Читать книгу The Fox Skin - Ира Шилова - Страница 2

Lelya's family did not clean the hut. The family did not heat the stove. The family did not keep a broom, a vat, or an oven fork in the household. However, the family's dwelling was always neat and warm, and dishes from the womb of the forest appeared on the table every sunset, as if invisible servants carried the dust, laid beds, fed the hidden fire, and slaughtered wild boars and grouse.

Lelya's family never went to see people. Yet, once in awhile, when people came to see them, Lelya saw disorder in those visits: no one had invited the human guests to the hut, the humans' gifts were rejected, and only the mother spoke calmly to those who came, as if they were not the visitors but the danger.

And the most curious thing in life for Lelya was the Night Talk. While the stars wandered through eternity, the family hurriedly whispered with the nature: the mother with trees, the brothers with winds, the sisters with owls, and Lelya with a fox. And it seemed to the girl to be strange and sensible at the same time. Just as the rich gilding on the leaves after the summer looked natural, so the family's way of life seemed common to Lelya. But the girl's soul, different from the souls of her relatives, was worried and expected a payback for idle life. After lavish autumn harvests a punishing winter invariably followed.