Читать книгу Trilogy of Dhana and the Earth. Book two. War with reptilians - Andrey Prudkovskii - Страница 4

“Take care of Terra!”

“I do not want to leave you!”

“Terra must grow free! You will be safe in my mother’s forest if you do not decide to look for me mentally.”

“Darling, but how did it happen, why did you open, after all, everything was so wonderful.”

“Well, I could not stand my joy when my daughter was born … I am guilty! Now I can’t avoid the saucers. And you go! They shouldn’t find you! Goodbye, I feel they are close! Take care of Terra!”

“Goodbye, beloved!”

Three years passed

“Valentina Sergeevna, I cannot live here anymore, I’m leaving to look for Masha. I want Terra to live with you!”

“My girl, how can it be … And are you not afraid of saucers?”

“They won’t do anything to us! But we will be together.”

“But what about Terra?”

“I want her grow free. When she becomes an adult let her decide her own destiny. Maybe one day we will meet again. I hope, she will forgive us!”

Terra

I said goodbye to my mom as I was three. In the heart of a thick forest, in which my grandma forbade me go, we remained with her in a tiny hut. We have a garden where my grandma and I are planting various greens. In the autumn we gather the harvest. Then the lengthy days of winter are coming. My grandma is nice. In the evenings, she tells me fairy tales. The extraterrestrial generator rumbles silently, heating our cabin. The cat Murka got settled on the generator. My grandma and I are sailing to far-off worlds, the ancient worlds of fairy kingdoms of the Ancient Earth. It’s all in a different way now. The land belongs to the saucers. They fly on their own saucers and take anyone who thinks out loud. So they took dad and mom. Both my grandmother and I also know how to think out loud, but we never do this, so because of that we are not taken away.

And then spring came again. I’m already big, I’m four and I can walk along the edge of the forest. How good it is here! The forest is whistling, singing, rustling. I sit down on a log and listen, listen, listen … I sit still … Then the hedgehog jumped out of a bush and quickly-quickly went about his business. And a butterfly sat on my hand and began to clean its antennae with a paw…

Hot days have come and my grandma has removed my dress and my shoes and instructed me, because it is helpful, to run naked and sunbathe! I went around the edge of the woods from that day on, grass pricked at first, but I became accustomed to that. And I saw a girl, very little and also naked, once in the forest thicket. When I stared at her, she stood and checked me closely. We looked at each other and didn’t move for a long time, and then I decided to approach the girl.

“Who are you?” I asked. But the girl did not answer. I ran into the forest and back, and the girl ran with me. We had a lot of fun.

“Bless me,” I shouted in admiration. “And now back.”

“Terra, where are you?” – called my grandmother.

“I’m here, playing with a girl!”

“What girl?”

“Girl, what’s your name?”

“Bess” my friend answered quietly.

“Her name is Bess,” I cried to my grandmother.

“Take her here.”

“Let’s go,” I called my friend, and we, holding hands went to grandmother.

Grandmother was very surprised to see a naked baby who came to us from the forest.

“Poor little soul, you must be hungry?” grandmother bustled about, offering the girl a pie. But the girl did not take the pie, and first of all she rushed to the bucket of water, put her whole head in it – and drank, drank, drank… Grandmother even worried that the baby would drown herself in it.

“I am not surprised,” said grandmother, “there are neither rivers nor lakes near us. And if we did not have a pump that draws water out of the ground, we wouldn’t have anything to drink either. Where did you come from? And how far have you gone from your family! She must be lost! There is nothing to do with that, you will have to live with us! What’s your name?”

“Bess” she said.

“I see, so you will live with us, Bess.”

The little girl just blinked.

“Poor thing, you even haven’t learnt how to speak yet. What happened to your parents? Oh, I understand, of course, they were taken by platers! They probably wanted to hide here, in my forest, but could not escape from the villains? They hid you in the bushes…”

The little girl blinked again.

So Bess lived with us. During the first year she said nothing except her name. Bess ate little, but drank a lot. And she often ran away from home at night, and stared towards the forest, where she lost her parents. She didn’t learn to speak until the second year, but she couldn’t tell us much. No matter how much we asked her about her parents, she didn’t remember anything.

“The girl experienced shock,” my grandmother said to me the unfamiliar word. “Do not ask her anymore. One day, if she wants, she will remember! The main thing is that she is alive and healthy, everything else does not matter.”

Bess

I’m Bess, the girl from the forest. They ask me what I remember, and but I do not remember a lot. The worst thing is thirst! I want to drink stronger and stronger… Then darkness. These nightmares often torment me. I also remember the first time I saw Terra, and then I realized that I was a girl like her, and that she was my future sister… the first time we ran together. “Bless me!” The little sister shouted, and I repeated to her: “Bess”. I could not speak the letter “L” then. After that I drank water in their house! From that time thirst became a thing of the past. It’s such a pleasure to dip your head in a bucket and drink, drink in big gulps! And then run out into the yard without clothes with arms outstretched, and stare at the yellow sun…

“You’re running naked again! I will teach you!” screams grandma. “You’ll catch a cold, hot days are gone! Autumn is coming!”

Grandmother teaches me that somewhere far away live people, and one cannot run naked among them.

“It’s indecent! When you go to the people, remember that!”

I do not care of other people; my grandma and my little sister Terra are enough for me. And we both love the stories that grandma tells us in the evenings. I imagine Terra and I are princesses who one day will fell in love with handsome princes. And we live in palaces, and the grandmother will come to visit us in turn, one day to me and the other to Terra. Yes, but when will we play together? I should think it over, because something is wrong … And what about princes, what games do they like to play? In fairy tales they all have some battles, some dragons. Their games are so boring. The dragons … they had better not fight the dragons, but tame them! Yes, grandma, grandma! I understand! Terra and I will tame dragons! And then fly them far, far away! To see everything! We will take you with us if you want. And see from above our father and mother! And take them away on dragons, and bring them to you!

“Oh, my dear” cried the grandmother. “What an imaginative girl you are! Look, daughters, do not think loudly, because platers will take you away!”

“What are they like, grandmother? Are they scary? Do they eat people?!”

“No, kids, they don’t,” grandma says. “They breed people like we breed tomatoes.”

I can just imagine my father and mother growing up in the beds, far away, at platers’ place … and how bored they are to sit in the beds, and do not be allowed to go anywhere when they are bred … Our poor fathers and mothers. “When we grow up, we will definitely save them!” I say. “And we will plant that harmful plates on the beds and let them breed themselves.”

Grandma laughs through her tears:

“Oh, my child! Indeed, let them breed themselves!”

In such a way passed my happy childhood. The most joyful days were the days when we all went together to gather mushrooms in the forest. Grandmother was afraid of getting lost, especially when the sun was hiding behind the clouds. Terra was afraid too, but I was not, as I always knew the direction to the house. And I discovered that grandma, and Terra does not see well at night… But during the day they could distinguish more colors than I do. I always confused blue and green, red and orange.

Here is the other memory. Terra and I are twelve years; we stand near a large mirror in my grandmother’s room and analyze the changes of our bodies.

“Oh, shameless girls!” grandma comes in. “What are you doing here?”

“Grandma, don’t you think that Terra and I look alike?”

“Yes, it is true, you are like twins,” grandma says, “but Terra is white, and you, Bess, are brown.”

Years passed and now we are sixteen… Two days ago died our cat Murka. And then our grandma became ill…

One day she called us to her and said “It’s time for you girls to go out and look for your own destiny.”

“What about you, grandmother?”

“My life seems to be over.” I will die soon. Bury me and leave. I contacted mentally with your parents, granddaughter, they are alive, healthy and miss you very much, they had your little brother, but platers took him away. They don’t advise you to be caught by platers. Platers will not arrive for me, because they realized that I am going to die.

These are the last days in the house of our childhood. Behind the house appeared a mound with a cross on it, as our beloved grandmother wanted. Tomorrow we are ready to go! But where?!

The path near the house runs from North to South. But which way should we go? Out of habit, I go to my favorite place on the edge of the forest; bare feet are especially sensitive to our native land. I raise my hands to the sun.

“The sun, show us the way!”

Its light pours from above, penetrating me through and through, and it seems that something is happening…

Then I realize that we have to go the West. We never went with grandmother in that direction, as there was marshy lowland, overgrown with impassable bushes.

Terra is silent and does not object, she is all in her grief. So I will decide! I wipe the solar dish on the roof for the last time and do not switch off the generator. Let those who come here find a warm hut. I do not take a lot of food, because Terra and I are able to eat everything that grows in the forest. They say that in ancient times people did not know how to do that, and because of that there was starvation. I hope that we will find water at the bottom of lowlands, so I just take a small water-bottle. And, of course, a long rope, it can always come in handy!

For four days we make our way through the bushes on marshy lowland, but ahead, on the high hills, long pines invitingly stand. They are very close, but ahead is the river, though not wide but violent. Terra and I can’t swim! We go along the low bank, sinking to the waist in the mud. Here is bending, water with force is striking in the opposite high bank.

One end of the rope I tie to a bush, the other around Terra, and push her into the water. With a squeal she disappears under the water, but a minute later the stream carries her straight to the opposite shore. There she ties one end of the rope to a tree, and I tie myself to my end and throw myself into the water. I cannot get to the shore as Terra did. I am brought to the surface and carried at the center of the stream. The rope tightens, and Terra begins to pull me toward the shore. So we crossed the river, and at the same time washed from the mud.

We continue our way. There’s a path ahead in the right direction. After a few steps we see the light and hear someone’s voices. There are creatures unknown to us, men-princes our grandmother told us about. Or maybe they are not princes? They sit by the fire. The fire was new to us, too, because my grandmother never put it. The men look at us, both in dirty gray robes and pants, the older one with a mustache and beard, the other a young boy.

“Chicks came to us,” says the older one, “take off your dresses and let’s have some fun.”

I obediently take off my dress, but Terra won’t. A bearded man comes toward me with a knife in his right hand. Good knife, I would like to take it with me!

“Well done, chick” he says to me, putting his hand between my breasts. He puts the knife to my stomach. The second guy tries to knock Terra to the ground and tear off her dress. Terra fights back…

“No, they are not princes!” I compress the fingers of my boyfriend with my breasts, at first he smiles, then, when his fingers begin to crackle and break down, screams… and suddenly sticks his knife in my stomach. That’s what I need, my stomach muscles pinch the blade so he can’t take it out again. The knife is mine!

“They’re not people!” he yells, tearing and ripping out his skin, trying to take his hand away of my breasts.

“Pasha run away!” and he disappears around the bend of the path.

I pull the knife out of my stomach, outstretched my arm and poke it into Pasha’s hip, which was sprawled on my sister.

Pasha looks at my outstretched hand with horror and rushes away with a scream.

“That is all” I say to Terra “get up”. At the same time I put on a dress. In comparison to Terra’s dress mine is not even crumpled. My sister gets up and rushes to me crying.

“Bess, are men really so disgusting?! They are not like that in fairy tales.”

“Oh, Koschey the Immortal is also ugly enough… Let’s put the fire out! The grandmother said that the fires are dangerous, but I’m afraid to come closer to it. Do it, Terra!”

Meat is fried at the stake on metal sticks, the smell is disgusting! But Terra really adores it. Taking a metal bowl from the ground, she throws fire with the ground takes meat sticks with her and starts eating!

“Do you want to taste it, Bess? It is so delicious!”

I flinch in disgust,

“No, eat it yourself! And let’s leave the path; otherwise these fake princes will bring here their friends …”

And again we are walking through our native endless forest. Terra is chewing meat, and I am viewing my trophy – a brilliant knife, blade is two my palms long, the handle is comfortable, leather, with a support for the fingers. The wonderful knife. Gap from it in my stomach is already tightened, only a drop of transparent tar is on the surface…

Terra

I follow my little sister and remember our past life. The adventure with those men woke me up. Everything became special. And especially Bess, such a familiar, my sister. We are so alike and different at the same time, for example, I could get scratched in the forest, could prick my led, but she…

It had never happened to her. Once a month my grandmother cut my hair to keep it out of the bushes, but she never cut Bess’s hair, because it was already short and slightly curly. “It’s probably from your African ancestors, like your dark skin” my grandmother used to say. And when I got sick once a month, Bess didn’t, but my grandmother was sorry for her and not for me. Bess had never been afraid of anything neither of the forest, nor of the rushing river. The only thing she was afraid of was fire and nothing else, even those nasty men… And now she is walking and mentally greeting trees, and those even respond. “Wait! How do they do that? Can I hear them?! So I can talk to trees! Can I also talk to Bess that way? And no platers can hear me because they will take my thoughts for those of a tree?!”

“Bess, do you hear me?! Bess, we can talk to each other mentally without fear, but not as people talk, but as trees do! And no platers will catch us. They’ll think we’re trees!”

“Indeed! How could I not have guessed?” rejoiced she. “Now we can always talk, even at a distance, and never lose each other!”