by Unknown
And so Danilushko went. The ground had already begun to frost over, and there was a dusting of snow. Danilushko went up to the steep slope where he had found the stone. He looked around. Right at the spot where the stone had been there was now a big hollow, as if someone had been quarrying. Without stopping to think about who this could have been, Danilushko stepped down into the hollow. ‘I’ll sit down and have a rest from the wind,’ he thought. ‘It’s warmer down here.’ Beside one of the walls of the hollow he saw a grey rock shaped like a chair. Danilushko sat on it, and fell deep into thought. He was looking down at the ground; he just couldn’t stop thinking about that stone flower. ‘If only I could have just one glimpse of it!’
All of a sudden it felt warm, as if summer had returned. Danilushko looked up: sitting opposite him, by the far wall, was the Mistress of the Copper Mountain. Danilushko knew her at once by her beauty and her malachite dress. Only he thought, ‘Maybe I’m just dreaming this. Maybe there isn’t really anyone at all.’ He went on silently sitting there, looking right at the spot where the Mistress was sitting, acting as if he saw nothing. She, too, was silent, as if lost in thought. Then she asked, ‘So, Master Danilko, did your moonflower chalice not work out?’
‘No,’ he answered. ‘It didn’t.’
‘Don’t be downhearted! Try again! You shall have stone according to your wish.’
‘No,’ he answered, ‘I can’t go on. I’m worn out, and it’s all gone wrong. Show me the stone flower.’
‘That’s easily done,’ she said, ‘only you’ll end up regretting it.’
‘Are you saying you won’t let me leave the mountain?’
‘What do you mean, not let you leave! The way is open, it’s just that people always return to me.’
‘Show me the flower, I beg you!’
Once again she tried to dissuade him: ‘Why not try once more to do it on your own!’ She talked about Prokopich: ‘He took pity on you, now it’s your turn to pity him.’ She talked about his betrothed: ‘The lass adores you, but you always have your eyes elsewhere.’
‘I know,’ Danilushko shouted, ‘but without the flower, life is nothing to me. Show it to me!’
‘In that case,’ she said, ‘let us go to my garden, Master Danilko.’
She stood up. At that moment there was a rustling noise like a landslide. Danilushko saw that the walls of the hollow had disappeared. Towering above him were tall trees, only they weren’t like ordinary trees – these trees were made of stone. Some were marble, some were of serpentine. Yes, every kind of stone. And they were alive, with branches and little leaves. They were swaying in the wind; there was a sound as if someone was tossing handfuls of shingle about. The grass below was also of stone. Azure, red, many-coloured … Though there was no sun to be seen, everything was lit up like just before sunset. Little golden snakes were fluttering and dancing between the trees. They radiated light.
And so the Mistress led Danilushko to a large clearing. Here the earth was like ordinary clay; on it, though, were bushes as black as velvet. And adorning these bushes were large green bell-shaped malachite flowers, and in each bell was a little antimony star. Above these flowers glimmered fiery bees, and the little stars were quietly chiming; it was as if they were singing.
‘Well, master craftsman Danilko, have you had your look?’ asked the Mistress.
‘How would I ever find the stone to make anything like this?’ replied Danilushko.
‘Had you thought up this flower yourself, I’d have given you the stone, but now I can’t.’
With that, she gave a wave of her hand.
Once again there was a rustling noise – and once again Danilushko was sitting on the chair-shaped stone in the hollow. The wind was whistling. Well, as we know, it was autumn.
Danilushko went back home. That very evening his betrothed was holding a party. At first Danilushko sang and danced and seemed full of cheer, but then it was as if a cloud came over him. Katya took fright: ‘What’s happened? You look like you’re at a funeral!’
He said, ‘My head’s hurting. All I can see is black and green and red. I can’t see light anywhere.’
The party came to an end. As was the custom, the bride and her girlfriends began to walk the groom back to his home. It was no distance at all, just one or two houses away. Katya said, ‘Let’s go the long way round, girls. We’ll walk to the end of the street, then come back down Yelanskaya Street.’
To herself she was thinking: ‘Perhaps he just needs some air, maybe he’ll perk up again once he’s outside.’
Her girlfriends were happy enough to go along with this. ‘Yes,’ they called out. ‘Of course, we must walk him home properly. He lives awfully close – we haven’t yet had time to sing him a proper parting song.’
It was a quiet night, and snow was falling – just right for a walk. And so on they went. The bride and groom walked ahead, while the bride’s girlfriends and the young men who had been at the party fell a little behind. The girls started up their parting song. It was long and plaintive, like a funeral lament. This was the last thing Katya wanted. Her Danilushko had been gloomy enough anyway: why did they have to go and sing him a funeral song?
She tried to distract Danilushko. He talked a little, but then he turned sad and silent again. In the meantime Katya’s girlfriends had come to the end of their parting song and moved on to more cheerful ones. The girls were lively and full of laughter, but Danilushko seemed more dejected than ever. No matter how she tried, there was nothing Katya could do to cheer him up. And so they came to his home. The friends of the bride and groom began to go their separate ways, while Danilushko silently, without observing the rituals, walked the bride back to her door and then went back home again.
Prokopich had long since gone to bed. Danilushko quietly lit a lamp, dragged his chalices into the middle of the hut and stood there looking at them. Just then Prokopich was seized by a coughing fit. He was choking and gasping. You see, he was old and he had become quite ill. This coughing cut through Danilushko’s heart like a knife. Memories of the whole of his life with Prokopich flashed through his mind. He felt terribly sorry for the old man. As for Prokopich, when he had finished coughing, he asked, ‘What are you doing with the chalices?’
‘Oh, I’m just wondering if it’s time to hand them over.’
‘You should have done that long ago,’ said Prokopich. ‘They’re simply taking up space here. And there’s certainly nothing you can do to improve them.’
Well, they talked a little longer, then Prokopich fell back to sleep. And Danilushko lay down too, only he couldn’t get to sleep at all. He tossed and turned, got up again, lit a lamp, had another look at the chalices and walked over to Prokopich. For a while he just stood there, looking down at the old man and sighing …
Then he took a hammer and smashed it down onto the moonflower. The chalice shattered with a crunch. As for the other chalice, the one made from the squire’s drawing, he didn’t even touch it. He merely spat into the centre of it and ran out of the hut. And from that moment Danilushko was nowhere to be found.
Some said that he had gone crazy and disappeared into the forest; some said that the Mistress had taken him as one of her mountain masters.
But really it was all very different. And that is another story.
The Mountain Master
Katya, Danilko’s betrothed, remained unmarried. It was two or three years since Danilko had gone missing, and she had passed the usual age for marrying. In our parts, among the factory folk, a girl over twenty was considered past her prime. Young lads would seldom marry such girls – more often the girls would end up marrying widowers. This Katya, though, was a comely girl, and the young men were still asking for her hand. But her reply was always the same: ‘I’m promised to Danilko.’
They tried to talk her round: ‘Well, it can’t be helped! You were promised to him but you never married. No use thinking about all that now. The man died long ago.’
Katya would not budge: �
��I’m promised to Danilko. And maybe he will come back after all.’
‘He is not among the living,’ they would repeat. ‘That’s for sure.’
But she held fast: ‘No one has seen him dead. To me he’s as alive as ever.’
They decided the lass was not quite right in the head, and they left her alone. Others even started to mock her; they began calling her the corpse’s bride. The name stuck. From then on, it was as if she had no other name but Katya Corpse-Bride.
Then there was an outbreak of some kind of disease, and Katya’s elderly parents both died. She had a large family: three brothers, all of them with wives, and a number of married sisters. They fell out over who should live in their father’s house. Seeing they had reached a deadlock, Katya said, ‘I’ll go and live in Danilushko’s hut. Prokopich is quite elderly now. At least I’ll be able to look after him.’
Her brothers and sisters tried, of course, to dissuade her:
‘It’s not proper, sister. Prokopich may be elderly, but think what people might say.’
‘Why should I care?’ she replied. ‘It won’t be me spreading gossip. And anyway, Prokopich is hardly a stranger to me. He’s a foster father to my Danilko. I shall call him Papa.’
And so she left. It has to be said that her relatives did not try all that hard to stop her: with one less person, after all, things would be quieter. Prokopich, for his part, was pleased.
‘Thank you, Katya, for not forgetting me,’ he said.
And so they began to live together. Prokopich would sit at the bench, and Katya would run about doing the chores – working in the vegetable plot, boiling and baking, and the like. Keeping house for two is, of course, not so very difficult … Katya was a sprightly girl; she’d get through the work in no time. When she’d finished, she would sit down to her own handiwork: sewing, knitting, making things to keep for a rainy day. Everything went smoothly to begin with, although Prokopich was getting weaker and weaker. He would spend a day at the workbench, then two in bed. Long years of work had worn him out. Katya began wondering how they would manage.
‘This sewing and knitting won’t earn us a livelihood, but it’s the only craft I know.’
So she said to Prokopich, ‘Papa! Teach me to make something simple.’
This made Prokopich laugh: ‘Whatever next! Working with malachite is no job for a girl. Never heard of such a thing in all my life.’
Well, all the same, she began to watch Prokopich at his craft. Wherever she could, she helped him out. She would saw the stone; she would do some polishing. And Prokopich began to show her a few other things. Not real craftsmanship. Simple things like how to turn a plaque, make handles for knives and forks and other items people needed. Mere trifles, of course, but enough to make a difference if times grew hard.
Prokopich died not long after. Then Katya’s brothers and sisters began to press her more than ever: ‘There’s nothing for it. Now you really do have to get married. How will you be able to live on your own?’
Katya cut them short: ‘That’s my worry, not yours. I don’t need your suitors. Danilushko will come back. He’ll master his craft in the mountain and come back.’
Her brothers and sisters gesticulated excitedly: ‘Are you in your right mind, Katya? To talk like that is sinful! The man died long ago, but you’re still waiting for him! Watch out, or you’ll start seeing things.’
‘I’m not afraid of that,’ she replied.
‘But what are you going to live on?’
‘You don’t need to worry about that either,’ she answered. ‘I shall manage on my own.’
The brothers and sisters took this to mean that Prokopich had left her some money. They started up again: ‘You’re a fool! If there’s money around, you’re going to need a man in the house even more. Somebody – God forbid – might try to steal the money. They’ll wring your neck like a chicken. And you’ve barely even lived …’
‘I shall live,’ she answered, ‘as long as I am fated to.’
The brothers and sisters went on for some time with their hullabaloo. Some of them were shouting, some trying to talk her round, some crying, but Katya stood firm: ‘I’ll get by on my own. No need for any of your suitors. I already have a betrothed.’
Her family, of course, were incensed: ‘If you need help, don’t come running to us!’
‘Thank you,’ she replied, ‘my dear brothers, my sweet sisters! I won’t forget. And don’t you forget either. If you happen to pass this way, then you must walk straight past my door!’
She was laughing at them. The brothers and sisters left in a fury, slamming the door behind them.
Katya was left all on her own. At first, of course, she cried, but then she said, ‘No! I won’t give in!’
She dried her eyes and set about the housework, scrubbing and scouring till everything was clean. When she had finished, she went to the workbench. Here, too, she began arranging everything to suit her; she put the tools she most needed close by, and put the rest to one side. Once everything was in order, she wanted to get down to work: ‘I can at least have a go at making a wall-plaque.’
She went to get a stone, but there were none that seemed right. There were the remnants of Danilushko’s moonflower chalice, but Katya wanted to keep them; she had tied them up in a special bundle. And, of course, there was all the stone that Prokopich had left. But the pieces he had been working on during his last months had been large ones. Those stones were all too big. He’d already used up the offcuts and leftovers for smaller items. ‘Seems I’ll have to go down to the mine,’ Katya said to herself. ‘Maybe I’ll find what I need there.’
She had heard Danilko and Prokopich talk of getting their stone from Snake Hill. So that’s where she went.
Around Gumeshki, as always, there were lots of people: some sorting through the ore, some carting it away. They stared at Katya, wondering what she was doing with her basket. Katya didn’t like being gawped at. Instead of looking for stone there, she walked round to the far side of the hill where there was still forest. Katya made her way through the forest until she reached Snake Hill itself, and there she sat down. She felt grief-stricken; memories of Danilushko were coming back. She sat on the stone, and her tears began to flow. There was no one else nearby, she was surrounded by trees, and she wept without restraint, her tears dripping down onto the earth. She cried for some time, and then she saw: right by her feet there was now a large piece of malachite. But it was lodged in the earth. How could she get it out without a pickaxe or a crowbar? She tried to shift it a little. It seemed not to be too firmly embedded. So she started scraping the earth away with a little stick. She scraped away all she could and then began trying to shake it free. Suddenly it yielded, and there was a sound from underneath, like a branch snapping. The stone was a small slab, three fingers thick, the breadth of a palm, and no more than two spans long. Katya gazed at it in wonder: ‘It’s exactly what I was thinking of. I’ll be able to get a good number of plaques from it when I saw it up. And there’ll hardly be any waste.’
She brought the stone home and got straight down to work. Sawing takes time, and there was the housework to attend to as well. She’d look up from her work and realize the whole day had gone by; there was no time to mope about. But the moment she sat down at the bench, she would always remember Danilushko: ‘If only he could see that there’s a new worker now! Sitting where he and Prokopich used to sit!’
Of course, a few louts made their appearance. It was bound to happen … On the eve of some holiday Katya was sitting working late into the night when three lads climbed over the fence. They wanted to give her a fright, or maybe worse – who knows? Anyway, they were all drunk. Katya was sawing away and she didn’t hear them come into the entrance room. She heard nothing until they started trying to break into the main room: ‘Open up, Corpse-Bride! You have guests from among the living!’
At first Katya simply said: ‘Go away, boys!’
Well, that didn’t have much effect. They carried o
n bashing away at the door – it seemed as if it might give way any moment. At this point Katya undid the latch, flung open the door and shouted, ‘Well, come on in. Who wants his forehead smashed first?’
The lads gawped – she was holding an axe.
‘Don’t fool around with that!’ they said.
‘Who’s fooling around?’ she answered. ‘Cross the doorstep and you get your head smashed in.’
They may have been drunk, but the lads could see that she wasn’t joking. She was a fully-grown woman, with broad shoulders, a determined look in her eyes, and she clearly knew what to do with an axe. They did not dare enter. They hollered a bit and then left. They even went about telling people what had happened. Soon people started teasing them – three of them and they’d run away from a girl! This, of course, was not to their liking, so they spun a yarn about how Katya had not been alone. No, standing behind her had been a corpse: ‘It was so terrifying that you couldn’t help but run for your life!’
There’s no knowing how many people believed the lads, but from then on the rumours began to spread: ‘There’s an evil spirit in that house. It’s not for nothing she chooses to live all alone.’
Katya heard all this, but it didn’t bother her. ‘So much the better,’ she thought. ‘Let them spin their yarns! If they start to feel a bit frightened, maybe it’ll stop them from coming a second time.’
The neighbours were also astonished to see Katya at the workbench. ‘Trying her hand at a man’s craft!’ they scoffed. ‘Whatever will come of it?’
This stung Katya more. She herself began to wonder whether or not she could cope with all the work on her own. Well, nevertheless she got a grip on herself: ‘It’s just wares for the market! Is that so demanding? Just needs to be smooth … I can do that, can’t I?’
Katya finished sawing up the stone. The pattern fitted remarkably; it seemed almost to be telling her where to make the crosswise cuts. Katya marvelled at how cleverly everything was turning out. She divided the stone along the markings, then started turning. The work wasn’t especially tricky, but it wasn’t beginner’s work either. At first she found it a struggle, but then she got the hang of it. The plaques came out superb, and with no waste at all. The only stone she lost was the dust from the turning.