Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin

Pantry of the sun

Fairy tale

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

We lived in this village just one house away from the children. And, of course, we, along with other neighbors, tried to help them as best we could. They were very nice. Nastya was like a golden chicken on high legs. Her hair, neither dark nor light, shimmered with gold, the freckles all over her face were large, like gold coins, and frequent, and they were cramped, 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 about ten years old. He was short, but very dense, with a broad forehead and a wide nape. He was a stubborn and strong boy.

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

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

After their parents, their entire peasant farm went to their children: the five-walled hut, the cow Zorka, the heifer Dochka, the goat Dereza. Nameless sheep, chickens, golden rooster Petya and piglet Horseradish.

Along with this wealth, however, the poor children also received great care for all living beings. But did our children cope with such a misfortune in difficult years? 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 the smart and friendly guys learned everything themselves and began to live well.

And what smart kids they were! Whenever possible, they joined in social work. Their noses could be seen on collective farm fields, in meadows, in barnyards, at meetings, in anti-tank ditches: their noses were so perky.

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 friendly as our favorites lived.

Just like her late mother, Nastya got up far before the sun, in the predawn hour, along the shepherd's chimney. With a twig in her hand, she drove out her beloved herd and rolled back to the hut. Without going to bed again, she lit the stove, peeled potatoes, made dinner, and so busied herself with the housework until nightfall.

Mitrasha learned from his father how to make wooden utensils: barrels, gangs, tubs. He has a jointer that is more than twice his height. And with this ladle he adjusts the planks one to another, folds them and supports them with iron or wooden hoops.

With a cow, there was no such need for two children to sell wooden utensils at the market, but good people they ask, who needs a gang for the washbasin, who needs a barrel for the drips, who needs a tub to pickle cucumbers or mushrooms, or even a simple vessel with cloves - to plant a home flower.

He will do it, and then he will also be repaid with kindness. But, besides cooperage, he is responsible for all the men's farming and social affairs. He attends all meetings, tries to understand public concerns and, probably, realizes something.

It’s very good that Nastya is two years older than her brother, otherwise he would certainly have become arrogant and in their friendship they would not have had the wonderful equality they have now. It happens that now Mitrasha will remember how his father taught his mother, and, imitating his father, will also decide to teach his sister Nastya. But my sister doesn’t listen much, she stands and smiles. Then the “little guy in the bag” begins to get angry and swagger and always says with his nose in the air:

- Here's another!

- Why are you showing off? - my sister objects.

- Here's another! - the brother is angry. – You, Nastya, swagger yourself.

- No, it's you!

- Here's another!

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

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

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

The sour and very healthy cranberry berry grows in swamps in the summer and is harvested in late autumn. But not everyone knows that the best cranberries, the sweetest ones, as we say, happen when they have spent the winter under the snow.

In one village, near the Bludov swamp, near the city of Pereslavl-Zalessky, two children were orphaned. Their mother died of illness, their father died in the Patriotic War.
We lived in this village just one house away from the children. And, of course, we, along with other neighbors, tried to help them as best we could. They were very nice. Nastya was like a golden chicken on high legs. Her hair, neither dark nor light, shimmered with gold, the freckles all over her face were large, like gold coins, and frequent, and they were cramped, 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 about ten years old. He was short, but very dense, with a broad forehead and a wide nape. He was a stubborn and strong boy.
“The little man in the bag,” the teachers at school called him smiling among themselves.
The little man in the bag, like Nastya, was covered in golden freckles, and his nose, clean, like his sister’s, looked up.
After their parents, their entire peasant farm went to their children: the five-walled hut, the cow Zorka, the heifer Dochka, the goat Dereza. Nameless sheep, chickens, golden rooster Petya and 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 the smart and friendly guys learned everything themselves and began to live well.
And what smart kids they were! Whenever possible, they joined in social work. Their noses could be seen on collective farm fields, in meadows, in barnyards, at meetings, in anti-tank ditches: their noses were so perky.
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 friendly as our favorites lived.
Just like her late mother, Nastya got up far before the sun, in the predawn hour, along the shepherd's chimney. With a twig in her hand, she drove out her beloved herd and rolled back to the hut. Without going to bed again, she lit the stove, peeled potatoes, made dinner, and so busied herself with the housework until nightfall.
Mitrasha learned from his father how to make wooden utensils: barrels, gangs, tubs. He has a jointer that is more than twice his height. And with this ladle he adjusts the planks one to another, folds them and supports them with iron or wooden hoops.
With a cow, there was no such need for two children to sell wooden utensils at the market, but kind people ask those who need a gang for the washbasin, those who need a barrel for dripping, those who need a tub of pickles for cucumbers or mushrooms, or even a simple vessel with cloves - to plant a home flower .
He will do it, and then he will also be repaid with kindness. But, besides cooperage, he is responsible for all the men's farming and social affairs. He attends all meetings, tries to understand public concerns and, probably, realizes something.
It’s very good that Nastya is two years older than her brother, otherwise he would certainly have become arrogant and in their friendship they would not have had the wonderful equality they have now. It happens that now Mitrasha will remember how his father taught his mother, and, imitating his father, will also decide to teach his sister Nastya. But my sister doesn’t listen much, she stands and smiles. Then the “little guy in the bag” begins to get angry and swagger and always says with his nose in the air:
- Here's another!
- Why are you showing off? - my sister objects.
- Here's another! - brother is angry. - You, Nastya, swagger yourself.
- No, it's you! Pantry of the sun
- Here's another!
So, having tormented her obstinate brother, Nastya strokes him on the back of his head. And as soon as the sister’s little hand touches the wide back of his brother’s head, his father’s enthusiasm leaves the owner.
- Let's weed together! - the sister will say.
And the brother also begins to weed the cucumbers, or hoe the beets, or hill up the potatoes.
Yes, it was very, very difficult for everyone during the Patriotic War, so difficult that, probably, it has never happened in the whole world. So the children had to endure a lot of all sorts of worries, failures, and disappointments. But their friendship overcame everything, they lived well. And again we can firmly say: in the entire village no one had such friendship as Mitrash and Nastya Veselkin lived with each other. And we think, perhaps, it was this grief for their parents that united the orphans so closely.

II
The sour and very healthy cranberry berry grows in swamps in the summer and is harvested in late autumn. But not everyone knows that the best cranberries, the sweetest ones, as we say, happen when they have spent the winter under the snow. These spring dark red cranberries float in our pots along with beets and drink tea with them as with sugar. Those who don’t have sugar beets drink tea with just cranberries. We tried it ourselves - and it’s okay, you can drink it: sour replaces sweet and is very good on hot days. And what a wonderful jelly made from sweet cranberries, what a fruit drink! And among our people, this cranberry is considered a healing medicine for all diseases.
This spring, there was still snow in the dense spruce forests at the end of April, but in the swamps it is always much warmer: there was no snow there at that time at all. Having learned about this from people, Mitrasha and Nastya began to gather for cranberries. Even before daylight, Nastya gave food to all her animals. Mitrash took his father’s double-barreled Tulka shotgun, decoys for hazel grouse, and did not forget the compass. It used to be that his father, heading into the forest, would never forget this compass. More than once Mitrash asked his father:
“You’ve been walking through the forest all your life, and you know the whole forest like the palm of your hand.” Why else do you need this arrow?
“You see, Dmitry Pavlovich,” the father answered, “in the forest this arrow is kinder to you than your mother: sometimes the sky will be covered with clouds, and you can’t decide by the sun in the forest, if you go at random, you’ll make a mistake, you’ll get lost, you’ll go hungry.” Then just look at the arrow and it will show you where your home is. You go straight home along the arrow, and they will feed you there. This arrow is more faithful to you than a friend: sometimes your friend will cheat on you, but the arrow invariably always, no matter how you turn it, always looks north.
Having examined the wonderful thing, Mitrash locked the compass so that the needle would not tremble in vain along the way. He carefully, like a father, wrapped footcloths around his feet, tucked them into his boots, and put on a cap so old that its visor split in two: the upper crust rode up above the sun, and the lower one went down almost to the very nose. Mitrash dressed in his father’s old jacket, or rather in a collar connecting stripes of once good homespun fabric. The boy tied these stripes on his tummy with a sash, and his father's jacket sat on him like a coat, right down to the ground. The hunter’s son also tucked an ax into 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? - asked Mitrasha.
“But what about,” Nastya answered, “don’t you remember how your mother went to pick mushrooms?”
- For mushrooms! You understand a lot: there are a lot of mushrooms, so it hurts your shoulder.
- And maybe we’ll have even more cranberries.
And just when Mitrash wanted to say his “here’s another”, he remembered what his father had said about cranberries, back when they were preparing him for war.
“You remember this,” Mitrasha said to his sister, “how my father told us about cranberries, that there is a Palestinian in the forest...
“I remember,” Nastya answered, “he said about cranberries that he knew a place and the cranberries there were crumbling, but I don’t know what he said about some Palestinian woman.” I also remember talking about the terrible place Blind Elan.
“There, near Yelani, there is a Palestinian,” said Mitrasha. “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 just cranberries. No one has ever been to this Palestinian land!
Mitrasha said this already at the door. During the story, Nastya remembered: she had a whole, untouched pot of boiled potatoes left from yesterday. Forgetting about the Palestinian woman, she quietly snuck over to the rack and dumped the entire cast iron into the basket.
“Maybe we’ll get lost,” she thought. “We have enough bread, we have a bottle of milk, and maybe some potatoes will come in handy too.”
And at that time the brother, thinking that his sister was still standing behind him, told her about the wonderful Palestinian woman and that, however, on the way to her was the Blind Elan, where many people, cows, and horses died.
- Well, what kind of Palestinian is this? - asked Nastya.
- So you didn’t hear anything?! - he grabbed.
And he patiently repeated to her, as he walked, everything that he had heard from his father about a Palestinian land unknown to anyone, where sweet cranberries grow.

III
The Bludovo swamp, where we ourselves 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 walked through this swamp with an ax in his hand and cut a passage for other people. The hummocks settled under human feet, and the path became a groove along which water flowed. The children crossed this marshy area in the pre-dawn darkness without much difficulty. And when the bushes stopped obscuring the view ahead, at the first morning light the swamp opened up to them, like the sea. And yet, it was the same, this Bludovo swamp, the bottom of the ancient sea. And just as there, in the real sea, there are islands, just as there are oases in deserts, so there are hills in swamps. In the Bludov swamp, these sandy hills, covered with high forest, are called borins. After walking a little through the swamp, the children climbed the first hill, known as the High Mane. From here, from a high bald spot in the gray haze of the first dawn, Borina Zvonkaya could be barely visible.
Even before reaching Zvonkaya Borina, almost right next to the path, individual blood-red berries began to appear. Cranberry hunters initially put these berries in their mouths. Anyone who has never tasted autumn cranberries in their life and immediately succumbed to spring cranberries would have taken their breath away from the acid. But the village orphans knew well what autumn cranberries were, and that’s why when they ate spring cranberries now, they repeated:
- How sweet!
Borina Zvonkaya willingly opened up her wide clearing to the children, which even now, in April, was covered with dark green lingonberry grass. Among this greenery of last year, here and there new flowers of white snowdrop and purple, small and fragrant flowers of wolf's bast could be seen. Pantry of the sun
“They smell good, try picking a wolf’s bast flower,” said Mitrasha.
Nastya tried to break the twig of the stem and could not do it.
- Why is this bast called a wolf’s? - she asked.
“Father said,” the brother answered, “the wolves weave baskets out of it.”
And he laughed.
-Are there still wolves here?
- Well, of course! Father said there is a terrible wolf here, the Gray Landowner.
- I remember: the same one who slaughtered our herd before the war.
- My father said: he lives on the Sukhaya River, in the rubble.
- He won’t touch you and me?
- Let him try! - answered the hunter with a double visor.
While the children were talking like this and the morning was moving closer and closer to dawn, Borina Zvonkaya was filled with bird songs, the howls, moans and cries of animals. Not all of them were here, on Borina, but from the swamp, damp, deaf, all the sounds gathered here. Borina with the forest, pine and sonorous on 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 just one beautiful word.
You can see how the bird sings on the branch, and every feather trembles with effort. But still, they cannot say words like we do, and they have to sing, shout, and tap.
- Tek-tek! - the huge bird Capercaillie taps barely audibly in the dark forest.
- Shvark-shvark! - The Wild Drake flew in the air over the river.
- Quack-quack! - wild duck Mallard on the lake.
- Gu-gu-gu! - beautiful bird Bullfinch on a birch tree.

In one village, near the Bludov swamp, near the city of Pereslavl-Zalessky, two children were orphaned. Their mother died of illness, their father died in the Patriotic War. We lived in this village just one house away from the children. And, of course, we, along with other neighbors, tried to help them as best we could. They were very nice. Nastya was like a golden hen on high legs. Her hair, neither dark nor light, shimmered with gold, the freckles all over her face were large, like gold coins, and frequent, and they were cramped, 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 about ten years old. He was short, but very dense, with a broad forehead and a wide nape. He was a stubborn and strong boy. “The little man in the bag,” the teachers at school called him smiling among themselves. The little man in the bag, like Nastya, was covered in golden freckles, and his clean nose, like his sister’s, looked up like a parrot. After their parents, their entire peasant farm went to their children: a five-walled hut, a cow Zorka, a heifer Dochka, a goat Dereza, nameless sheep, chickens, a golden rooster Petya and a 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, their distant relatives and all of us neighbors came to help the children. But very soon the smart and friendly guys learned everything themselves and began to live well. And what smart kids they were! Whenever possible, they joined in social work. Their noses could be seen on collective farm fields, in meadows, in barnyards, at meetings, in anti-tank ditches: their noses were so perky. 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 friendly as our favorites lived. Just like her late mother, Nastya got up far before the sun, in the predawn hour, along the shepherd's chimney. With a twig in her hand, she drove out her beloved herd and rolled back to the hut. Without going to bed again, she lit the stove, peeled potatoes, made dinner, and so busied herself with the housework until nightfall. Mitrasha learned from his father how to make wooden utensils: barrels, gangs, tubs. He has a jointer that is more than twice his height. And with this ladle he adjusts the planks one to another, folds them and supports them with iron or wooden hoops. With a cow, there was no such need for two children to sell wooden utensils at the market, but good people ask for someone who needs a gang for the washbasin, someone who needs a barrel for dripping, someone who needs a tub of pickles for cucumbers or mushrooms, or even a simple vessel with scallops - homemade plant a flower. He will do it, and then he will also be repaid with kindness. But, in addition to cooperage, he is responsible for the entire male household and public affairs. He attends all meetings, tries to understand public concerns and, probably, realizes something. It’s very good that Nastya is two years older than her brother, otherwise he would certainly become arrogant, and in their friendship they would not have the wonderful equality they have now. It happens that now Mitrasha will remember how his father taught his mother, and, imitating his father, will also decide to teach his sister Nastya. But my sister doesn’t listen much, she stands and smiles... Then the Little Man in the Bag begins to get angry and swagger and always says with his nose in the air:- Here's another! - Why are you showing off? - my sister objects. - Here's another! - brother gets angry. - You, Nastya, swagger yourself.- No, it's you! - Here's another! So, having tormented her obstinate brother, Nastya strokes him on the back of his head, and as soon as her sister’s small hand touches her brother’s wide head, 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, it has never happened in the whole world. So the children had to endure a lot of all sorts of worries, failures, and disappointments. But their friendship overcame everything, they lived well. And again we can firmly say: in the entire village no one had such friendship as Mitrash and Nastya Veselkin lived with each other. And we think, perhaps, it was this grief for their parents that united the orphans so closely.

This is how the days pass: over a fire, hunting, with a fishing rod, a camera. Spring is moving, the earth begins to dry out, grass appears, the trees turn green. Summer passes, then autumn, finally white flies fly, and frost begins to pave the way back. Then Mikhail Mikhailovich returns to us with new stories.

We all know the trees in our forests, the flowers in the meadows, the birds, and various animals. But Prishvin looked at them with his special keen eye and saw something that we were unaware of.

“That’s why the forest is called dark,” writes Prishvin, “because the sun looks into it as if through a narrow window, and does not see everything that is happening in the forest.”

Even the sun doesn't notice everything! And the artist learns the secrets of nature and rejoices in discovering them.

So he found an amazing birch bark tube in the forest, which turned out to be the pantry of some hardworking animal.

So he attended the name day of the aspen tree - and we breathed with him the joy of spring blossom.

So he overheard the song of a completely unnoticeable little bird on the very top finger of the Christmas tree - now he knows what they are all whistling, whispering, rustling and singing about!

So the bun rolls and rolls along the ground, the storyteller follows his bun, and we go with him and recognize countless little relatives in our common House of Nature, learn to love our native land and understand its beauty.

V. Prishvina

Pantry of the sun
Fairy tale

I

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

We lived in this village just one house away from the children. And, of course, we, along with other neighbors, tried to help them as best we could. They were very nice. Nastya was like a golden hen on high legs. Her hair, neither dark nor light, shimmered with gold, the freckles all over her face were large, like gold coins, and frequent, and they were cramped, 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 about ten years old. He was short, but very dense, with a broad forehead and a wide nape. He was a stubborn and strong boy.

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

The little man in the bag, like Nastya, was covered in golden freckles, and his clean nose, like his sister’s, looked up like a parrot.

After their parents, their entire peasant farm went to their children: a five-walled hut, a cow Zorka, a heifer Dochka, a goat Dereza, nameless sheep, chickens, a golden rooster Petya and a 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, their distant relatives and all of us neighbors came to help the children.

But very soon the smart, friendly guys learned everything themselves and began to live well.

And what smart kids they were! Whenever possible, they joined in social work. Their noses could be seen on collective farm fields, in meadows, in barnyards, at meetings, in anti-tank ditches: their noses were so perky.

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 friendly as our favorites lived.

Just like her late mother, Nastya got up far before the sun, in the predawn hour, along the shepherd's chimney. With a twig in her hand, she drove out her beloved herd and rolled back to the hut. Without going to bed again, she lit the stove, peeled potatoes, made dinner, and so busied herself with the housework until nightfall.

Mitrasha learned from his father how to make wooden utensils, barrels, gangs, and basins. He has a jointer, okay 1
Lady? l o - cooper's instrument of the Pereslavl district of the Ivanovo region. ( Note here and below. M. M. Prishvina.)

More than twice his height. And with this ladle he adjusts the planks one to another, folds them and supports them with iron or wooden hoops.

When there was a cow, there was no such need for two children to sell wooden utensils at the market, but good people ask for someone who needs a bowl for the washbasin, someone who needs a barrel for dripping, someone who needs a tub of pickles for cucumbers or mushrooms, or even a simple vessel with scallops - homemade plant a flower.

He will do it, and then he will also be repaid with kindness. But, besides cooperage, he is responsible for all the men's farming and social affairs. He attends all meetings, tries to understand public concerns and, probably, realizes something.

It’s very good that Nastya is two years older than her brother, otherwise he would certainly have become arrogant and in their friendship they would not have had the wonderful equality they have now. It happens that now Mitrasha will remember how his father taught his mother, and, imitating his father, will also decide to teach his sister Nastya. But the sister doesn’t listen much, she stands and smiles... Then the Little Man in the Bag begins to get angry and swagger and always says with his nose in the air:

- Here's another!

- Why are you showing off? - my sister objects.

- Here's another! - the brother is angry. – You, Nastya, swagger yourself.

- No, it's you!

- Here's another!

So, having tormented her obstinate brother, Nastya strokes him on the back of his head, and as soon as her sister’s small hand touches her brother’s wide head, 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, it has never happened in the whole world. So the children had to endure a lot of all sorts of worries, failures, and disappointments. But their friendship overcame everything, they lived well. And again we can firmly say: in the entire village no one had such friendship as Mitrash and Nastya Veselkin lived with each other. And we think, perhaps, it was this grief for their parents that united the orphans so closely.

II

The sour and very healthy cranberry berry grows in swamps in the summer and is harvested in late autumn. But not everyone knows that the best cranberry is sweet, as we say, it happens when it spends the winter under the snow. These spring dark red cranberries float in our pots along with beets and drink tea with them as with sugar. Those who don’t have sugar beets drink tea with just cranberries. We tried it ourselves - and it’s okay, you can drink it: sour replaces sweet and is very good on hot days. And what a wonderful jelly made from sweet cranberries, what a fruit drink! And among our people, this cranberry is considered a healing medicine for all diseases.

This spring, there was still snow in the dense spruce forests at the end of April, but in the swamps it is always much warmer - there was no snow there at that time at all. Having learned about this from people, Mitrasha and Nastya began to gather for cranberries. Even before daylight, Nastya gave food to all her animals. Mitrash took his father’s double-barreled Tulka shotgun, decoys for hazel grouse, and did not forget the compass. It used to be that his father, going into the forest, would never forget this compass. More than once Mitrash asked his father:

“You’ve been walking through the forest all your life, and you know the whole forest like the palm of your hand.” Why else do you need this arrow?

“You see, Dmitry Pavlovich,” answered the father, “in the forest this arrow is kinder to you than your mother: sometimes the sky will be covered with clouds, and you cannot decide by the sun in the forest; if you go at random, you will make a mistake, you will get lost, you will go hungry.” Then just look at the arrow and it will show you where your home is. You go straight home along the arrow, and they will feed you there. This arrow is more faithful to you than a friend: sometimes your friend will cheat on you, but the arrow invariably always, no matter how you turn it, always looks north.

Having examined the wonderful thing, Mitrash locked the compass so that the needle would not tremble in vain along the way. He carefully, like a father, wrapped footcloths around his feet, tucked them into his boots, and put on a cap so old that its visor split in two: the upper leather crust rode up above the sun, and the lower one went down almost to the very nose. Mitrash dressed in his father’s old jacket, or rather in a collar connecting stripes of once good homespun fabric. The boy tied these stripes on his tummy with a sash, and his father's jacket sat on him like a coat, right down to the ground. The hunter’s son also tucked an ax into his belt, hung a bag with a compass on his right shoulder, and 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? – asked Mitrasha.

“But what about,” Nastya answered, “don’t you remember how your mother went to pick mushrooms?”

- For mushrooms! You understand a lot: there are a lot of mushrooms, so it hurts your shoulder.

“And maybe we’ll have even more cranberries.”

And just when Mitrash wanted to say his “here’s another”, he remembered what his father had said about cranberries, back when they were preparing him for war.

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

In the forest...

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

“There, near Yelani, there is a Palestinian,” said Mitrasha. “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 just cranberries. No one has ever been to this Palestinian land!

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

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

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

- Well, what kind of Palestinian is this? – Nastya asked.

- So you didn’t hear anything?! - he grabbed.

And he patiently repeated to her, as he walked, everything that he had heard from his father about a Palestinian land unknown to anyone, where sweet cranberries grow.

III

The Bludovo swamp, where we ourselves 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 pribolotitsa with an ax in his hand and cut down a passage for other people. The hummocks settled under human feet, and the path became a groove along which water flowed. The children crossed this marshy area in the pre-dawn darkness without much difficulty. And when the bushes stopped obscuring the view ahead, at the first morning light the swamp opened up to them, like the sea. And yet, it was the same, this Bludovo swamp, the bottom of the ancient sea. And just as there, in the real sea, there are islands, just as there are oases in deserts, so there are hills in swamps. In the Bludov swamp, these sandy hills, covered with high forest, are called borins. After walking a little through the swamp, the children climbed the first hill, known as the High Mane. From here, from a high bald patch, Borina Zvonkaya could be barely visible in the gray haze of the first dawn.

Even before reaching Zvonkaya Borina, almost right next to the path, individual blood-red berries began to appear. Cranberry hunters initially put these berries in their mouths. Anyone who has never tasted autumn cranberries in their life and immediately succumbed to spring cranberries would have taken their breath away from the acid. But the village orphans knew well what autumn cranberries were, and that’s why when they ate spring cranberries now, they repeated:

- How sweet!

Borina Zvonkaya willingly opened up her wide clearing to the children, which even now, in April, was covered with dark green lingonberry grass. Among this greenery of last year, here and there new flowers of white snowdrop and purple, small, and fragrant flowers of wolf's bast could be seen.

“They smell good, try picking a wolf bast flower,” said Mitrasha.

Nastya tried to break the twig of the stem and could not do it.

- Why is this bast called a wolf’s? – she asked.

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

And he laughed.

-Are there still wolves here?

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

“I remember: the same one who slaughtered our herd before the war.”

– Father said: he now lives on the Sukhaya River, in the rubble.

– He won’t touch you and me?

- Let him try! - answered the hunter with a double visor.

Borina Zvonkaya willingly opened her wide clearing to the children.

While the children were talking like this and the morning was moving closer and closer to dawn, Borina Zvonkaya was filled with bird songs, howls, moans and cries of animals. Not all of them were here, on Borina, but from the swamp, damp, deaf, all the sounds gathered here. Borina with the forest, pine and sonorous on dry land, responded to everything.

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

You can see how the bird sings on a twig and every feather trembles with effort. But still, they cannot say words like we do, and they have to sing, shout, and tap.

- Tek-tek! – the huge bird Capercaillie taps barely audibly in the dark forest.

- Shvark-shwark! – The Wild Drake flew in the air over the river.

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

- Gu-gu-gu! - red bird Bullfinch on a birch tree.

The snipe, a small gray bird with a long nose like a flattened hairpin, rolls through the air like a wild lamb. It seems like “alive, alive!” cries the large sandpiper Curlew. A black grouse is muttering and chuffing somewhere. 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 we distinguish them, and we rejoice, and we 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 it, we will tell them, as people, this word:

- Hello!

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

And they quack in response, and snort, and squabble, and squabble, trying to answer us with all these voices:

- Hello, hello, hello!

But among all these sounds, one burst out, unlike anything else.

– Do you hear? – asked Mitrasha.

- How can you not hear! – Nastya answered. “I’ve been hearing it for a long time, and it’s somehow scary.”

– There’s nothing wrong! My father told me and showed me: this is how a hare screams in the spring.

- Why is that so?

- My father said, he shouts: “Hello, bunny!”

- What is that noise?

- Father said it was the bittern, the water bull, whooping.

- Why is he hooting?

- My father said that he also has his own girlfriend, and in his own way he also says to her like everyone else: “Hello, Vypikha!”

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

- Victory, victory!

- What is this? – asked the delighted Nastya.

“Father said this is how cranes greet the sun.” This means that the sun will rise soon.

But the sun had not yet risen when the hunters for sweet cranberries descended into a large swamp. The celebration of meeting the sun had not yet begun here. A night blanket hung over the small gnarled fir-trees and birches like a gray haze and muffled all the wonderful sounds of the Belling Borina. Only a painful, painful and joyless howl was heard here.

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

“What is this, Mitrasha,” Nastenka asked, shuddering, “howling so terribly in the distance?”

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

- So why is he howling so terribly now?

“Father said that wolves howl in the spring because they have nothing to eat now.” And Gray is still left alone, so he howls.

The marsh dampness seemed to penetrate through the body to the bones and chill them. And I really didn’t want to go even lower into the damp, muddy swamp!

-Where are we going to go? – Nastya asked.

Mitrasha took out a compass, set the 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 the people go.” Father told us, do you remember what a terrible place this is - Blind Elan, how many people and livestock died in it. No, no, Mitrashenka, we won’t go there. Everyone goes in this direction, which means cranberries grow there.

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

Nastya, noticing that her brother was starting to get angry, suddenly smiled and stroked him on the back of his head. Mitrasha immediately calmed down, and the friends walked along the path indicated by the arrow, now no longer side by side, as before, but one after another, in single file.

IV

About two hundred years ago, the sowing wind brought two seeds to the Bludovo swamp: a pine seed and a spruce seed. Both seeds fell into one hole near a large flat stone... Since then, perhaps two hundred years ago, these spruce and pine trees have been growing together. Their roots were intertwined from an early age, their trunks stretched upward side by side towards the light, trying to overtake each other. Trees of different species fought terribly among themselves with their roots for food, and with their branches for air and light. Rising higher and higher, growing thicker with trunks, they dug dry branches into living trunks and in some places pierced each other through and through. The evil wind, having given the trees such a miserable life, sometimes flew here to shake them. And then the trees moaned and howled throughout the Bludovo swamp, like living beings. It was so similar to the moaning and howling of living creatures that the fox, curled up in a ball on a moss hummock, raised its sharp muzzle upward. This groan and howl of pine and spruce was so close to living beings that the wild dog in the Bludov swamp, hearing it, howled with longing for the man, and the wolf howled with inescapable anger 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 birches, illuminated the Sounding Borina and the mighty trunks of the pine forest became like the lit candles of a great temple of nature. From there, here, to this flat stone, where the children sat down to rest, the singing of birds, dedicated to the rising of the great sun, faintly reached. And the light rays flying over the children’s heads were not yet warming. The swampy ground was all chilled, small puddles were covered with white ice.

It was completely quiet in nature, and the children, frozen, were so quiet that the black grouse Kosach did not pay any attention to them. He sat down at the very top, where pine and spruce branches formed like a bridge between two trees. Having settled down on this bridge, quite wide for him, closer to the spruce, Kosach seemed to begin to bloom in the rays of the rising sun. The comb on his head lit up with a fiery flower. His chest, blue in the depths of black, began to shimmer from blue to green. And his iridescent, lyre-spread tail became especially beautiful. Seeing the sun above the miserable swamp fir trees, he suddenly jumped up on his high bridge, showed his cleanest white linen of undertail and underwings and shouted:

- Chuf! Shi!

In grouse, “chuf” most likely meant “sun,” and “shi” probably was their “hello.”

In response to this first snort of the Current Kosach, the same chuffing with the flapping of wings was heard far throughout the swamp, and soon dozens of large birds, like two peas in a pod similar to Kosach, began to fly here from all sides and land near the Lying Stone.

The children sat with bated breath on the cold stone, waiting for the rays of the sun to come to them and warm them up at least a little. And then the first ray, gliding over the tops of the nearest, very small Christmas trees, finally began to play on the children’s cheeks. Then the upper Kosach, greeting the sun, stopped jumping and chuffing. He sat down low on the bridge at the top of the tree, stretched his long neck along the branch and began a long song, similar to the babbling of a brook. In response to him, somewhere nearby, dozens of the same birds sitting on the ground, each also a rooster, stretched out their necks and began to sing the same song. And then, as if a rather large stream was already muttering, it ran over the invisible pebbles.

How many times have we, hunters, waited for the dark morning, listened in awe to this singing at the chilly dawn, trying in our own way to understand what the roosters were crowing about. And when we repeated their mutterings in our own way, what came out was:

Cool feathers
Ur-gur-gu,
Cool feathers
I'll cut it 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 was sitting on a nest and was hiding there all the time from Kosach, who was mating almost right next to the nest. The crow would very much like to drive Kosach away, but she was afraid to leave the nest and let her eggs cool in the morning frost. The male raven guarding the nest was making its rounds at that time and, probably having encountered something suspicious, lingered. The crow, waiting for the male, lay down in the nest, was quieter than water, lower than the grass. And suddenly, seeing the male flying back, she shouted:

This meant to her:

“Help me!”

- Kra! - the male answered in the direction of the current, in the sense that it is still unknown who will tear off whose cool feathers.

Antipych's lodge was not far from the Sukhaya River, where several years ago, at the request of local peasants, our wolf team came. Local hunters discovered that a large brood of wolves lived somewhere on the Sukhaya River. We came to help the peasants and got down to business according to all the rules of fighting a predatory animal.

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

Trees and rot were piled up in many tiers. Grass poked through the trees, ivy vines twined with frequent young aspen trees. And so a strong place was created, or even, one might say, in our way, in the hunter’s way, a wolf fortress.

Having identified the place where the wolves lived, we walked around it on skis and along the ski track, in a circle of three kilometers, hung flags, red and fragrant, from the bushes on a string. The red color frightens the wolves and the smell of calico frightens them, and they become especially fearful if a breeze, running through the forest, moves these flags here and there.

As many shooters as we had, we made as many gates in a continuous circle of these flags. Opposite each gate a shooter stood somewhere behind a thick fir tree. By carefully shouting and tapping their sticks, the beaters aroused the wolves, and at first they quietly walked in their direction. The she-wolf herself walked in front, behind her were the young Pereyarkas, and behind her, to the side, separately and independently, was a huge big-browed seasoned wolf, a villain known to the peasants, nicknamed the Gray Landowner.

The wolves walked very carefully. The beaters pressed. The she-wolf began to 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 wolf sense and, poking here and there as she had to, found a way out and was met at the very gate with a shot in the head just ten steps from the hunter.

So all the wolves died, but Gray had been in such troubles more than once and, hearing the first shots, waved through the flags. As he jumped, 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 no less cows and sheep than a whole flock had slaughtered them before. From behind a juniper bush, he waited for the shepherds to leave or fall asleep. And, having determined the right moment, he burst into the herd and slaughtered the sheep and spoiled the cows. After that, he grabbed one sheep on his back and rushed it, jumping with the sheep over the fence to himself, into an inaccessible lair on the Sukhaya 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, while chasing a dog running after the owner’s sleigh, he drove it into the sleigh and tore it right out of the owner’s hands.

The gray landowner became a thunderstorm in 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, 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 to blow his trumpet.

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 the trees near the Lying Stone howled, he could not stand it and crawled out of his lair. He stood over the rubble, raised his head, tucked up his already skinny belly, put his only ear to the wind, straightened half of his tail and howled.

What a pitiful howl this is! But you, a passer-by, if you hear and a reciprocal feeling arises in you, do not believe in pity: it is not a dog, man’s most faithful friend, howling, 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 to serve it after him.