This story was told by her grandfather, Yegor Ivanovich Maksimov, to Elena Potapova, a resident of Irkutsk, shortly before his death. For many years he lived in a small village Zaprudye, which has now disappeared from the map, not far from Lake Baikal. The events that Yegor Ivanovich told about took place more than half a century ago.
In the mid-1930s, a large and noisy peasant family of the Kozhevnikovs lived next to Maksimov's house. The head of the family, Ivan, worked on the collective farm - watching the horses, his wife Rita worked as a milkmaid on the same collective farm. The couple had a lot of children - seven, all of them gave their parents a lot of trouble. The two elders worked, but the other five had to be dressed, shod, fed, washed, all this gave the Kozhevnikovs a lot of trouble.
However, the youngest daughter, seven-year-old Varya, was the most troublesome. For her mischievous character, the girl was rarely called by name, in the village she was called a bully. Not a day passed without Varya committing some dirty trick: she would set fire to the hay, then she would frighten the chickens, then she would break the eggs she had laid.
Ivan, who doted on his youngest daughter, always looked condescendingly at children's pranks. But Rita, on the other hand, regularly gave her youngest daughter strong thrashing: either she would bruise with twigs, then she would give a good slap on the head. It also happened that the mother sent the girl to sleep without supper, Rita did not skimp on sharp words, like: "so that you fall underground", "so that the devils take you" …
That spring morning the Kozhevnikov family was awakened unusually early by the loud barking of a dog. Ivan went out into the yard, deciding that someone had come to visit them. But there was no one at the gate, having driven the dog into the booth, the man returned to the house, where he was met by Varvara, who had risen from the bed. The girl in a whisper told her father that some kind grandmother had just come to her, who called her to live in her forest, promised to feed her with honey and gingerbread. When asked where this grandmother had gone, the girl pointed to the gate. Rita accidentally overheard this conversation and again began to shout at the girl, telling her not to invent nonsense, but to help with the housework.
That same morning it turned out that Varvara had smeared all the chickens with tar. Angry Rita once again sent her daughter to a dark basement, giving with her a crust of black bread, and she herself went to work. The parents who returned in the late afternoon opened the basement and, to their horror, saw that it was empty. At the same time, the door and the lock were intact - the girl seemed to evaporate. The children called from the yard told their parents that they tried several times to talk to Varya, but she was always silent. They could not open the door without keys.
The whole village went in search of the girl together with the head of the collective farm. Several search groups were created, all of them combed the taiga forest, fifteen-year-old Yegor Maksimov also took part in the search for Varvara.
At some point, Rita Kozhevnikova lagged behind her group, and suddenly it was as if she heard a child's voice humming an unpretentious song. Rita threw herself on the voice and suddenly found herself in a clearing, in the center of which stood a solid hut, a light flickering in its windows. Knocking on the door, Rita entered the house. An elderly woman was bustling around the table, seeing the guest, the hostess invited her to the table, placing a bowl of fresh gingerbread in front of Rita. And then she began to scold Rita for the bad words with which she now and then rewarded the unreasonable child. After speaking out, the old woman told Rita to go home, they say, the girl has been at home for a long time.
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While the villagers continued their unsuccessful search for Varvara, Rita went home. Entering home, she saw her daughter sitting at the table with a gingerbread in her hand, with the same one that the old woman treated Rita. The girl did not answer her mother's questions. Only a few days later did Varya speak. She said that her kind grandmother took her from the basement and brought her to the hut. There, according to the girl, she spent a whole year, the old woman fed her with sweet gingerbread and gave her fresh milk, taught her to talk with animals and other smart things. The head of the family said that he knew the surrounding forests very well, and there were no huts there.
Since then, the youngest daughter of the Kozhevnikovs seems to have been replaced. She was no longer mischievous, but, on the contrary, helped, and helped more with words. The girl said what the weather would be like tomorrow, she told me what kind of cattle was sick on the farm, whether next year would be fruitful - all this came true with perfect accuracy. Moreover, the girl predicted that her father would be bitten by wolves while hunting, and her two older brothers would be killed in the war. It all came true too. At the age of sixteen, Varvara disappeared and has never been seen since.
Already now, in our time, residents of the surrounding villages and tourists say that getting lost in those taiga forests, they had to go out into a clearing with a hut. There they were met by an old woman who treated them to gingerbread and showed them where to go to get out of the forest. Isn't that a Barbarian?