I understand that I am undead, I am not a human, but if you think that huddling in a cold damp corner, covered with a blanket of rotten straw, is normal for someone like me, you are deeply, very deeply mistaken! Many people compare brownies with rats, they call them "hangers-on", but don't we do little for you people? And besides, we also attach, attach and love.
After all, you must admit that there are not so many spirits in this world that can get along with a person. And now I freeze against a hundred-year-old wall under a collapsed roof, clearing snow from a place in the corner of a dead house. I look at the dead oven, behind which until recently I basked and basked in dryness and tranquility, and I myself slowly perish in complete oblivion on the edge of an abandoned village.
When the owners had a daughter, the father, a hard-working and fair-minded man, cut down a large new house. On the collective farm, as an honorary worker, he was given forty cubic meters of forest, however, the chairman was then severely scolded in the village council for arbitrariness, but in the end, everyone agreed to encourage the front-line soldier and drummer of labor with a bonus in the form of timber for a new house. So the father of little Nastya, together with his comrades, built both the house and the stove over the summer. We did everything right, and they drank the filling and put the coin at an angle. They lured me out of the old hut, and in the new house the hostess immediately put a piece of bread under the oven, and I took root. Nastya grew up before my eyes.
One night a fever came to the house to kill the family. I drove the old woman away, but, running away, she touched the girl with her shroud. What to do?! I took some soot from the oven, smeared the girl's face and began to howl. The family woke up, and the mother immediately understood everything. Once the brownie howls, and Nastenka's face is stained, it means that trouble will happen to her. Take our girl, she says to her husband, in the morning to the regional center to see a doctor. “How so, she is not sick,” the father answers. But, nevertheless, you were lucky - try to contradict her! And halfway through, Nastenka had a fever. Lucky to arrive in time, they saved her. Yes, and our horse Zvezdochka was playful. I looked after her too.
Then Nastenka grew up and matchmakers came to our house, approached the stove under which I slept, and began to rattle the shutter, then sat down in the proper place. The owner came out to them, and they began to trade for Nastenka. I stretched, yawned, crept under the table and tied the laces on my boots - there is nothing to force in the village. The matchmakers then both fell, but they were not offended by my leprosy. So Nastya was attached to a good guy, their son was born, and they named him Stepan. Very often Nastya and her son came to the parental home.
It was then that televisions began to appear in the villages, which showed the peasants city life. And when Stepan grew up, he went to live in the city. And a few years later Nastya came to say goodbye - "The son has become a man, his mother has not abandoned, we will live in the city." Since then, they have rarely come, the last times already by car together with Stepina's wife Lena. They helped the old people. Then the veteran grandfather died - the owner of my house, and then his grandmother.
The house was locked and I was left alone. But I knew that Nastya, Stepan, and Lena would return. And they really came a few years later, but Nastya was not with them, and there was a little girl very similar to Nastya. Her name was Lisa. They heated the damp house and, although Lena was not satisfied with the conditions, they decided to spend a vacation here. I rejoiced, warmed myself by the stove again and took care of people.
And then one day, when Stepan and Lena were on the river, I heard Lisa scream, looked out the window and saw how two boys who came to the old people from a neighboring house for the summer were catching up with our girl. Running up to the house, she ran her hand under the old bucket, where the key to the lock was usually kept, but realizing that she would not have time to open it, she rushed into the barn, closed the gate and began to pull it towards herself. But the hooligans turned out to be stronger, they pressed the girl to the hayloft and began to threaten: “Who did you call fools ?! Now we will bury you in this stinking barn."
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They twisted Lisa's arms, knocked her to the ground, and one of the young sadists put his dirty foot right on her face. And then I showed myself, although usually we cannot do this. One of the boys yelled so that they heard in the neighboring village and rushed to run, and the second could not get off. For a couple of moments he stood and looked into my eyes, and then he lost consciousness. He was revived by the returning Stepan and Lena.
Lisa ran away, but then I saw a saucer of milk by the stove. I drank greedily, because there is nothing tastier than the master's treat. Liza understood everything, because Baba Nastya, when she was alive, told the story of the brownie who saved her from death.
The story of one of the hooligans: “We were just standing in the barn with Lisa, and then something hissed upstairs. I looked there and saw a huge disgusting writhing worm with arms, all covered with hair. He had green eyes that glowed in the dark and a terrible mouth with a tongue. This monster looked like a huge thick hairy snake that climbed out of the barn to bite us. I don't remember anything else, everything suddenly became dark."
They left a month later. Loading things into their beautiful car, they decided that they would come again in a couple of years, because Lena wanted to spend her next vacation abroad.
And I waited. Three years later, the old roof collapsed in the spring from heavy snow, and the house took on an uninhabited look. And in the summer, Stepan, Lena and the grown-up Liza arrived in the village. They looked at the unfortunate house, and Lena decided that it was not worth coming here anymore, because they had a new good dacha. In addition, almost no one lives in the village. Liza was the last to get into the car. She looked at the windows of our house for a long time, and I looked at her. All … Their new car disappeared around the corner, and I realized that I was left alone.
Several years passed, and our village was completely deserted. But one summer I saw people in the yard. My whole being rejoiced: "Will I really have new owners!" And they tore off the frames from the windows, pulled out the great-grandmother's spinning wheel and some other things from the barn, loaded it all into their car, then walked through other houses and left. And then I howled, and the same howl came from the neighboring houses.
Look at me - I have cleared the corner of the snow and I am sitting, covered with straw. I understand that I am not a person, but why then it seems to me that I am dying. Why?
V. Shamov