Prishvin wrote the fairy tale “The Pantry of the Sun” in 1945. In the work, the author reveals classic themes of nature and love for the motherland for Russian literature. Using artistic technique personifications, the author “revitalizes” the swamp, trees, wind, etc. for 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 internal state characters, 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 about 10 years old, Nastya’s brother; he was jokingly called “the little man in the bag.”

Grass- the dog of the deceased forester Antipych, “big red, with a black strap on the back.”

Wolf Old landowner

Chapter 1

In the village “near the Bludov swamp, in the area of ​​the city of Pereslavl-Zalessky, two children were orphaned” - Nastya and Mitrasha. “Their mother died of illness, their father died in the Patriotic War.” The children were left with the hut and the farm. At first, neighbors helped the children manage the farm, but soon they learned everything themselves.

The children lived very friendly. Nastya got up early and “busted about the housework until the night.” Mitrasha was engaged in “male farming”, making barrels, tubs, and wooden utensils, which he sold.

Chapter 2

In the village in the spring they collected cranberries that had lain under the snow all winter; they were tastier and healthier than those in the fall. At the end of April, the guys gathered to pick berries. Mitrash took with him his father’s double-barreled gun and a compass - his father explained that you can always find your way home using a compass. Nastya took a basket, bread, potatoes and milk. The children decided to go to Blind Elani - there, according to their father’s stories, there is a “Palestinian” on which a lot of cranberries grow.

Chapter 3

It was still dark and the guys went to the Bludovy swamp. Mitrasha said that a “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 desired clearing with cranberries.

Chapter 4

The children went to the "Lying Stone". From there there were two paths - one well-trodden, “dense”, and the second “weak”, but going north. Having quarreled, the guys went in different directions. Mitrasha went north, and Nastya followed the “common” path.

Chapter 5

In a potato pit, near the ruins of a forester’s house, there lived a hound dog, Travka. Her owner, the old hunter Antipych, died two years ago. Longing for its owner, the dog often climbed the hill and howled protractedly.

Chapter 6

Several years ago, not far from the Sukhaya River, a “whole team” of people exterminated wolves. They killed everyone except the cautious Gray landowner, whose left ear and half of his tail were only shot off. In the 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 the dog Travka, the wolf headed towards her. However, Grass smelled a hare's trail and followed it, and near the Lying Stone she smelled the smell of bread and potatoes, and ran at a trot after Nastya.

Chapter 8

Bludovo swamp with “huge reserves of flammable peat, there is a pantry of the sun.” “For thousands of years this goodness is preserved under water” and then “peat is inherited by man from the sun.”

Mitrash walked to the “Blind Elani” - a “disastrous place” where many people died in the quagmire. Gradually, the bumps under his feet “became semi-liquid.” To shorten the path, Mitrasha decided to go not along a safe path, but directly through the clearing.

From the first steps the boy began to drown in the swamp. Trying to escape from the swamp, he jerked sharply and found himself in the swamp up to his chest. To prevent the quagmire from completely sucking him in, he held on to his gun.

From afar came the cry of Nastya calling him. Mitrash answered, but the wind carried his cry in the other direction.

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

The 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. Grass heard that a fox was chasing a brown hare nearby and ran after the prey towards Blind Elani.

Chapter 11

Catching up with the hare, Grass ran out to the place where Mitrash was pulled into the quagmire. The boy recognized the dog and called him 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 was “the former wonderful Antipych,” joyfully rushed to Mitrasha.

Chapter 12

Remembering the hare, Grass ran after him further. Hungry Mitrash immediately realized “that all his salvation would be in this hare.” The boy hid in the juniper bushes. Grass drove the hare here, and Gray came running to the barking of the dog. Seeing a wolf five steps away from him, Mitrash 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 the 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 was able to kill the old wolf, but they soon became convinced of this themselves. Nastya gave the collected cranberries to the evacuated Leningrad children. In two next year During the war, Mitrash “stretched out” and matured.

This story was told by the “scouts of swamp riches”, who during the war years prepared the swamps – “storehouses of the sun” – for peat extraction.

Conclusion

In the work “Pantry of the Sun,” Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin touches on the issues of survival of people, in particular children, in difficult periods (in the story this is the time Patriotic War), shows the importance of mutual support and assistance. The “pantry of the sun” in the fairy tale is a collective symbol, denoting not only peat, but also all the wealth of nature and the people living on that land.

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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 the parents all of them peasant farm The children got: a five-walled hut, the cow Zorka, the heifer Daughter, and 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 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! If possible, they joined 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 older than brother for two years, 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.

"II"

The sour and very healthy cranberry berry grows in swamps in the summer and is harvested 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.
This spring there is snow in dense spruce forests It was still holding out 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,” 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, you will 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 for you truer than a friend: it happens that your friend will cheat on you, but the arrow 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, 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.
- What about it? – Nastya answered. – Don’t you remember how mom 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 “here’s another!”, he remembered what his father had said about cranberries when they were preparing him for war.
“You remember this,” Mitrasha said to his sister, “how 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 scary 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 Palestine before.
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, indeed, on the way to her was the 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 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, that’s what it was, this Bludovo swamp, bottom 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 would have immediately had enough of spring ones would have taken their breath away from the acid. But the brother and sister knew well what autumn cranberries were, and therefore, when they now ate spring cranberries, they repeated:
- So sweet!
Borina Zvonkaya willingly opened 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.”
– 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! - knocks slightly audibly huge bird Capercaillie in dark forest.
- Shvark-shwark! – a wild Drake flew in the air over the river.
- Quack-quack! – wild duck Mallard on the lake.
- Gu-gu-gu! - a beautiful bird Bullfinch on a birch tree.
The snipe, a small gray bird with a nose as long as a flattened hairpin, rolls through the air like a wild lamb. It seems like “alive, alive!” cries the curlew sandpiper. The black grouse is somewhere muttering and chuffing. The white partridge, like a witch, is laughing.
We, hunters, have long, since our childhood, distinguished, and rejoiced, and understand well what word they are all working on and cannot say. That is why, when we come to the forest in early spring at dawn and hear it, we will tell them, as people, this word.
- Hello!
And as if they would then also be happy, as if they would then also pick up wonderful word, flowing from the human tongue.
And they quack in response, and squawk, and squabble, and squabble, trying to answer us with all their 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.
- What for?
– Father said: he shouts “Hello, little hare!”
- What is that noise?
- Father said it was a bittern, a water bull, whooping.
- Why is he hooting?
“My father said he also has his own girlfriend, and in his own way he says to her, just like everyone else: “Hello, drunk.”
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. It was then that a special, triumphant cry seemed to burst out above all the sounds, fly out and cover everything, as if all the people could shout joyfully in harmonious agreement.
- Victory, victory!
- What is this? – asked the delighted Nastya.
“My 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.
“What is this, Mitrasha,” Nastenka asked, shuddering, “howling so terribly in the distance?”
“Father said,” answered Mitrasha, “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 terribly now?
– Father said wolves howl in the spring because they now have nothing to eat. 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. Mitrash 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 among themselves with their roots for food, and with their branches for air and light. Rising higher and higher, thickening their 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 so loudly throughout the Bludovo swamp, like living beings, 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 pine forest became like the lit candles of the 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 floated across.
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 caught fire fire 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 over the miserable swamp fir trees, he suddenly jumped up on his high bridge, showed his white, clean linen of undertail and underwings and shouted:
- Chuf, shi!
In grouse, “chuf” most likely meant the sun, and “shi” probably was their “hello.”
In response to this first chuffing of the Kosach-current, the same chuffing with the flapping of wings was heard far throughout the swamp, and soon dozens of people began to fly here from all sides and land near the Lying Stone big birds, like two peas in a pod similar to Kosach.
With bated breath, the children sat on a 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 one 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 until 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 muttering in our own way, what came out was:

Cool feathers
Ur-gur-gu,
Cool feathers
I'll cut it off.

"V"

The trees moaned so pitifully that his hound dog, Grass, crawled out of a half-collapsed potato pit near Antipych’s lodge and howled pitifully in the same way, in tune with the trees.
Why did the dog have to crawl out of the warm, comfortable basement so early and howl pitifully in response to the trees?
Among the sounds of moaning, growling, grumbling, and howling that morning in the trees, it sometimes sounded as if somewhere in the forest a lost or abandoned child was crying bitterly.
It was this crying that Grass could not bear and, hearing it, crawled out of the hole at night and at midnight. The dog could not bear this cry of trees intertwined forever: the trees reminded the animal of his own grief.
Two whole years have passed since a terrible misfortune happened in Travka’s life: the forester she adored, the old hunter Antipych, died.
For a long time we went hunting with this Antipych, and the old man, I think, forgot how old he was, he kept living, living in his forest lodge, and it seemed that he would never die.
- How old are you, Antipych? – we asked. - Eighty?
“Not enough,” he answered.
- One hundred?
- A lot of.
Thinking that he was joking with us, but he knew it well, we asked:
- Antipych, well, stop your jokes, tell us the truth, how old are you?
“In truth,” answered the old man, “I will tell you if you tell me in advance what the truth is, what it is, where it lives and how to find it.”
It was difficult to answer us.
“You, Antipych, are older than us,” we said, “and you probably know better than us what the truth is.”
“I know,” Antipych grinned.
- So, say.
- No, while I’m alive, I can’t say, you look for it yourself. Well, when I’m about to die, come: then I’ll whisper the whole truth in your ear. Come!
- Okay, we'll come. What if we don’t guess when it’s necessary, and you die without us?
Grandfather squinted in his own way, the way he always squinted when he wanted to laugh and joke.
“You kids,” he said, “are not little, it’s time to know for yourself, but you keep asking.” Well, okay, when I’m ready to die and you’re not here, I’ll whisper to my Grass. Grass! - he called.
A large red dog with a black strap across its back entered the hut. Under her eyes there were black stripes with a curve like glasses. And this made her eyes seem very large, and with them she asked: “Why did you call me, master?”
Antipych 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 to joke, to play. The grass waved its tail, began to sink lower and lower on its legs, and when it crawled up to the old man’s knees, it lay on its back and turned up its light belly with six pairs of black nipples. Antipych just extended his hand to stroke her, she suddenly jumped up and put her paws on his shoulders - and kissed him and kissed him: on the nose, and on the cheeks, and on the very lips.
“Well, it will be, it will be,” he said, calming the dog and wiping his face with his sleeve.

Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin

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

Part 1

In one village, near 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 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, who needs a gang for the washbasin, who needs a barrel for dripping, who needs a tub to pickle cucumbers or mushrooms, or even a simple vessel with teeth - 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 is 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 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.

Part 2

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.
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,” 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, you will 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 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.
- What about it? – Nastya answered. – Don’t you remember how mom 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 “here’s another!”, he remembered what his father had said about cranberries when they were preparing him for war.
“You remember this,” Mitrasha said to his sister, “how 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 Palestine before.
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’ve got enough bread, a bottle of milk, and potatoes might also come in handy.”
And at that time the brother, thinking that his sister was still standing behind him, told her about the wonderful Palestinian woman and that, indeed, on the way to her was the 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.

Part 3

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 would have immediately had enough of spring ones would have taken their breath away from the acid. But the brother and sister knew well what autumn cranberries were, and therefore, when they now ate spring cranberries, they repeated:
- So sweet!
Borina Zvonkaya willingly opened 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, “they use it to weave baskets for themselves.”
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 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 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-shwark! – a wild Drake flew in the air over the river.
- Quack-quack! – wild duck Mallard on the lake.
- Gu-gu-gu! - a beautiful bird Bullfinch on a birch tree.
The snipe, a small gray bird with a nose as long as a flattened hairpin, rolls through the air like a wild lamb. It seems like “alive, alive!” cries the curlew sandpiper. The black grouse is somewhere muttering and chuffing. The white partridge, like a witch, is laughing.
We, hunters, have long, since our childhood, distinguished, and rejoiced, and understand well what word they are all working on and cannot say. That is why, when we come to the forest in early spring at dawn and hear it, we will tell them, as people, this word.
- Hello!
And it’s as if they will then also be delighted, as if they will then also pick up the wonderful word that has flown from the human tongue.
And they quack in response, and squawk, and squabble, and squabble, trying to answer us with all their 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.
- What for?
– Father said: he shouts “Hello, little hare!”
- What is that noise?
- Father said it was a bittern, a water bull, whooping.
- Why is he hooting?
“My father said he also has his own girlfriend, and in his own way he says to her, just like everyone else: “Hello, drunk.”
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. It was then that a special, triumphant cry seemed to burst out above all the sounds, fly out and cover everything, as if all the people could shout joyfully in harmonious agreement.
- Victory, victory!
- What is this? – asked the delighted Nastya.
“My 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.
“What is this, Mitrasha,” Nastenka asked, shuddering, “howling so terribly in the distance?”
“Father said,” answered Mitrasha, “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 terribly now?
– Father said wolves howl in the spring because they now have nothing to eat. 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. Mitrash 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.

Part 4

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 among themselves with their roots for food, and with their branches for air and light. Rising higher and higher, thickening their 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 so loudly throughout the Bludovo swamp, like living beings, 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 floated across.
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 over the miserable swamp fir trees, he suddenly jumped up on his high bridge, showed his white, clean linen of undertail and underwings and shouted:
- Chuf, shi!
In grouse, “chuf” most likely meant the sun, and “shi” probably was their “hello”.
In response to this first snort of the Current Kosach, the same snort 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.
With bated breath, the children sat on a 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 one 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 until 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 muttering 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 his flight at that time and, probably, having encountered something suspicious, he 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:
- Kra!
This meant to her:
- Help me out!
- 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.
The male, immediately understanding what was going on, went down and sat down on the same bridge, near the Christmas tree, right next to the nest where Kosach was mating, only closer to the pine tree, and began to wait.
At this time, Kosach, not paying any attention to the male crow, called out his words, known to all hunters:
- Car-car-cupcake!
And this was the signal for a general fight of all the displaying roosters. Well, 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.
The hunters for sweet cranberries sat motionless, like statues, on a stone. The sun, so hot and clear, came out against them over the swamp fir trees. But at that time one cloud happened in the sky. It appeared like a cold blue arrow and crossed the rising sun in half. At the same time, the wind suddenly blew again, and then the pine tree pressed and the spruce growled.
At this time, having rested on a stone and warmed up in the rays of the sun, Nastya and Mitrasha got up to continue their journey. But right at the stone, a rather wide swamp path diverged like a fork: one, good, dense path went to the right, the other, weak, went straight.
Having checked the direction of the trails with a compass, Mitrasha, pointing out a weak trail, said:
- We need to take this one to the north.
- This is not a path! – Nastya answered.
- Here's another! – Mitrasha got angry. “People were walking, so there was a path.” We need to go north. Let's go and don't talk anymore.
Nastya was offended to submit to the younger Mitrasha.
- Kra! - shouted the crow in the nest at this time.
And her male ran in small steps closer to Kosach, halfway across the bridge.
The second cool blue arrow crossed the sun, and a gray gloom 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 the people are walking here.” Are we really smarter than everyone else?
“Let all people walk,” the stubborn “little guy in a bag” answered decisively. “We must follow the arrow, as our father taught us, north, towards Palestine.”
“Father told us fairy tales, he joked with us,” said Nastya. “And, probably, there are no Palestinians at all in the north.” It would be very stupid for us to follow the arrow: we will end up not in Palestine, but in the very Blind Elan.
“Well, okay,” Mitrash turned sharply. “I won’t argue with you anymore: you go along your path, where all the women go to buy cranberries, but I’ll go on my own, along my path, to the north.”
And in fact he went there without thinking about the cranberry basket or the food.
Nastya should have reminded him of this, but she was so angry that, all red as red, she spat after him and followed the 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 hit him with all his might. As if scalded, Kosach rushed towards the flying black grouse, but the angry male caught up with him, pulled him out, threw a bunch of white and rainbow feathers through the air and chased him far away.
Then the gray darkness moved in tightly and covered the entire sun with its life-giving rays. An evil wind very sharply tore the trees intertwined with roots, piercing each other with branches, and the entire Bludovo swamp began to growl, howl, and groan.

Part 5

The trees moaned so pitifully that his hound dog, Grass, crawled out of a half-collapsed potato pit near Antipych’s lodge and howled pitifully in the same way, in tune with the trees.
Why did the dog have to crawl out of the warm, comfortable basement so early and howl pitifully in response to the trees?
Among the sounds of moaning, growling, grumbling, and howling that morning in the trees, it sometimes sounded as if somewhere in the forest a lost or abandoned child was crying bitterly.
It was this crying that Grass could not bear and, hearing it, crawled out of the hole at night and at midnight. The dog could not bear this cry of trees intertwined forever: the trees reminded the animal of his own grief.
Two whole years have passed since a terrible misfortune happened in Travka’s life: the forester she adored, the old hunter Antipych, died.
For a long time we went hunting with this Antipych, and the old man, I think, forgot how old he was, he kept living, living in his forest lodge, and it seemed that he would never die.
- How old are you, Antipych? – we asked. - Eighty?
“Not enough,” he answered.
- One hundred?
- A lot of.
Thinking that he was joking with us, but he knew it well, we asked:
- Antipych, well, stop your jokes, tell us the truth, how old are you?
“In truth,” answered the old man, “I will tell you if you tell me in advance what the truth is, what it is, where it lives and how to find it.”
It was difficult to answer us.
“You, Antipych, are older than us,” we said, “and you probably know better than us what the truth is.”
“I know,” Antipych grinned.
- So, say.
- No, while I’m alive, I can’t say, you look for it yourself. Well, when I’m about to die, come: then I’ll whisper the whole truth in your ear. Come!
- Okay, we'll come. What if we don’t guess when it’s necessary, and you die without us?
Grandfather squinted in his own way, the way he always squinted when he wanted to laugh and joke.
“You kids,” he said, “are not little, it’s time to know for yourself, but you keep asking.” Well, okay, when I’m ready to die and you’re not here, I’ll whisper to my Grass. Grass! - he called.
A large red dog with a black strap across its back entered the hut. Under her eyes there were black stripes with a curve like glasses. And this made her eyes seem very large, and with them she asked: “Why did you call me, master?”
Antipych 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 to joke, to play. The grass waved its tail, began to sink lower and lower on its legs, and when it crawled up to the old man’s knees, it lay on its back and turned up its light belly with six pairs of black nipples. Antipych just extended his hand to stroke her, she suddenly jumped up and put her paws on his shoulders - and kissed him and kissed him: on the nose, and on the cheeks, and on the very lips.
“Well, it will be, it will be,” he said, calming the dog and wiping his face with his sleeve.
He stroked her on the head and said:
- Well, it will be, now go to your place.
The grass turned and went out into the yard.
“That’s it, guys,” said Antipych. “Here’s Travka, a hound dog, who understands everything from one word, and you, stupid ones, ask where the truth lives.” Okay, come. But let me go, I’ll whisper everything to Travka.
And then Antipych died. Soon after this, the Great Patriotic War began. No other guard was appointed to replace Antipych, and his guard was abandoned. The house was very dilapidated, much older than Antipych himself, and was already supported by supports. One day, without an owner, the wind played with the house, and it immediately fell apart, like a house of cards falling apart from one breath of a baby. One year, tall fireweed grass sprouted through the logs, and all that was left of the hut in the forest clearing was a mound covered with red flowers. And Grass moved into the potato pit and began to live in the forest, like any other animal. But it was very difficult for Grass to get used to wild life. She drove animals for Antipych, her great and merciful master, but not for herself. Many times she happened to catch a hare during the rut. Having crushed him under her, she lay down and waited for Antipych to come, and, often completely hungry, did not allow herself to eat the hare. Even if Antipych for some reason did not come, she took the hare in her teeth, lifted her head high so that it would not dangle, 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, when Antipych died, she needed, like everyone else wild beast, live for yourself. It happened that more than once during the hot season she forgot that she was chasing a hare only in order to catch him and eat him. Grass forgot so much on the hunt that, having caught a hare, she dragged him to Antipych, and then sometimes, hearing the groan of the trees, she climbed up the hill, which was once a hut, and howled and howled.
The wolf Gray Landowner has been listening to this howl for a long time.

Part 6

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 made its way 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 scares the wolves, and the smell of calico frightens them, and they are especially afraid 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 at the very gate she was met 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 right moment, broke into the herd and slaughtered sheep and spoiled cows. After that, he grabbed one sheep on his back and rushed it, jumping with the sheep over the fences, to his 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, in early spring, having survived the 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.
Which one mournful howl! 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 howling, man’s truest friend, it is a wolf, worst enemy him, doomed to death by his very malice.

Part 7

The dry river goes around the Bludovo swamp in a large semicircle. On one side of the semicircle a dog howls, on the other a wolf howls. And the wind presses on the trees and carries their howls and groans, not knowing at all who it serves. He doesn’t care who howls—a tree, a dog—man’s friend, or a wolf—his worst enemy—as long as he howls. The wind treacherously brings a plaintive howl to the wolf abandoned by man dogs. And Gray, having heard the living groan of the dog from the groaning of the trees, quietly got out of the rubble and, with his only ear alert and a straight half of his tail, rose to the top. Here, having determined the place of the howl near Antip's guardhouse, he set off from the hill straight in wide strides in that direction.
Fortunately for Grass, severe hunger forced her to stop her sad crying or, perhaps, calling for a new person. Maybe for her, in her dog’s understanding, Antipych didn’t 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 will call her to him again, only with a different face, and she will serve this face just as faithfully as the other.
This is most likely what happened: The grass with its howl called Antipych to itself.
And the wolf, hearing this dog’s hateful plea for a man, went there at full swing. She would have held out for about five more minutes, and Gray would have grabbed her. But, having prayed to Antipych, she felt very hungry, she stopped calling Antipych and went to look for the hare's trail for herself.
It was at that time of year when the nocturnal animal, the hare, does not lie down at the first onset of morning, only to lie all day in fear with with open eyes. In spring, the hare wanders openly and boldly through the fields and roads for a long time and in the white light. And so one old hare, after a quarrel between the children, came to where they had separated, and, like them, sat down to rest and listen on the Lying Stone. A sudden gust of wind with the howling of the trees frightened him, and he, jumping from the Lying Stone, ran with his hare leaps, throwing his hind legs forward, straight to the place of the Blind Elani, terrible for a person. He had not yet shed thoroughly and left marks not only on the ground, but also hung winter fur on the bushes and on last year’s old tall grass.
Quite some time had passed since the hare sat on the stone, but Grass immediately picked up the scent of the hare. She was prevented from chasing him by footprints on the stone of two little people and their baskets, smelling of bread and boiled potatoes.
So, Travka faced a difficult task - to decide whether to follow the trail of the hare to the Blind Elan, where the trail of one of the little people also went, or to follow the human trail going to the right, bypassing the Blind Elan.
The difficult question would be resolved very simply if it were possible to understand which of the two 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 the hare to the one who gives the bread.
Where to go, in which direction?.. In such cases, people think, but about a hound dog, hunters say: the dog is chipped.
And so the Grass split off. And, like any hound, in this case, she began to make circles, with her head held high, with her senses directed up, down, and to the sides, and with an inquisitive strain of her eyes.
Suddenly, a gust of wind from the direction Nastya went instantly stopped the dog’s rapid movement in a circle. The grass, after standing for a while, 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, distributing firewood. Antipych, so that Grass would not disturb him, tied her near the house. Early in the morning, at dawn, the forester left. But only by lunchtime did Grass realize that the chain at the other end was tied to an iron hook on a thick rope. Realizing this, she stood on the rubble, stood up on her hind legs, pulled up the rope with her front legs, and by evening crushed it. Now, after that, with a chain around her neck, she set off in search of Antipych. More than half a day had passed since Antipych passed; his trace disappeared and was then washed away by a fine drizzling rain, similar to dew. But the silence in the forest all day was such that during the day not a single stream of air moved and the finest odorous particles of tobacco smoke from Antipych’s pipe hung in the still air from morning to evening. Realizing immediately that it was impossible to find Antipych by following the tracks, having made a circle with his head held high, the Grass suddenly fell on a tobacco stream of air and little by little, through the tobacco, now losing the air trail, now meeting him again, it finally reached its owner.
There was such a case. Now, when the wind, with a strong and sharp gust, brought a suspicious smell to her senses, she petrified and 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 was flying and where one of the little men had gone.
The grass returned to the lying stone, checked the smell of the basket on the stone with what the wind had brought. Then she checked the trace of the other little man and also a hare trail. You can guess that's what she thought:
“The brown hare followed directly to his 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. And what could it be? comparison - to work, to strain, 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 him.
Looking carefully to the side again direct trace towards the Blind Elan, the Grass finally turned towards the path that goes around the Blind Elan with right side, once again rose to her hind legs, was confident, wagged her tail and trotted there.

Part 8

The blind elan, where the compass needle led Mitrash, was a disastrous place, and here, over the centuries, many people and even more livestock were drawn into the swamp. And, of course, everyone who goes to the Bludovo swamp should know well what it is, the Blind Elan.
This is how we understand it, that the entire Bludovo swamp with all its huge reserves of fuel and peat is a storehouse of the sun. Yes, that’s exactly what 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 warmth to all of them, and they, dying, decomposing, passed it on as an inheritance to other plants, bushes, berries, flowers and blades of grass. But in swamps, water does not allow plant parents to transfer all their goodness to their children. For thousands of years this goodness is preserved under water, the swamp becomes a storehouse of the sun, and then this entire storehouse of the sun, like peat, is inherited by man.
The Bludovo swamp contains huge reserves of fuel, but the peat layer is not the same thickness everywhere. Where the children sat at the Lying Stone, 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 Blind Elani, the layer became younger and thinner.
Little by little, as Mitrasha moved forward according to the direction of the arrow and the path, the bumps under his feet became not just soft, as before, but semi-liquid. It’s as if he steps on something solid, but his foot goes away and becomes scary: is his foot really going into the abyss? You come across some fidgety bumps, and you have to choose a place to put your foot. And then it just happened that when you step, your foot suddenly starts to growl, like your stomach, and runs somewhere under the swamp.
The ground underfoot became like a hammock suspended over a muddy abyss. On this moving earth, on thin layer intertwined with the roots and stems of plants, there are sparse, small, gnarled and moldy fir 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 naked bitch raised like a hand to hug you as you walked, and another has a stick in her hand and is waiting to hit you, the third crouched down for some reason, the fourth, standing, knits a stocking, and so on: no matter what. Christmas tree, it certainly looks like something.
The layer under Mitrasha’s feet became thinner and thinner, but the plants were probably intertwined very tightly and held the man well, and, swaying and swaying all around, he kept walking and walking forward. Mitrash could only believe the man who walked ahead of him and even left the path behind him.
The old Christmas tree women were very worried, allowing a boy with a long gun and a cap with two visors to pass between them. It happens that one will suddenly rise up, as if she wants to hit the daredevil on the head with a stick, and will block all the other old women in front of her. And then he lowers himself, and another witch stretches her bony hand towards the path. And you wait - just about, like in a fairy tale, a clearing will appear, and on it is the hut of a witch with dead heads on poles.
A black raven, guarding its nest in the forest, flying around the swamp in a guard circle, noticed a small hunter with a double visor. In the spring, the raven also has a special cry, similar to how a person shouts through his throat and nose: “Dron-tone!” There are incomprehensible and elusive shades in the basic sound that our ears cannot understand, and that is why we cannot understand the conversation of ravens, but only guess, like deaf-mutes.
- Dron-ton! - shouted the guard raven in the sense that some small man with a double visor and a gun, he is approaching Blind Elani and that, perhaps, there will soon be some profit.
- Dron-ton! – the female raven answered from a distance on the nest.
And this meant to her:
- I hear and wait!
Magpies, who are closely related to ravens, noticed the roll call of ravens and began to chirp. And even the fox, after an unsuccessful hunt for mice, pricked up its ears to the cry of the raven.
Mitrasha heard all this, but was not at all cowardly - what could he be cowardly if there was a human path under his feet: a man like him was walking, which means that he himself, Mitrasha, could boldly walk along it. And, hearing the raven, he even sang:

- Don’t hang yourself, black raven,
Over my head.

Singing encouraged him even more, and he even figured out how to shorten hard way along the path. Looking at his feet, he noticed that his foot, sinking into the mud, was immediately collecting water in a hole there. So each person, walking along the path, drained water from the moss lower down, and therefore, on the drained edge, next to the stream of the path, on both sides, tall sweet white grass grew in an alley. According to this, no yellow color, as it was everywhere now, in early spring, but rather the color of white, the grass far ahead of you could understand where the human path passed. So I saw Mitrash: his path turns sharply to the left and goes far there and completely disappears there. He checked the compass, the arrow pointed north, the path went west.
- Whose are you? - the lapwing shouted at this time.
- Alive, alive! - answered the sandpiper.
- Dron-ton! – the raven shouted even more confidently.
And magpies began to chatter in the Christmas trees all around.
Having looked around the area, Mitrash saw right in front of him a clean, good clearing, where the hummocks, gradually decreasing, turned into a completely flat place. But the most important thing: he saw that very close on the other side of the clearing, tall white grass was snaking - an invariable companion of the human path. Recognizing from the direction of the white bear a path that did not go directly to the north, Mitrasha thought: “Why would I turn left, onto the hummocks, if the path is just a stone’s throw away - you can see it there, behind the clearing?”
And he boldly walked forward, crossing the clear clearing.

"x x x" Mitrasha walked along the Elani at first better than even before through the swamp. Gradually, however, his leg began to sink deeper and deeper, and it became more and more difficult to pull it back out. The elk feels good here, he has terrible strength in his long legs, and, most importantly, he doesn’t think and rushes the same way both in the forest and in the swamp. But Mitrash, sensing danger, stopped and thought about his situation. At one moment he stopped, he sank up to his knees, at another moment he was above his knees. He could still, with an effort, break out of the elani back. And he decided to turn around, put the gun on the swamp and, leaning on it, jump out. But then, very close to me, ahead, I saw tall white grass on the human trail.
“I’ll jump over,” he said.
And he rushed.
But it was already too late. In the heat of the moment, like a wounded man - to disappear, just to disappear - at random, he rushed again, and again, and again. And I felt myself tightly covered from all sides up to my chest. Now he couldn’t even breathe much: 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, do not move and quickly calm his breathing. So he did: he took off his gun, put it in front of him, and 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 same direction as Nastya. And his cry carried him to the other side of the Bludov swamp, to the west, where there were only fir trees endlessly. Some magpies responded to him and, flying from tree to tree, with their usual anxious chirping, little by little surrounded the entire Blind Elan, and, sitting on the upper fingers of the trees, thin, oblique, long-tailed, they began to chatter.
Some like:
- Dri-ti-ti!
Other:
- Dra-ta-ta!
- Dron-ton! – the raven shouted from above.
And, very smart for any nasty business, the magpies realized the complete powerlessness of the little man immersed in the swamp. They jumped from the top fingers of the fir trees to the ground and different sides The Magpies began their offensive in leaps.
The little man with the double visor stopped screaming.
According to him tanned face, tears flowed down my cheeks in shining rivulets.

Page 1 of 6

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 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 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 is 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 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!
- 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 only 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,” 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 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, indeed, on the way to her was the 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 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 would have immediately had enough of spring ones 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:
- So 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’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 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 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-shwark! - 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.