Читать книгу Cheerful locomotive Chu-Chukhin and his friends. Good fairy tales with fantasy elements - - Страница 4

In one difficult area that fits exactly between Poltava and Kiev, among swamps, ancient forests and abandoned military installations, wandering trains settled. Their appearance would not have aroused any particular interest in anyone if it were not for the evil old woman who lived in the Swamp of Old Locomotives and ran her business by melting rolling stock into spoons and forks.

Those places stood apart and were not listed on any map. Some attributed this to their witchcraft nature, and others saw it only in the recent stay of the military here, who, as you know, are in no hurry to put their objects on maps. But be that as it may, the military safely left these places, leaving behind all their buildings, a dozen railway crossings, several bridges over rivers and other utensils that were either forgotten or could not be used in the new place. It was in such a military facility, very similar to a hut on chicken legs, that the old woman, who was called Baba Yaga, settled, and who harbored a grudge against the traveling engines.

The engines sometimes interfered in forest or swamp affairs, but more out of ignorance or urgent necessity than for any other reasons, and this infuriated the old woman every time.

And the locals lived across the river. They lived here for a long time, at least they thought so themselves. They lived, but they clearly drew a line where they could enter without fear, and where it was better not to interfere. Therefore, if anyone wandered across the river, he returned from there with gray hair and a mass of fables, from which there were even fewer people willing to visit the forests and swamps.

The forest inhabitants only looked to outsiders as something single, monolithic, but in fact, even within this closed community, which tried not to let outsiders in, a stormy life was in full swing. Baba Yaga, after leaving the military swamps, called herself their successor, which the Walking Oaks, who had lived in these places for thousands of years and therefore considered Baba Yaga to be an alien, openly disagreed with. The forest and water inhabitants did not want change, having become accustomed to the life that had been here for centuries and therefore aggressively perceived any outside interference. The swamp spirits that settled in the local swamps lured passing locomotives with their spells of mechanical magic, and periodic damage and other witchcraft of Baba Yaga were neutralized by the manifestations of the magic of the local flora and fauna. To a large extent, the locomotives were simply lucky…

The histories that are given below just tell about the events that took place in this corner of the Poltava region, not mapped on any map, where, as you know, every second old woman is a witch, and every third cat is Bayun.