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Отрывок из детской прозы “Seven Steps In A Circle”

Zoey feared darkness even more than silence. Partly due to her boundless imagination, but mainly because of the extraordinary storytelling gift possessed by her elderly nanny. Augusta was in her seventies, plagued by sciatica, so in the games of pirates and giants she was of no use. Therefore, she usually put an end to the noisy evening fuss of the master’s children with a simple and effective method: she extinguished the lamps on the second floor and sitting in the rocking chair with her knitting and telling stories about all sorts of evil creatures lurking in the darkness of the hushed house.

Augusta knew a lot about supernatural beings… Having grown up in a remote fishing village, she learned to read at the age of twenty-eight, and was well-versed in ghosts and werewolves, vampires and water nymphs, mermaids, leprechauns, wraiths, and all sorts of vile creatures, just like an experienced poultry farmer knows different breeds of chickens and guinea fowl. She knew their habits and quirks, omens and culinary preferences, and she told stories about them with such liveliness and sparkle that even Axel, Zoey’s sixteen-year-old brother who had returned on vacation from military school, grew slightly pale and nibbled on his fingertips.

However, Augusta was not an empty chatterbox and reminded her listeners that the undead always had their weaknesses. It was important to remember just three simple laws: evil forces only exist in darkness, they feed on sin and disobedience, and they cannot tolerate godliness. Therefore, an obedient child who had diligently recited the Lord’s Prayer before bedtime and quietly hid under the blanket was not only inaccessible to the undead but also completely uninteresting to them, and partly even unpleasant.

Axel was bothered by these insinuations about darkness, and he tried to object (after all, the future officer knew that all the most interesting things in soldier’s life begin after sunset). However, Augusta (although she swore, she had never touched cards in her life) knew how to play her trump card in time: The Kingdom of God has always been called the Kingdom of Light, isn’t that so? And everything that lies beyond the light is darkness, where those who do not accept the Lord and His laws belong. Yes, yes, my dear, including all those wicked people you were talking about to the stroker before dinner. The tavern keepers, the owners of gambling houses, shameless girls, and all that riffraff that doesn’t show its face in daylight.

At home, Zoey always stood by Axel’s side because she loved her older brother tenderly and quite mutually. But now, as darkness clung to her from all sides, so alien and malevolent, the girl couldn’t help but think that Augusta was worth listening to more carefully…

Augusta was right… No… She even held back, apparently sparing her wards. After all, the old woman just wanted the children not to run to the kitchen at night for sweets and not to play pranks on the stairs. But what was that cozy home darkness, infused with familiar smells, filled with domestic sounds, compared to this… Boundless, cold, and utterly indifferent.

Augusta never told that the darkness breathes, stares with hundreds of invisible eyes, growls and tosses. This alien darkness smelled of garbage and rancid oil, stove soot and damp linen. It squealed gutturally in dog voices, jingled with chains, creaked with shutters. It waved away the swaying stunted lanterns with a rotten-fishy breeze, lazily drove straw mixed with ashes along the dilapidated palisades, gleamed with greasy puddles, black as wheel ointment.

Home darkness was… toy-like. Like a plush puppy with soft ears and beady eyes, smelling of cinnamon cookies and soap, adorably pretending to be a dog… And this darkness was not pretending to be anyone. It was indeed a chain wolfhound, stinking with damp fur, baring it’s fangs from the depth of a rickety kennel.

Zoey took a sharp breath, suddenly feeling her jaw go numb as she clenched her teeth so tightly. She stopped, raising her tense shoulders and looking around. Where was she rushing to like this… She could run straight to the river like that. A weathervane… A weathervane rooster above the slanting metal pipe, so noticeable from afar… Where was it? Fences crowded around, darkened by time and rain. On one of them hung a crookedly nailed sign: «Aunt June’s Offal Pies.» Zoey involuntarily shivered. She had never known before that the offal was edible…

The moon kept hiding in the clouds, the road went farther and farther into the tangle of slums, and only a lone rat jumped out of the thickets of nettles, smartly skirted the puddle, and darted into a pile of vegetable peels, dumped at the gate on the left. The roofs were bristling with crumpled breaks, blackened with dormer windows, emitted sparse peat smoke. But there was no weathervane…

Where is she? How far have you wandered into the bowels of this terrible place? Zoey shook with a slight chill and rushed headlong back … or forward … somewhere further, hoping that the tin cock would peek out from behind the roofs again.

The cloak dragged through the mud, the shoes champed, the bobbins tinkled in the basket. The girl ran out from behind another corner and, yelping, staggered back, almost falling into a ditch at the edge of the road: on the ground, right in the thick slush, a corpse lay face down. Outstretched hands helplessly clung with dirty fingers to the clay, a broken bottle lay at the very head.

Zoey squeaked, choking on her voice, and then rushed away, no longer caring about the silence, and desperately sobbing. She ran through the darkness, the stench, and the whirl of dim lights. She ran, slipping, stumbling, stepping on the edge of her cloak. She ran until she flew out onto a small square, in the middle of which stood an old well with a thick rusted chain looped around its gate. An oil lantern towered above the well, snatching a round, bright orange spot from the darkness.

The lacemaker stood still for a moment, then rushed to the lantern and sat down on the ground, trembling slightly, and huddling against its moss-covered base. That’s it… She would sit here, in this bright circle, until morning came. And then… something will happen. Something will definitely happen… But at least it will again be light… The main thing was to survive until that light…

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