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Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin

PANTRY OF THE SUN

Fairy tale and stories

Foreword

About Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin

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 porcini 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:

He locked the car, leaving only a window for Zhalka. 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's happening in the forest! The forester has a laundry.

In the morning for fairy tales! - I answered displeasedly: I did not want to rise yet.

© 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)

About Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin

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.

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 beings. 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.

fairy tale

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 beings. 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.

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The trees groaned so plaintively that his hound dog Travka climbed out of the half-collapsed potato pit near Antipych's lodge and howled plaintively in the same tone as the trees.

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 yourself probably know better than we 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, 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.

“Children, you,” 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 ... when she crawled up to the old man's knees, lay down on her back and turned up her fair belly with six pairs of black nipples. Antipych just held out his hand to stroke her, she suddenly jumped up with her paws on her shoulders - and kiss, and kiss 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. Soon 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 Ivan-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 the trees, she climbed the hill, which was once a hut, and howled, and howled ...

The gray landowner wolf has been listening to this howl for a long time ...

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 hunting style, 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 Seryy had been in such alterations 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 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 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. 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 who now, after him, to serve it.

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 is a man’s friend, or a wolf is his worst enemy, as long as they howl. 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 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 basket, which smelled 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 hunters say about a 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 a high head, with a sense 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 afterwards, 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, checking 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:

"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 spruce on the right side, once again rose on her hind legs, confidently wagged her tail and trotted there.

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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 combustible 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 the pantry of the sun, and then all this pantry of the sun, like peat, is inherited by a person from the sun.

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 leaves, 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. Acidic marsh 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 knits a stocking while standing, and that’s all: whatever the Christmas tree, it definitely 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 man 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.

Suddenly, a head with a tuft appears overhead, quite close, and a lapwing with round black wings and white underwings, alarmed on the nest, sharply shouts:

- Whose are you, whose are you?

- Alive, alive! - as if answering a lapwing, shouts a large curlew, a gray bird with a large crooked beak.

And the black raven, guarding its nest on the borin, flying around the swamp in a sentinel circle, noticed a small hunter with a double visor. In the spring, the raven also has a special cry, similar to how if a person shouts with his throat and nose: "Dron-ton!" There are incomprehensible and not perceptible shades in this basic sound, and therefore we cannot understand the conversation of ravens, but only guess, like 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 him was walking, which means that he, Mitrasha, could boldly walk along it. And, hearing the raven, he even sang:

Don't 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 there, 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, tall 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 ...

- Oh, you! - it used to be, Antipych told us, - you guys go around dressed and shod.

– But how? we asked.

- They would go, - he answered, - naked and barefoot.

- Why are they naked and barefoot?

And he was rolling over us.

So we did not understand anything, what the old man was laughing at.

Now, only many years later, Antipych's words come to mind, and everything becomes clear: Antipych addressed these words to us when we, children, whistling fervently and confidently, spoke about something that we had not yet experienced at all.

Antipych, offering us to walk naked and barefoot, just did not finish: "If you do not know the ford, do not climb into the water."

So here is Mitrasha. And the prudent Nastya warned him. And the white-bearded grass showed the direction of the detour of the elani. Not! Not knowing the ford, he left the beaten human path and climbed straight into the Blind Elan. And meanwhile, right here, in this clearing, the interweaving of plants stopped altogether, there was elan, the same thing as an ice-hole in a pond in winter. In an ordinary elani, at least a little bit of water is always visible, covered with white beautiful water lilies, kupavs. That's why this spruce was called Blind, because it was impossible to recognize it by its appearance.

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 position. 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 much to disappear - at random, he rushed again, and again, and again. And he felt that he was tightly grasped from all sides to the very chest. Now he couldn’t even breathe heavily: at the slightest movement he was pulled 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 down his breathing 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 carried his cry to the other side of the Bludov 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, nosy, long-tailed, began to crackle, some like:

- Dri-ti-ti!

- Dra-ta-ta!

- Drone-tone! the raven called from above.

And, instantly stopping the noisy flapping of his wings, he abruptly threw himself down and again opened his wings almost above the very head of the little man.

The little man did not even dare to show the gun to the black herald of his doom.

And the magpies, very smart for every filthy deed, realized the complete impotence of a little man immersed in a swamp. They jumped off the top fingers of the fir trees to the ground and from different sides began their magpie offensive in leaps and bounds.

The little man with the double visor stopped screaming. Tears streamed down his tanned face, down his cheeks.

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Whoever has never seen how cranberries grow can walk through the swamp for a very long time and not notice that he is walking on cranberries. Here, take a blueberry berry - it grows, and you see it: a thin stalk stretches up, along the stalk, like wings, small green leaves in different directions, and blueberries, black berries with a blue fluff sit in small peas near the leaves. The same is true of lingonberries, a blood-red berry, the leaves are dark green, dense, do not turn yellow even under the snow, and there are so many berries that the place seems to be watered with blood. Blueberries still grow in a swamp with a bush, a blue berry, larger, you won’t pass without noticing. In remote places, where the huge capercaillie bird lives, there is a stone berry, a red-ruby berry with a brush, and each rubie is in a green frame. Only we have one single cranberry, especially in early spring, hiding in a swamp tussock and almost invisible from above. Only when a lot of it gathers in one place, you will notice from above and think: "Someone scattered cranberries." You bend down to take one, try it, and together with one berry you pull a green thread with many cranberries. If you want, you can pull out a whole necklace of large blood-red berries from a tussock.

Either that cranberries are an expensive berry in the spring, or that they are healthy and healing, and that it is good to drink tea with them, only women develop terrible greed when picking them. One old woman from us once collected such a basket that she could not even lift it. And she didn’t dare to pour a berry or even throw a basket. Yes, I almost died near a full basket. And it happens that one woman attacks a berry and, looking around to see if anyone sees it, she lies down on the ground in a wet swamp and crawls and no longer sees that another one is crawling towards her, not even like a person at all. So they will meet one with the other - and well, fight!

At first, Nastya plucked each berry separately from the whip, for each red one she leaned to the ground. But soon, because of one berry, she stopped bending over: she wanted more. She began to guess now where not one or two berries could be taken, but a whole handful, and began to bend down only for a handful. So she pours handful after handful, more and more often, but she wants more and more.

It happened that Nastenka would not work at home for an hour, so that her brother would not be remembered, so that she would not want to call to him. But now he has gone off alone, no one knows where, and she doesn’t even remember that she has bread, that her beloved brother is out there somewhere, in a heavy swamp, hungry. Yes, she forgot about herself and only remembers cranberries, and she wants more and more.

Because of what, after all, all the fuss caught fire in her when arguing with Mitrasha: it was precisely because she wanted to follow the crowded path. And now, groping after the cranberries, where the cranberries lead, there she goes, Nastya imperceptibly left the crowded path.

There was only once like awakening from greed: she suddenly realized that somewhere she had gone off the path. She turned to where she thought there was a path, but there was no path. She rushed to the other side, where two dry trees with bare branches loomed - there was no path there either. Here it would be, on occasion, to remember her about the compass, as Mitrasha spoke about him, and about her own brother, her beloved, to remember that he was going hungry, and, remembering, to call to him ...

And just to remember how suddenly Nastenka saw something that not every cranberry gets to see at least once in her life ...

In their argument about which path to follow, the children of one did not know that the big path and the small one, bending around the Blind spruce, both converged on the Dry River and there, beyond the Dry, no longer diverging, in the end they led out to the big Pereslavskaya road. In a large semicircle, Nastya's path went around the dry valley of the Blind Elan. Mitrashin's path went straight near the very edge of the yelani. If he hadn’t gone wrong, hadn’t lost sight of the white-bearded grass on the human path, he would have long ago been in the place where Nastya had just come. And this place, hidden between the juniper bushes, was exactly the same Palestinian woman where Mitrasha was aiming at by compass.

If Mitrasha came here hungry and without a basket, what would he do here, on this blood-red Palestinian? Nastya came to the Palestinian woman with a large basket, with a large supply of food, forgotten and covered with sour berries.

And again, the girl, who looks like a Golden Hen on high legs, should think about her brother at a joyful meeting with a Palestinian woman and shout to him:

Dear friend, we have arrived!

Ah, raven, raven, prophetic bird! You yourself may live for three hundred years, and whoever gave birth to you, in his testicle, told everything that he also learned during his three hundred years of life. And so the memory of everything that had been in this swamp for a thousand years passed from raven to raven. How much you, raven, have seen and know, and why don’t you at least once leave your crow’s circle and carry on your mighty wings the news of a brother dying in a swamp from his desperate and senseless courage to a sister who loves and forgets her brother from greed.

Would you, raven, tell them ...

- Drone-tone! - shouted the raven, flying over the very head of the dying man.

- I hear, - also in the same "drone tone" the crow answered him on the nest, - just be in time, snatch something before it is completely sucked into the swamp.

- Drone-tone! - the male crow shouted a second time, flying over the girl, crawling almost next to her dying brother in the wet swamp. And this “drone tone” of the raven meant that the raven family might get even more from this crawling girl.

There were no cranberries in the very middle of the Palestinian. Here a dense aspen forest stood out in a hilly curtain, and in it stood a horned giant elk. To look at him from one side - it will seem, he looks like a bull, to look at the other - a horse and a horse: both a slender body, and slender legs, dry, and a muzzle with thin nostrils. But how arched is this muzzle, what eyes and what horns! You look and think: maybe there is nothing - neither a bull, nor a horse, but something big, gray, in a frequent gray aspen forest is formed. But how is it formed from aspen, if you can clearly see how the thick lips of the monster slammed to the tree and a narrow white stripe remains on the tender aspen: this monster feeds like that. Yes, almost all aspens show such bites. No, this bulk is not a vision in a swamp. But how can one understand that such a large body can grow on an aspen crust and petals of a marsh shamrock? Where does a man, with his power, get greed even for the sour cranberry?

The elk, picking off the aspen, from its height calmly looks at the crawling girl, as at any crawling creature.

Seeing nothing but cranberries, she crawls and crawls towards a large black stump, barely moving a large basket behind her, all wet and dirty, the former Golden Hen on high legs.

The elk does not even consider her a person: she has all the habits of ordinary animals, which he looks at with indifference, like we look at soulless stones.

A large black stump collects the rays of the sun and heats up very much. It is already beginning to get dark, and the air and everything around is cooling. But the stump, black and large, still retains heat. Six small lizards crawled out of the swamp and crouched on him; four lemon butterflies, folding their wings, crouched with their antennae; big black flies came to spend the night. A long cranberry whip, clinging to grass stalks and bumps, braided a warm black stump and, having made several turns at the very top, went down to the other side. Poisonous viper snakes guard the heat at this time of the year, and one, huge, half a meter long, crawled onto a stump and curled up on a cranberry.

And the girl also crawled through the swamp, not raising her head high. And so she crawled to the burnt stump and pulled the very whip where the snake lay. The snake raised its head and hissed. And Nastya also raised her head ...

It was then that Nastya finally woke up, jumped up, and the elk, recognizing a person in her, jumped out of the aspen and, throwing forward strong, long stilted legs, rushed easily through the viscous swamp, as a hare rushes along a dry path.

Frightened by the elk, Nastenka looked in amazement at the snake: the viper still lay curled up in a warm ray of sun. Nastya imagined that she herself had remained there, on the stump, and now she had come out of the snake's skin and was standing, not understanding where she was.

Not far away stood a large red dog with a black strap on its back, looking at her. This dog was Grass, and Nastya even remembered her: Antipych came to the village with her more than once. But she could not remember the name of the dog correctly and called out to her:

- Ant, Ant, I'll give you some bread!

And reached for the basket for bread. The basket was filled to the top with cranberries, and under the cranberries was bread.

How much time has passed, how many cranberries lay down from morning to evening, until the huge basket was filled! Where was her brother during this time, hungry, and how did she forget about him, how did she forget herself and everything around?

She looked again at the stump where the snake lay, and suddenly cried out piercingly:

- Brother, Mitrasha!

And, sobbing, she fell down near the basket filled with cranberries. It was this piercing cry that then flew to the Elani, and Mitrasha heard it and answered, but a gust of wind then carried his cry away to the other side, where only magpies lived.

That strong gust of wind when poor Nastya called out was not the last before the silence of the evening dawn. The sun at that time passed down through a thick cloud and threw out the golden legs of its throne from there to the ground.

And that impulse was not the last, when Mitrasha shouted in response to Nastya's cry.

The last impulse was when the sun plunged the golden legs of its throne, as if underground, and, large, clean, red, touched the earth with its lower edge. Then a little white-browed thrush sang his sweet song in the upland. Hesitantly, near the Lying Stone, on the calmed trees, Kosach-tokovik streamed. And the cranes shouted three times, not like in the morning - "victory", but sort of like:

- Sleep, but remember: we will wake you all up soon, wake up, wake up!

The day ended not with a gust of wind, but with a last light breath. Then there was complete silence, and everything became audible everywhere, even the grouse whistling in the thickets of the Dry River.

At this time, sensing human misfortune, Grass went up to the sobbing Nastya and licked her cheek, salty from tears. Nastya raised her head, looked at the dog, and so, without saying anything to her, lowered her head back and laid it right on the berry. Grass could clearly smell the bread through the cranberries, and she was terribly hungry, but she could not afford to dig in the cranberries with her paws. Instead, sensing human misfortune, she raised her head high and howled.

Once, I remember, a long time ago we also rode in the evening, as it was in the old days, along the forest road in a troika with a bell. And suddenly the coachman reined in the troika, the bell fell silent, and, listening, the coachman said to us:

We ourselves heard something.

- What is it?

- Some kind of trouble: a dog howls in the forest.

At the time, we never knew what the problem was. Perhaps, somewhere in the swamp, a man was also drowning, and, seeing him off, a dog, a true friend of man, howled.

In complete silence, when Grass howled, Gray immediately realized that it was on a Palestinian, and quickly, quickly waved straight there.

Only very soon Grass ceased to howl, and Gray stopped to wait until the howl began again.

At that moment, Grass herself heard a familiar thin and rare voice in the direction of the Lying Stone:

- Wow, wow!

And I immediately realized, of course, that it was a fox yapping at a hare. And then, of course, she understood - the fox found a trace of the same hare that she sniffed there, on the Lying Stone. And then she realized that a fox without cunning would never catch up with a hare and she yapped, only so that he would run and get tired, and when he got tired and lay down, then she would grab him on the bed. With Grass after Antipych, this happened more than once when getting a hare for food. Hearing such a fox, Grass hunted in the wolf's way: as a wolf on the rut silently stands in a circle and, after waiting for a dog roaring at a hare, catches it, so she, hiding, from under the fox's rut ​​caught a hare.

After listening to the fox's rut, Grass, just like we hunters, understood the circle of the hare's run: from the Lying Stone, the hare ran to the Blind Elan and from there to the Dry River, from there for a long semicircle to the Palestinian woman and again by all means to the Lying Stone. Realizing this, she ran to the Lying Stone and hid there in a thick juniper bush.

Travka did not have to wait long. With her delicate hearing, she heard, inaccessible to human hearing, the champing of a hare's paw over the puddles on the swamp path. These puddles appeared on Nastya's morning tracks. Rusak was bound to show himself right now at the Lying Stone.

The grass behind the juniper bush crouched and braced its hind legs for a mighty throw, and when it saw the ears, it rushed.

Just at that time, the hare, a big, old, hardened hare, hobbled barely, took it into his head to suddenly stop and even, standing up on his hind legs, listen to how far the fox was yapping.

So it came together at the same time: Grass rushed, and the hare stopped.

And Grass was carried through a hare.

While the dog straightened up, the hare was already flying in huge leaps along the Mitrashin path directly to the Blind Spruce.

Then the wolf method of hunting failed: before dark it was impossible to wait for the return of the hare. And Grass, in her canine way, rushed after the hare and, screeching, filled the entire evening silence with a lilting, measured, even dog bark.

Hearing the dog, the fox, of course, immediately abandoned the hunt for the hare and took up the daily hunt for mice. And Gray, finally hearing the long-awaited barking of a dog, rushed on the swings in the direction of the Blind Elani.

Pantry of the sun Prishvin download

Magpies on the Blind Elani, having heard the approach of a hare, divided into two parties: some remained with the little man and shouted:

- Dri-ti-ti!

Others shouted at the hare:

- Dra-ta-ta!

It is difficult to understand and guess in this magpie anxiety. To say that they are calling for help - what help! If a man or a dog comes to the magpie cry, the magpies will get nothing. To say that with their cry they call the entire magpie tribe to a bloody feast? Is it so...

- Dri-ti-ti! shouted the magpies, jumping closer and closer to the little man.

But they couldn’t jump at all: the man’s hands were free. And suddenly the magpies mixed up, the same magpie either yells at "i", then yells at "a".

This meant that a hare was coming to the Blind Elan.

This hare had more than once dodged Grass and knew well that the hare was catching up with the hare, and that, therefore, it was necessary to act by cunning. That is why just before the spruce tree, not reaching the little man, he stopped and stirred up all forty. They all sat down on the top fingers of the trees, and they all shouted at the hare:

- Dri-ta-ta!

But for some reason, the hares do not attach any importance to this cry and make their discounts, not paying any attention to forty. That is why it sometimes seems that this magpie chirping is useless, and so it is they, sort of like people, sometimes just spend time out of boredom in chatter.

The hare, after standing a little, made his first huge jump, or, as the hunters say, his discount, - in one direction, standing there, threw himself into the other and after a dozen small jumps - into the third, and there lay down with his eyes to his trail on that the case that if Grass understands the discounts, she will come to the third discount, so that you can see her in advance ...

Yes, of course, the hare is smart, smart, but all the same, these discounts are a dangerous business: a smart hound also understands that the hare always looks at its own track, and so contrives to take the direction on the discounts not in the footsteps, but right in the air with its upper instinct.

And how, then, does the hare’s heart beat when he hears that the barking of the dog has stopped, the dog has chipped and began to silently make his terrible circle at the place of the chip ...

The hare was lucky this time. He understood: the dog, starting to make its circle around the tree, met something there, and suddenly a man’s voice was clearly heard there and a terrible noise arose ...

You can guess - the hare, having heard an incomprehensible noise, said to himself something like ours: "Away from sin," - and, feather-grass-feather grass, quietly went back to the Lying Stone.

And Grass, having scattered on a spruce tree over a hare, suddenly, ten paces away from her eye to eye, saw a little man and, forgetting about the hare, stopped in her tracks.

What Grass thought, looking at the little man in the elani, can be easily guessed. After all, we are all different for us. For Grass, all people were like two people: one is Antipych with different faces and the other person is Antipych's enemy. And this is why a good, smart dog does not immediately approach a person, but stops and finds out whether it is its owner or its enemy.

And so Grass stood and looked into the face of a little man, illuminated by the last ray of the setting sun.

The eyes of the little man were at first dull, dead, but suddenly a light lit up in them, and Grass noticed this.

“Most likely, this is Antipych,” Travka thought.

And slightly, barely perceptibly wagged her tail.

We, of course, cannot know how Travka thought, recognizing her Antipych, but, of course, one can guess. Do you remember if this happened to you? It happens that you lean in the forest to a quiet backwater of a stream and there, as in a mirror, you will see - the whole, the whole person, big, beautiful, as for Antipych Grass, bent down from behind your back and also looks into the backwater, as in a mirror. And so it is beautiful there, in the mirror, with all nature, with clouds, forests, and the sun also sets down there, and the new moon is shown, and frequent stars.

So that's for sure, probably, and Grass in every face of a person, as in a mirror, could see the whole person Antipych, and she tried to throw herself on each neck, but from her experience she knew: there is an enemy of Antipych with exactly the same face.

And she waited.

And her paws, meanwhile, were also sucked in a little; if you stand like that longer, then the dog's paws will get so sucked in that you won't pull it out. It was no longer possible to wait.

And suddenly…

Neither thunder, nor lightning, nor sunrise with all victorious sounds, nor sunset with the crane's promise of a new beautiful day - nothing, no miracle of nature could be greater than what happened now for Grass in the swamp: she heard a human word - and what a word !

Antipych, like a big, real hunter, at first called his dog, of course, in a hunting way - from the word to poison, and at first he called our Grass Zatravka; but after that the hunting nickname slipped on the tongue, and the beautiful name Grass came out. The last time Antipych came to us, his dog was also called Zatravka. And when the little man's eyes lit up, it meant that Mitrasha remembered the dog's name. Then the lifeless, bluish lips of the little man began to fill with blood, turn red, and move. Grass noticed this movement of her lips and for the second time slightly wagged her tail. And then a real miracle happened in the understanding of Grass. Just like the old Antipych in the old days, the new young and little Antipych said:

- Seed!

Recognizing Antipych, Grass instantly lay down.

- Oh well! - said Antipych. - Come to me, smart girl!

And Grass, in response to the words of the man, quietly crawled.

But the little man called to her and beckoned her now, not quite directly from the bottom of her heart, as Grass herself probably thought. The little man in his words not only had friendship and joy, as Travka thought, but also hid a cunning plan for his salvation. If he could tell her his plan clearly, with what joy she would rush to save him! But he could not make himself understandable to her and had to deceive her with an affectionate word. He even needed her to be afraid of him, otherwise if she weren’t afraid, didn’t feel a good fear of the power of the great Antipych and, like a dog, would throw herself on his neck like a dog, then the swamp would inevitably drag a person into its bowels, and his friend the dog. The little man simply could not be the great man now that Travka imagined. The little man was forced to be cunning.

“Baby, dear Grasshopper!” he caressed her in a sweet voice.

And I thought:

"Well, crawl, just crawl!"

And the dog, with its pure soul suspecting something not entirely pure in Antipych's clear words, crawled with stops.

- Well, my dear, more, more!

And I thought:

"Crawl, just crawl."

And little by little she crept up. He could even now, leaning on a gun spread out in the swamp, lean forward a little, stretch out his hand, stroke his head. But the cunning little man knew that at his slightest touch, the dog, with a squeal of joy, would rush at him and drown him.

And the little man stopped a big heart in himself. He froze in the exact calculation of the movement, like a fighter in a blow that determines the outcome of the fight: live or die.

Just a little crawl on the ground, and Grass would have thrown herself on the man’s neck, but the little man was not mistaken in his calculation: he instantly threw his right arm forward and grabbed a large, strong dog by the left hind leg.

So how could an enemy of a person be able to deceive like that?

The grass rushed with insane force, and it would have escaped from the hand of the little man, if he, already dragged enough, had not grabbed her by the other leg with his other hand. Immediately after that, he lay down on his stomach on the gun, released the dog, and on all fours himself, like a dog, rearranging the support-gun forward and forward, crawled to the path where a man constantly walked and where tall white-beard grass grew from his feet along the edges. Here, on the path, he got up, here he wiped the last tears from his face, shook off the dirt from his rags, and, like a real big man, ordered authoritatively:

“Come to me now, my Seed!”

Hearing such a voice, such words, Grass gave up all her hesitation: before her stood the former, beautiful Antipych. With a squeal of joy, recognizing the owner, she threw herself on his neck, and the man kissed his friend on the nose, eyes, and ears.

Isn't it time to tell now how we ourselves think about the enigmatic words of our old forester Antipych, when he promised us to whisper his truth to the dog if we ourselves did not find him alive? We think Antipych said this not quite in jest. It may very well be that Antipych, as Travka understands him, or, in our opinion, the whole man in his ancient past, whispered to his dog friend some great human truth, and we think: this truth is the truth of the age-old severe struggle of people for love.

It now remains for us not much to say about all the events of this big day in the Fornication swamp. The day, long as it was, was not quite over yet when Mitrasha got out of the elani with the help of Grass. After the stormy joy of meeting with Antipych, the business-like Grass immediately remembered her first chase after a hare. And it's understandable: Grass is a hound dog, and her job is to drive for herself, but for the owner Antipych, catching a hare is all her happiness. Now recognizing Antipych in Mitrash, she continued her interrupted circle and soon got on the exit trail of the hare, and immediately followed this fresh trail with her voice.

The hungry Mitrasha, barely alive, immediately realized that all his salvation would be in this hare, that if he killed the hare, he would get fire with a shot and, as happened more than once with his father, bake the hare in hot ashes. After examining the gun, changing the sodden cartridges, he went out into the circle and hid in a juniper bush.

It was still good to see a fly on the gun when Grass turned the hare from the Lying Stone onto Nastya's big path, drove it to the Palestinian, directed it from here to the juniper bush where the hunter was hiding. But then it happened that Gray, hearing the renewed rut of the dog, chose for himself exactly the same juniper bush where the hunter was hiding, and two hunters, a man and his worst enemy, met ... Seeing a gray muzzle from himself and some five steps away, Mitrasha I forgot about the hare and fired almost point-blank.

The gray landowner ended his life without any torment.

Gon was, of course, shot down by this shot, but Grass continued her work. The most important thing, the happiest thing, was not a hare, not a wolf, but that Nastya, hearing a close shot, screamed. Mitrasha recognized her voice, answered, and she instantly ran to him. After that, Travka soon brought the hare to her new, young Antipych, and the friends began to warm themselves by the fire, cook their own food and lodging for the night.

Nastya and Mitrasha lived across the house from us, and when hungry cattle roared in their yard in the morning, we were the first to come to see if any trouble had happened to the children. We immediately realized that the children did not spend the night at home and most likely got lost in the swamp. Little by little, other neighbors also gathered, began to think how we could help the children out, if only they were still alive. And they were just about to scatter across the swamp in all directions - we look, and the hunters for sweet cranberries are coming out of the forest in single file, and on their shoulders they have a pole with a heavy basket, and next to them is Grass, Antipych's dog.

They told us in great detail about everything that had happened to them in the Fornication Swamp. And we believed everything: an unheard-of collection of cranberries was evident. But not everyone could believe that a boy in his eleventh year of life could kill an old cunning wolf. However, several people from those who believed, with a rope and a large sled, went to the indicated place and soon brought the dead Gray landowner. Then everyone in the village stopped their business for a while and gathered, and not only from their own village, but also from neighboring villages. How many there were conversations! And it's hard to say who they looked at more - at the wolf or at the hunter in a cap with a double visor. When they turned their eyes from the wolf to the hunter, they said:

- But they teased: "The man in the bag"!

“There was a peasant,” others answered, “but he swam away, who dared, he ate two: not a peasant, but a hero.”

And then, imperceptibly for everyone, the former "Peasant in a bag" really began to change and over the next two years of the war he stretched out, and what kind of guy came out of him - tall, slender. And he would certainly become a hero of the Patriotic War, but that's just the war is over.

And the Golden Hen also surprised everyone in the village. No one reproached her for greed, like we did, on the contrary, everyone approved, and that she prudently called her brother to the thorny path, and that she picked up so many cranberries. But when from the orphanage of the evacuated Leningrad children turned to the village for all possible help for the children, Nastya gave them all her healing berries. It was then that we, having entered the confidence of the girl, learned from her how she tormented herself for her greed.

It remains for us now to say a few more words about ourselves: who we are and why we got into the Fornication Swamp. We are the scouts of the swamp riches. From the first days of the Patriotic War, they worked on preparing the swamp for extracting fuel in it - peat. And we found out that the peat in this swamp is enough for the operation of a large factory for a hundred years. These are the riches hidden in our swamps! And many still only know about these great pantries of the Sun, that it is as if devils live in them: all this is nonsense, and there are no devils in the swamp.

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 piglet Horseradish. Pantry of the sun
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.
With 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 - 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 objects.
- Here's another! brother gets angry. - You, Nastya, are bragging yourself.
- No, it's you! The pantry of the sun
- 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.
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 can’t decide on the sun in the forest, you go at random - you’ll 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.
- 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 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," 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, so what is this Palestinian? - 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 - oases, so in swamps there are hills. 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.
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 last year, in some places, new flowers of a white snowdrop and lilac, small and fragrant flowers of a wolf's bark were seen.
- They smell good, try picking a wolf's bark flower, - said Mitrasha.
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, - answered the brother, - wolves weave baskets from 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 lives on the Dry River, in the rubble.
- He won't touch us?
- Let him try! - answered the hunter with a 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.
- Shvark-shvark! - 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.