Village bike from the Novgorod region.
In 2006 there was a mushroom year in the village. It's a good thing. Only, going into the forest for prey, you should not forget some signs and rules. Forest owners … whoever they are, they don't tolerate disorder.
All the neighbors of Pashka Zimin and his wife - Alena, a loose, asthmatic and always pale to green postcard - were carrying mushrooms from the forest - in baskets and buckets.
Pavel did not look at the neighbour's prey - he repaired his ever-breaking old "Muscovite", mowed grass for goats for the winter, and went fishing in the evenings. But Alena with envious eyes saw off every red-headed, white, boletus. As if the neighbors were dragging them not from the forest, but from their own bins.
- Pash, I would also go to the forest! - She itched to her husband. - Vaughn, Lenka-medic yesterday with her son brought three buckets from Matreshkin pine forest. They forced the whole shop with pickles, wound it up for two winters. And their stove is hung with dried white, I saw.
- Don't worry, - Pavel denied. - I have my own stash in the local forests. I know such a mushroom clearing, a cherished one - no one but me will find it.
But all the same, in order to calm his wife, he was going to the forest the next day.
* * *
Promotional video:
Pavel left the house when the sun had already decorated the clouds with red borders, paved a path to the sky. The lowlands beyond the village were covered with mist, bluish as thin milk. Zimin walked along the road, not hiding, with might and main thudding boots, but the sounds of footsteps melted away, dissolved in the moist air.
Dead silence stood around - as if some giants had wrapped cotton wool around the entire village. Outside the outskirts, the mushroom picker turned to the pine forest, along a clearing along the power line he headed to the bridge over the stream. Among the trees, the fog climbed in dark, bluish tufts: it would come closer, then it would sink into the depths, like a multi-headed snake in a nest.
Pavel walked and reasoned with himself: it is interesting to know, where did so many mushrooms come from this year? After all, it's worth drying all summer. Because of the heat, even the river became shallow. Maybe the fogs are feeding the mycelium? There is a lot of dampness in them. Here is a cane of mushrooms from these gray mists …
A branch to the left of the road cracked deafeningly. Zimin looked around - no one. Fog. In its damp mud any tree seems like a ghost. If only the sun had risen, Paul thinks, otherwise he would not get lost in such jelly.
He went down a ravine, crossed a stream, then climbed a hillock, turned through a former collective farm field to a fork - and there, too, is not far from the cherished forest with a mushroom meadow.
And suddenly foliage rustled on the left hand. Someone is walking through the forest very close to the path. Annoyance took Pavel: this is a meticulous people! Now he will catch up, say hello, start to ask questions, get imposed on fellow travelers, but what is it for? Pavel did not intend to show the cherished mushroom meadow and share his secrets.
So Zimin did not act like a human: he bent down as if shaking a stone out of his boot, pretended not to see or hear the stranger. A man approached, greeted, muttered something - Zimin did not respond, did not even raise his head. Glancing sideways, he only noticed that the passerby was wearing something dark and shaggy, like a long fur vest.
Pavel treated the stranger unfriendly. He chuckled and walked over to his side. Pavel listened to how his steps freeze in the distance. And, making sure that he was alone in the forest, he ran further along the path he knew.
He walked as if he were running, as if his legs were carrying him. Even strange. But I got there without incident. And when he came to his place, he forgot about everything in the world. The mushrooms in the cherished glade turned out to be visible and invisible: white milk mushrooms, mushrooms, waves. Have time to bend over and cut off your hats! Only Pavel will cut one circle of mushrooms, unbend - and a step away from him there is another circle, though don't get up.
In the end, Zimin began to crawl on his knees like a baby, so as not to waste energy. I climbed this way for two hours and chopped a full ten-liter basket of mushrooms, but they all do not end. Yes, what are the best mushrooms! Exactly a toy - strong, elastic, not a single worm. I came to my senses when I took the basket in my hands and tore it off the ground - a pound one. Now I would bring all this wealth to the house.
* * *
It was a gloomy day. By noon, it started to rain. Pavel got out on a familiar path and went home. He walks slowly, the heavy basket pulls his right hand. Finally, there is a fork, here is a former collective farm field, a hillock, behind it a ravine, in which the stream always makes noise …
Pavel approaches closer to the ravine, but the stream is not heard. He went downstairs - he looked: indeed, there was no stream. The ravine is the same as it was, overgrown with spruce forest, overgrown with windbreaks, and there is no stream at the bottom of it.
"Did you miss?" - thinks Zimin.
I could probably have missed: the young trees are all the same. By chance, my eyes let me down - so I turned into some other ravine. Although it is wonderful - after all, these places are best known to Zimin.
Pavel scrambled out of the ravine with his burden - he looked: and the collective farm field was gone. In its place is a birch grove. Couldn't the field be so overgrown while Pavel was picking mushrooms ?!
Zimin is walking along the woods, trying to figure out where he has been carried. And the basket on the elbow presses the hand, and even sways - rubbed bruises. There is silence around, only the rain rustles over the leaves, and birch trunks creak. Creepy: a completely alien forest. Pavel realized that he was lost.
I decided to go back to the familiar mushroom meadow to look for a new way home from there. He walked across the edge diagonally, returned to the ravine, and there, instead of young trees and a windbreak, there was green duckweed at the bottom and black water: a swamp.
What an obsession? The only swamp in this area is fifteen kilometers from here. Either I'm going crazy, thinks Zimin, or the evil spirits are fooling their heads.
And suddenly someone called out nearby.
- Hey! I'm here! - Zimin responded. He was delighted and rushed to the voice. I haven't figured it out yet - female or male.
“Well, whoever is - the main thing is a person. Together we will find the way! - Pavel thinks. And my hands ache, and my legs are buzzing, I was out of breath with a heavy basket, but in a hurry, he climbs through the gullies so that a person in the forest does not miss, not lose.
- People! Hey! Hey! - Paul calls with all his might.
In response, he hears some kind of muttering - the words cannot be made out, but it seems to be getting closer and closer.
And it got colder. The sun is stroking the distant spruce tree with its last red comb. From all the dimples, the little ones, I felt delusion, rot and dampness. Pavel went out into a clearing, pushed the spruce branches apart and saw - a black shadow hunched over between the trees. Came closer - and this is a mushroom. Huge, half human height. And still the same voice mutters:
- Cut, what are you worth?
Pavel shuddered, looked around - no one.
And the voice does not subside:
- What are you, you fool? Cut it quickly! Until others came up.
And grumbles like a bird screams.
Pavel froze. He stands and stares into the dusk, and his hands seem to be on their own - they put the basket, and in his pocket - for the knife.
- Cut, cut! Hurry up! And then they will take away!
Who will take away, what will take away and why such a huge mushroom for a man with a full basket of milk mushrooms and mushrooms - Paul does not understand anything. Fog in the head, weakness in the legs. Swung forward and scratched the mushroom with a knife. A mushroom cap fell off - the size of a good basin - and blood gushed from the stem of the mushroom, right in the eyes of Pavel.
- You beast, murderer! - the voice wheezes.- What have you done?
- I did not want! - screamed Pavel. He staggered back, rushed to the side, and his way was blocked. Some black-haired man in a dark fur sleeveless jacket - pale, bluish, with a slit throat, stands in front of him, smiling.
- Have you forgotten your mushrooms? Go get it!
And he points to Paul's forgotten basket. She is lying on her side, and mushrooms have spilled out of her. Pavel rushed - and there weren't mushrooms at all, but human ears! Pink, bloody, large and small.
- Oh, and you scored mushrooms, Pavlusha! Excellent mushrooms! No one has such! - The man opened his black mouth and laughs, pours out. And in the mouth itself, instead of a tongue, a spruce branch sticks out.
Pavel turned around and ran, not looking - where the curve would take. He galloped along the hills like a stupefied goat, somewhere he fell into a nettle, somewhere he climbed into the water up to his waist - he did not remember how he got out later on a solid place. And again - run, run!
His heart is pounding, blood beating in his temples, but Pavel does not dare to stop: everything seems - they will catch up with him, they are about to be seized. He was out of breath, and his legs were no longer holding him, but he was walking and walking. Scary!
He wandered, without remembering himself, in the woods for several hours. Until finally a harsh light from the darkness hit him in the eyes and blinded him. Then Paul stood rooted to the spot. And he heard the brakes whistle.
It turned out that, wandering around the thicket, he ran straight out onto the highway near the village. It is also fortunate that the driver in the old "Zhiguli" was not driving fast - he managed to brake. Enraged, he jumped out of the car and attacked Zimin with his fists. But, looking closely, he did not beat.
Zimin smiled at him painfully serenely, standing on the road in the headlights - dirty, drenched, and his eyes were senseless and joyful, like a baby's. The one who almost crushed him was delighted as if he were a loved one! The driver saw what a strange state the man was in, - he grumbled, spat and drove off.
And Pavel Zimin returned home - tired, frightened, with shaking hands. Alena's wife met him in tears.
- Where have you gone ?! Where had you been?!
Paul did not even know what to answer his wife to such a question. Who knows? He did not remember even half of what happened to him. He only understood one thing for the rest of his life: when he met another person in the forest - don't be rude! Moreover, out of greed.
Because this, perhaps, is not a man at all, but the spirit of the forest - Leshy.
