Shackles

– And we здеся! – the children’s voice cried from darkness.

The female shadow approached closer and gasped joyfully: on a zavalinka Elizar sat. Vukol and Lavrusha, giggling, were linked and not danced, not fought in darkness.

– We sit yes we wait! – Elizar told getting up. – Anybody there is no house!

– Eka! – the grandmother sighed – two women of the house! I ban, tea, heat! Children, a poklichta, run behind them! Ah you, darling!

Elizar dissolved creaking gate, entered Chalka into the yard, began to unharness a horse. The grandmother helped.

– Do not work, Elizarushka, men will approach now!.

Masha with a key came, children, behind them Ondrevn’s molodayka came running… Unlocked a log hut, entered. Molodayka lit not a splinter, but a tin seven-linear lamp, previously having cleaned glass the brush.

– The lamp was got! – Elizar was surprised.

– And how? – brisk Ondrevna laughed. – Tea, is better and better than a splinter!

– She at us got any news! – good-natured the grandmother from a closet responded.

On windows there were in pots flowers with short flights of stairs from splinters, blossomed scarlet and lilac hand bells. A floor was washed purely up, scraped out, the log hut as though became cheerful.

– That the young hostess means! – the guest joked.

– God grant! – the grandmother told, spreading a stoleshnik. – And we are also glad! The grandfather to a spervonachal grumbled, and теперя and most ndravitsya! Anything! as they say, the znayka teaches Dunno! The kind wife will preserve the house, and thin a sleeve will shake!

– The husband a cart will not bring in that the wife puts with a pot! – Elizar noticed.

– Whether for a long time to us, Elizar?

– The short-haired maid of a braid will not braid!

– How are you? – quietly Masha asked.

– Affairs – as soot is white! Anything! To our trumps all under color! Later I will tell!

Vukol told about the travel with the father by huge steamship with here such red wheels, to a black pipe from which there is a smoke and there is such whistle that you will become deaf! How they were in the city and what there, high houses: if ten log huts that are not enough to put of one on another – and!

The laurels listened and were surprised. After long separation at them was much what to report each other.

– And our Karyukh the zherebenochka brought! – he interrupted the nephew. – Pretty, all in it and is allowed to stroke!

This native log hut from a polatyama and a familiar bar, with white subfenny and a closet of Vukol behind it loved, he remembered winter evenings when the grandmother told fairy tales, the grandfather spun bast shoes, and they with Laurels traveled, as well as now, on a bar on polat. The familiar picture “As Mice of a Cat Buried” still hung on a wall, but he looked at it critically, with a smile. Too spoke of grandmother’s fairy tales haughtily as read in books, mysterious for Laurels, about the knight Don Quixote and his faithful armourbearer, about underwater travel of the captain Nemo by all seas and oceans.

“Big” sat at a table. There arrived the grandfather and Yafim, the father Vukola told something. Friends did not listen to what was told below: they above, under the ceiling, had talk.

After Yafim’s marriage the wall about polaty was pasted over with paper on which fancy patterns from the proceeding rain were formed. Yellowish spots merged in the opinion of Vukol in the imagined picture: as though astride horses Tatars, in sharp caps, in striped dressing gowns, fly at full speed with curve sabers in hands.

– You see? – he asked Monastery, showing on a wall. – This horses, and on them – Tatars with sabers.

– I see nothing! – the Laurels answered.

– And I see! yes you look longer – and you will see! There are horses, here Tatars, here sabers!

But the Laurels so saw nothing. He only partly trusted the nephew, from his assurances considered a lot of things lies. Their conversation often resembled Don Quixote’s conversation with his armourbearer.

– To lie – not to be tired, would be to listen to whom! – mistrustfully the little peasant laughed.

The voice of Elizar who told at cheerful attention of listeners too did not stop.

– Lomonosov was from simple fishermen, and reached that the tsar accepted it… There was Kulibin, the mechanic self-educated person, and that there was still Englishman Fulton… Was much such people for whom great brains worked, and more and more poverty left them…

– And at us too such is, the miller Chelyak – was heard the grandfather’s voice. – Sly fellow! The fan to build! On a leg to connect you with it!

– I know Chelyak, interpreted with him… both of us lack one: sciences! The bird to feathers, and the person the doctrine is red! But – to study never late. Also I will achieve the!

– And you remember – Vukol said – we have a picture “The Bay of Naples Has a Family of Fishermen”? I look every day – I will not see enough! The sea is drawn there, children bathe, and ashore the fisherman’s daughter is beautiful before, just as in the fairy tale…

– Nourishingly, it is visible, live! by the sea! – efficiently noticed Laurels. – Smooth! And it is good to bathe also at us, on Print! Let’s go morning! children we will collect to play an arable land!

– Better in robbers! – Vukol objected and began to tell about robbers.

They vividly went down on a bar. Ondrevna put them linen and showed the door for a door. On backs the spark shone. The bath was similar to a dugout with a small window. Undressing in a cold waiting room, continued a talk. To drive away fear, laughed. The grandfather with Yafim came to a waiting room soon.

Having returned to a log hut, also did not notice how fell asleep.

* * *

Woke up late in the morning: the sun shone, hens outside cackled. The Russian furnace burned, in a closet of the woman cooked festive foods. From the yard the grandfather entered.

– Children wake – he told – behind a grass in zaymishche I go!

At these words Monasteries jumped and began to shake the nephew for a shoulder:

– Behind a grass! behind a grass!

Wiping eyes, ran out through an outer entrance hall on a porch – to wash: the clay washstand hung there on a string in the summer, the pure towel, but not a dirty rag as was before, to Ondrevniny orders hung in the same place.

Outside there was Chalka harnessed in the cart. In the cart the braid and the axe lay.

– Well, sit down, swindlers! – good-natured the grandfather told, dissolving gate.

It jumped in the cart, and Chalka, winding the head, zatrusit to the alley to descent in a lugovina where shone постепок and the wood moved under wind. It was from a distance heard as in the Rooky Mane rooks shouted, flickered a black grid over nests in branches of sprawling oaks.

The bridge, as always, was in deep dirt. For pedestrians the thick tree was thrown through a stream. Hardly got out to the abrupt coast as immediately came to be under the green arch of the wood stretching the wide branches over their heads. Chalka ran a slow, complacent lynx, footfall of his not grounded hoofs softly was given in the wood.

Through branches silver of the Print lake flashed, boundaries of oaks white cups of lilies of the valley, juicy stolbunets, bushes of a dogrose and unknown bright red berries flashed.

– Their wolves eat – explained Laurels to the nephew – on the Spiked glade strawberry is, and in the fall – торон, blackberry… Water, a grass теперя on Spiked high, dense sold!.

About half an hour went on the soft dampish forest road. Somewhere in the depth of the wood the cuckoo cuckooed. Morning was solar, warm, given to drink by freshness of the juicy, shady thicket rustling with infinite thoughtful and tender noise.

The grandfather was silent, occasionally patting Chalka vozhzhy what Chalka answered with friendly nods.

At last, left the Spiked glade. It was the wide flat valley in the depth of which there were giants the black poplars publishing the equal, dense, triumphing rumble.

– And what behind them? – the nephew asked the uncle.

– For sokoryam – Proran… for Proran – Vzmor! Hvorostnik grows there, high yes long… at-at, Proran – he angry yes bystry, deep – a bottom is not present!.

The grandfather suspended a horse and moved down after the journey in a high juicy grass. Then got down and, having whetted a scythe whetstone, waved it. It as if effortlessly, for fun, slightly moved a braid, slightly наклонясь forward, and the grass and a nikla, and laid down ranks, bared the cut earth.

The grandfather mowed, and children armfuls dragged a grass to the cart. At last, the old man lifted a big bundle and put it in the cart. Chalka tastefully chewed a grass – juicy, damp from morning dew. Having loaded the cart, the grandfather placed children on grass top, told:

– Trample down!

They cheerfully trampled down with pleasure smelling grass and joyfully laughed. Then mudflows. From a bright green mowed grass their uncovered heads – one fair-haired, another blond, and two pairs of laughing eyes were seen. To sit now it was soft. The grandfather jumped on a cart nakleska, pulled reins, and Chalka, winding the head, with a grass bunch in teeth, willingly drove the cart back on the former road. The crude grass lay densely. It was heavy to Chalke to trot, but he, probably, tried.

The zealous country horse was not young any more, but never waited for a whip, carried шагисто, ran a dispute, and in dark nights did not go astray, having remarkable memory on roads. It was the old friend and the grandfather’s companion. Even now, when Chalki’s strengths became any more not those that before, he still in the old manner strove to trot with a heavy cart. But was tired soon and only wound the head as if wanted to tell: “Eh, old age!”

It was pleasant to come back home, lying on a soft, damp, fragrant grass. On an edge the grandfather stopped Chalka, got down, took out the axe and cut down a young curly birch, having thrust its komly under a grass “for a Trinity”.

– It is our, hrestyansky, the wood – explained Laurels to the nephew – there was a wish – cut down, nothing for it will be, and before the wood was lordly… the barin died long ago, the wood to us departed! And behind a village fence the merchant bought Dubrov near the village where the mansion remained, together with the earth…

– Here and there is not enough earth! – the grandfather interfered – swindlers! That there was the barin an earth, and now – a kuptsova!. Than you will live if you will grow up?.

Children could not answer, puzzly looked at each other. The wood rustled, green walls stood on both sides of the road, the green arch met over their heads. Again the Print lake flashed aside.

– Let’s reach to the bridge – we will get down – whispered to the friend of Monasteries – on Print we will run!

When drove on the bridge, there was misfortune: the cart got stuck in dirt; Chalka hardly held on it to the dry coast and suddenly stopped knee-deep in the dense bog. How many the grandfather urged on it, it only wound and shook the head.

– Eh, old age! – with a sigh the grandfather told and on a shaft got out to the coast. – You what you sit, swindlers? Get down!

Children got on a shaft after the grandfather. Sucked in Chalka to the bog more and more deeply.

Then the grandfather выпряг him also looked around: whether looks who? But on a holiday behind the village was nobody.

– Eh, old age! – again the grandfather repeated, took Chalka one hand for a tail, and another for a mane, planted the feet against the coast so that bast shoes it went to the soft earth, terribly began to roar on Chalka and – pulled out it on the dry place. Then looked back on the parties again, became on chalkino place in shafts, all napruzhinitsya, the back stooped, the head left between big shoulders, and the long beard almost touched the earth. Panting, the grandfather rocked here and there and took out a cart then wiped a sleeve a bald head, put Chalka and suddenly, having angrily threatened with a whip handle, severely told children:

– You motrit, swindlers, do not stir! I will bungle!

And though they knew that the grandfather never before flogged anybody but only he swore and in rare instances raised, however involuntarily were afraid: they were frightened by its force; has to be therefore it also never did not beat anybody: was afraid of the force.

– We on Sittsevo will go! – prositelno told Laurels.

The grandfather silently sat down on a cart, pulled reins and, already driving off, waved on them a hand.

Having got over through a stream on the cut-down tree, they ran a forest footpath to the lake. Both were without caps, barefoot and already on the run took off from themselves shirts it is to plunge into the water rather. Print sparkled in the sun between oak trunks. When ran up to the high green coast, on an unruffled surface of the lake, on its middle, floated, being removed, two big proud birds with silver feathers, with long necks and black noses.

– Swans! – whispered Laurels, threw a shirt on a grass and wanted was with running start to plunge into the water, but on the usual place of bathing someone floundered about and swam, lifting legs the whole column of the splashes sparkling in the sun.

– Children! – cheerfully the chest female voice cried – you want, I will get a cockleshell?

– This is Grunka! – said Laurels in low tones.

The girl disappeared under water and long there remained, only circles on water went.

Suddenly she jumped out up to a breast over water and with laughter threw it a big brilliant silvery sink.

The laurels bent to lift a gift, but Vukol as if was dumbfounded, without taking eyes from Gruni. Around the head her snake twisted the black big braid intertwined in white water colors. The dark face with eagle eyes and thin, as if drawn, eyebrows affected it: it seemed to it similar to the person, somewhere seen by it… perhaps, in a dream…

Grunya swam up to the coast where over water, on low to a tree bough, her dress hung, and rose from water already in a shirt: the shirt was in covering on a breast and on hips and only around a slender waist lay freely, Unwound the long thick plait which fell below knees, squeezed out of it water, threw a lilac dress, and the head tied with a red bandage. By sight it was years sixteen.

– Lavrusha! This is the nephew, perhaps, yours? – loudly Grunya asked, and her voice began to sound as a pipe.

– Nephew! – solidly the Laurels answered.

Grunya looked at Vukol with the unusual eyes, and it seemed to him that she watches derisively.

– What is your name?

Vukol stood pale, looking to the earth, and, as captivated, lost gift for speaking, could utter nothing.

– See you, exactly what tsarevitch!

Light step there passed Grunya by it and, passing, again burned it with a quizzical glance. It disappeared in the wood, singing the lingering song.

– Eh, what! – Vukol with surprise told – it is similar to the fisherman’s daughter!

The laurels did not understand it:

– She is not the fisherman’s daughter, it Listratov the daughter, at them rolls in money!

They plunged into the water and floated. Then, having held the breath, fell by a bottom, opened eyes there as before did, and through water as through a chintz, saw each other sitting at a sandy bottom. Therefore the transparent lake – Print was called. Came up upward, splashed and floated as frogs, but Vukol’s memory did not leave an image of the beauty; he wanted to see as soon as possible again it and to look, look endlessly.

IV

In the wood the cart with two horsemen drove. The miller Chelyak, stocky, wide, all convex as if a bucket-chelyak which pour grain drove the horse. Elizar sat next. In a back of the cart some construction from a popular print and a wire was attached.

When the cart drove in the wood, the miller stopped a horse.

– Tprr!. climb, a postrelyata! on Proran we go!

Children scrambled in the cart, and it zadrebezzhat on the familiar forest road.

After the cart the youth – guys and maids, as always to a holiday went groups. The miller knocked on a popular print and told laughing:

– Мотови́ ло-готови́ ло on a prozvanye “фир” – at it there are a lot of holes!

Children laughed, though did not understand intricate words of Chelyak.

– Flying carpet! – smiling, Elizar added and, having turned back to Chelyak, continued the interrupted conversation: – Whether it will be possible whether is not present, but there is no doubt that the science will achieve the and the person will fly as a bird…

The miller trifled a broad chestnut beard and anxiously frowned shaggy eyebrows. His old kazinetovy jacket was through impregnated with flour dust.

– Science! – derisively it pokryakhtet, jumping up on potholes – and where to take it to the man? You understand everything!. I from time immemorial – the miller: I look at gear wheels, at all mill structure, I look as the mill waves wings, but cannot depart!. and here the thought was! Twenty years I build, but I cannot reach… there is no help from anybody! My car is only the first experience, model… shortcomings at it – a plenty… there are no words, I tested it – went down from a mill – to float! and now through Proran I can…

He kept silent, groaning and leaning sinewy hands against edges of the cart. Having stooped, resembled the bird ready to fly up.

– And you what you build? – having kept silent, he asked Elizar.

– Built to a self-skating rink long ago, threw and again was accepted… I want to try again now… You are here a miller, and I from youth work at the plants… saw many models. Modeller I… Looked in books… It appears – the physics should be known: without efty knowledge you are knocked by a forehead about everything as the blind person…

– Here that and it: as a bug on a thread…

– But my main thought not in efty!. other, highest, big thought! – Elizar sighed.

– What?

Elizar shook curls, kept silent and told, having lowered a voice:

– The steam plane – here a thought!

The miller waved hands, splashed palms, nearly fell out of the cart and again caught a nakleska. Then, too having lowered a voice, whispered:

– On conscience I will tell you, and I fight! Does not leave! Hitch!. The tree feels ill at ease we cut…

– Be silent! – annoyancely Elizar interrupted. – Experiences are necessary! experiences! There will pass, maybe, one thousand years, not only the plane will be invented, and all life will change, heaven and earth will be moved… all work will be executed by the car, and the person will have only one – the highest work – a thought!. you remember, look back back what the mankind reached? Whether long ago steamships and engines went? And to efty only in the fairy tale Ivan the Fool on pike command went by an oven!. All laughed at Englishman Fulton who adapted a boiler, nobody trusted, nobody supported, with hunger the genius died!. And left on its!. And of course – instead of the flying carpet – the steam-engine will depart! Will depart! In efty there is no doubt!. And by self-skating rinks will go very much even to fast time… but will sometime open also the perpetual motion machine!

– Can be! not at us only!

– And how nobility? The science is more wonderful than any miracles!. The thought works not only for you yes at me!. to a mozha, thousands of the heads, not to us a couple, fight… and I trust: people will achieve! inevitably!

In a back of the cart wooden gear castors – one lay more, another – is less, a wooden box, and from the cart two long popular prints similar to sails with the wire fastened to them overhung. Children wanted to touch and turn gear castors, to take wire rods. Vukol stretched was a hand, but the father strictly shook finger at him and continued an unclear conversation.

The cart slid through the Spiked glade to the very tall black poplars going to the sky the tops hooting under warm wind. They a ridge stood on the very brink of high clay break, and through their branches silver of the wide river flashed. The brisk horse ran on the soft road cheerfully and quickly, wind blew sideways, blowing off her tail and a mane on the party.

The miller stopped the cart, drove under a shadow of black poplars. They were so enormous that a horse with the cart and people on it seemed toy, tops of trees as if went to clouds: on the foozle of the cut black poplar the cart could go in. Noise of widely raskinuty silvery branches merged in solemnly floating string rumble. Several enormous trees which are washed away by a high water under the roots fell down tops down and lay as prostrate giants, with naked roots, with even green branches. In the bottom of break the raging, bubbling sleeve of Volga, almost same wide, as well as it – Proran, a bend separated from Volga from which it was separated by the narrow oblong island densely overgrown with a young talnik rushed. Behind the island Proran, bending around it, again connected to radical Volga, forming as if a beach width in several kilometers.

– Vzmor! – told Laurels enthusiastically, showing on the island.

Far on the horizon the mountain coast of Volga slightly became blue and similar rose humpbacked, to a cloud, the gloomy mountain the Barge hauler. Lower mountains on the Volga Current it was hardly possible to distinguish the small town with several churches and the familiar tower reminding the sugar head.

The horse of a vypryagla was also tied to the cart put close to a tree trunk in several grasps. Thick boughs stretched over break. Deeply below Proran roared, the screw its terrible rapid turned, shaking up yellowish foam. Water had a fishing tent, and several fishermen sat with the long rods strengthened on pegs ashore. On a trick three-four boats shook.

With curiosity, having raised the heads, fishermen watched how Chelyak and Elizar pottered about about the cart, knocking hammers.

From the Spiked glade the audience – guys, maids, children approached – the crowd was formed. Chelyak angrily cried on them that departed far away.

Masters assembled the small mechanism with a gear wheel and a spring, with a wooden crossbeam in a bottom of the open basten wings reminding wings of a huge eagle.

Chelyak from the cart got on a direct and long bough, walked all on it.

Elizar lifted and stretched him the aircraft. Slowly and carefully involved the mechanism on a tree branch. Chelyak long pottered, measured something, leveled the wings raised over his head and began to get a spring.

– My God, bless! I fly!

Elizar got into the boat and across floated through Proran.

Cracked, began to patter in branches, and all saw an extraordinary show: the unusual bird soared up over Proran, rising above and above, like a kite. The beard of the miller and a leg in boots flashed. It seemed that the dragon flies and carries the person in the claws: under open wings the lump of the small human figure sitting on a crossbeam was seen.

The plane described an arch over Proran and began to decrease in Vzmor’s talnik. Decreased slowly and – as it seemed to the stood crowd – very long. From a distance resembled already the kite who caught production.

The winged being fell to tops of a dense talnik, potrepykhatsya and disappeared in him. Elizar stuck to a sandy shallow, jumped out of the boat and ran to the scene.

The crowd rustled.

– Flew? and? fathers!

– It was killed?

– Do not know!

Rushed from a steep slope to the coast. Put palms to eyes, looked. Some jumped in boats.

But here on the bank of Vzmor there was Elizar, bearing on shoulders basten wings. Behind it, limping, Chelyak hobbled.

– It is live! Sly fellow!

– And god, perhaps, will not praise for it? Took in head to fly supposedly?

When the boat moored, on hands pulled out it on the clay coast. Chelyak was pale, the sleeve of his jacket came off at all, on a cheek blood flowed. It wiped it a red scarf.

Elizar stood ahead of all. His beard shivered, in eyes there were tears. He wanted to tell something and could not. On sand fragments of wings lay.

The crowd started talking at once:

– See, darling, saw death!

– Death to be afraid – not to live on light!

– Without courage there is no home brew also!

– It, so put: or a breast in crosses, or the head in bushes! Was able, means! without ability and a bast shoe you will not weave!