Читать книгу Mission 777 Possible - Марина Спроуз - Страница 11

“Go to the reeds, to the swamps, where people don’t go, where God’s word doesn’t reach; there you will have visions, nourishment, forever and ever amen,” rasped the old woman’s voice over Marianna’s head. Then the old woman read prayers, and Marianna smelled the wax nearby: the old woman poured wax into a bowl of water.

Then holding the wax in her hand, she said, "– Look, look what’s here…”

Marianna had been going to the old woman for the tenth time already.

“You should come for the young moon,” the toothless old woman said. Little Marianna didn’t know that “young moon” meant the new moon.

But she had to come, her grandmother said she had to go to stop wetting the bed, to keep bed sheets from hanging and drying in the garden; she had to come for twenty readings.

They said there was fear, but what caused it wasn’t clear: maybe she was just scared of the dog, or maybe of the old lady, a neighbor. Granny, the neighbor, stepped outside wearing her terrible rags, she stood by the gate and watched. Marianna went along the road with her little feet, and she said in fear, “Grandma Aga.”

She heard and saw the frightened look of Marianna. Now the wet sheets…

The witch, the neighbor, came close to Marianna and whispered into her face, “Not enough? Not enough?”

Marianna didn’t understand what she meant by “not enough” back then. One day, she left her gate and found a crow that had been killed, its blood visible and horrifying…

She didn’t think about the witch, the neighbor, just the crow. At night, the granny stepped out, holding a book in her hands and whispered strange words as she walked around the garden fence. Granny Klavdiya constantly made finds: sometimes a buried piece of bread in her garden, sometimes a pot of feces thrown over the fence by someone.

One dream often haunted Marianna: she runs away, and a witch in rags chases her. In her dream, Marianna is in fear as she tries to run quickly from the gate to the porch; the monster chases her. The witch is about to grab her by her clothes.

The dream was repeated again and again.

Everything passes… time heals, and Marianna was healed of wet sheets.