About two hundred years ago, the wind-sower brought two seeds to the Fornication swamp: a pine seed and a spruce seed. Both seeds fell into one hole near a large flat stone ... Since then, for perhaps two hundred years, these spruce and pine have been growing together. Their roots have intertwined since childhood, their trunks stretched up close to the light, trying to overtake each other. Trees of different species terribly fought among themselves with roots for food, with branches for air and light. Rising higher, thickening their trunks, they dug dry branches into living trunks and in places pierced each other through and through. An evil wind, having arranged such an unhappy life for the trees, sometimes flew here to shake them. And then the trees groaned and howled at the whole Fornication swamp, like living creatures. Before that, it looked like the groan and howl of living beings that the fox, curled up on a moss tussock into a ball, raised its sharp muzzle up. This groan and howl of pine and spruce was so close to living beings that a feral dog in the Fornication swamp, hearing it, howled from longing for a person, and a wolf howled from inescapable malice towards him.
The children came here, to the Lying Stone, at the very time when the first rays of the sun, flying over the low, gnarled swamp fir-trees and birch trees, illuminated the Ringing Borina and the mighty trunks of the pine forest became like lit candles of the great temple of nature. From there, here, to this flat stone, where the children sat down to rest, faintly came the singing of birds, dedicated to the rising of the great sun. And the bright rays flying over the heads of the children did not yet warm. The swampy land was all in a chill, small puddles were covered with white ice.
It was quite quiet in nature, and the children, who were cold, were so quiet that the black grouse Kosach paid no attention to them. He sat down at the very top, where the boughs of pine and boughs of spruce formed like a bridge between two trees. Having settled down on this bridge, which was rather wide for him, closer to the spruce, Kosach seemed to begin to bloom in the rays of the rising sun. On his head, a scallop lit up like a fiery flower. His chest, blue in the depths of black, began to pour from blue to green. And his iridescent, lyre-spread tail became especially beautiful. Seeing the sun over the miserable swamp fir-trees, he suddenly jumped up on his high bridge, showed his purest white linen of undertails, underwings and shouted:
In grouse, “chuf” most likely meant “sun”, and “shi” probably had our “hello”.
In response to this first chirping of Kosach-tokovik, the same chirping with the flapping of wings was heard far across the swamp, and soon dozens of large birds began to fly in and land near the Lying Stone from all sides, like two drops of water similar to Kosach.
The children sat with bated breath on the cold stone, waiting for the rays of the sun to come to them and warm them at least a little. And now the first ray, gliding over the tops of the nearest, very small Christmas trees, finally played on the children's cheeks. Then the upper Kosach, greeting the sun, stopped jumping up and down. He squatted low on the bridge at the top of the tree, stretched his long neck along the bough, and began a long, brook-like song. In response to him, somewhere nearby, dozens of the same birds sitting on the ground, each rooster, too, stretched out its neck, began to sing the same song. And then, as if already quite a large stream, muttering, ran over invisible pebbles.
How many times have we, the hunters, after waiting for the dark morning, at the chilly dawn listened with trepidation to this singing, trying in our own way to understand what the roosters are singing about. And when we repeated their mutterings in our own way, we got:
cool feathers,
Ur-gur-gu,
cool feathers,
Obor-woo, I will break off.
So the black grouse muttered in unison, intending to fight at the same time. And while they were muttering like that, a small event happened in the depths of the dense spruce crown. There a crow sat on a nest and hid there all the time from Kosach, who was swimming almost near the nest itself. The crow would very much like to drive Kosach away, but she was afraid to leave the nest and cool the eggs in the morning frost. The male crow guarding the nest at that time was making its flight and, having probably met something suspicious, lingered. The crow, waiting for the male, lay in the nest, was quieter than water, lower than grass. And suddenly, seeing the male flying back, she shouted her own:
This meant for her:
"Rescue!"
Kra! - answered the male in the direction of the current, in the sense that it is still unknown who will cut off the twisted feathers for whom.
The male, immediately realizing what was the matter, went down and sat down on the same bridge, near the fir tree, at the very nest where Kosach was lekking, only closer to the pine tree, and began to wait.
Kosach at this time, not paying any attention to the male crow, called out his own, known to all hunters:
Kar-ker-cupcake!
And this was the signal for a general fight of all the current roosters. Well, the cool feathers flew in all directions! And then, as if on the same signal, the male crow, with small steps along the bridge, imperceptibly began to approach Kosach.
Motionless as statues, hunters for sweet cranberries sat on a stone. The sun, so hot and clear, came out against them over the swamp fir trees. But there was one cloud in the sky at that time. It appeared like a cold blue arrow and crossed the rising sun in half. At the same time, suddenly the wind jerked, the tree pressed against the pine tree, and the pine tree groaned. The wind blew once more, and then the pine pressed, and the spruce roared.
At this time, having rested on a stone and warmed up in the rays of the sun, Nastya and Mitrasha got up to continue on their way. But at the very stone, a rather wide swamp path forked: one, good, dense, the path went to the right, the other, weak, went straight.
Having checked the direction of the paths on the compass, Mitrasha, pointing to a weak path, said:
We need to follow this one to the north.
This is not a trail! - answered Nastya.
Here's another! Mitrasha got angry. - People were walking, - that means the path. We need to go north. Let's go and don't talk anymore.
Nastya was offended to obey the younger Mitrasha.
Kra! - shouted at this time the crow in the nest.
And her male with small steps ran closer to Kosach for half a bridge.
The second sharp blue arrow crossed the sun, and a gray cloud began to approach from above. The Golden Hen gathered her strength and tried to persuade her friend.
Look, - she said, - how dense my path is, all people walk here. Are we smarter than everyone?
Let all people go, - the stubborn Muzhik in a bag resolutely answered. - We must follow the arrow, as our father taught us, to the north, to the Palestinian.
My father told us stories, he joked with us, - said Nastya, - and, probably, there is no Palestinian at all in the north. It would be very stupid for us to follow the arrow - just not to the Palestinian, but to the very Blind Elan we will please.
Well, all right, - Mitrasha turned sharply, - I won’t argue with you anymore: you go along your path, where all the women go for cranberries, but I will go on my own, along my own path, to the north.
And he actually went there without thinking about the cranberry basket or the food.
Nastya should have reminded him of this, but she herself was so angry that, all red as red, she spat after him and went for cranberries along the common path.
Kra! cried the crow.
And the male quickly ran across the bridge the rest of the way to Kosach and beat him with all his might. Like a scalded Kosach rushed to the flying grouse, but the angry male caught up with him, pulled him out, let a bunch of white and rainbow feathers fly through the air and drove and drove far away.
Then the gray cloud moved in tightly and covered the entire sun, with all its life-giving rays. The evil wind blew very sharply. Trees woven with roots, piercing each other with branches, growled, howled, groaned all over the Fornication swamp.
About two hundred years ago, the wind-sower brought two seeds to the Fornication swamp: a pine seed and a spruce seed. Both seeds fell into one hole near a large flat stone ... Since then, for perhaps two hundred years, these spruce and pine have been growing together. Their roots have intertwined since childhood, their trunks stretched up close to the light, trying to overtake each other. Trees of different species terribly fought among themselves with roots for food, with branches for air and light. Rising higher, thickening their trunks, they dug dry branches into living trunks and in places pierced each other through and through. An evil wind, having arranged such an unhappy life for the trees, sometimes flew here to shake them. And then the trees groaned and howled at the whole Fornication swamp, like living creatures. Before that, it looked like the groan and howl of living beings that the fox, curled up on a moss tussock into a ball, raised its sharp muzzle up. This groan and howl of pine and spruce was so close to living beings that a feral dog in the Fornication swamp, hearing it, howled from longing for a person, and a wolf howled from inescapable malice towards him.
The children came here, to the Lying Stone, at the very time when the first rays of the sun, flying over the low, gnarled swamp fir-trees and birch trees, illuminated the Ringing Borina and the mighty trunks of the pine forest became like lit candles of the great temple of nature. From there, here, to this flat stone, where the children sat down to rest, faintly came the singing of birds, dedicated to the rising of the great sun. And the bright rays flying over the heads of the children did not yet warm. The swampy land was all in a chill, small puddles were covered with white ice.
It was quite quiet in nature, and the children, who were cold, were so quiet that the black grouse Kosach paid no attention to them. He sat down at the very top, where the boughs of pine and boughs of spruce formed like a bridge between two trees. Having settled down on this bridge, which was rather wide for him, closer to the spruce, Kosach seemed to begin to bloom in the rays of the rising sun. On his head, a scallop lit up like a fiery flower. His chest, blue in the depths of black, began to pour from blue to green. And his iridescent, lyre-spread tail became especially beautiful. Seeing the sun over the miserable swamp fir-trees, he suddenly jumped up on his high bridge, showed his purest white linen of undertails, underwings and shouted:
- Chuf! Shi!
In grouse, “chuf” most likely meant “sun”, and “shi” probably had our “hello”.
In response to this first chirping of Kosach-tokovik, the same chirping with the flapping of wings was heard far across the swamp, and soon dozens of large birds began to fly in and land near the Lying Stone from all sides, like two drops of water similar to Kosach.
The children sat with bated breath on the cold stone, waiting for the rays of the sun to come to them and warm them at least a little. And now the first ray, gliding over the tops of the nearest, very small Christmas trees, finally played on the children's cheeks. Then the upper Kosach, greeting the sun, stopped jumping up and down. He squatted low on the bridge at the top of the tree, stretched his long neck along the bough, and began a long, brook-like song. In response to him, somewhere nearby, dozens of the same birds sitting on the ground, each rooster, too, stretched out its neck, began to sing the same song. And then, as if already quite a large stream, muttering, ran over invisible pebbles.
How many times have we, the hunters, after waiting for the dark morning, at the chilly dawn listened with trepidation to this singing, trying in our own way to understand what the roosters are singing about. And when we repeated their mutterings in our own way, we got:
cool feathers,
Ur-gur-gu,
cool feathers,
Obor-woo, I will break off.
So the black grouse muttered in unison, intending to fight at the same time. And while they were muttering like that, a small event happened in the depths of the dense spruce crown. There a crow sat on a nest and hid there all the time from Kosach, who was swimming almost near the nest itself. The crow would very much like to drive Kosach away, but she was afraid to leave the nest and cool the eggs in the morning frost. The male crow guarding the nest at that time was making its flight and, having probably met something suspicious, lingered. The crow, waiting for the male, lay in the nest, was quieter than water, lower than grass. And suddenly, seeing the male flying back, she shouted her own:
This meant for her:
"Rescue!"
— Kra! - answered the male in the direction of the current, in the sense that it is still unknown who will cut off the twisted feathers for whom.
The male, immediately realizing what was the matter, went down and sat down on the same bridge, near the fir tree, at the very nest where Kosach was lekking, only closer to the pine tree, and began to wait.
Kosach at this time, not paying any attention to the male crow, called out his own, known to all hunters:
— Kar-ker-cupcake!
And this was the signal for a general fight of all the current roosters. Well, the cool feathers flew in all directions! And then, as if on the same signal, the male crow, with small steps along the bridge, imperceptibly began to approach Kosach.
Motionless as statues, hunters for sweet cranberries sat on a stone. The sun, so hot and clear, came out against them over the swamp fir trees. But there was one cloud in the sky at that time. It appeared like a cold blue arrow and crossed the rising sun in half. At the same time, suddenly the wind jerked, the tree pressed against the pine tree, and the pine tree groaned. The wind blew once more, and then the pine pressed, and the spruce roared.
At this time, having rested on a stone and warmed up in the rays of the sun, Nastya and Mitrasha got up to continue on their way. But at the very stone, a rather wide swamp path forked: one, good, dense, the path went to the right, the other, weak, went straight.
Having checked the direction of the paths on the compass, Mitrasha, pointing to a weak path, said:
“We need to follow this one to the north.
- It's not a trail! - answered Nastya.
- Here's another! Mitrasha got angry. - People were walking, - that means the path. We need to go north. Let's go and don't talk anymore.
Nastya was offended to obey the younger Mitrasha.
— Kra! - shouted at this time the crow in the nest.
And her male with small steps ran closer to Kosach for half a bridge.
The second sharp blue arrow crossed the sun, and a gray cloud began to approach from above. The Golden Hen gathered her strength and tried to persuade her friend.
“Look,” she said, “how dense my path is, all people walk here. Are we smarter than everyone?
“Let all the people go,” the stubborn Man in the pouch answered decisively. - We must follow the arrow, as our father taught us, to the north, to the Palestinian.
“Father told us fairy tales, he joked with us,” said Nastya, “and, probably, there is no Palestinian at all in the north. It would be very stupid for us to follow the arrow - just not to the Palestinian, but to the very Blind Elan we will please.
“Well, all right,” Mitrasha turned sharply, “I won’t argue with you anymore: you go along your path, where all the women go for cranberries, but I’ll go on my own, along my path, to the north.
And he actually went there without thinking about the cranberry basket or the food.
© 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 porcini mushroom, and under it every insignificant little thing like russula is 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.
Prishvin wrote the fairy tale "Pantry of the Sun" in 1945. In the work, the author reveals the themes of nature, love for the motherland, classic for Russian literature. Using the artistic device of personification, the author “enlivens” the swamp, trees, wind, etc. to the reader. Nature seems to act as a separate hero of the fairy tale, warning children about danger, helping them. Through descriptions of the landscape, Prishvin conveys the internal state of the characters, the change of mood in the story.
main characters
Nastya Veselkina- a 12-year-old girl, Mitrasha's sister, "was like a golden hen on high legs."
Mitrasha Veselkin- a boy of 10 years old, Nastya's brother; he was jokingly called "the man in the pouch".
Grass- the dog of the deceased forester Antipych, "big red, with a black strap on his back."
Wolf Old landowner
Chapter 1
In the village "near the Bludov swamp, near the city of Pereslavl-Zalessky, two children were orphaned" - Nastya and Mitrasha. "Their mother died of an illness, their father died in the Patriotic War". The children were left with a hut and a household. At first, the guys were helped to manage the household by the neighbors, but soon they themselves learned everything.
The children lived very well together. Nastya got up early and "took care of the house until night." Mitrasha, on the other hand, was engaged in "man's household", he made barrels, pelvises, wooden utensils, which he sold.
Chapter 2
In the village in the spring, cranberries were harvested, which had lain all winter under the snow, they were tastier and healthier than autumn ones. At the end of April, the guys gathered for berries. Mitrasha took with him his father's double-barreled gun and a compass - his father explained that with a compass one can always find the way home. Nastya took a basket, bread, potatoes and milk. The children decided to go to the Blind Elani - there, according to their father, there is a "Palestinian", on which a lot of cranberries grow.
Chapter 3
It was still dark, the guys went to the Fornication swamp. Mitrasha said that the “terrible wolf, the Gray landowner” lives alone in the swamps. As confirmation of this, a wolf howl was heard in the distance.
Mitrasha led his sister along the compass to the north - to the right clearing with cranberries.
Chapter 4
The children went to the Lying Stone. From there there were two paths - one trodden by people, “dense”, and the second “weak”, but going north. Having quarreled, the guys parted in different directions. Mitrasha went to the north, and Nastya - along the "common" path.
Chapter 5
Travka, a hound dog, lived in a potato pit near the ruins of the forester's house. Her owner, the old hunter Antipych, died two years ago. Yearning for his owner, the dog often climbed the hill and howled in a long way.
Chapter 6
A few years ago, not far from the Dry River, a “whole team” of people exterminated wolves. Everyone was killed, except for the cautious Gray landowner, who was only shot off his left ear and half of his tail. In summer, the wolf killed cattle and dogs in the villages. Hunters came five times to catch Gray, but he managed to escape each time.
Chapter 7
Hearing the howl of Travka's dog, the wolf headed towards her. However, Grass smelled a hare trail and followed it, and near the Lying Stone she smelled bread and potatoes, and ran after Nastya at a trot.
Chapter 8
Fornication swamp with "huge reserves of combustible peat, there is a pantry of the sun." “Thousands of years this goodness has been preserved under water” and then “peat is inherited by a person from the sun”.
Mitrasha went to the "Blind Elani" - the "deadly place", where many people died in the quagmire. Gradually, the bumps under his feet "became semi-liquid". To shorten the path, Mitrasha decided not to follow a safe path, but directly through the clearing.
From the first steps the boy began to sink into the swamp. Trying to break out of the quagmire, he jerked sharply and ended up in a chest-deep swamp. To prevent the quagmire from completely engulfing him, he held on to his gun.
From afar came the cry of Nastya calling him. Mitrasha answered, but the wind carried his cry in the other direction.
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Grass, "sensing human misfortune", raised its head high and howled. Gray hurried to the howl of the dog from the other side of the swamp. Travka heard that a fox was chasing a hare nearby and ran after the prey in the direction of the Blind Elani.
Chapter 11
Catching up with the hare, Grass ran out to the place where Mitrash had been dragged into the bog. The boy recognized the dog and called to him. When Grass came closer, Mitrasha grabbed her by the hind legs. The dog "rushed with insane force" and the boy managed to get out of the swamp. Grass, deciding that in front of her "the former beautiful Antipych" joyfully rushed to Mitrasha.
Chapter 12
Remembering the hare, Grass ran after him further. Hungry Mitrasha immediately realized "that all his salvation will be in this hare." The boy hid in the juniper bushes. Grass also drove a hare here, and Gray ran to the barking of the dog. Seeing a wolf five paces away, Mitrasha shot at him and killed him.
Nastya, hearing the shot, screamed. Mitrasha called her, and the girl ran to the cry. The guys lit a fire and made themselves dinner from a hare caught by Grass.
After spending the night in the swamp, the children returned home in the morning. At first, the village did not believe that the boy could kill the old wolf, but soon they themselves were convinced of this. Nastya gave the collected cranberries to the evacuated Leningrad children. Over the next two years of the war, Mitrasha "stretched out" and matured.
This story was told by "scouts of marsh riches", who during the war years prepared swamps - "storerooms of the sun" for peat extraction.
Conclusion
In the work “The Pantry of the Sun”, Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin touches on the issues of the survival of people, in particular children, in difficult periods (in the story this is the time of the Patriotic War), shows the importance of mutual support and assistance. The "pantry of the sun" in the fairy tale is a composite symbol denoting not only peat, but also all the richness of nature, and the people living on that land.
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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 fuel, peat, is a pantry of the sun. Yes, that's exactly how it is, that the hot sun was the mother of every blade of grass, every flower, every marsh bush and berry. The sun gave its heat to all of them, and they, dying, decomposing, in fertilizer passed it on, as an inheritance, to other plants, bushes, berries, flowers and blades of grass. But in swamps, water prevents plant parents from passing on all their goodness to their children. For thousands of years, this goodness has been preserved under water, the swamp becomes a pantry of the sun, and then all this pantry of the sun, like peat, goes to a person as an inheritance.
The fornication swamp contains huge reserves of fuel, but the peat layer is not everywhere the same thickness. Where the children sat at the Lying Stone, the plants lay layer upon layer on top of each other for thousands of years. Here was the oldest layer of peat, but further, the closer to Slepaya Elani, the layer became younger and thinner.
Little by little, as Mitrasha moved forward at the direction of the arrow and the path, the bumps under his feet became not only soft, as before, but semi-liquid. He steps with his foot as if on solid ground, and the foot goes away and it becomes scary: isn’t the foot completely going into the abyss? Some fidgety bumps come across, you have to choose a place where to put your foot. And then it went like that, that you set foot, and under your foot from this, suddenly, as in your stomach, growl and run somewhere under the swamp.
The ground beneath my feet became like a hammock suspended over a muddy abyss. On this moving land, on a thin layer of plants woven together by roots and stems, there are rare, small, gnarled and moldy Christmas trees. The acidic swamp soil does not allow them to grow, and they, so small, are already a hundred years old, or even more. Old Christmas trees are not like trees in a forest, they are all the same: tall, slender, tree to tree, column to column, candle to candle. The older the old woman in the swamp, the more wonderful it seems. Then one bare bough raised like a hand to hug you on the go, and the other has a stick in her hand, and she is waiting for you to clap, the third crouched down for some reason, the fourth, standing, knits a stocking, and so everything: whatever Christmas tree, it certainly looks like something.
The layer under Mitrasha's feet became thinner and thinner, but the plants were probably very tightly intertwined and held the man well, and, swaying and shaking everything far around, he walked and walked forward. Mitrasha could only believe in the person who walked ahead of him and even left the path behind him.
The old Christmas trees were very worried, passing between them a boy with a long gun, in a cap with two visors. It happens that one suddenly rises, as if he wants to hit the daredevil on the head with a stick, and will close all the other old women in front of him. And then it will descend, and another sorceress pulls a bony hand to the path. And you wait - just about, as in a fairy tale, a clearing will appear, and on it is a witch's hut with dead heads on poles.
A black raven, guarding its nest on a borin, flying around the swamp in a watch circle, noticed a small hunter with a double peak. 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 shades in the main sound that are incomprehensible and elusive to our ear, and therefore we cannot understand the conversation of ravens, but only guess as deaf-mutes.
- Drone-tone! - shouted the guard raven in the sense that some small man with a double visor and a gun was approaching the Blind Elani and that, perhaps, soon there would be a life.
- Drone-tone! - the female raven answered from afar on the nest.
And that meant to her:
- Listen and wait!
The magpies, who are closely related to the ravens, noticed the call of the ravens and chirped. And even the fox, after an unsuccessful hunt for mice, pricked up its ears to the cry of a raven.
Mitrasha heard all this, but was not afraid at all - what was he to be afraid of, if there was a human path under his feet: a man like himself was walking, which means that he himself, Mitrasha, could boldly walk along it. And, hearing the raven, he even sang:
- Do not wind, black raven,
Over my head.
The singing cheered him up even more, and he even figured out how to shorten the difficult path along the path. Looking under his feet, he noticed that his foot, sinking into the mud, immediately collects water into the hole. So every person, walking along the path, lowered the water from the moss lower, and therefore, on the drained edge, next to the stream of the path, on either side, tall sweet white-haired grass grew in an alley. From this, not yellow, as it was everywhere now, in early spring, but rather the color of white, one could understand far ahead of oneself where the human path passes. Then Mitrasha saw: his path turns sharply to the left and goes far there and there it completely disappears. He checked the compass, the needle was pointing north, the path was going west.
- Whose are you? – shouted at this time the lapwing.
- Alive, alive! Kulik answered.
- Drone-tone! the raven shouted even more confidently.
And magpies crackled all around in the fir-trees.
Looking around the area, Mitrasha saw right in front of him a clear, good clearing, where the bumps, gradually descending, turned into a completely level place. But the most important thing: he saw that very close on the other side of the clearing, 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 directly 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.
"xxx"
Mitrasha walked along the yelani at first better than even before through the swamp. Gradually, however, his foot began to sink deeper and deeper, and it became more and more difficult to pull it back out. Here the moose is fine, he has terrible strength in his long leg, and, most importantly, he does not think and rushes the same way in the forest and in the swamp. But Mitrasha, sensing danger, stopped and thought about his situation. In one moment of stopping, he plunged to the knee, in another moment he was above the knee. He could still, having made an effort, escape from the elani back. And he made up his mind to turn around, put the gun on the swamp and, leaning on it, jump out. But right there, not far from me, in front, I saw tall white grass on the trail of a man.
“I'll jump,” he said.
And rushed.
But it was already too late. In the heat of the moment, like a wounded man - to disappear, so disappear - at random, he rushed again, and again, and again. And he felt himself tightly embraced from all sides to the very chest. Now he could not even breathe heavily: at the slightest movement he was drawn down. He could do only one thing: lay the gun flat on the swamp and, leaning on it with both hands, not move and calm his breath as soon as possible. So he did: he took off his gun, put it in front of him, leaned on it with both hands.
A sudden gust of wind brought him Nastya's piercing cry:
- Mitrasha!
He answered her.
But the wind was from the side where Nastya was. And his cry carried away to the other side of the Fornication swamp, to the west, where there were only Christmas trees without end. Some magpies responded to him and, flying from fir tree to fir tree, with their usual anxious chirping, little by little surrounded the entire Blind spruce, and, sitting on the upper fingers of the fir trees, thin, slanting, long-tailed, began to crackle.
Some like:
- Dri-ti-ti!
- Dra-ta-ta!
- Drone-tone! the raven called from above.
And, being very smart for every filthy deed, the magpies realized the complete impotence of the little man immersed in the swamp. They jumped from the top fingers of the trees to the ground and from different sides began their magpie attack with jumps.
The little man with the double visor stopped screaming.
Tears streamed down his tanned face, down his cheeks.
