The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

To go back to Kromy was as dangerous as to go on. It was probably more dangerous behind us, because there was the river, with several ice holes near the town, and we might easily not see them in the snowstorm and fall through the ice, while ahead there was the level steppe and only Selivan’s forest at the fifth mile, which was no more dangerous in a storm, because it must even have been quieter in the forest. Besides, the road didn’t go deep into the forest, but ran along the edge of it. The forest could only serve us as an indication that we were halfway home, and therefore the coachman Spiridon drove the horses more quickly.

The road kept getting more difficult and snowy: the former merry noise of the runners was forgotten; on the contrary, the sleigh crawled over crumbly snowdrifts and soon began lurching now this way, now that.

We lost our calm state of mind and began asking the footman and the coachman all the time about our situation, receiving uncertain and hesitant replies from them. They tried to instill in us a confidence in our safety, while feeling no such confidence themselves.

After half an hour of quick driving, with Spiridon whipping up the horses more and more often, we were cheered by the outcry:

“There’s Selivan’s forest coming in sight!”

“Is it far off?” asked my aunt.

“No, we’ve almost reached it.”

That was as it should have been—we had already been driving for about an hour since Kromy, but another good half hour went by—we kept driving, and the whip snapped over the horses more and more often, but there was no forest.

“What’s wrong? Where’s Selivan’s forest?”

No reply from the box.

“Where’s the forest?” my aunt asked again. “Have we passed it?”

“No, we haven’t,” Spiridon replied in a muffled voice, as if from under a pillow.

“What does it mean?”

Silence.

“Come down here! Stop! Stop!”

My aunt stuck herself out from behind the flap, desperately cried “Stop!” with all her might, and fell back into the sleigh, bringing with her a whole cloud of snowy swirls, which, under the influence of the wind, did not settle at once, but trembled like hovering flies.

The coachman stopped the horses, and it was well he did, because their bellies were heaving heavily and they were staggering from fatigue. If they hadn’t been given a rest at that moment, the poor animals would probably have collapsed.

“Where are you?” my aunt asked Boris, who had climbed down from the box.

He was unrecognizable. Before us stood not a man, but a pillar of snow. The collar of Boris’s wolfskin coat was turned up and tied with a scrap of something. All this was plastered with snow and stuck together in a single lump.

Boris did not know the road and replied timidly that it seemed we had lost our way.

“Call Spiridon here.”

To call vocally was impossible: the blizzard shut all mouths and itself roared and howled abroad with terrible violence.

Boriska climbed up on the box to pull Spiridon by the arm, but … he spent a very long time there, before he appeared beside the coach again and explained:

“Spiridon is not on the box!”

“Not on the box! Where is he then?”

“I don’t know. He must have gone looking for the way. Let me go, too.”

“Oh, Lord! No, don’t—don’t go. You’ll both perish, and we’ll all freeze to death.”

On hearing those words, my cousin and I started to cry, but just then another pillar of snow appeared by the carriage beside Borisushka, still bigger and scarier.

This was Spiridon, who had put on a spare bast bag, which stood up around his head all packed with snow and frozen.

“Where did you see the forest, Spiridon?”

“I did see it, madam.”

“Then where is it now?”

“You can see it now, too.”

My aunt wanted to look, but she didn’t see anything, it was all dark. Spiridon assured her that that was because her eyes were “unfamiliarized,” but that he had seen the forest looming up for a very long time, but … the trouble was that, as we moved towards it, it moved away from us.

“Like it or not, it’s all Selivashka’s doing. He’s luring us somewhere.”

Hearing that, in such terrible weather, we had fallen into the hands of the villain Selivashka, my cousin and I cried even louder, but my aunt, who was born a country squire’s daughter and was later a colonel’s wife, was not so easily disconcerted as a town lady, for whom various adversities are less familiar. My aunt had experience and know-how, and they saved us in a situation which, in fact, was very dangerous.

XIV