there any more wolves around here?”

- Well, how! Father said there is a terrible wolf here, the Gray Landowner.

“I remember the same one that slaughtered our herd before the war.

- Father said he lives on the Dry River in the rubble.

- He won't touch us?

“Let him try,” answered the hunter with the double visor.

While the children were talking like that and the morning was moving closer and closer to dawn, Borina Zvonkaya was filled with bird songs, howling, groaning and crying of animals. Not all of them were here, on the borin, but from the swamp, damp, deaf, all the sounds gathered here. Borina with a forest, pine and sonorous in dry land, responded to everything.

But the poor birds and little animals, how they all suffered, trying to pronounce something common to all, one beautiful word! And even children, as simple as Nastya and Mitrasha, understood their effort. They all wanted to say only one beautiful word.

You can see how the bird sings on a branch, and each feather trembles from her effort. But all the same, they cannot say words like we do, and they have to sing, shout, tap out.

- Tek-tek! - A huge bird, Capercaillie, taps a little audibly in a dark forest.

- Swag-shvark! - a wild Drake flew over the river in the air.

- Quack-quack! - wild duck Mallard on the lake.

– Gu-gu-gu! - a beautiful bird Bullfinch on a birch.

Snipe, a small gray bird with a nose as long as a flattened hairpin, rolls in the air like a wild lamb. It seems like "alive, alive!" shouts Curlew the sandpiper. The black grouse is muttering and chuffing somewhere. The White Partridge is laughing like a witch.

We, hunters, for a long time, from our childhood, both distinguish, and rejoice, and understand well what word they are all working on and cannot say. That is why, when we come to the forest in early spring at dawn and hear, we will tell them, as people, this word.

- Hello!

And as if they would then also rejoice, as if they, too, would then pick up the wonderful word that had flown from the human tongue.

And they will quack in response, and zachufikat, and zasvarkat, and zatetek, trying with all their voices to answer us:

- Hello, hello, hello!

But among all these sounds, one escaped - unlike anything else.

– Do you hear? Mitrasha asked.

How can you not hear! - answered Nastya. “I’ve heard it for a long time, and it’s kind of scary.

- There is nothing terrible. My father told me and showed me: this is how a hare screams in spring.

- What for?

- Father said: he shouts "Hello, hare!"

- And what is it that hoots?

“Father used to say that the bittern is hooting, the water bull.

- And what is he whining about?

- My father said he also has his own girlfriend, and he also says the same to her in his own way, like everyone else: "Hello, drunk."

And suddenly it became fresh and cheerful, as if the whole earth was washed at once, and the sky lit up, and all the trees smelled of their bark and buds. It was then that a special, triumphant cry seemed to break out above all sounds, flew out and covered everything, similar as if all people could shout joyfully in harmonious harmony.

- Victory, victory!

- What is it? - asked the delighted Nastya.

“Father used to say that this is how cranes greet the sun. This means that the sun will rise soon.

But the sun had not yet risen when the sweet cranberry hunters descended into the great swamp. The celebration of the meeting of the sun had not yet begun at all. Over the small, gnarled fir-trees and birch trees, a night blanket hung in a gray haze and drowned out all the wonderful sounds of the Ringing Borina. Only a painful, aching and joyless howl was heard here.

“What is it, Mitrasha,” Nastenka asked, shivering, “howling so terribly in the distance?”

“Father said,” Mitrasha answered, “these are wolves howling on the Dry River, and, probably, now it’s the gray landowner’s wolf howling. Father said that all the wolves on the Dry River were killed, but it was impossible to kill Gray.

“So why is he howling terribly now?”

- Father said wolves howl in the spring because they have nothing to eat now. And Gray was still alone, so he howls.

The swamp dampness seemed to seep through the body to the bones and chill them. And so I did not want to go down even lower into the damp, marshy swamp.

– Where are we going? – asked Nastya.

Mitrasha took out a compass, set north and, pointing to a weaker path going north, said:

We will go north along this path.

- No, - Nastya answered, - we will go along this big path, where all people go. Father told us, do you remember what a terrible place it is - Blind Elan, how many people and livestock died in it. No, no, Mitrashenka, let's not go there. Everyone goes in this direction, which means that cranberries grow there.

- You understand a lot! - the hunter interrupted her - We will go north, as my father said, there is a Palestinian woman where no one has been before.

Nastya, noticing that her brother was beginning to get angry, suddenly smiled and stroked him on the back of the head. Mitrasha immediately calmed down, and the friends went along the path indicated by the arrow, now not side by side, as before, but one after another, in single file.

"IV"

About two hundred years ago, the wind-sower brought two seeds to the Fornication swamp: a pine seed and a spruce seed. Both seeds fell into one hole near a large flat stone. Since then, for perhaps two hundred years, these spruce and pine have been growing together. Their roots have intertwined since childhood, their trunks stretched up close to the light, trying to overtake each other. Trees of different species fought among themselves with roots for food, with branches for air and light. Rising higher, thickening their trunks, they dug dry branches into living trunks and in places pierced each other through and through. An evil wind, having arranged such an unhappy life for the trees, sometimes flew here to shake them. And then the trees groaned and howled at the whole Fornication swamp like living creatures, that the fox, curled up on a moss tussock, lifted its sharp muzzle up. This groan and howl of pine and spruce was so close to living beings that a feral dog in the Fornication swamp, hearing it, howled from longing for a person, and a wolf howled from inescapable malice towards him.

The children came here, to the Lying Stone, at the very time when the first rays of the sun, flying over the low, gnarled swamp fir-trees and birch trees, illuminated the Ringing Borin and the mighty trunks of the pine forest became like lit candles of the great temple of nature. From there, here, to this flat stone, where the children sat down to rest, faintly flew the singing of birds, dedicated to the rising of the great sun.

It was quite quiet in nature, and the children, who were cold, were so quiet that the black grouse Kosach paid no attention to them. He sat down at the very top, where the boughs of pine and boughs of spruce formed like a bridge between two trees. Having settled down on this bridge, which was rather wide for him, closer to the spruce, Kosach seemed to begin to bloom in the rays of the rising sun. On his head, a scallop lit up like a fiery flower. His chest, blue in the depths of black, began to pour from blue to green. And his iridescent, lyre-spread tail became especially beautiful.

Seeing the sun over the miserable swamp fir-trees, he suddenly jumped up on his high bridge, showed his white, purest linen of undertail, underwings and shouted:

- Chuf, shi!

In grouse, “chuf” most likely meant the sun, and “shi” probably had our “hello”.

In response to this first chirping of Kosach-tokovik, the same chirping with flapping wings was heard far across the swamp, and soon dozens of large birds began to fly in and land near the Lying Stone from all sides, like two drops of water similar to Kosach.

With bated breath, the children sat on the cold stone, waiting for the rays of the sun to come to them and warm them at least a little. And now the first ray, gliding over the tops of the nearest, very small Christmas trees, finally played on the children's cheeks. Then the upper Kosach, greeting the sun, stopped jumping up and down. He squatted low on the bridge at the top of the tree, stretched his long neck along the bough, and began a long, brook-like song. In response to him, somewhere nearby, dozens of the same birds sitting on the ground, too - every rooster - stretched out their necks and began to sing the same song. And then, as if already quite a large stream, muttering, ran over invisible pebbles.

How many times have we, the hunters, after waiting for the dark morning, at the chilly dawn listened with trepidation to this singing, trying in our own way to understand what the roosters are singing about. And when we repeated their mumbling in our own way, we got:

cool feathers,
Ur-gur-gu,
Cool feathers
Obor-woo, I will break off.

So the black grouse muttered in unison, intending to fight at the same time. And while they were muttering like that, a small event happened in the depths of the dense spruce crown. There a crow sat on a nest and hid there all the time from Kosach, who was swimming almost near the nest itself. The crow would very much like to drive Kosach away, but she was afraid to leave the nest and cool the eggs in the morning frost. The male crow guarding the nest at that time was making its flight and, probably, having met something suspicious, lingered. The crow, waiting for the male, lay in the nest, was quieter than water, lower than grass. And suddenly, seeing the male flying back, she shouted her own:

This meant for her:

- Rescue!

- Kra! - the male answered in the direction of the current in the sense that it is still unknown who will cut off the twisted feathers for whom.

The male, immediately realizing what was the matter, went down and sat down on the same bridge, near the fir tree, at the very nest where Kosach was lekking, only closer to the pine tree, and began to wait.

Kosach at this time, not paying any attention to the male crow, called out his own, known to all hunters:

- Kar-kar-cake!

And this was the signal for a general fight of all the current roosters. Well, the cool feathers flew in all directions! And then, as if on the same signal, the male crow, with small steps along the bridge, imperceptibly began to approach Kosach.

Motionless as statues, hunters for sweet cranberries sat on a stone. The sun, so hot and clear, came out against them over the swamp fir trees. But there was one cloud in the sky at that time. It appeared like a cold blue arrow and crossed the rising sun in half. At the same time, suddenly the wind blew once more, and then the pine pressed and the fir roared.

At this time, having rested on a stone and warmed up in the rays of the sun, Nastya and Mitrasha got up to continue on their way. But near the stone itself, a fairly wide swamp path forked: one, good, dense path went to the right, the other, weak, went straight.

Having checked the direction of the paths on the compass, Mitrasha, pointing out the weak path, said:

“We need to go north along this one.

- It's not a trail! - answered Nastya.

- Here's another! Mitrasha got angry. - People were walking - that means the path. We need to go north. Let's go and don't talk anymore.

Nastya was offended to obey the younger Mitrasha.

- Kra! - shouted at this time the crow in the nest.

And her male with small steps ran closer to Kosach for half a bridge.

The second sharp blue arrow crossed the sun, and a gray cloud began to approach from above.

The Golden Hen gathered her strength and tried to persuade her friend.

“Look,” she said, “how dense my path is, all people walk here. Are we smarter than everyone?

“Let all people go,” the stubborn “Peasant in a bag” resolutely answered. - We must follow the arrow, as our father taught us, to the north, to the Palestinian.

“Father told us fairy tales, he joked with us,” said Nastya. - And, probably, there is no Palestinian at all in the north. It would be very stupid for us to follow the arrow: just not on the Palestinian, but on the very Blind Elan.

- Well, all right, - Mitrasha turned sharply. - I won’t argue with you anymore: you go along your path, where all the women go for cranberries, but I will go on my own, along my path, to the north.

And he actually went there without thinking about the cranberry basket or the food.

Nastya should have reminded him of this, but she herself was so angry that, all red as red, she spat after him and went for cranberries along the common path.

- Kra! the crow screamed.

And the male quickly ran across the bridge the rest of the way to Kosach and beat him with all his might. As if scalded, Kosach rushed to the flying grouse, but the angry male caught up with him, pulled him out, let a bunch of white and rainbow feathers fly through the air and drove and drove away.

Then the gray cloud moved in tightly and covered the entire sun with its life-giving rays. The evil wind very sharply pulled the trees woven with roots, piercing each other with branches, they growled, howled, groaned all over the Fornication Swamp.

Current page: 6 (total book has 8 pages) [available reading excerpt: 2 pages]

Salvation Island

We didn't have to wait long for the spill. One night, after a heavy, very warm rain, water immediately increased by a meter, and for some reason, the previously invisible city of Kostroma with white buildings seemed so distinct, as if it had been under water before and only now emerged from under it. Also the mountain bank of the Volga, which used to be lost in snowy whiteness, now rose above the water, yellow from clay and sand. Several villages on hillocks were surrounded by water and stuck out like anthills.

On the great flood of the Volga here and there one could see kopecks of unfilled land, sometimes bare, sometimes with bushes, sometimes with tall trees. Ducks of different breeds clung to almost all these kopecks, and on one spit, in a long row, one to one, bean geese looked into the water. Where the land was completely flooded and only the tops stuck out from the former forest, like frequent wool, everywhere these hairs were covered with various animals. The animals sometimes sat on the branches so densely that an ordinary willow branch of some kind became like a bunch of large black grapes.

The water rat swam towards us, probably from a very long distance, and, tired, leaned against an alder twig. A slight wave of water tried to tear the rat away from its pier. Then she climbed a little up the trunk, sat down on the fork.

Here she firmly settled down: the water did not reach her. Only occasionally a large wave, the "ninth wave", touched her tail, and from these touches circles were born and floated away in the water.

And on a fairly large tree, probably standing under water on a high hillock, a greedy, hungry crow was sitting and looking for its prey. It would be impossible for her to see a water rat in the fork, but circles floated on the wave from contact with the tail, and it was these circles that gave the crow the whereabouts of the rat. Here began a war not to the stomach, but to the death.

Several times, from the blows of the crow's beak, the rat fell into the water, and again climbed onto its fork, and again fell. And now the crow had already succeeded in grabbing its prey, but the rat did not want to become a victim of a crow.

Gathering the last of her strength, she pinched the crow so that the fluff flew out of it, and so hard, as if it had been shot with a shot. The crow even almost fell into the water and only with difficulty coped, stunned, sat on her tree and began diligently straightening her feathers, healing her wounds in her own way. From time to time, from her pain, remembering the rat, she looked back at it with a look as if she were asking herself: "What kind of rat is this? As if it had never happened to me!"

Meanwhile, the water rat, after its happy blow, even forgot to think about the crow. She began to strain the beads of her eyes to our desired shore.

Having cut off a branch for herself, she took it with her front paws, as if with her hands, and began to gnaw with her teeth, and turn her hands around. So she gnawed clean the whole branch and threw it into the water. She did not gnaw at the new cut branch, but went straight down with it and swam and dragged the branch in tow. All this was seen, of course, by a predatory crow and accompanied the brave rat to our very shore.

Once we were sitting by the shore and watched how shrews, voles, water rats, and minks, and hares, and ermines, and squirrels, also immediately swam in a large mass, and every one of them kept their tails up.

We, as the owners of the island, met each animal, received it with kindred attention, and, having looked, let it run to the place where its breed is supposed to live. But in vain did we think that we knew all our guests. A new acquaintance began with the words of Zinochka.

“Look,” she said, “what is happening to our ducks!”

These ducks of ours are bred from the wild, and we took them for hunting: ducks scream and lure wild drakes to shoot.

We looked at these ducks and see that for some reason they have become much darker and, most importantly, much thicker.

- Why is this? - we began to guess, to think.

And they went for the answer to the riddle to the ducks themselves. Then it turned out that for countless spiders, insects and all kinds of insects floating on the water in search of salvation, our ducks were two islands, a desirable land.

They climbed on the floating ducks in full confidence that they had finally reached a safe haven and their dangerous wandering on the waters was over. And there were so many of them that our ducks grew fat and fat noticeably before our eyes.

So our shore became an island of salvation for all animals - large and small.

forest owner

That was on a sunny day, otherwise I'll tell you how it was in the forest just before the rain. There was such silence, there was such tension in anticipation of the first drops, that it seemed that every leaf, every needle tried to be the first and catch the first drop of rain. And so it became in the forest, as if each smallest essence received its own, separate expression.

So I go in to them at this time, and it seems to me: they all, like people, turned their faces to me and, out of their stupidity, they ask me, like a god, for rain.

“Come on, old man,” I ordered the rain, “you will torment us all, go on like this, start!”

But this time the rain did not listen to me, and I remembered my new straw hat: it will rain - and my hat is gone. But then, thinking about the hat, I saw an unusual Christmas tree. She grew up, of course, in the shade, and that is why her branches were once lowered down. Now, after selective felling, she found herself in the light, and each branch of her began to grow upwards. Probably, the lower boughs would have risen over time, but these branches, having touched the ground, released their roots and clung ... So, under the tree with the branches raised up below, a good hut turned out. Having cut the spruce branches, I compacted it, made an entrance, and laid the seat below. And I just sat down to start a new conversation with the rain, as I see - opposite me, very close, a large tree is burning. I quickly grabbed a spruce branch from the hut, gathered it into a broom and, quilting over the burning place, little by little extinguished the fire before the flame burned through the bark of the tree around and thus made it impossible for the juice to flow.

Around the tree, the place was not burned by a fire, cows were not grazed here, and there could not be undershepherds on which everyone blamed for the fires. Remembering my childhood robber years, I realized that the tar on the tree was set on fire, most likely, by some boy out of mischief, out of curiosity to see how the tar would burn. As I descended into my childhood years, I imagined how pleasant it was to strike a match and set fire to a tree.

It became clear to me that the pest, when the tar caught fire, suddenly saw me and disappeared immediately somewhere in the nearest bushes. Then, pretending that I was continuing my way, whistling, I left the place of the fire and, having taken several dozen steps along the clearing, jumped into the bushes and returned to the old place and also hid.

I did not have long to wait for the robber. A fair-haired boy of seven or eight years old, with a reddish sunny tan, bold, open eyes, half-naked and with an excellent build, came out of the bush. He looked hostilely in the direction of the clearing where I had gone, picked up a fir cone and, wanting to throw it somewhere at me, swung it so that he even turned over around himself. This didn't bother him; on the contrary, like a real master of the forests, he put both hands in his pockets, began to look at the place of the fire and said:

- Come out, Zina, he's gone!

A girl came out, a little older, a little taller, and with a large basket in her hand.

“Zina,” the boy said, “you know what?

Zina looked at him with large calm eyes and answered simply:

- No, Vasya, I don’t know.

- Where are you! said the owner of the forests. - I want to tell you: if that person had not come, if he had not extinguished the fire, then, perhaps, the whole forest would have burned down from this tree. If only we could have a look!

- You are an idiot! Zina said.

“Really, Zina,” I said. - I thought of something to brag about, a real fool!

And as soon as I said these words, the perky master of the forests suddenly, as they say, "flee".

And Zina, apparently, did not even think of answering for the robber. She calmly looked at me, only her eyebrows rose slightly in surprise.

At the sight of such a reasonable girl, I wanted to turn the whole story into a joke, win her over and then work together on the master of the forests. Just at this time, the tension of all sentient beings waiting for rain reached its extreme.

“Zina,” I said, “look how all the leaves, all the blades of grass are waiting for the rain. There, the hare cabbage even climbed onto the stump to capture the first drops.

The girl liked my joke, she graciously smiled at me.

- Well, old man, - I said to the rain, - you will torment us all, start, let's go!

And this time the rain obeyed, went. And the girl seriously, thoughtfully focused on me and pursed her lips, as if she wanted to say: "Jokes are jokes, but still it started to rain."

“Zina,” I said hurriedly, “tell me, what do you have in that big basket?”

She showed: there were two white mushrooms. We put my new hat in the basket, covered it with a fern, and headed out of the rain to my hut. Having broken another spruce branch, we covered it well and climbed in.

- Vasya! the girl shouted. - It will fool, come out!

And the owner of the forests, driven by the pouring rain, did not hesitate to appear.

As soon as the boy sat down next to us and wanted to say something, I raised my index finger and ordered the owner:

- No goog!

And all three of us froze.

It is impossible to convey the delights of being in the forest under a Christmas tree during a warm summer rain. A crested hazel grouse, driven by the rain, burst into the middle of our thick Christmas tree and sat down right above the hut. Quite in sight under a branch, a finch settled down. The hedgehog has arrived. A hare hobbled past. And for a long time the rain whispered and whispered something to our Christmas tree. And we sat for a long time, and everything was as if the real owner of the forests whispered to each of us separately, whispered, whispered ...

Cat

When I see from the window how Vaska makes his way in the garden, I shout to him in the most tender voice:

- Wa-sen-ka!

And in response, I know, he also screams at me, but I’m a little tight in my ear and can’t hear, but only see how, after my cry, a pink mouth opens on his white muzzle.

- Wa-sen-ka! I shout to him.

And I guess - he shouts to me:

- Now I'm going!

And with a firm straight tiger step he goes to the house.

In the morning, when the light from the dining room through the half-open door is still only a pale slit, I know that the cat Vaska is sitting in the darkness at the very door and waiting for me. He knows that the dining room is empty without me, and he is afraid: in another place he may doze off my entrance to the dining room. He has been sitting here for a long time and, as soon as I bring in the kettle, he rushes to me with a kind cry.

When I sit down for tea, he sits on my left knee and watches everything: how I prick sugar with tweezers, how I cut bread, how I spread butter. I know that he does not eat salted butter, but takes only a small piece of bread if he does not catch a mouse at night.

When he is sure that there is nothing tasty on the table - a crust of cheese or a piece of sausage, then he falls on my knee, tramples a little and falls asleep.

After tea, when I get up, he wakes up and goes to the window. There he turns his head in all directions, up and down, considering the passing flocks of jackdaws and crows in this early morning hour. From the whole complex world of the life of a big city, he chooses only birds for himself and rushes entirely only to them.

During the day - birds, and at night - mice, and so the whole world is with him: in the daytime, in the light, the black narrow slits of his eyes, crossing a muddy green circle, see only birds, at night the whole black luminous eye opens and sees only mice.

Today, the radiators are warm, and because of this, the window is very fogged up, and the cat has become very bad at counting jackdaws. So what did my cat think? He got up on his hind legs, his front paws on the glass and, well, wipe, well, wipe! When he rubbed it and it became clearer, he again calmly sat down, like porcelain, and again, counting the jackdaws, began to move his head up and down, and to the sides.

During the day - birds, at night - mice, and this is Vaska's whole world.

Grandfather's boots

I remember well - grandfather Mikhey walked in his felt boots for ten years. And how many years he went to them before me, I can’t say. He used to look at his feet and say:

- Valenki again passed through, it is necessary to hem.

And he will bring a piece of felt from the bazaar, cut out the sole from it, sew it on, and again the felt boots go like new ones.

So many years have passed, and I began to think that everything in the world has an end, everything dies, and only grandfather's felt boots are eternal.

It happened that my grandfather began to have a strong ache in his legs. Our grandfather had never been ill, but then he began to complain, even called the paramedic.

- It's from cold water, - said the paramedic, - you need to quit fishing.

- I only live on fish, - the grandfather answered, - I can’t help but wet my foot in the water.

- It is impossible not to wet, - the paramedic advised, - put on boots when you climb into the water.

This advice went to the benefit of the grandfather: the ache in the legs was gone. But only after the grandfather got spoiled, he began to climb into the river only in felt boots and, of course, rubbed them mercilessly on the bottom pebbles. The felt boots moved strongly from this, and not only in the soles, but also above, at the place of the bend of the sole, cracks appeared.

“It’s true, it’s true,” I thought, “that everything in the world comes to an end, and felt boots cannot serve grandfather without end: felt boots come to an end.”

People began to point to grandfather on felt boots:

- It's time, grandfather, to give your felt boots peace, it's time to give them to the crows for nests.

It wasn't there! Grandfather Mikhey, so that the snow would not clog in the cracks, dipped them into the water - and into the cold. Of course, in the cold, the water in the cracks of the boots froze and the ice closed up the cracks. And after that, grandfather once again dipped the felt boots into the water, and the whole felt boot was covered with ice from this. These are the felt boots that became warm and durable after that: I myself had to cross the non-freezing swamp in winter in my grandfather's boots, and at least something.

And I again returned to the idea that, perhaps, there will never be an end to grandfather's felt boots.

But it happened, one day our grandfather fell ill. When he had to go out out of necessity, he put on felt boots in the hallway, and when he returned, he forgot to take them off in the hallway and leave them in the cold. So in icy boots and climbed onto the hot stove.

Not that, of course, it's a misfortune that water from melted boots from the stove flowed into a bucket of milk - what's that! But the trouble is that the immortal boots this time ran out. Yes, it could not be otherwise. If you pour water into a bottle and put it in the cold, the water will turn into ice, the ice will be crowded, and it will break the bottle. So this ice in the cracks of the felt boots, of course, loosened and tore the wool everywhere, and when everything melted, everything became dust ...

Our stubborn grandfather, as soon as he recovered, tried to freeze the felt boots again and looked even a little, but soon spring came, the felt boots in the senets melted and suddenly spread.

- It's true, really, - said the grandfather in his hearts, - it's time to rest in the crows' nests.

And in my heart I threw the felt boots from the high bank into the burdock, where at that time I was catching goldfinches and various birds.

- Why are boots only for crows? - I said. - Every bird in the spring drags a piece of hair, a fluff, a straw into the nest.

I asked my grandfather about this just at the time when he swung it was the second felt boot.

“All birds,” the grandfather agreed, “need wool for a nest, and all kinds of animals, mice, squirrels, everyone needs this, it’s a useful thing for everyone.”

And then my grandfather remembered about our hunter, that for a long time the hunter reminded him of felt boots: it's time, they say, to give them to him for wads. And the second felt boot did not throw and ordered me to take it to the hunter.

Soon the bird season began. All sorts of spring birds flew down to the river on the burdocks and, pecking at the heads of the burdocks, turned their attention to the boots. Every bird noticed him, and when they came to build nests, from morning till night they began to dismantle grandfather's felt boots to shreds. For one week, the whole felt boots were pulled apart by the birds to the nests, settled down, sat on the eggs and incubated, and the males sang.

On the warmth of the boots, the birds hatched and grew, and when it became cold, they flew away in clouds to warmer climes. In the spring they will return again, and many in their hollows, in their old nests, will again find the remains of grandfather's felt boots. The same nests that were made on the ground and on the bushes will also not disappear: from the bushes everyone will fall to the ground, and on the ground their mice will find and drag the remains of the felt boots to their underground nests.

I walked a lot in my life through the forests, and when I had to find a bird's nest with felt bedding, I thought like a little one:

"Everything in the world has an end, everything dies, and only one grandfather's felt boots are eternal."

pantry of the sun
fairy tale

I

In one village, near Bludov swamp, near the city of Pereslavl-Zalessky, two children were orphaned. Their mother died of an illness, their father died in World War II.

We lived in this village just one house away from our children. And, of course, we also, together with other neighbors, tried to help them in any way we could. They were very nice. Nastya was like a golden hen on high legs. Her hair, neither dark nor blond, shone with gold, the freckles all over her face were large, like gold coins, and frequent, and they were crowded, and they climbed in all directions. Only one nose was clean and looked up like a parrot.

Mitrasha was two years younger than his sister. He was only ten years old with a ponytail. He was short, but very dense, with foreheads, the back of his head was wide. He was a stubborn and strong boy.

"The little man in the bag", smiling, called him among themselves teachers at school.

The little man in the pouch, like Nastya, was covered in golden freckles, and his little nose, too, like his sister's, looked up like a parrot.

After their parents, all their peasant farming went to the children: a five-walled hut, the cow Zorka, the heifer Daughter, the goat Dereza, nameless sheep, chickens, the golden rooster Petya and the piglet Horseradish.

Along with this wealth, however, the poor children also received great care for all these living beings. But did our children cope with such a misfortune during the difficult years of the Patriotic War! At first, as we have already said, the children came to help their distant relatives and all of us, the neighbors. But very soon smart and friendly guys learned everything themselves and began to live well.

And what smart kids they were! If possible, they joined in community work. Their noses could be seen on the collective farm fields, in the meadows, in the barnyard, at meetings, in anti-tank ditches: such perky noses.

In this village, although we were newcomers, we knew well the life of every house. And now we can say: there was not a single house where they lived and worked as amicably as our pets lived.

Just like her late mother, Nastya got up far before the sun, in the predawn hour, along the shepherd's trumpet. With a stick in her hand, she drove out her beloved herd and rolled back into the hut. Without going to bed any more, she kindled the stove, peeled potatoes, seasoned dinner, and so busied herself with the housework until night.

Mitrasha learned from his father how to make wooden utensils: barrels, bowls, tubs. He's got a jointer, got along 5
Ladilo is a cooperage instrument of the Pereslavsky district of the Ivanovo region. (Here and further note. M. M. Prishvin.)

More than twice his height. And with this fret, he adjusts the boards one by one, folds and wraps them with iron or wooden hoops.

When there was a cow, there was no such need for two children to sell wooden utensils on the market, but kind people ask who - a bowl on the washbasin, who needs a barrel under the drops, who needs a tub of pickled cucumbers or mushrooms, or even a simple dish with cloves - homemade plant a flower.

He will do it, and then he will also be repaid with kindness. But, besides cooperage, the entire male economy and public affairs lie on it. He attends all meetings, tries to understand public concerns and, probably, is smart about something.

It is very good that Nastya is two years older than her brother, otherwise he would certainly become arrogant, and in friendship they would not have, as now, excellent equality. It happens, and now Mitrasha will remember how his father instructed his mother, and decides, imitating his father, to also teach his sister Nastya. But the little sister does not obey much, stands and smiles ... Then the Peasant in the bag begins to get angry and swagger and always says with his nose up:

- Here's another!

- What are you bragging about? the sister objected.

- Here's another! brother gets angry. - You, Nastya, are bragging yourself.

- No, it's you!

- Here's another!

So, having tormented her obstinate brother, Nastya strokes him on the back of the head, and as soon as her sister's little hand touches her brother's wide neck, her father's enthusiasm leaves the owner.

“Let’s weed together,” the sister will say.

And the brother also begins to weed cucumbers, or hoe beets, or plant potatoes.

Yes, it was very, very difficult for everyone during the Patriotic War, so difficult that, probably, this has never happened in the whole world. So the children had to take a sip of all sorts of worries, failures, and sorrows. But their friendship overpowered everything, they lived well. And again we can firmly say: in the whole village, no one had such friendship as Mitrasha and Nastya Veselkin lived among themselves. And we think, probably, this grief about the parents connected the orphans so closely.

II

Sour and very healthy cranberries grow in swamps in summer and are harvested in late autumn. But not everyone knows that the very best cranberries, sweet, as we say, happen when they spend the winter under the snow.

This spring dark red cranberry is hovering in our pots along with beets and they drink tea with it, like with sugar. Who does not have sugar beets, then they drink tea with one cranberry. We tried it ourselves - and nothing, you can drink: sour replaces sweet and is very good on hot days. And what a wonderful jelly is obtained from sweet cranberries, what a fruit drink! And among our people, this cranberry is considered a healing medicine for all diseases.

This spring, the snow in the dense spruce forests was still there at the end of April, but it is always much warmer in the swamps: there was no snow at all at that time. Having learned about this from people, Mitrasha and Nastya began to gather for cranberries. Even before the light, Nastya gave food to all her animals. Mitrasha took his father's double-barreled gun "Tulku", decoys for hazel grouse and did not forget the compass either. Never, it happened, his father, going to the forest, will not forget this compass. More than once Mitrasha asked his father:

- All your life you walk through the forest, and you know the whole forest, like a palm. Why do you still need this arrow?

“You see, Dmitry Pavlovich,” answered the father, “in the forest, this arrow is kinder to you than your mother: it happens that the sky will close with clouds, and you cannot decide on the sun in the forest, you go at random - you make a mistake, you get lost, you starve. Then just look at the arrow - and it will show you where your house is. You go straight along the arrow home, and you will be fed there. This arrow is truer to you than a friend: it happens that your friend will cheat on you, but the arrow invariably always, no matter how you turn it, always looks to the north.

Having examined the wonderful thing, Mitrasha locked the compass so that the arrow would not tremble in vain on the way. He well, in a fatherly way, wrapped footcloths around his legs, adjusted them into his boots, put on a cap so old that his visor was divided in two: the upper leather crust lifted up above the sun, and the lower went down almost to the nose. Mitrasha dressed himself in his father's old jacket, or rather, in a collar that connected the strips of once good homespun fabric. On his tummy the boy tied these stripes with a sash, and his father's jacket sat on him like a coat, to the very ground. Another son of a hunter stuck an ax in his belt, hung a bag with a compass on his right shoulder, a double-barreled "Tulka" on his left, and thus became terribly scary for all birds and animals.

Nastya, starting to get ready, hung a large basket over her shoulder on a towel.

Why do you need a towel? Mitrasha asked.

- And how, - answered Nastya. - Don't you remember how your mother went for mushrooms?

- For mushrooms! You understand a lot: there are a lot of mushrooms, so the shoulder cuts.

- And cranberries, maybe we will have even more.

And just as Mitrasha wanted to say his "here's another!", he remembered how his father had said about cranberries, even when they were gathering him for the war.

“Do you remember this,” Mitrasha said to his sister, “how our father told us about cranberries, that there is a Palestinian 6
Palestine is popularly called some excellently pleasant place in the forest.

In the woods…

“I remember,” Nastya answered, “he said about cranberries that he knew the place and the cranberries were crumbling there, but I don’t know what he was talking about some Palestinian woman. I still remember talking about the terrible place Blind Elan. 7
Yelan is a swampy place in a swamp, like a hole in the ice.

“There, near the elani, there is a Palestinian woman,” Mitrasha said. - Father said: go to the High Mane and after that keep to the north and, when you cross the Zvonkaya Borina, keep everything straight to the north and you will see - there a Palestinian woman will come to you, all red as blood, from only one cranberry. No one has been to this Palestinian yet!

Mitrasha said this already at the door. During the story, Nastya remembered: she had a whole, untouched pot of boiled potatoes from yesterday. Forgetting about the Palestinian woman, she quietly darted to the stump and dumped the entire cast-iron into the basket.

"Maybe we'll get lost, too," she thought.

And the brother at that time, thinking that his sister was still behind him, told her about a wonderful Palestinian woman and that, however, on the way to her there is a Blind Elan, where many people, cows, and horses died.

“Well, what kind of Palestinian is that?” – asked Nastya.

"So you didn't hear anything?" he grabbed. And patiently repeated to her already on the go everything that he heard from his father about a Palestinian woman unknown to anyone, where sweet cranberries grow.

III

The swamp of fornication, where we ourselves also wandered more than once, began, as a large swamp almost always begins, with an impenetrable thicket of willow, alder and other shrubs. The first person passed this bog with an ax in his hand and cut a passage for other people. The bumps settled under the human feet, and the path became a groove through which water flowed. The children easily crossed this swamp in the predawn darkness. And when the bushes ceased to obscure the view ahead, at the first morning light, a swamp opened up to them, like a sea. And by the way, it was the same, it was the Fornication swamp, the bottom of the ancient sea. And just as there, in a real sea, there are islands, as in deserts there are oases, so there are hills in swamps. Here in the Fornication Swamp, these sandy hills, covered with high pine forest, are called borins. Having passed a little by the swamp, the children climbed the first borina, known as the High Mane. From here, from a high bald spot, in the gray haze of the first dawn, Borina Zvonkaya could barely be seen.

Even before reaching the Zvonka Borina, almost near the very path, individual blood-red berries began to appear. Cranberry hunters initially put these berries in their mouths. Whoever has not tried autumn cranberries in his life and immediately had enough spring ones would take his breath away from acid. But the village orphans knew well what autumn cranberries were, and therefore, when they now ate spring cranberries, they repeated:

- So sweet!

Borina Zvonkaya willingly opened her wide clearing to the children, which, even now, in April, is covered with dark green lingonberry grass. Among this greenery of the previous year, here and there one could see new white snowdrop flowers and lilac, small, and frequent, and fragrant flowers of wolf's bark.

“They smell good, try it, pick a flower of a wolf’s bark,” Mitrasha said.

Nastya tried to break the twig of the stalk and could not.

- And why is this bast called a wolf's? she asked.

“Father said,” the brother answered, “the wolves weave baskets out of it.”

And laughed.

“Are there any more wolves around here?”

- Well, how! Father said there is a terrible wolf here, the Gray Landowner.

- I remember. The one that slaughtered our herd before the war.

- Father said: he now lives on the Dry River in the rubble.

- He won't touch us?

“Let him try,” answered the hunter with the double visor.

While the children were talking like that and the morning was moving closer and closer to dawn, Borina Zvonkaya was filled with bird songs, howling, groaning and crying of animals. Not all of them were here, on the borin, but from the swamp, damp, deaf, all the sounds gathered here. Borina with a forest, pine and sonorous in dry land, responded to everything.

But the poor birds and little animals, how they all suffered, trying to pronounce something common to all, one beautiful word! And even children, as simple as Nastya and Mitrasha, understood their effort. They all wanted to say only one beautiful word.

You can see how the bird sings on a branch, and each feather trembles from her effort. But all the same, they cannot say words like we do, and they have to sing, shout, tap out.

- Tek-tek, - a huge bird Capercaillie taps in a dark forest, barely audibly.

- Swag-shvark! - Wild Drake flew over the river in the air.

- Quack-quack! - wild duck Mallard on the lake.

- Gu-gu-gu, - the red bird Bullfinch on the birch.

Snipe, a small gray bird with a long nose like a flattened hairpin, rolls in the air like a wild lamb. It seems like "alive, alive!" shouts Curlew the sandpiper. The black grouse is somewhere mumbling and chufykaet. The White Partridge laughs like a witch.

We, hunters, have been hearing these sounds for a long time, since our childhood, and we know them, and distinguish them, and rejoice, and understand well what word they are all working on and cannot say. That is why, when we come to the forest at dawn and hear, we will say this word to them, as people, this word:

- Hello!

And as if they would then also rejoice, as if then they, too, would all pick up the wonderful word that had flown from the human tongue.

And they will quack in response, and zachufikat, and zasvarkat, and zatetek, trying with all these voices to answer us:

- Hello, hello, hello!

But among all these sounds, one escaped, unlike anything else.

– Do you hear? Mitrasha asked.

How can you not hear! - answered Nastya. “I’ve heard it for a long time, and it’s kind of scary.

- There is nothing terrible. My father told me and showed me: this is how a hare screams in spring.

- Why is that?

- Father said: he shouts: "Hello, hare!"

- And what is it that hoots?

- Father said: it is the bittern, the water bull, who hoots.

- And what is he whining about?

- My father said: he also has his own girlfriend, and he also says the same to her in his own way, like everyone else: "Hello, Bump."

And suddenly it became fresh and cheerful, as if the whole earth was washed at once, and the sky lit up, and all the trees smelled of their bark and buds. Then it was as if a triumphant cry broke out above all sounds, flew out and covered everything with itself, similar as if all people could shout joyfully in harmonious harmony:

- Victory, victory!

- What is it? - asked the delighted Nastya.

- Father said: this is how cranes meet the sun. This means that the sun will rise soon.

But the sun had not yet risen when the sweet cranberry hunters descended into the great swamp. The celebration of the meeting of the sun had not yet begun at all. Over the small, gnarled fir-trees and birch trees, a night blanket hung in a gray haze and drowned out all the wonderful sounds of the Ringing Borina. Only a painful, aching and joyless howl was heard here.

Nastenka shrank all over from the cold, and in the swampy dampness the sharp, stupefying smell of wild rosemary smelled upon her. The Golden Hen on high legs felt small and weak before this inevitable force of death.

“What is it, Mitrasha,” Nastenka asked, shivering, “howling so terribly in the distance?”