Page 2 of 6
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 zatetek, and zasvarkat, 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 not to 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!"
- What's that screeching?
- Father said, it is the bittern, the water bull, who hoots.
- And what is he whining about?
- My father said that he also has his own girlfriend, and he also says the same to her in his own way, like everyone else: “Hello, Vypikha.”
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, as if above all sounds, that a special, triumphant cry broke out, flew out and covered everything, similar, as if all people could shout joyfully in harmonious harmony:
- Victory, victory!
- What is it? - asked 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, - asked Nastenka, shivering, - howling so terribly in the distance?
- Father said, - answered Mitrasha, - these are wolves howling on the Dry River, and, probably, now it is 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 that 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 didn’t 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'll go north along this path.
- No, - answered Nastya, - we will go along this big path, where all people go. Father told us, remember, what a terrible place it is - Blind Elan, how many people and cattle 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 to the 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 terribly 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. Before that, it looked like the groan and howl of living beings that the fox, curled up on a moss tussock into a ball, raised 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 came the singing of birds, dedicated to the rising of the great sun. And the bright rays flying over the heads of the children did not yet warm. The swampy land was all in a chill, small puddles were covered with white ice.
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 purest white linen of undertails, underwings and shouted:
- Chuf! Shi!
In grouse, “chuf” most likely meant “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.
The children sat with bated breath 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, each rooster, too, stretched out its neck, 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 mutterings 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, having probably 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! - answered the male 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-ker-cupcake!
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 jerked, the tree pressed against the pine tree, and the pine tree groaned. The wind blew once more, and then the pine pressed, and the spruce 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 at the very stone, a rather wide swamp path forked: one, good, dense, the path went to the right, the other, weak, went straight.
Having checked the direction of the paths on the compass, Mitrasha, pointing to a 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 the people go,” the stubborn Muzhik in the bag answered decisively. - 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 to the Palestinian, but to the very Blind Elan we will please.
“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’ll 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! cried the crow.
And the male quickly ran across the bridge the rest of the way to Kosach and beat him with all his might. Like a 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 far away.
Then the gray cloud moved in tightly and covered the entire sun, with all its life-giving rays. The evil wind blew very sharply. Trees woven with roots, piercing each other with branches, growled, howled, groaned all over the Fornication swamp.
Page 1 of 3
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 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 - 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 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 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?”
“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 so 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 too.
- You understand a lot! the hunter cut her off. - We will go to the 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 terribly 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. Before that, it looked like the groan and howl of living beings that the fox, curled up on a moss tussock into a ball, raised 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 Borina, 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 came the singing of birds, dedicated to the rising of the great sun.
And the bright rays flying over the heads of the children did not yet warm. The swampy land was all in a chill, small puddles were covered with white ice.
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, each rooster, too, stretched out its neck, 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 mutterings 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, having probably 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-kor-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 jerked, the tree pressed against the pine tree, and the pine tree groaned. The wind blew once more, and then the pine pressed, and the spruce roared.
At this time, having rested on a stone and warmed by 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, so the trail. 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 the people go,” the stubborn Muzhik in the bag answered decisively. - 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.
- 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. Like a 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 far away.
Then the gray cloud moved in tightly and covered the entire sun with all its life-giving rays. The evil wind blew very sharply. Trees woven with roots, piercing each other with branches, growled, howled, groaned all over the Fornication swamp.
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 terribly 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. Before that, it looked like the groan and howl of living beings that the fox, curled up on a moss tussock into a ball, raised 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 Borina, 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 came the singing of birds, dedicated to the rising of the great sun. And the bright rays flying over the heads of the children did not yet warm. The swampy land was all in a chill, small puddles were covered with white ice. 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, each rooster, too, stretched out its neck, 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 mutterings in our own way, we got:cool feathers,
Ur-gur-gu,
Cool feathers
Obor-woo, I will break off.
- 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.
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.
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.
