Читать книгу Trilogy of Dhana and the Earth. Book three. Invisible enemy - Andrey Prudkovskii - Страница 7

I was very unlucky in childhood. My father beat me very often and so painfully. I remember some situations especially clear. Here I am sitting on my father’s desk and making the little planes from the papers that lie there. Dad comes in and pulls up my pants. I’m already used to it: no matter what I do, it all ends up the same way. Here I’m on the floor making a small lake of stationery glue and a beautiful ink island on it. Dad comes into a room and without looking at my lake squishes it. Then everything is as usual.

If I had time, I was hiding in my mom’s skirts. She was kind and didn’t let my father beat me. Sometimes she took offense at me too. One summer I caught a beautiful grasshopper bigger than my palm. I couldn’t help but bring home such beauty to show my beloved mother. Unfortunately, mom went to bed after lunch, and I let the grasshopper to play on the window net. I went to the kitchen to see what was edible there. Before I had time to eat half of the sausage, I heard my mother scream. It turns out that the grasshopper sat on her nose and woke her up. Was it worth shouting? Besides, she really crushed the grasshopper… I let him go, would he survive? And my mother didn’t talk to me that day. I guess she was offended. I wonder if she was offended by me or by the grasshopper.

When Mom got tired to keep an eye at what I did in the house, she kicked me outside. There I had a dog called Bulka, with whom we used to run through the streets of the city. Most of all, we were attracted by abandoned wastelands and ravines “on the backside” of houses and streets. The ravines were full of weeds above my height, there were big green grasshoppers loudly chirping in the evenings, and Bulka found a large pile of garbage nearby. He liked to dig in it, and I watched with interest what he dug up. He liked the bones, and I liked the green glasses… A little further, on the first floor of one of the houses, lived an amusing girl who said all the words in the wrong way. It was so funny! Sometimes I remembered what she said and I, singing it in different ways, was running down the street and making friends laugh.

One day, my parents kicked me out again:

″At least, give us a day or two of rest,” my beloved mother told me.

So, I saw real horses and carts at the girl’s house. The girl’s grandmother, who she called Bella, was packing their things, and the girl was already sitting in a cart. I made up my mind, came up and asked:

″Where are you going?″

The girl turned her back and didn’t answer, but her grandmother said in a gentle voice that they were going to visit her great-great-grandmother.

″I don’t have a grandmother,’ I said sadly, ‘and all my parents want to do is take a break from me. Can I go with you?″

″Ask your mother: if she allows it, you can.″

I ran quickly to my house and called my mother. It turned out that she and father were just discussing where to send me while they were doing some re-registration. This was the most important event that changed my whole subsequent life.

The cart first drove through the streets of the city, then turned towards the forest and drove for a long time along the edge of it and the field, then turned into a thick forest. All the way the girl turned away from me diligently, and her grandmother handled the horses. At some point she said:

″Then the horses know the way, I’ll take a nap, and you can hold the reins. Just don’t stretch them too hard! ″

The last part of the way I drove the cart, although I did not understand why horses sometimes turned from one forest road to another at the intersections.

That’s how my new life began. There were no kids in the village we came to. I had to play with a little girl who deformed all the words so ridiculously. Soon I found out that her name was Mila. I went with her to the scary dense forest for mushrooms and berries and was always afraid to get lost, but Mila always knew the right way home. I was also afraid of wild animals, and Mila wasn’t afraid at all, even when we really saw a huge bear on the other side of the meadow. After that, I began to treat Mila quite differently. One evening I even caught a big green grasshopper for Mila.

″What a beauty,” she said when I put it in her palm. Then the grasshopper flew into the bush, and we were listening for a long time for his chirping with other grasshoppers.

Yes, I didn’t write of how adults tried to get us out of this village, and how they failed to do this. Instead of taking me back to the city, my parents came to live with us in the village. Mila and her grandmother had a big four-room house, so they offered us two extra rooms. My dad set up a real school on the huge porch. Then relatives came to the neighbors, their children came with them and stayed in our village. Somehow it happened that I went everywhere with Mila, and then other children of our age joined us. Mila didn’t pay much attention to me, she probably remembered me teasing her in the city, but I wasn’t offended by her. She was always interesting anyway. And after she taught all of us how to listen to each other’s thoughts, things became even more interesting. Now we all had no secrets from each other. Everybody already knew that Zinka loved Fedka, and Fedka, surprised to hear about it, seemed to agree. But nobody could read Mila’s thoughts. And I’d like to know how she treated me!

Then Mila taught everyone how to connect mentally, and Zinka got into the computer network. A month later, a flying saucer flew from the city with the commission, which was very eager to meet Zinka. Mila invited us all to her house and asked Zina not to tell the commission about her. That’s where I got stuck:

″Don’t talk about me either! ″ I decided that I would always do the same as Mila. The edited Mila’s story looked like this:

″We were taught telepathy by the postman Petr Andreevich. One day the six of us were sitting next to each other on the porch, holding hands, and Zinka wanted to get into the network and look at her site, and she suddenly did it″.

This story was remembered by all our friends, who were questioned by the commission.

Then Zinka came running to us:

″Mila,’ she said really fast, ‘we are all invited to learn telepathy somewhere, and we will have free access to any sites there… Can we go with this commission?″

″Well, if you all really want it, you can do it,’ Mila replied, ‘go! ″

″And then, when you come to the city, will you find us?″ Zina added in apologizing tone.

″Of course I will! ″ Mila answered. ″We just need to put a mark on all of you.″

″Which mark? ″ Zinka was afraid. ″Does it hurt?″

″It doesn’t hurt,” Mila replied, ″ everybody is invited to the farewell dinner.″

The dinner was sad: we were letting our friends to the big world and we didn’t know if we could meet them again. When everyone left, I asked Mila:

″And what about the mark you wanted to put on us? ″

″Everything’s fine with the mark,’ she replied, ‘Terra put on the marks, and now I’ll always find my friends.

But Mila didn’t tell me who Terra was.

Everyone’s gone; it was just the two of us with Mila. Mila was sad without friends, and I was even glad she was spending all her free time with me. I went skiing with her to the forest to listen to those, who couldn’t be heard in the village. I didn’t hear anything, but Mila said she could. One day she even grabbed my hand:

″Look! Look!″

A branch of bushes on my left swung, and something big and furry flashed and disappeared.

″It’s not a bear!″ Mila said. ″The bears are all sleeping! ″

Then it was summer. Mila and I went into the forest together. Mila said that we don’t have to take our food with us because long ago all the people on our planet were instilled a culture of alien bacteria, which allows us to eat any kind of greenery growing in the forest. Mila said we need to find dryads in the woods. That she knows where to go, but she doesn’t know how to convince the dryads to make friends with us yet. It was just amazing! Mila was walking ahead, and I was looking and looking… I was looking at her little legs, skillfully jumping from the root to root, at back and head with a long braid hidden under the headscarf… So, imperceptibly, it slipped under the feet, and we were already jumping from bump to bump.

″No, that won’t do,’ finally my companion said, ‘we’ll have to fly.″

″How can we fly? ″ I was surprised.

″That’s it,’ my friend replied, ‘imagine that you can do it! Let’s go!

Mila slowly went up in the air. I had no choice but to try to do the same. To my surprise, I followed Mila.

″And here are our friends,” Mila pointed to the clear sky above our heads, sparkling with the sun’s rays.

″Probably, she is overheated,’ I thought, and here, among the sparkling air currents, I saw little laughing men, ‘Unfortunately, I am overheated too.″

We sat down on a high hill under the big tall pines. My head kept fizzing and I clearly felt bad.

″It’s just because you are not used to that,’ Mila reassured me, ‘have a rest, everything will be fine.″

I put my head on her lap and really fell asleep. I dreamt I was lying on Mila’s lap, and little funny people were playing and singing around us. And then I dreamt that a walking bush came out of the forest, came up to us and extended a hand-branch to Mila. I wanted to reach out to him too, but I couldn’t do it.

″He’s very tired and sleeping,” Mila said ″ let him have a rest; he’s already got impressions more than enough″. I really fell asleep, so I haven’t seen anything else. I woke up from a gentle swing. A big strong man was carrying me like a little child.

″Say hello,’ said Mila, ‘this is Kubess the Seventh. And behind him is his girlfriend, Besska the Fifth. Get used to them, they’re not people, they’re dryads, but nobody should know about it besides you and me. We will just call them Kubess and Besska. Let’s say we met them in the forest, and they helped us to cross the swamp. From now on they will also live with us in our village.

How Mila persuaded her grandmother, I don’t know, but Kubess and Besska really stayed to live in their half of the house. However, most of the day and night, as Mila told me, they spent in the garden near the house. My parents were even happy to have garden assistants. This summer made us happy with an unprecedented harvest.