Fairy tales of the wise grandma Agatha. Liudmila Petrovna Rzhevskaya
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to the ground and fell silent.
People stood for another ten minutes and went to sleep in their tents. But they just began to doze, when the terrible wolf howl came again, this time not drawling, but threatening, as if the animals asked: “Why did you come here? Why did you break our peace? Now we will not let you sleep, there will be no rest for you.”
Gold diggers this time not only began to shoot, but also made a fire. They began to throw burning flakes into the grass and bushes. The howl was interrupted, but not for long. As soon as people climbed into the tents, they heard the wolf howl again, and each time with increasing force, as if there was not a pack of wolves, but three or four of such packs. So it continued until the sunrise, people in tents did not close their eyes until morning. In the morning the wolves left. But the gold diggers could not work, they fell asleep in tents after a sleepless night.
During the day, birds worked at the gold digging place. Many of them flew to the tents, rose up such a whim that the strangers, waking up, could not understand for a long time, what was happening outside, and when they came out and saw a huge number of birds that grabbed everything from their tables and from the ground, and then were throwing all this onto them, the diggers were not only surprised by such an invasion, but also frightened.
“It seems that it is not very good place here”, the most cowardly of the gold diggers, blond Nazar said. “We have to leave this place, guys; I do not like this at all.”
“How to leave, when the gold in the river was just found, we just began washing it, a dredge was put, so much effort we took, and now we have to leave because of some birds? Well, we shoot them all, and it’s over!”
“What about wolves? At night, you could hardly understand where to shoot!” Nazar continued. “They can bite us themselves.”
“Stop whining,” furious Taras growled. He brought people here, he first found gold here, and only the work has started, the forest animals give them no peace now. He snatched a rifle from the tent and started shooting at the birds again. Those flew apart in a moment, but as soon as the silence came after the shots, the birds attacked the tents from above again.
People, exhausted by a sleepless night, furious because of uninvited guests during the day, covered their heads with blankets and fell asleep. How much they slept, no one knows, but when they woke up, they were horrified at what they saw. Their dredge, on which they washed river sand to find grains of gold, was broken by a bear – that’s what they thought, because everywhere on the ground there were footsteps of a large bear. The foodstuffs were scattered and pecked out by birds, their two workhorses were bitten to the blood by the wasps and lamented plaintively on the tie. Almost the whole camp was destroyed.
There was nothing left for their work.
The gold diggers were broken. They talked to each other and decided to go down the river to another place.
“What kind of calamity happened, as if the whole forest world has rebelled against us?” they asked themselves. And in fact, the forest world rebelled against people who did not appreciate nature, mercilessly destroyed the forest, birds, animals. For their bad attitude to nature, local people and forest inhabitants, the gold miners paid the highest price: they lost a fine gold vein, which, if developed, could make them wealthy people. We must respect the laws of nature and live in peace with birds and all forest creatures. Then we ourselves shall lead a good life, and shall be respected.
This is how the grandmother Agatha finished her story. And what about Nastenka? The girl kept on growing. And many other stories happened to her.
Nastenka and her tiger Sharik
One summer, Nastenka went into the woods, to pick berries for the grandmother Agata. She went into the forest thicket and saw under the tree a small red-haired kitty. The cat was very large and, for her pity, very sick. It could hardly move its paws and lift its head. Nastenka forgot about all her berries, picked up the kitty and ran home. Mom, seeing Nastenka, flung up her hands and cried out at her:
“Nastenka, why did you bring the little tiger home? What if a tigress comes to his smell here? Can you ever imagine what will happen to us?”
Nastenka opened her little mouth in fright and said:
“But Mom, it was alone in the forest, and then I thought it was a kitty. He really looks like a cat. Mom, how can it be, he’s alive, he needs to be cured, and the tigress, maybe, has already forgotten about him.”
The mother agreed that the tiger needed to be cured, because he was really very sick, but after that, Nastenka should take him to the forest. And Nastenka agreed with this.
And Nastenka’s mother worked as a veterinarian in the village. Her name was Maria. For a whole month Nastenka with her mom cured a tiger cub. During this time, the tiger cub became so attached to Nastenka that it followed her like a dog. And the inhabitants of the village gave him the nickname Sharik. Everyone laughed when Nastenka went out into the street with her fosterling: “Ah, it’s you, Nastenka, with your Sharik came to us. What news will you tell us?” The girl sat down on the log next to other villagers and their children, the tiger cub was climbing her knees, licking her nose, wrinkling its snout and sneezing. And everyone laughed and said: “Well, it is a real dog; the name Sharik is so suitable.” So Nastenka and her mother began to call him Sharik. Time passed and Sharik grew up. He demanded more and more porridge and meat. And mother Maria once told Nastenka: “Well, Nastenka, take your Sharik into the forest. He is a forest animal and must live in the forest. And we can not feed him. We can hardly feed ourselves.” But Nastenka did not want to part with her Sharik. They were really attached to each other.
The tiger cub grew for the summer, his paws were much stronger, his voice was much coarser, and when he growled at strangers, they were afraid to approach Nastenka and tried to stay away from her. And one day the boys started a fight, Nastenka rushed to set them apart, Sharik rushed to the boys to and, probably, he thought that the boys wanted to offend his adorable little girl, such a lovely mistress, and began to bite the boys randomly. They roared and rushed off the tiger cub, and Sharik ran after them, Nastenka ran after Sharik, shouting and cursing: “Oh you rascal, why you have bitten the boys, don’t you dare to do it again!” But then Nastenka remembered that her Sharik was the forest animal and he did not understand the human language. She sat down on the grass, called Sharik to her, embraced him and began to talk with him in his own language, whispering something in his ear that only Sharik and Nastenka understood. Tiger guiltily lowered his head and followed Nastenka. And in the evening neighbors came to Nastenka’s mom place, with complaints of Nastenka and her Sharik. The tiger cub guiltily hid under the bed and angrily rumbled, knowing that the conversation was about him. Nastenka stood up for her fosterling: “Why did the boys fight? If it was not Sharik, no one would set them apart, and maybe they would beat each other even more than Sharik bit them.”
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