But the herbalist's son never showed up.
I sat in vain on the cold shop until the night, hoping to look at the door and bouncing from the rustle. I even missed the evening meal. When the glimmering light that filtered through the holes in the roof became completely ghostly, I humbled myself and stepped out onto the steps.
The dark sprucewood seemed to be an ink stain with barbed branches protruding, monolithic, and impassable. The blurred light of the month clung to its needles and dissolved powerlessly before reaching the ground. A crow circled silently over the remnants of the ruined fence, suspiciously shining at me. A couple of his brethren sat on stone pillars, bowing their heads with hunchbacked black beaks in my direction. I leaned down on the cracked, pruned steps of the chapel and pulled the hood of my cloak over my head.
A small hunched, lifeless silhouette.
It became so unspeakably dreary that I wanted to wail. I thought that even though I was finished with the cold here, no one would rush to find me and save me. The feeling of my own needlessness became so desperate that I covered my face with my hands, holding back my shameful cheekbones. It seems that long ago I got used to my orphanhood and put up with it, but wow ... rolled bitterly, leaving in his mouth nasty, nauseating taste, caught resentment in the temples.
The worst part is, there's not even a memory. Ksenia has at least this left, a warm living memory of the dead parents and grandmother, moments that can warm up in such cold nights ...
What about me? Just Riverstein. Before him, it's empty. There's no room for strength, no room for joy, no room for comfort.
Bitterness became unbearable, my heart burned with unweeping tears. And then came the anger. Anger at the unknown parents who had left me refused. Who were these people? What made a little five year old girl so rotten that she was left by the Riverstein stone fence and left without looking back?
Anger at the fate that made me a novice at the Order's Shelter, and thus powerless and dumb. I had nothing to hope for, after dedicating only years of tedious, painful work for the Order's benefit, without family, without children, without my personal, separate life! Out of consolation - only books, and those so expensive that the poor enlightener is unlikely to be able to afford them!
Traditionally, the enlighteners of the Order were orphans, who had nowhere to go, voluntarily such a fate was chosen by few people.
Though, what I am worried about! Even such an unenviable fate does not shine on me! Even if not today, so tomorrow the Call will return, and I will not have the strength to resist it.
And the missing children will die, and not waiting for help, will fall victim of an unknown and terrible killer, because I have no idea how to help them and where to look!
I was bored after all. I took my face off my palms, threw my head back, and I was bored. The raven on the fence tilted his beak, looking closely at me.
- Get out," I whispered. The black bird kept looking at me, turning its elongated head slightly, as if listening. I was angry.
- Get out of here! - I shouted fiercely.
An ice gust of wind with a white loop like a whip, dared the bird from the fence and hit the ground with its wing. The white crumb of the blizzard suddenly swirled around the chapel, the wind howled, the icy blizzards twirled and the snow fell from the sky with a deaf mauvais.
It was at that time when I opened my mouth to look at the sudden weather, and then I waxed to Riverstein, which shone weakly in the darkness. And his dubious warmth did not seem tempting to me at all.
* * *
The first time I escaped into the woods was one moon after my arrival in Riverstein. A huge building, with curved, roaring corridors and narrow windows of loopholes, scared me, settling anxious lighthouses and animal fear in my heart. The stone walls strangled me, kept me awake, closed my arms. They seemed to me to be a stone bag in which silly, trapped people were muttering...
The slippery twisted stairs made me dizzy and I whimpered in fear every time I went down them. I even tried to squeeze them, but going down the frayed stone steps without seeing them was even scarier. Even standing there, it seemed like you were flying into an abyss.
The long and narrow corridor seemed to me to be the gut of a scary bird that ate me and tried to digest me.
Riverstein scared me, causing me to hurry, but I was even more afraid of the people who inhabited it. I don't know why, but the black caps of the mentors, the brown hoodies of the disciples, Aristarchus' miraculous cadilo, the incomprehensible mournful sounds of prayer, and most importantly, the faces, sharp, thin, frightened or evil, caused me a nauseating wave of panic from which I did not know where to run.
Of course, I wasn't the first girl to get to Riverstein. The girls who were brought here were all orphaned, and who were less, who were more wild and frightened at first. But even against their background, I seemed to be a talked, mad, beast clogged in corners and cracks and eyes from there, wailing with fear. Of course, I was shunned. Even the girls were afraid to get in touch with the new girl, who did not communicate with anyone but Ksenia, only glimpsed with her strange eyes from under the unbrushed white cosmetics. My appearance was too unusual to look at, and my behavior too strange to at least cause sympathy.
At first, raising me with the usual methods of mentors were afraid, not knowing who I am and worried about whether a loving relative or parent will show up after me. And that's why they didn't touch me much, gave me food, allocated a laggard in the common bedroom.
At night I cried, called someone, but in the morning I couldn't remember my nightmares, and the girls looked at me obliquely and complained to the mentors. But then Xenia broke the nose of the most active vermin, and they began to tolerate my silent nightly wailing.
But when the moon in the sky was full and rounded, everyone knew that no one would come for me. And for my first "savagery", and name-non-understanding why you need to put your fingers under a whip rod, if you can hide them behind your back and get into a corner where they can not get, sent to the basement for reeducation.
If in Riverstein I felt like I was trapped, what a horror it was to be in a damp pit without windows, but only a cold, trampled earth floor, wet walls, and the smell of rats that had caught on to the cellar.
And the rats themselves did not fail to curiosity, sticking their hoarse noses with clumsy moustaches out of their narrow lashes, drove long muzzles, examining the "guest". Or lunch?
When the mentors decided that that was enough for the first time, and the heavy, slightly rusty iron, but still strong oak door opened, I flew out into the gap formed by a rat, and as the beast bit Harpie's hand trying to hold me to blood.
I can't even remember walking down the stairs, jumping out into the corridor and the door, waking up against the stone wall of the fence. But she couldn't hold me either. I could smell the breach before I saw it, crawled into the hole, and that I had piss between the trees. The mossy cold boulders and fir trees were nicer to me than the high walls of Riverstein, which a bird of prey had watched me flee and seemed now to shake, swing its black wings, and throw itself at the fugitive.
But, of course, Riverstein stood still, and I crawled a ferret under the thorny branches that bent down to the ground, buried myself in a crumbling yellow needle, and calmed down. Through thin needles lazy autumn light oozed out, calming me down, pine trees whispered softly, bowed their heads, smelled of tar and let me go. As if the rock-boulder that had pressed my chest was getting smaller, thinner, poured with sand...
I fell asleep.
And I didn't wake up from my own screaming, but from squirrel's crying over my ear. The squirrel, which had not yet changed its outfit to a redhead, and pieces of grey, which made it look like some kind of bird, did a good job digging through the pine or checking its stocks or hiding new ones. She mowed at me with fear, but without much fear, apparently not taking a pitiful bunch curled up in a forest tent for something that was dangerous.
For a while I was still watching her concentrated muzzle and a
gile legs, then reached out to stretch, kneading a chilly and swollen body. And I climbed out from under a hospitable fir tree.
Chapter 6.
Of course, I went back to Riverstein. I wanted to stay in the woods, but I couldn't live in them. The mentors were very surprised to see me. The men were bunched down, looking at my dirty knees and palms, my clothes, and the hair in which the pine needles were entangled. Everyone was sure that the stupid girl had been eaten by wolves in the woods and had not even tried to look for me, reasoning that it was the Blessed Mother's will. When asked where I was, I shrugged my shoulders, my forgetfulness became commonplace. I was not too happy, but they did not dare to expel me intentionally. They left me in the shelter until the messenger arrived, hoping that he would decide what to do with the foundling. But the winter came unexpectedly fast, the roads on the border were covered with snow, and the messenger had arrived only in spring...
And then he waved indifferently, saying, "I need a girl to bring up..." And the Mother Superior shrugged her shoulders, she lives - not to throw away...
I got used to it once during the winter, and the people of Riverstein got used to me. They didn't love me, they just put up with my presence, like a man with a pesky autumn bread or a woman with the first hurtful gray. I don't seem to want to, and scary, but where are you going to go? It's Blessed Mother's will...
* * *
Riverstein dwellers were afraid of the forest, shying away, hiding behind stone walls. To me, on the contrary, its walls seemed to be a trap, and only behind the fence did I feel comfortable. And strange as it may seem, I was safe. I listened to the voices of the wild beasts, which terrified the children and made the mentors renew their heads with a protective half sun, and I liked them much more than Aristarchus' dull songs. However, I was clever enough to keep silent about it, or the basement would have been more than that. For such confessions you can please the keepers as well as the fire...
I listened to the forest in silence. And I still ran into it in moments of despair.
Even Xenya didn't understand me. She did not feel any horror in front of the spruce tree and its inhabitants, but her strong village reasoning told her friend that it is not worth to walk there, especially in spring, when the area is full of hungry after the winter animals.
And I could not explain to her why I was drawn there and why I was not afraid. I didn't know that myself. It was just that the dark sprucewood gave me a sense of security that the high walls of Riverstein couldn't.
And the forest was kicking on the building from all sides, overhanging its spiny, powerful branches over the masonry fence, branching out its knotty roots, crawling out of the ground in the courtyard, scattering light seed wings, and germinating in the spring with thin baby pines. It was as if he was taking in a ring a pestilent building, as it seemed to everyone - threatening, but I thought - protecting ...
* * *
I was not afraid of the forest dwellers, and they were afraid of me.
Once I met a Wolverine on a forest path.
It was early autumn and I took off again, got out through a hole in a stone wall, threw my shoes there and walked barefoot on a slightly damp pine needles and strapped grass. My bare feet were walking inaudible, carefully, choosing the path myself, bypassing the small holes filled with moisture. And the rugged bumps of the foot only rejoiced. I used to touch the sticky trunks of pine trees with my hands, hugging them, trying not to think how my mentors would scold me for a dress soiled with resin.
Cloudberry and blueberries were growing lushly in a forest clearing behind a shallow muddy lake, and I hugged the trees and went there, hoping to find the berries that had already slept.
Low blueberry bushes, green on top and covered with tight berries from below, under the leaves, densely covered with mossy edges. somewhere my feet fell into the moisture, but I did not pay attention, only supported the hem, so as not to get dirty. I'd eaten and dirty the whole hem with a juicy berry, pretending to put them together somewhere to please Xenia. And I realized that the frozen silhouette is not another mossy stone, but a large frozen beast with a long dark face, short pressed ears and brown body on powerful legs with long black claws.
I held my breath, the black berry spilled sour in my mouth.
The beast froze as it looked at me and led me with a wary nose. And it fell awkwardly to my side. A crossbow shaft with a black tip was sticking out from under Wolverine's blade. The husky breath of the beast flew to me, black eyes looked... begging?
I did not understand, whence in me this strange feeling of regret and incorrectness, sadness on mortally wounded animal and desire to approach to it...
For what?
As a child's mind, I knew not to approach the wounded beast, and yet I persistently thought that he calls me, asks for something - but for what?
I was afraid to take a step towards the beast. A strange confidence in the correctness of my actions and the conviction that the Wolverine would not harm me strengthened in me. The long bent claws of the beast scraped the ground, its jaws were sore with pain, blood poured black tremors into its skin. But I was not afraid...
The black beads of animal eyes followed me incessantly, and I stopped two steps away, hesitant. What could I do, how could I help?
I still decided, came close, kneeled in the wet moss, and ran my hand over the blood-wet skin. The arrow got stuck deep inside and sat tight, not pulled out. I looked at my blood-stained and dirty hands, then laid my hand on the beast's head. And without hesitation, I wished for his torment to end. The husky breath gratefully broke under my hand.
I do not know, how many I sat so, going through brown fur, only the dress became damp from moss stuffed with moisture. I wiped my tears, got up, and slowly walked into the depths of the forest, forgetting the blueberry leaf.
I was seven years old.
* * *
As time went by, I got used to living in Riverstein, put up with its tall, blank walls, and even fell in love with them. Still, I had my own dark beauty in the old building, and then it was the only house I had.
Over the years, I learned to coexist in the world in which I lived, comforted myself with books and the little joys of the shelter residents.
And I almost stopped running away to the woods.
Only in my soul there was an incomprehensible longing for the space and a sense of incorrectness of my life, something lost and forgotten. But no matter how hard I could remember it, I could not.
* * *
I didn't sleep well. The snowstorm that hit the border at night was not a joke. The wind blew out of the chimneys like a bunch of angry spirits and threatened to knock out the mica glasses, which were rattling under his pressure. It seemed as if angry nature was about to tear down Riverstein, furiously throwing lumps of icy snow on its walls, chopping up hundred-year-old aspens at the gate, and shattering the gatekeeper's doorway. The gatekeeper himself prudently managed to hide behind the stone walls of the shelter.
The weather was so severe that no one slept by midnight, and most people prayed earnestly for the salvation of their sinful soul. Only by morning did the rage begin to weaken, the gusts of wind lost their former rage and power, and the blizzard sank to the liquid ice curls spinning by the walls.
No wonder I woke up completely shattered, with a cast-iron head and weakness in my legs. My recuperation break was over, as the Junior Prior told me in the evening, so I dragged myself to class in the morning. At least Harpy's daily jogging was cancelled today, or I wouldn't have missed the whip.
The first lesson was a new subject, with Lord Darroll as instructor. I tried to get lost in the back rows and not show myself to the curator. A faint consolation to my ego was that the man appeared with his left brush rewound with rags, seemed to have slipped in slippery driveways, or maybe fell down the worn stairs.
Well, whatever happens to him, I sure as hell won't feel sorry for him. Especially since pitying a handsome lord is so dark and dark, the same Rogneda was staring like a c
at on a crucian carp. She was staring at a novice inappropriately humble way! Well, that's her business.
I was slowly arranging my writing instruments, listening to the curator halfway through.
- Belogorskaya Vetriana! - I moaned in my mind, - maybe you'll tell the audience the basic tenets of our Order?
But why me?
But the question was easy, even Xenia, a rare opponent of any knowledge, and then was aware of the basic tenets. What can you say about me, the book mouse, how my friend majored me.
I talked about it without a hitch, hoping to get away from me. It wasn't there.
The curator, crouching like sour clothes, demanded to illuminate the historical milestones of the Order's formation. The children were mesmerized, hiding behind parchments. The history of our Order was thorny and confusing, but if in general terms, it was so:
...in times immemorial, our land was inhabited by terrible monsters and demons. Unseen monsters were not only terrible, but also had supernatural power and magic, fed by people. Most monsters of people ate, well, or created all sorts of nasty and necessities. And all this continued until people finally tired of it, and gathered the whole world they went to war on monsters, and after long and bloody battles drove them out of the Line. Great Mother, the Holy Virgin was so pure and innocent that she was able to seal the line with her holy blood, creating an indestructible fence for the world of monsters, through which they were powerless. Where the holy blood of the saint was spilled, the soil caught fire and wiped out, turning into the Black Earth.
And peace and prosperity prevailed. The Blessed Mother gave her life to the first ruler of the united kingdom of people, and that's why she was called the Foremother. Our rulers, the descendants of the Great Virgin bear a little of that very first holy blood and are considered the keepers of the line. Without them, our world is doomed to another demon invasion. If that happens, there will surely be a terrible and painful death for all people.
The Wind of the North Page 9