Secrets of the Bludov swamp
Literary game for 6th grade students
based on the fairy tale by M.M. Prishvin “Pantry of the Sun”
The game is played at the final lesson on Prishvin’s fairy tale “The Pantry of the Sun”. Students will have to go with the heroes of the work to the Bludov swamp
To go all the way to the end, you need to show observation, intelligence, general erudition, good knowledge of the text, and the ability to work in groups. The reward for a successfully completed section of the path will be healing cranberries (each point earned is one berry, the berries are drawn with red chalk inside the baskets shown on the board).
Preparing for the game. Previously, a group of students receives the task of tracing the path of Nastya and Mitrasha through the Bludov swamp and drawing up a map. Under the guidance of the teacher, the map is corrected and drawn up on a large sheet of paper. The students are divided into two teams: Team Nastya (girls) and Team Mitrasha (boys). One representative from each team is given creative task(see point 4).
1. Packing for the trip. When going to the forest, we must take with us the essentials. Make a list of the things that Nastya and Mitrash took with them. (Nastya: towel, basket, bread, milk, potatoes; Mitrasha: gun, hazel grouse decoys, compass, axe, bag.)
2. Sounding Borina. The path of Nastya and Mitrasha lay through Zvonkaya Borina. What trees grow in Zvonkaya Borina? (Pines.) Which bird greeted the sunrise with the cry “Chuff!” Shi!? (Grouse Kosach.) The dawn seemed to captivate the children with its beauty, and they watched the sun rise with bated breath. Find in the description of the morning the trails you know that help the author create this beautiful landscape(for each trope the team gets one point). Texts on cards:
1) “...The first rays of the sun, flying over the low, gnarled swamp fir trees and birches, illuminated Zvonkaya Borina and the mighty trunks pine forest became like the lit candles of the great temple of nature.”
2) “...The braid seemed to begin to bloom in the rays 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.”
3) “And then the first ray, sliding over the tops of the nearest, very small Christmas trees, finally began to play on the children’s cheeks. ‹…›Motionless, like statues, the hunters for sweet cranberries sat on a stone.”
3. Quarrel at the Lying Stone. Having sat down on the Lying Stone to rest, the children argued about which road to go next. One player from each team comes out to complete the task - to role-play a dispute between Nastya and Mitrasha (they are given costume details: a scarf, a basket, a cap, a compass, etc.). Team representatives defend the point of view of their hero. The one who is more convincing in the argument wins. Artistry and knowledge of the text are assessed.
4. Old Christmas trees. On the way to the Palestinian woman, Mitrash was greeted by old Christmas trees. Read their descriptions and determine which of them your opponents portrayed (one representative from each team performed homework- draw one of the old Christmas trees, this drawing is awarded to the team during the competition). Card text:
“On this moving earth, on a thin layer of plants intertwined with roots and stems, there are rare small, gnarled and moldy fir trees. ‹…› The older the old woman in the swamp, the more wonderful she seems. Then one naked branch raised it like a hand to hug you as you walked, and the other had a stick in her hand, and she was waiting for you to slap you; the third sat down for some reason; the fourth is standing and knitting a stocking. And so everything: no matter what the Christmas tree is, it certainly looks like something.”
5. Wild berries. The Bludovo swamp, through which we continue our journey, is rich in various berries. Find out the berries by their description (text on cards):
1) “...A thin stalk stretches up along the stalk, like wings, small green leaves in different directions, and small peas ‹…› black berries with black fluff sit on the leaves.” (Blueberry.)
2) “...Blood-red berry, the leaves are dark green, dense, do not turn yellow even under the snow, and there are so many berries that the place seems to be watered with blood.” (Cowberry.)
3) “...A red-ruby berry with a tassel, and each ruby in a green frame.” (Stone berry.)
4) “…The berry ‹…› hides in a swamp hummock and is almost invisible from above. ‹…› You bend down to take one, try it - and together with one berry you pull a green thread with many ‹…›. If you want, you can pull out a whole necklace of large, blood-red berries from the hummock.” (Cranberry.)
6. Blind Elan. You and I have approached a very dangerous place. Before us is the Blind Elan. You choose a question to answer “blindly” - you draw yourself a card with the question:
1) What did Blind Elan look like? (It resembled “...a clean, good clearing, where the hummocks, gradually decreasing, turned into a completely flat place.”)
2) Why does white grass grow along the edges of the path? (When a person passes, leaving a footprint, water collects in the hole from the footprint, and grass grows on the drained edge.)
3) Why could the elk easily run across the elan? (“It’s good for the elk here, he has terrible strength in his long leg, and, most importantly, he doesn’t think and rushes the same way both in the forest and in the swamp.”)
4) Speaking about Mitrash, who ended up in Yelan, the narrator recalls the saying of old Antipych. Which one? (“If you don’t know the ford, don’t go into the water.”)
7. Palestinian. In their dispute about which path to take, the children did not know one thing: that the big path and the small one, going around the Blind Elan, both came together. And this place, hidden between the juniper bushes, was just that Palestinian. “People call Palestine some pleasant place in the forest,” explains Prishvin. So in our Palestine a lot of all kinds of living creatures have gathered.
1) What was the moose doing among the Palestinians? (“...The monster’s thick lips plopped against the tree, and a narrow white stripe remained on the tender aspen: this is how this monster feeds.”)
2) Why did so many living creatures gather around the black stump: lizards, butterflies, large black flies and a huge viper half a meter long? (The black stump “collects the rays of the sun and becomes very hot,” and then retains heat for a long time and slowly cools.)
3) A dog appeared in the clearing, but Nastya could not remember its exact name. What did she call her? (Ant.)
8. Weed. What was the dog's real name? (Grass.) Grass can be considered one of the main characters of the fairy tale. It is unknown how it would have ended if she had not appeared on the edge of the Blind Elani. This dog deserves our special attention.
1) From what word did the dog’s original name come from? (Seed - to poison.)
2) What did Grass look like? (“A big red dog with a black strap all over its back. Under its eyes there were black stripes with a curve like glasses. And this made the eyes seem very big...”)
3) “And suddenly... Neither thunder, nor lightning ‹…› - nothing, no miracle of nature could have happened moreover, what happened now for Grass in the swamp...” What happened? (“She heard a human word - and what a word!” - “Priming!”)
4) Why did Grass recognize Mitrash as its owner?
9. Way home. Together with the heroes we return home safely. And finally, a few questions for the most attentive:
1) At what time of year did these events take place? (In spring.)
2) How old was Mitrash in 1945? (13th year: Mitrash killed a wolf at the 11th year of his life and two years later the war ended.)
3) Who is telling us this story? (Geologists who came to explore the riches of the Bludov swamp.)
4) What riches of the swamp attracted geologists here? (Pat deposits.)
General discussion on the following questions:
And what other riches does the Bludovo swamp conceal?
What valuable lesson did the Bludovo swamp teach Nastya and Mitrash? What about you?
To what people does the Bludovo swamp reveal its secrets?
Page 5 of 6
A large black stump collects the rays of the sun and becomes very hot. It’s already starting to get dark, and the air and everything around is cooling. But the stump, black and large, still retains heat. Six small lizards crawled out of the swamp and clung to the warmth; four lemon butterflies, folding their wings, dropped their antennae; big black flies came to spend the night. A long cranberry lash, clinging to the stems of grass and irregularities, entwined a black warm stump and, having made several turns at the very top, descended on the other side. Poisonous snakes - vipers guard the warmth at this time of year, and one, huge, half a meter long, crawled onto a stump and curled up in a ring on a cranberry.
And the girl also crawled through the swamp, without raising her head high. And so she crawled to the burnt stump and pulled the very whip where the snake lay. The reptile raised its head and hissed. And Nastya also raised her head...
It was then that Nastya finally woke up, jumped up, and the elk, recognizing her as a person, jumped out of the aspen tree and, throwing forward strong long legs- stilts, rushed easily through the viscous swamp, like a hare rushing along a dry path.
Frightened by the elk, Nastenka looked at the snake in amazement: the viper was still lying, curled up in a ring, in the warm ray of the sun. Nastya imagined that she herself had remained there, on the stump, and now she had come out of the snake’s skin and was standing, not understanding where she was.
A large red dog with a black strap on its back stood not far away and looked at her. This dog was Travka, and Nastya even remembered her: Antipych came to the village with her more than once. But she couldn’t remember the dog’s name correctly and shouted to it:
- Ant, Ant, I’ll give you some bread!
And she reached into the basket for bread. The basket was filled to the top with cranberries, and under the cranberries there was bread. How much time has passed, how many cranberries lay down from morning to evening, until the huge basket was filled! Where was her brother during this time, hungry, and how did she forget about him, how did she forget about herself and everything around her?!
She again looked at the stump where the snake lay, and suddenly screamed shrilly:
- Brother, Mitrasha!
And, sobbing, she fell down next to a basket filled with cranberries.
It was this piercing scream that reached Yelani. And Mitrash heard this and answered, but a gust of wind then carried his cry to the other side, where only magpies lived.
X 
That strong gust of wind when poor Nastya screamed was not the last before the silence of the evening dawn. At that time the sun passed down through a thick cloud and threw out the golden legs of its throne to the ground.
And that impulse was not the last, when in response to Nastya’s cry Mitrash shouted.
The last impulse was when the sun seemed to plunge the golden legs of its throne into the ground and, large, clean, red, touched the ground with its lower edge. Then, on the dry land, a small white-browed thrush sang its sweet song. Hesitantly near the Lying Stone, in the calmed trees, the Kosach-current was stuck. And the cranes shouted three times, not like in the morning - “victory!”, but as if:
“Sleep, but remember: we will soon wake you all up, wake you up, wake you up!”
The day ended not with a gust of wind, but with the last easy breathing. Then there was complete silence, and everything became audible everywhere, even the whistling of hazel grouse in the thickets of the Sukhaya River.
At this time, sensing human misfortune, Grass approached the sobbing Nastya and licked her cheek, salty from tears. Nastya raised her head, looked at the dog and, without saying anything to her, lowered her head back and laid it right on the berry. Through the cranberries, Grass clearly smelled bread, and she was terribly hungry, but she could not afford to dig her paws into the cranberries. Instead, sensing human misfortune, she raised her head high and howled.
Once, I remember, a long time ago, we were also driving in the evening, as in the old days, along a forest road in a troika with a bell. And suddenly the driver stopped the troika, the bell fell silent and, having listened, the coachman said to us:
- Trouble!
We heard something ourselves.
- What is this?
- Some kind of trouble: a dog is howling in the forest.
We never found out what the trouble was there then. Perhaps, somewhere in the swamp, a man was drowning and, seeing him off, a dog howled, true friend person.
In complete silence, when Grass howled, Gray immediately realized that it was in Palestine, and quickly and quickly waved straight there.
Only very soon Grass stopped howling, and Gray stopped to wait until the howl started again.
And at that time Grass herself heard a familiar thin and rare voice in the direction of the Lying Stone:
- Yawl! Yip!
And I immediately realized, of course, that it was a fox yapping at a hare. And then, of course, she understood: the fox had found the trail of the same brown hare that she had sniffed there, on the Lying Stone. And then she realized that a fox without cunning will never catch up with a hare and she only barks so that he will run and get tired, and when he gets tired and lies down, then she will grab him on his bed. This happened to Travka after Antipych more than once when getting a hare for food. Hearing such a fox, Grass hunted in the wolf's way: just as a wolf silently stands in a circle during the rut and, having waited for a dog roaring at the hare, catches it, so she, hiding, caught the hare from under the fox's rut.
Having listened to the fox's rut, Grass, just like us hunters, understood the hare's run circle: from the Lying Stone the hare ran to the Blind Elan and from there to the Sukhaya River, from there a long semicircle to the Palestine and again certainly to the Lying Stone. Realizing this, she ran to the Lying Stone and hid here in a dense juniper bush.
Travka didn’t have to wait long. With her subtle hearing, she heard the slurping of a hare's paw, inaccessible to human hearing, through the puddles on the swamp path. These puddles appeared on Nastya’s morning tracks. The Rusak would certainly now appear at the Lying Stone itself.
The grass behind the juniper bush crouched down and strained its hind legs for a mighty throw, and when it saw the ears, it rushed.
Just at this time, the hare, a big, old, seasoned hare, hobbling barely, decided to suddenly stop and even, standing up on his hind legs, listen to how far away the fox was barking.
So it all came together at the same time: The grass rushed, and the hare stopped.
And the Grass was carried by the hare.
While the dog straightened out, the hare was already flying with huge leaps along the Mitrashina path straight to the Blind Elan.
Then the wolf's method of hunting was unsuccessful: it was impossible to wait until dark for the hare to return. And Grass, in her canine way, rushed after the hare and, squealing loudly, with a measured, even dog bark, filled the entire evening silence.
Hearing the dog, the fox, of course, immediately gave up hunting for the hare and began her daily hunt for mice. And Gray, having finally heard the long-awaited barking of the dog, rushed in the direction of Blind Elani.
XI 
The magpies on the Blind Elani, having heard the approach of the hare, divided into two parties; some remained with the little man and shouted:
- Dri-ti-ti!
Others shouted for the hare:
- Dra-ta-ta!
It is difficult to guess and understand this magpie anxiety. To say that they are calling for help - what help is that! If a person or a dog comes to the magpie’s cry, the magpies will not get anything. To say that with their cry they call the entire magpie tribe to a bloody feast? Is that so...
- Dri-ti-ti! - the magpies shouted, jumping closer and closer to the little man.
But they couldn’t jump at all: the man’s hands were free. And suddenly the magpies mixed up: one and the same magpie would either squawk at “i” or squawk at “a”. 
This meant that the hare was approaching the Blind Elan.
The Rusak had dodged Travka more than once and knew well that the hound was catching up with the hare and that, therefore, it was necessary to act with cunning. That's why just before Yelanya, not reaching little man, he stopped and woke up all forty. They all sat on the top fingers of the fir trees, and they all shouted for the hare:
- Dri-ta-ta!
But for some reason the hares do not attach any importance to this cry and make their discounts, not paying any attention to the forty. That’s why sometimes you think that this magpie chattering is useless, and that they, like people, sometimes just spend time chatting out of boredom.
The hare, after standing for a little while, made his first huge jump, or, as the hunters say, his jump - in one direction, after standing there, he jumped to the other and after a dozen small jumps - to the third and there he lay down with his eyes on his trail, on the case that if Travka understands the discounts, he will come to the third discount, so that you can see it in advance...
Yes, of course, the hare is smart, smart, but still these discounts are a dangerous business: a smart hound also understands that the hare is always looking at its own trail, and so manages to take the direction of discounts not by its tracks, but directly in the air, by its upper instinct .
And how, then, does the little bunny’s heart beat when he hears that the dog’s barking has stopped, the dog has chipped and silently began to make its terrible circle at the place of the chip...
The hare was lucky this time. He understood: the dog, having begun to make its circle around the tree, met with something there, and suddenly a man’s voice was clearly heard there and a terrible noise arose...
You can guess: the hare, having heard an incomprehensible noise, said to himself something like our “away from sin” and, feather grass, feather grass, quietly went back on the trail, to the Lying Stone.
And the Grass, having scattered across the hare, suddenly ten steps away from itself saw a small man eye to eye and, forgetting about the hare, stopped dead in its tracks.
What Travka was thinking, looking at the little man in the elan, can be easily guessed. After all, for us, we are all different. For Travka, all people were like two people: one - Antipych with by different persons and the other person is Antipych’s enemy. And this is why a good, smart dog does not immediately approach a person, but will stop and find out whether it is his owner or his enemy.
So Grass stood and looked into the face of the little man, illuminated by the last ray of the setting sun.
The little man’s eyes were dull and dead at first, but suddenly a light lit up in them, and Grass noticed this.
“Most likely, this is Antipych,” thought Grass.
And she slightly, barely noticeably wagged her tail.
We, of course, cannot know how Travka thought when recognizing her Antipych, but, of course, we can guess.
Do you remember if this happened to you? It happens that you bend down in the forest towards a quiet creek and there, as in a mirror, you see: the whole, whole person, big, beautiful, like Antipych for Grass, leaned over from behind your back and also looks into the creek, like in a mirror. And so he is beautiful there, in the mirror, with all nature, with clouds, forests, and the sun also sets down there, and the new moon appears, and frequent stars.
So, for sure, Travka probably saw the whole person Antipych in each person’s face, as in a mirror, and she tried to throw herself on everyone’s neck, but from her experience she knew: there was an enemy of Antipych with exactly the same face.
And she waited.
Meanwhile, her paws were also gradually being sucked in; If you stand like this any longer, then the dog’s paws will get so sucked in that you won’t be able to get it out. It was no longer possible to wait.
And suddenly...
Neither thunder, nor lightning, nor the sunrise with all the victorious sounds, nor the sunset with the crane's promise of a new beautiful day - nothing, no miracle of nature could be greater than what happened now for Grass in the swamp: she heard a human word - and what a word !
Antipych, like a big, real hunter, named his dog at first, of course, in a hunting way - from the word “to poison”, and at first our Grass was called Zatravka; but after the hunting nickname, the name fell on the tongue, and the beautiful name Travka came out. The last time Antipych came to us, his dog was also called Zatravka. And when the light came on in the little man’s eyes, it meant that Mitrash remembered the name of the dog. Then the dead, blue lips of the little man began to become bloodshot, turn red, and begin to move. Grass noticed this movement of her lips and slightly wagged her tail a second time. And then a real miracle happened in understanding Grass. Just like old Antipych in the old days, the new young and little Antipych said:
- Seed!
Recognizing Antipych, Grass instantly lay down.
- Well! Well! - said Antipych. - Come to me, smart girl!
And the Grass, in response to the man’s words, quietly crawled.
But the little man was calling her and beckoning her now, not quite straight from the bottom of his heart, as Travka herself probably thought. The little man’s words not only contained friendship and joy, as Travka thought, but also concealed a cunning plan for his salvation. If he could tell her his plan clearly, with what joy she would rush to save him! But he could not make himself understandable to her and had to deceive her with kind words. He even needed her to be afraid of him, otherwise if she weren’t afraid, didn’t feel a good fear of the power of the great Antipych and would throw herself on his neck like a dog with all her might, then the swamp would inevitably drag a man into its depths, and his friend - a dog. The little man simply could not now be the great man that Travka imagined. The little man was forced to be cunning.
- Zatravushka, dear Zatravushka! - he caressed her in a sweet voice.
And I thought:
“Well, crawl, just crawl!”
And the dog, with its pure soul suspecting something not entirely pure in Antipych’s clear words, crawled with stops.
- Well, my dear, more, more!
And I thought:
“Just crawl, crawl!”
"x x x"
At first Mitrash walked along the Elani 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 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!
– Drone tone! – 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 began their magpie attack from different sides with jumps.
The little man with the double visor stopped screaming.
Tears flowed down his tanned face and down his cheeks in shiny rivulets.
"IX"
Anyone who has never seen how a cranberry grows can walk through a swamp for a very long time and not notice that he is walking through a cranberry. Take a blueberry - it grows, and you can see it: a thin stalk stretches up, along the stem, like wings, small green leaves in different directions, and blueberries, black berries with blue fluff, sit on the leaves in small peas. Also lingonberries, a blood-red berry, the leaves are dark green, dense, do not turn yellow even under the snow, and there are so many berries that the place seems to be watered with blood. Blueberries are still growing in the swamp as a bush, the berries are blue, larger, you can’t pass by without noticing. In remote places where the huge capercaillie bird lives, there is a stoneweed, a red ruby berry with a tassel, and each ruby in a green frame. Only here we have one single cranberry, especially in early spring, hiding in a swamp hummock and almost invisible from above. Only when a lot of it has gathered in one place, you notice it from above and think: “Look, someone scattered the cranberries.” You bend down to take one, try it, and together with one berry you pull a green thread with many cranberries. If you want, you can pull out a whole necklace of large, blood-red berries from the hummock.
Either that cranberries are an expensive berry in the spring, or that they are healthy and healing and that it’s good to drink tea with them, only terrible greed develops when picking them. One old woman once filled our basket so big that she couldn’t even lift it. And I didn’t dare to pour out the berries or even abandon the basket. And so I stayed until nightfall next to the full basket.
Otherwise, it happens that a woman will attack a berry and, looking around to see if anyone can see, she will lie down on the ground in a wet swamp and crawl.
At first, Nastya picked each berry from the vine separately, and for each red one she bent down to the ground. But soon she stopped bending over for one berry: she wanted more.
She began to guess now where she could get not just one or two berries, but a whole handful, and began to bend down only for a handful. So she pours out handful after handful, more and more often, but she wants more and more.
It used to be that Nastenka wouldn’t work at home for an hour before, so that he wouldn’t remember his brother, so that he wouldn’t want to echo him. But now he’s gone alone, no one knows where, and she doesn’t even remember that she has the bread, that her beloved brother is out there somewhere, in a dark swamp, walking hungry. Yes, she has forgotten about herself and only remembers cranberries, and she wants more and more.
That’s why all the fuss flared up during her argument with Mitrasha: namely, that she wanted to follow the well-worn path. And now, groping after the cranberries, where the cranberries lead, that’s where she, Nastya, imperceptibly left the well-worn path.
There was only one kind of awakening: she suddenly realized that she had gone off the path somewhere. I turned to where it seemed like there was a path, but there was no path there. She rushed in the other direction, where two dry trees with bare branches loomed - there was no path there either. Then, by chance, she should remember about the compass, as Mitrash spoke about it, and her brother, her beloved, remember that he was going hungry, and, remembering, call out to him.
And just to remember how suddenly Nastenka saw something that not every cranberry grower gets to see at least once in her life.
In their dispute about which path to take, the children did not know that the big path and the small one, going around the Blind Elan, both converged on the Sukhaya River and there, beyond the Sukhaya River, no longer diverging, they eventually led to the big Pereslavl road. In a large semicircle, Nastya’s path went around the dry land of the Blind Elan. Mitrash's path went straight near the very edge of the Yelan. If he hadn’t been so careful, if he hadn’t lost sight of the white grass on the human path, he would have long ago been in the place where Nastya came only now. And this place, hidden between the juniper bushes, was exactly the same Palestinian land that Mitrasha was aiming for on the compass.
If Mitrash had come here, hungry and without a basket, what would he have done here, this Palestine is blood red?
Nastya came to the Palestinian village with a large basket, with a large supply of food, forgotten and covered with sour berries.
And again, the girl, who looks like the Golden Hen on high legs, should think about her brother during a joyful meeting with a Palestinian woman and shout to him:
– Dear friend, we have arrived!
Ah, raven, raven, prophetic bird! You yourself may have lived for three hundred years, and whoever gave birth to you has retold in his testicle everything that he also learned during his three hundred years of life. And so the memory of everything that happened in this swamp for a thousand years passed from raven to raven. How much have you, crow, seen and known, and why won’t you at least once leave your circle of crows and carry on your mighty wings the news of your brother dying in the swamp from his desperate and senseless courage. You should have told them, raven.
– Drone tone! - shouted the raven, flying over the very head of the dying man.
– “I hear,” the crow answered him on the nest, also in the same “drone tone,” “just make sure you grab something before it gets completely sucked into the swamp.”
– Drone tone! – the male raven shouted for the second time over the girl crawling almost next to her dying brother in the wet swamp. And this “drone tone” from the raven meant that the raven family might get even more from this crawling girl.
There were no cranberries in the very middle of Palestine. Here a dense aspen forest stood out as a hilly curtain, and in it stood a horned giant elk. To look at him from one side - it will seem like he looks like a bull, to look at him from the other - a horse and a horse: a slender body, and slender, dry legs, and a mug with thin nostrils. But how arched this mug is, what eyes and what horns! You look and think: maybe there is nothing - neither a bull nor a horse, but something big, gray appears in the dense gray aspen forest. But how does an aspen tree form, if you can clearly see how the monster’s thick lips plopped onto the tree, and a narrow white stripe remains on the tender aspen tree: this is how this monster feeds. Yes, almost all aspen trees show such bites. No, this huge thing is not a vision in the swamp. But how can one understand that such a large body can grow on aspen bark and marsh shamrock petals? Where does a person, given his power, get greed even for the sour berry cranberry?
The elk, gleaning an aspen tree, calmly looks from its height at the crawling girl.
Seeing nothing but her cranberry, she crawls and crawls towards a large black stump. She barely moves the basket behind her, all wet and dirty, the old Golden Hen on high legs.
The moose doesn’t even consider her to be a person: she has all the habits of ordinary animals, which he looks at indifferently, like we look at soulless stones.
A large black stump collects the rays of the sun and becomes very hot. It’s already starting to get dark, the air and everything around is cooling. But the stump, black and large, still retains heat. Six small lizards crawled out of the swamp and clung to the warmth; four lemongrass butterflies, folding their wings, fell with their antennae; big black flies came to spend the night. A long cranberry lash, clinging to the stems of grass and irregularities, entwined a black warm stump and, having made several turns at the very top, descended on the other side. Poisonous snakes, vipers, guard the warmth at this time of year, and one huge one, half a meter long, crawled onto a stump and curled up in a ring on a cranberry.
And the girl also crawled through the swamp, without raising her head high. And so she crawled to the burnt stump and pulled the very lash where the snake lay. The reptile raised its head and hissed. And Nastya also raised her head.
Then, finally, Nastya woke up, jumped up, and the elk, recognizing her as a person, jumped out of the aspen tree and, throwing forward his strong long stilt legs, rushed easily through the viscous swamp, like a hare rushing along a dry path.
Frightened by the elk, Nastenka looked at the snake in amazement: the viper was still lying curled up in a ring in the warm ray of the sun.
A large red dog with black straps on its back stood not far away and looked at her. This dog was Travka. And Nastya even remembered her: Antipych came to the village with her more than once. But she couldn’t remember the dog’s name correctly and shouted to it:
– Muravka, Muravka, I'll give you some bread!
And she reached into the basket for bread. The basket was filled to the top, and there was bread under the cranberries. How long did it take, how many cranberries lay there from morning to evening, until the huge basket was filled? Where was the hungry brother during this time and how did she forget about him, how did she forget about herself and everything around her?
She again looked at the stump where the snake lay, and suddenly screamed shrilly:
– Brother, Mitrasha!
And, sobbing, she fell down next to a basket filled with cranberries.
This piercing scream then reached Yelan, and Mitrash heard it and responded, but a gust of wind then carried the scream in the other direction.
"X"
That strong gust of wind when poor Nastya screamed was not the last before the silence of the evening dawn. At that time the sun passed down through a thick cloud and threw out the golden legs of its throne to the ground.
And that impulse was not the last, when in response to Nastya’s cry Mitrash shouted.
The last impulse was when the sun seemed to plunge the golden legs of its throne into the ground and, large, clean, red, touched the ground with its lower edge. Then, on the dry land, the little white-browed song thrush sang its sweet song. Sadly, near the Lying Stone, on the calmed trees, the Kosach current was stuck. And the cranes shouted three times, not like “victory” in the morning, but sort of like:
– Sleep, but remember: we will soon wake you all up, wake you up, wake you up!
The day ended not with a gust of wind, but with the last light breath. Then there was complete silence, and everything became audible everywhere, even the whistling of hazel grouse in the thickets of the Sukhaya River.
At this time, sensing human misfortune, Grass approached the sobbing Nastya and licked her cheek, salty from tears. Nastya raised her head, looked at the dog and, without saying anything to her, lowered her head back and laid it right on the berry. Through the cranberries, Grass clearly smelled bread, and she was terribly hungry, but she could not afford to dig her paws into the cranberries. Instead, sensing human misfortune, she raised her head high and howled.
I remember once, a long time ago, we were also driving in the evening, as in the old days, along a forest road in a troika with a bell. And suddenly the driver stopped the troika, the bell fell silent, and, listening, the driver said to us:
– Trouble!
We heard something ourselves.
– What is this?
– Some kind of trouble: a dog howls in the forest.
We never knew what the trouble was then. Perhaps, somewhere in the swamp, a man was also drowning, and, seeing him off, a dog, man’s faithful friend, howled.
In complete silence, when Grass howled, Gray immediately realized that it was in Palestine, and quickly, quickly waved straight there.
Only very soon the Grass stopped howling. And Gray stopped to wait until the howling started again.
And at that time Grass herself heard a familiar thin and rare voice in the direction of the Lying Stone:
– Yip, yap!
And I immediately realized, of course, that it was a fox yapping at a hare. And then, of course, she understood - the fox found the trail of the same hare, the hare that she sniffed there, on the Lying Stone. And then she realized that a fox without cunning would never catch up with a hare and she only barked so that he would run and get tired, and when he got tired and lay down, then she would grab him while lying down. This happened to Travka after Antipych more than once when getting a hare for food. Hearing such a fox, Grass hunted in the wolf's way, just as a wolf during the rut silently stops in a circle and, waiting for the dog roaring at the hare, catches it, so she, hiding, caught the hare from under the rut of the fox.
Having listened to the fox's rut, Grass, just like us hunters, understood the hare's run from the Lying Stone: the hare ran to the Blind Elan and from there to the Sukhaya River, from there a long semicircle to the Palestine and again certainly to the Lying Stone. Realizing this, she ran to the Lying Stone and hid here in a dense juniper bush.
Travka didn’t have to wait long. With her subtle hearing, she heard the slurping of a hare's paw, inaccessible to human hearing, through the puddles on the swamp path. These puddles appeared on Nastya’s morning tracks. The Rusak would certainly now appear at the Lying Stone itself.
The grass behind the juniper bush crouched down and strained its hind legs for a mighty throw, and when it saw the ears, it rushed.
Just at this time, the hare, a big, old, seasoned hare, hobbling barely, decided to suddenly stop and, even standing up on his hind legs, to listen to how far away the fox was barking.
So they came together at the same time: The grass rushed, and the hare stopped.
And the Grass was carried by the hare.
While the dog was righting itself, the hare was already flying in huge leaps along the Mitrashina path straight to the Blind Elan.
Then the wolf's method of hunting was unsuccessful; it was impossible to wait until dark for the hare to return. And Grass, in her canine way, rushed after the hare and, squealing loudly, with a measured, even dog bark, filled the entire evening silence.
Hearing the dog, the fox, of course, immediately gave up hunting for the hare and began her daily hunt for mice. And Gray, having finally heard the long-awaited barking of the dog, rushed at full swing in the direction of Blind Elani.
"XI"
The magpies on the Blind Elani, having heard the approach of the hare, divided into two parties; some remained with the little man and shouted:
– Dri ti ti!
Others shouted for the hare:
– Dra ta ta!
It is difficult to understand and guess in this magpie alarm. To say that they are calling for help - what help is that! If a person or a dog comes to the magpie’s cry, the magpies will not get anything. To say that with their cry they call the entire magpie tribe to a bloody feast: that’s probably true.
– Dri ti ti! - the magpies shouted, jumping closer and closer to the little man.
But they couldn’t jump at all; the little man’s hands were free. And suddenly the magpies mixed up, the same magpie either squawked at “i” or squawked at “a”.
This meant that the hare was approaching the Blind Elan. This hare had dodged Travka more than once and knew well that the hound was catching up with the hare and that, therefore, it was necessary to act with cunning. That is why, just before the tree, before reaching the little man, he stopped and excited all forty. They all sat on the top fingers of the fir trees, and they all shouted for the hare:
– Dra ta ta!
But for some reason the hares do not attach any importance to this cry and make their discounts, not paying any attention to the forty. That’s why sometimes you think that this magpie chattering is useless, and that they, like people, sometimes just spend time chatting out of boredom.
The hare, after standing for a little while, made his first huge jump, or, as the hunters say, his jump - in one direction, after standing there, he jumped to the other and after a dozen small jumps - to the third and there he lay down with his eyes on his trail in case , that if Travka understands the discounts, it will come to the third discount, so that you can see it in advance.
Yes, of course, the hare is smart, smart, but all the same, these discounts are a dangerous business: a smart hound also understands that the hare is always looking at its own trail, and so manages to take the direction of discounts, not by its tracks, but directly in the air, by its upper instinct .
And how does the little bunny’s heart beat when he hears that the dog’s barking has stopped, the dog has chipped and silently began to make its terrible circle at the spot of the chip.
The hare was lucky this time. He understood: the dog, having begun to make its circle around the tree, met something there, and suddenly a man’s voice was clearly heard there, and a terrible noise arose.
You can guess - the hare, having heard an incomprehensible noise, said to himself something like ours: “Away from sin” - and - feather grass, feather grass, quietly went back to the Lying Stone.
And the Grass, having scattered across the hare, suddenly ten steps away from itself saw a little man eye to eye and, forgetting about the hare, stopped dead in its tracks.
You can easily guess what Travka was thinking, looking at the little man in the elan. After all, for us, we are all different. For Travka, all people were like two people: one Antipych with different faces and the other person is Antipych’s enemy. And this is why a good, smart dog does not immediately approach a person, but stands and finds out: it is its owner or his enemy.
So Grass stood and looked into the face of the little man, illuminated by the last ray of the setting sun.
The little man’s eyes were dull and dead at first, but suddenly a light lit up in them, and Grass noticed this.
“Most likely, this is Antipych,” thought Grass.
And just a little, barely noticeably, she wagged her tail.
We, of course, cannot know how Travka thought when recognizing her Antipych, but, of course, we can guess. Do you remember if this happened to you? It happens that you bend down in the forest towards a quiet creek and there, as in a mirror, you see - the whole person, the whole person, big, beautiful, like Antipych for Grass, bends down from behind your back and also looks into the creek, like in a mirror. And so he is beautiful there, in the mirror, with all nature, with clouds, forests, and the sun also sets down there, and the new moon appears, and frequent stars.
So, for sure, Travka probably saw the whole person Antipych in each person’s face, as in a mirror, and she tried to throw herself on everyone’s neck, but from her experience she knew: there was an enemy of Antipych with exactly the same face.
And she waited.
Meanwhile, her paws were also gradually being sucked in: if you continue to stand like this, then the dog’s paws will be so sucked in that you won’t be able to pull them out. We can't wait any longer.
And suddenly.
Neither thunder, nor lightning, nor the sunrise with all the victorious sounds, nor the sunset with the crane's promise of a new beautiful day - nothing, no miracle of nature could be greater than what happened now for Grass in the swamp: she heard a human word, and what a word !
Antipych, like a big, real hunter, named his dog at first, of course, according to hunting - from the word poison, and at first our Grass was called Zatravka; but after the hunting nickname, the name fell on the tongue, and the beautiful name Travka came out. The last time Antipych came to us, his dog was also called Zatravka. And when the light came on in the little man’s eyes, it meant that Mitrash remembered the name of the dog. Then the dead, blue lips of the little man began to become bloodshot, turn red, and begin to move. Grass noticed this movement of her lips and slightly wagged her tail a second time. And then a real miracle happened in understanding Grass. Just like old Antipych in the old days, the new young and little Antipych said:
– Seed!
Recognizing Antipych, Grass instantly lay down.
– Well, well! - said Antipych. - Come to me, smart girl!
And the Grass, in response to the man’s words, quietly crawled.
But the little man was calling her and beckoning her now, not quite from the bottom of his heart, as Travka herself probably thought. The little man’s words not only contained friendship and joy, as Travka thought, but also concealed a cunning plan for his salvation. If he could tell her his plan clearly, with what joy she would rush to save him. But he could not make himself understandable to her and had to deceive her with kind words. He even needed her to be afraid of him, otherwise if she weren’t afraid of him, didn’t feel a good fear of the power of the great Antipych and rushed like a dog at his neck with all her might, then the swamp would inevitably drag the man and him into its depths. friend - a dog. The little man simply could not now be the great man that Travka imagined. The little man was forced to be cunning.
– Zatravushka, dear Zatravushka! – he caressed her in a sweet voice.
And I thought: “Well, crawl, just crawl!”
And the dog, with its pure soul suspecting something not entirely pure in Antipych’s clear words, crawled with stops.
– Well, my dear, more, more!
And I thought: “Just crawl, crawl.”
And little by little she crawled up. Even now, he could, leaning on the gun spread out in the swamp, lean forward a little, extend his hand, stroke his head. But the little cunning man knew that from his slightest touch the dog would rush at him with a squeal of joy and drown him.
And the little man stopped his big heart. He froze in precise calculation of movement, like a fighter in the blow that determines the outcome of the fight: whether he should live or die.
If only there was a small crawl on the ground, and the Grass would have thrown itself on the man’s neck, but the little man was not mistaken in his calculations: he instantly threw away his right hand forward and grabbed the big, strong dog by the left hind leg.
So could the enemy of man really deceive him like that?
The grass rushed with insane force, and it would have torn out of the little man’s hand if he, already quite dragged out, had not grabbed her other leg with his other hand. Immediately after that, he lay down on his stomach on the gun, released the dog and was on all fours himself, like a dog , moving the support of the gun forward and forward, he crawled to the path where the man constantly walked and where tall white grass grew from his feet along the edges. Here, on the path, he stood up, here he wiped the last tears from his face, shook off the dirt from his rags and, like a real big man, authoritatively ordered:
– Come to me now, my Seed!
Hearing such a voice, such words, Grass gave up all her hesitation: the old, beautiful Antipych stood before her. With a squeal of joy, recognizing her owner, she threw herself on his neck, and the man kissed his friend on the nose, eyes, and ears.
Isn’t it time to say now how we ourselves think about the mysterious words of our old forester Antipych, when he promised to whisper his truth to the dog if we ourselves do not find him alive? We think Antipych didn’t say this entirely in jest. It may very well be that Antipych, as Travka understands him, or, in our opinion, a man, once, in his ancient past, whispered to his friend the dog some great human truth, and we think: this truth is the truth of the eternal harsh struggle of people for love.
Page 3 of 3
IX
Anyone who has never seen how a cranberry grows can walk through a swamp for a very long time and not notice that he is walking through a cranberry. Take a blueberry - it grows, and you can see it: a thin stalk stretches up along the stem, like wings, small green leaves in different directions, and blueberries, black berries with blue fluff, sit on the leaves with small peas. Likewise, lingonberries, a blood-red berry, the leaves are dark green, dense, do not turn yellow even under the snow, and there are so many berries that the place seems to be watered with blood. Blueberries are still growing in the swamp as a bush, the berries are blue, larger, you can’t pass by without noticing. In remote places where the huge capercaillie bird lives, there is a stoneweed, a red-ruby berry with a tassel, and every ruby in a green frame. Only here we have one single cranberry, especially in early spring, hiding in a swamp hummock and almost invisible from above. Only when a lot of it has gathered in one place, you notice it from above and think: “Someone scattered the cranberries.” You bend down to take one, try it, and together with one berry you pull a green thread with many cranberries. If you want, you can pull out a whole necklace of large, blood-red berries from the hummock.
Either that cranberries are an expensive berry in the spring, or that they are healthy and healing and that it is good to drink tea with them, only women develop terrible greed when collecting them. One old woman once filled our basket so big that she couldn’t even lift it. And I didn’t dare to pour out the berries or even abandon the basket. Yes, I almost died near the full basket. Otherwise, it happens that one woman will attack a berry and, looking around to see if anyone can see, she will lie down on the ground in a wet swamp and crawl, and no longer see that another woman is crawling towards her, not even resembling a person at all. So they will meet each other - and well, fight!
At first, Nastya picked each berry from the vine separately, and for each red one she bent down to the ground. But soon she stopped bending over for one berry: she wanted more. She began to guess now where she could get not just one or two berries, but a whole handful, and began to bend down only for a handful. So she pours out handful after handful, more and more often, but she wants more and more.
It used to be that Nastenka wouldn’t work at home for an hour before, so that he wouldn’t remember his brother, so that he wouldn’t want to echo him. But now he’s gone alone, no one knows where, and she doesn’t even remember that she has the bread, that her beloved brother is out there somewhere, walking hungry in a heavy swamp. Yes, she has forgotten about herself and only remembers cranberries, and she wants more and more.
That’s what caused all the fuss to flare up during her argument with Mitrasha: precisely because she wanted to follow the well-trodden path. And now, groping for the cranberries, where the cranberries lead, there she goes, Nastya quietly left the well-worn path.
There was only one time, like an awakening from greed: she suddenly realized that she had gone off the path somewhere. She turned to where she thought there was a path, but there was no path there. She rushed in the other direction, where two dry trees with bare branches loomed - there was no path there either. Then, by chance, she should remember about the compass, as Mitrash spoke about it, and her very brother, her beloved, remember that he was going hungry, and, remembering, call out to him...
And just to remember how suddenly Nastenka saw something that not every cranberry grower gets to see at least once in their life...
In their dispute about which path to take, the children did not know that the big path and the small one, going around the Blind Elan, both converged on the Sukhaya River and there, beyond the Sukhaya River, no longer diverging, they eventually led to the big Pereslavl road. In a large semicircle, Nastya’s path went around the dry land of the Blind Elan. Mitrash's path went straight near the very edge of the Yelan. If he hadn’t been so careful, if he hadn’t lost sight of the white grass on the human path, he would have long ago been in the place where Nastya came only now. And this place, hidden between the juniper bushes, was exactly the same Palestinian land that Mitrasha was aiming for on the compass.
If Mitrash had come here hungry and without a basket, what would he have done here, on this blood-red Palestine? Nastya came to the Palestinian village with a large basket, with a large supply of food, forgotten and covered with sour berries.
And again, the girl, who looks like the Golden Hen on high legs, should think about her brother during a joyful meeting with a Palestinian and shout to him:
- Dear friend, we have arrived!
Ah, raven, raven, prophetic bird! You yourself may have lived for three hundred years, and whoever gave birth to you has retold in his testicle everything that he also learned during his three hundred years of life. And so the memory of everything that happened in this swamp for a thousand years passed from raven to raven. How much have you, raven, seen and known, and why don’t you at least once leave your crow circle and carry on your mighty wings the news of a brother dying in a swamp from his desperate and senseless courage, to a sister who loves and forgets her brother? from greed.
You, raven, would tell them...
- Dron-ton! - shouted the raven, flying over the very head of the dying man.
“I hear,” the crow answered him on the nest, also in the same “drone-tone,” “just make sure you grab something before he gets completely sucked into the swamp.”
- Dron-ton! – the male raven shouted for the second time, flying over the girl crawling almost next to her dying brother in the wet swamp. And this “drone tone” from the raven meant that the raven family might get even more from this crawling girl.
There were no cranberries in the very middle of Palestine. Here a dense aspen forest stood out as a hilly curtain, and in it stood a horned giant elk. To look at him from one side - it will seem like he looks like a bull, to look at him from the other - a horse and a horse: a slender body, and slender legs, dry, and a mug with thin nostrils. But how arched this mug is, what eyes and what horns! You look and think: maybe there is nothing - neither a bull nor a horse, but something big, gray, appears in the dense gray aspen forest. But how does an aspen tree form, if you can clearly see how the monster’s thick lips plopped onto the tree and a narrow white stripe remains on the tender aspen tree: this is how this monster feeds. Yes, almost all aspen trees show such bites. No, this huge thing is not a vision in the swamp. But how can one understand that such a large body can grow on aspen bark and marsh shamrock petals? Where does a person, given his power, get greed even for the sour berry cranberry?
An elk, gleaning an aspen tree, calmly looks from its height at the crawling girl, as at any crawling creature.
Seeing nothing but cranberries, she crawls and crawls towards a large black stump, barely moving a large basket behind her, all wet and dirty, the old Golden Hen on high legs.
The moose doesn’t even consider her to be a person: she has all the habits of ordinary animals, which he looks at indifferently, like we look at soulless stones.
A large black stump collects the rays of the sun and becomes very hot. It’s already starting to get dark, and the air and everything around is cooling. But the stump, black and large, still retains heat. Six small lizards crawled out of the swamp and clung to the warmth; four lemon butterflies, folding their wings, dropped their antennae; big black flies came to spend the night. A long cranberry lash, clinging to the stems of grass and irregularities, entwined a black warm stump and, having made several turns at the very top, descended on the other side. Poisonous viper snakes guard the warmth at this time of year, and one, huge, half a meter long, crawled onto a stump and curled up in a ring on a cranberry.
And the girl also crawled through the swamp, without raising her head high. And so she crawled to the burnt stump and pulled the very whip where the snake lay. The reptile raised its head and hissed. And Nastya also raised her head...
It was then that Nastya finally woke up, jumped up, and the elk, recognizing her as a person, jumped out of the aspen tree and, throwing forward his strong, long stilt legs, rushed easily through the viscous swamp, like a brown hare rushing along a dry path.
Frightened by the elk, Nastenka looked at the snake in amazement: the viper was still lying curled up in the warm ray of the sun. Nastya imagined that she herself had remained there, on the stump, and now she had come out of the snake’s skin and was standing, not understanding where she was.
A large red dog with a black strap on its back stood not far away and looked at her. This dog was Travka, and Nastya even remembered her: Antipych came to the village with her more than once. But she couldn’t remember the dog’s name correctly and shouted to it:
- Ant, Ant, I’ll give you some bread!
And she reached into the basket for bread. The basket was filled to the top with cranberries, and under the cranberries there was bread.
How much time has passed, how many cranberries lay down from morning to evening, until the huge basket was filled! Where was her brother during this time, hungry, and how did she forget about him, how did she forget about herself and everything around her?
She again looked at the stump where the snake lay, and suddenly screamed shrilly:
- Brother, Mitrasha!
And, sobbing, she fell down next to a basket filled with cranberries. This piercing cry then reached Yelan, and Mitrash heard it and responded, but a gust of wind then carried his cry to the other side, where only magpies lived.
X
That strong gust of wind when poor Nastya screamed was not the last before the silence of the evening dawn. At that time the sun passed down through a thick cloud and threw out the golden legs of its throne to the ground.
And that impulse was not the last, when in response to Nastya’s cry Mitrash shouted.
The last impulse was when the sun seemed to plunge the golden legs of its throne into the ground and, large, clean, red, touched the ground with its lower edge. Then, on the dry land, a small white-browed thrush sang its sweet song. Hesitantly near the Lying Stone, in the calmed trees, the Kosach-current was stuck. And the cranes shouted three times, not like in the morning - “victory”, but as if:
- Sleep, but remember: we will soon wake you all up, wake you up, wake you up!
The day ended not with a gust of wind, but with the last light breath. Then there was complete silence, and everything became audible everywhere, even the whistling of hazel grouse in the thickets of the Sukhaya River.
At this time, sensing human misfortune, Grass approached the sobbing Nastya and licked her cheek, salty from tears. Nastya raised her head, looked at the dog and, without saying anything to her, lowered her head back and laid it right on the berry. Through the cranberries, Grass clearly smelled bread, and she was terribly hungry, but she could not afford to dig her paws into the cranberries. Instead, sensing human misfortune, she raised her head high and howled.
Once, I remember, a long time ago, we were also driving in the evening, as in the old days, along a forest road in a troika with a bell. And suddenly the driver stopped the troika, the bell fell silent, and, having listened, the coachman said to us:
We heard something ourselves.
- What is this?
- There is some kind of trouble: a dog is howling in the forest.
We never found out what the trouble was there then. Perhaps, somewhere in the swamp, a man was also drowning, and, seeing him off, a dog, man’s faithful friend, howled.
In complete silence, when Grass howled, Gray immediately realized that it was in Palestine, and quickly, quickly waved straight there.
Only very soon Grass stopped howling, and Gray stopped to wait until the howl started again.
And at that time Grass herself heard a familiar thin and rare voice in the direction of the Lying Stone:
- Yip, yap!
And I immediately realized, of course, that it was a fox yapping at a hare. And then, of course, she understood - the fox had found the trail of the same brown hare that she had sniffed there, on the Lying Stone. And then she realized that a fox without cunning would never catch up with a hare and she only barked so that he would run and get tired, and when he got tired and lay down, then she would grab him while lying down. This happened to Travka after Antipych more than once when getting a hare for food. Hearing such a fox, Grass hunted in the wolf's way: just as a wolf silently stands in a circle during the rut and, having waited for a dog roaring at the hare, catches it, so she, hiding, caught the hare from under the fox's rut.
Having listened to the fox's rut, Grass, just like us hunters, understood the hare's run circle: from the Lying Stone the hare ran to the Blind Elan and from there to the Sukhaya River, from there a long semicircle to the Palestine and again certainly to the Lying Stone. Realizing this, she ran to the Lying Stone and hid here in a dense juniper bush.
Travka didn’t have to wait long. With her subtle hearing, she heard the slurping of a hare's paw, inaccessible to human hearing, through the puddles on the swamp path. These puddles appeared on Nastya’s morning tracks. The Rusak would certainly now appear at the Lying Stone itself.
The grass behind the juniper bush crouched down and strained its hind legs for a mighty throw, and when it saw the ears, it rushed.
Just at this time, the hare, a big, old, seasoned hare, hobbling barely, decided to suddenly stop and even, standing up on his hind legs, listen to how far away the fox was barking.
So it all came together at the same time: The grass rushed, and the hare stopped.
And the Grass was carried by the hare.
While the dog straightened out, the hare was already flying with huge leaps along the Mitrashina path straight to the Blind Elan.
Then the wolf's method of hunting was unsuccessful: it was impossible to wait until dark for the hare to return. And Grass, in her canine way, rushed after the hare and, squealing loudly, with a measured, even dog bark, filled the entire evening silence.
Hearing the dog, the fox, of course, immediately gave up hunting for the hare and began her daily hunt for mice. And Gray, having finally heard the long-awaited barking of the dog, rushed in the direction of Blind Elani.
XI
The magpies on the Blind Elani, hearing the approach of the hare, divided into two parties: some remained with the little man and shouted:
- Dri-ti-ti!
Others shouted for the hare:
- Dra-ta-ta!
It is difficult to understand and guess in this magpie alarm. To say that they are calling for help - what help is that! If a person or a dog comes to the magpie’s cry, the magpies will not get anything. To say that with their cry they call the entire magpie tribe to a bloody feast? Is that so...
- Dri-ti-ti! - the magpies shouted, jumping closer and closer to the little man.
But they couldn’t jump at all: the man’s hands were free. And suddenly the magpies mixed up, the same magpie either squawked at “i” or squawked at “a”.
This meant that the hare was approaching the Blind Elan.
This hare had dodged Travka more than once and knew well that the hound was catching up with the hare and that, therefore, it was necessary to act with cunning. That is why, just before the tree, before reaching the little man, he stopped and woke up all forty. They all sat on the top fingers of the fir trees, and they all shouted for the hare:
- Dri-ta-ta!
But for some reason the hares do not attach any importance to this cry and make their own discounts, not paying any attention to forty. That’s why sometimes you think that this magpie chattering is useless, and that they, like people, sometimes just spend time chatting out of boredom.
The hare, after standing for a little while, made his first huge jump, or, as the hunters say, his jump - in one direction, after standing there, he jumped to the other and after a dozen small jumps - to the third and there he lay down with his eyes on his trail on that chance that if Travka understands the discounts, he will come up with a third discount, so that you can see it in advance...
Yes, of course, the hare is smart, smart, but still these discounts are a dangerous business: a smart hound also understands that the hare is always looking at its own trail, and so manages to take the direction of discounts not by its tracks, but directly in the air with its upper instinct.
And how, then, does the little bunny’s heart beat when he hears that the dog’s barking has stopped, the dog has chipped and silently began to make its terrible circle at the place of the chip...
The hare was lucky this time. He understood: the dog, having begun to make its circle around the tree, met with something there, and suddenly a man’s voice was clearly heard there and a terrible noise arose...
You can guess - the hare, having heard an incomprehensible noise, said to himself something like ours: “Away from sin,” and, feather grass, feather grass, quietly went back to the Lying Stone.
And the Grass, having scattered across the hare, suddenly ten steps away from itself saw a small man eye to eye and, forgetting about the hare, stopped dead in its tracks.
What Travka was thinking, looking at the little man in the elan, can be easily guessed. After all, for us, we are all different. For Travka, all people were like two people: one was Antipych with different faces and the other person was Antipych’s enemy. And this is why a good, smart dog does not immediately approach a person, but will stop and find out whether it is his owner or his enemy.
So Grass stood and looked into the face of the little man, illuminated by the last ray of the setting sun.
The little man’s eyes were dull and dead at first, but suddenly a light lit up in them, and Grass noticed this.
“Most likely, this is Antipych,” thought Grass.
And she slightly, barely noticeably wagged her tail.
We, of course, cannot know how Travka thought when recognizing her Antipych, but, of course, we can guess. Do you remember if this happened to you? It happens that you lean in the forest towards a quiet creek and there, as in a mirror, you see - the whole, whole person, big, beautiful, like Antipych for Grass, leaned over from behind your back and also looks into the creek, like in a mirror. And so he is beautiful there, in the mirror, with all nature, with clouds, forests, and the sun also sets down there, and the new moon appears, and frequent stars.
So, for sure, Travka probably saw the whole person Antipych in each person’s face, as in a mirror, and she tried to throw herself on everyone’s neck, but from her experience she knew: there was an enemy of Antipych with exactly the same face.
And she waited.
Meanwhile, her paws were also gradually being sucked in; If you stand like this any longer, then the dog’s paws will get so sucked in that you won’t be able to get it out. It was no longer possible to wait.
And suddenly... 
Neither thunder, nor lightning, nor the sunrise with all the victorious sounds, nor the sunset with the crane's promise of a new beautiful day - nothing, no miracle of nature could be greater than what happened now for Grass in the swamp: she heard a human word - and what a word !
Antipych, like a big, real hunter, named his dog at first, of course, in a hunting way - from the word poison, and at first our Grass was called Zatravka; but after the hunting nickname, the name fell on the tongue, and the beautiful name Travka came out. The last time Antipych came to us, his dog was also called Zatravka. And when the light came on in the little man’s eyes, it meant that Mitrash remembered the name of the dog. Then the dead, blue lips of the little man began to become bloodshot, turn red, and begin to move. Grass noticed this movement of her lips and slightly wagged her tail a second time. And then a real miracle happened in understanding Grass. Just like old Antipych in the old days, the new young and little Antipych said:
- Seed!
Recognizing Antipych, Grass instantly lay down.
- Well, well! - said Antipych. - Come to me, smart girl!
And the Grass, in response to the man’s words, quietly crawled.
But the little man was calling her and beckoning her now, not quite straight from the bottom of his heart, as Grass herself probably thought. The little man’s words not only contained friendship and joy, as Travka thought, but also concealed a cunning plan for his salvation. If he could tell her his plan clearly, with what joy she would rush to save him! But he could not make himself understandable to her and had to deceive her with kind words. He even needed her to be afraid of him, otherwise if she weren’t afraid, didn’t feel a good fear of the power of the great Antipych and would throw herself on his neck like a dog with all her might, then the swamp would inevitably drag a man into its depths, and his friend - a dog. The little man simply could not now be the great man that Travka imagined. The little man was forced to be cunning.
- Zatravushka, dear Zatravushka! – he caressed her in a sweet voice.
And I thought:
“Well, crawl, just crawl!”
And the dog, with its pure soul suspecting something not entirely pure in Antipych’s clear words, crawled with stops.
- Well, my dear, more, more!
And I thought:
"Crawl, just crawl."
And little by little she crawled up. Even now, he could, leaning on the gun spread out in the swamp, lean forward a little, extend his hand, stroke his head. But the little cunning man knew that from his slightest touch the dog would rush at him with a squeal of joy and drown him.
And the little man stopped his big heart. He froze in precise calculation of movement, like a fighter in the blow that determines the outcome of the fight: whether he should live or die.
Just a small crawl on the ground, and Grass would have thrown itself on the man’s neck, but the little man was not mistaken in his calculation: instantly he threw his right hand forward and grabbed the large, strong dog by the left hind leg.
So could the enemy of man really deceive him like that?
The grass jerked with insane force, and it would have escaped from the little man’s hand if he, already quite dragged out, had not grabbed her other leg with his other hand. Immediately after that, he lay down on his stomach on the gun, released the dog, and on all fours, like a dog, moving the support-gun forward and forward, he crawled to the path where the man constantly walked and where tall white grass grew from his feet along the edges. Here, on the path, he stood up, here he wiped the last tears from his face, shook off the dirt from his rags and, like a real big man, authoritatively ordered:
- Come to me now, my Seed!
Hearing such a voice, such words, Grass gave up all her hesitation: the old, beautiful Antipych stood before her. With a squeal of joy, recognizing her owner, she threw herself on his neck, and the man kissed his friend on the nose, eyes, and ears.
Isn’t it time to say now how we ourselves think about the mysterious words of our old forester Antipych, when he promised us to whisper his truth to the dog if we ourselves did not find him alive? We think Antipych didn’t say this entirely in jest. It may very well be that Antipych, as Travka understands him, or, in our opinion, the whole man in his ancient past, whispered to his dog friend some of his great human truths, and we think: this truth is the truth of the eternal harsh struggle of people for love.
XII
Now there is not much left for us to say about all the events of this big day in the Bludov swamp. The day, no matter how long it was, was not quite over when Mitrash got out of the elani with the help of Travka. After the intense joy of meeting Antipych, the businesslike Travka immediately remembered her first hare race. And it’s clear: Grass is a hound dog, and her job is to chase for herself, but for the owner Antipych, catching a hare is all her happiness. Having now recognized Mitrash as Antipych, she continued her interrupted circle and soon found herself on the hare’s exit trail and immediately followed this fresh trail with her voice.
Hungry Mitrash, barely alive, immediately realized that all his salvation would be in this hare, that if he killed the hare, he would start the fire with a shot and, as had happened more than once with his father, he would bake the hare in hot ashes. After examining the gun and changing the wet cartridges, he went out into the circle and hid in a juniper bush.
You could still clearly see the front sight on the gun when Grass turned the hare from the Lying Stone onto Nastya’s big path, drove him out onto the Palestinian road, and directed him from here to the juniper bush where the hunter was hiding. But then it happened that Gray, having heard the renewed rutting of the dog, chose for himself exactly the same juniper bush where the hunter was hiding, and two hunters, a man and his worst enemy, met... Seeing the gray muzzle from himself and five steps away, Mitrash forgot about the hare and shot almost point blank.
The gray landowner ended his life without any suffering.
Gon was, of course, knocked down by this shot, but Travka continued her work. The most important thing, the happiest thing was not the hare, not the wolf, but that Nastya, hearing a close shot, screamed. Mitrasha recognized her voice, answered, and she instantly ran to him. After that, soon Travka brought the hare to her new, young Antipych, and the friends began to warm themselves by the fire, prepare their own food and lodging for the night.
Nastya and Mitrasha lived across the house from us, and when in the morning a hungry cattle roared in their yard, we were the first to come to see if any trouble had happened to the children. We immediately realized that the children had not spent the night at home and most likely got lost in the swamp. Little by little, other neighbors gathered and began to think about how we could help the children out, if only they were still alive. And just as they were about to scatter across the swamp in all directions, we looked, and the hunters for sweet cranberries were coming out of the forest in single file, and on their shoulders they had a pole with a heavy basket, and next to them was Grass, Antipych’s dog.
They told us in every detail about everything that happened to them in the Bludov swamp. And we believed everything: an unprecedented harvest of cranberries was evident. But not everyone could believe that a boy in his eleventh year could kill an old cunning wolf. However, several of those who believed, with a rope and a large sled, went to the indicated place and soon brought the dead Gray landowner. Then everyone in the village stopped what they were doing for a while and gathered, and not only from their own village, but also from neighboring villages. How much talk there was! And it’s hard to say who they looked at more – the wolf or the hunter in a cap with a double visor. When they looked from the wolf to the hunter, they said:
– But they teased: “A little man in a bag”!
“There was a little peasant,” others answered, “but he swam, and he who dared ate two: not a little peasant, but a hero.”
And then, unbeknownst to everyone, the former “Little Man in a Bag” really began to change and over the next two years of the war he grew taller, and what a guy he turned out to be – tall, slender. And he would certainly become a hero Patriotic War, but the war is just over.
And the Golden Hen also surprised everyone in the village. No one reproached her for greed, like we did; on the contrary, everyone approved of her, and that she wisely called her brother on the beaten path, and that she picked so many cranberries. But when the evacuated Leningrad children from the orphanage turned to the village for all possible help for the children, Nastya gave them all her healing berries. It was then that we, having gained the girl’s trust, learned from her how she suffered privately for her greed.
Now all we have to do is say a few more words about ourselves: who we are and why we ended up in the Bludovo Swamp. We are scouts of swamp riches. Since the first days of World War II, they have been working on preparing the swamp for extracting fuel from it - peat. And we found out that there is enough peat in this swamp to operate a large factory for a hundred years. These are the riches hidden in our swamps! And many people still only know about these great storehouses of the Sun that devils seem to live in them: all this is nonsense, and there are no devils in the swamp.
