In the morning, barely awake, Petunia first examined her hands closely.
Hands were hands.
Thin, pale, nails cut short, a callus on her right index finger from writing.
Ordinary hands, really.
Not aristocratic, certainly, but not like some village girl’s either.
But fresh from sleep, it felt like her hands should look somehow different…
There was something about that dream, besides wandering among countless trees and trying to call out to someone — but what?
Petunia racked her brain for a bit, but the cares of the new day claimed her, and soon she dismissed these fruitless musings.
Hanging a kettle of water over the hearth — all her supplies had been used up yesterday — she sat down at the table and carefully wrote down her entire previous day, so terrifying and yet so wondrous.
Her fingers still didn’t obey properly, and the pen tried to slip out of her hand a couple of times.
Petunia didn’t give up, biting her lower lip and stubbornly forming letter after letter.
The thought that she had actually touched a real ghost still made her shiver, but today a small spark of pride mingled with the fear: she had managed it, she had done it!
She even tried to sketch yesterday’s visitor from memory, but instead of a frightening silhouette she got a shapeless blot, and Petunia angrily scribbled over the failed drawing with her pen, not sparing the ink.
Only then did she catch herself — she should have spared the ink.
Where would she find a new pen in this wilderness?
Water began to boil in the kettle.
Petunia tore her attention from the diary, carefully poured the boiling water into a pot, and set porridge to cook.
Settling with her notebook by the fireplace, pausing now and then to stir the oatmeal, she finished describing yesterday and quickly filled in the observation journal for the plantings.
The porridge turned out watery.
Petunia grimaced as she slurped her plain oatmeal, dreaming of a pat of butter or at least a spoonful of jam.
They would have brightened her meager breakfast wonderfully.
But what wasn’t there, wasn’t there.
And soon, she already knew, she wouldn’t even have oatmeal.
The weather forecast surprised her, promising rain all day tomorrow.
The luck forecast was indistinguishable from yesterday’s.
The fortune-teller said the spirits were neutral, but didn’t add yesterday’s “the day is in your hands,” from which Petunia concluded that no new guests were to be expected.
The third button was active again today, just like the first day.
Petunia clicked it and once again saw the farmer-dressed host on the screen.
He was holding several shoots of a plant that looked like both a leek and an ordinary onion at the same time.
Only its green stems were tubular, not flat like leek’s, and the white bulbs were smaller than both of its relatives’.
“And this tip is for those living in the Lone Lands,” the farmer said, smiling directly at Petunia.
She listened.
“Southwest of the city, where the river meets the ocean, spring onions grow in spring.
Sometimes you can gather a whole heap of them there!” A small map appeared on the screen, similar to the one that had flashed during the weather forecast.
The map’s main color was gray, with only a red dotted line standing out.
Petunia traced the suggested route with her finger.
The road started from her farm, entered the city’s territory, but led past the bridge along a chasm, then turned left into a dense forest, ending in a bold red cross on an unnamed clearing.
Petunia memorized the map as thoroughly as she could.
It seemed she had a chance to find a bit more food, since tomorrow she would most likely be stuck at home all day.
She went outside, leaving the door open.
Yesterday’s laundry was waiting for her right where she’d left it — on the tree branches.
Only a couple of items had been blown away by the wind, but they lay nearby, standing out against the green grass.
Petunia took down the clothes, folded them as neatly as she could, and wondered whether the storeroom would give her an iron if she asked.
The green sprouts had grown even more overnight.
In the very first row, little green radish leaves on red stems were showing off; behind them, carrot shoots had opened their palms to the sun.
The first leaves of parsnip resembled celery or parsley, but larger.
And the turnip seedlings, shaped like little hearts, finished off the beds.
Dill and parsley were already growing vigorously between them.
The parsley leaves were still very young — oval-shaped, light green in color.
A little more time would pass before they strengthened and took on their familiar form.
But the tender dill fronds had already feathered out, swaying in the spring breeze like the plumage of some exotic bird.
Looking at how confidently and quickly they were growing, Petunia felt genuine joy.
She even started thinking about what she could make from the first turnips, but quickly caught herself and lightly tapped her lips.
No, no — it was too early to count her chickens before they hatched.
Done with the garden, Petunia fetched her market bag, which she had sewn herself from an old raincoat of her mother’s.
She was immensely proud of and satisfied with this bag; besides its stylish design, borrowed from a German fashion magazine, it had no fewer than six pockets!
Two — which had been the raincoat’s original pockets — on the outside, and four more Petunia had stitched on the inside, so she could organize all sorts of small items conveniently.
She usually took this bag when she went shopping, and it almost always became an object of curiosity and envy for other female shoppers.
Petunia swung the bag on her arm.
Empty, it swayed slowly from side to side.
After a moment’s thought, she put a knife inside.
You never knew.
The trip to the city didn’t take as long as the first time.
Petunia had noticed this before.
Sometimes you go somewhere for the first time, you don’t know the road, you’re nervous, afraid of getting lost, and by the time you arrive, exhausted, it feels like ages have passed.
But the second or third time — it turns out it’s not so far or long to travel at all.
It’s just some kind of mystery!
Slipping between two facing cliffs, Petunia emerged onto the observation platform and paused for a moment, admiring the city and its palaces.
The city was quiet and empty, seemingly no different from itself a couple of days ago.
But Petunia suddenly felt it had become a bit livelier.
As though it were still wrapped in the bonds of sleep but already stirring, trying to wake.
Leaving the city to her left, she followed the path downward, with a vertical cliff on one side and a bottomless chasm on the other.
The road was also partially destroyed, and sometimes Petunia’s step sent a few pebbles tumbling into the abyss.
At such moments she’d shudder and double her vigilance.
It was probably only because of her heightened attention that she didn’t miss the right turn.
It was cleverly arranged — hidden among the rocks and camouflaged so that no matter how you looked, it was all solid stone.
But with a keen eye she noticed the remains of a pedestal — who knew what it was, a beautiful statue or a waymarker — and figured out there was a passage there.
It was almost identical to the one through which she had entered the city.
Except there was no arch carved from stone.
The cliffs simply converged with each other far overhead, forming a natural arch, and emerging from it, Petunia found herself right in the middle of a forest.
Petunia stopped and looked around.
Tall, slender pines surrounded her, with smaller trees growing between them — spruces, alders, and something else she didn’t immediately recognize — and the forest floor was covered with grass and low shrubs.
From above, here and there, breaking through the dense canopy, rays of sunlight fell into the forest, forming pillars of light.
Birds sang in the distance, and there were no other sounds.
A path ran out from under Petunia’s feet and stretched away into the distance.
She started along it, but quickly caught herself and turned around.
The rock arch looked like the mouth of a cave, and perhaps it would have been hard to miss.
But still…
And then Petunia surprised even herself.
Acting almost on instinct, she took out her knife and, with slow, uncertain movements, cut into the forest floor, revealing the dark earth beneath.
An improvised marker — the kind you’d never miss if you were watching your feet.
But how would she even know about this way of leaving trail signs?
“I’ll think about that later.” Petunia shook her head and walked slowly along the path, hoping it would lead her where she needed to go.
She left markers from time to time, and soon she got so good at it that she was doing it as quickly and deftly as if she’d been learning it all her life.
And before long, she discovered she had somehow acquired another skill.
A small clearing covered in soft green grass caught her attention.
Petunia didn’t even understand why yet, but her body was already stepping forward, her hand grabbing large, oblong-oval leaves growing from the ground, and with a yank, she pulled the plant from the soil, exposing a thick, fleshy root of yellowish-white color.
Uprooted, the root immediately spread a sharp, pungent smell around it, and it was thanks to that smell that Petunia recognized it.
“Is this horseradish?” She’d only ever seen it as a condiment before, but its distinctive smell gave it away completely.
Petunia admired her sudden find and put it in her bag.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” she commented, quoting Alice, and moved on.
By the time she finally found the clearing where spring onions grew in abundance, her wonderful bag already held three horseradishes — one big one, the first, and two smaller ones; a bunch of sorrel; a bunch of young, very stinging nettles that made her arms and legs itch terribly because she’d stupidly wandered into them; there was also a bunch of strange elongated leaves that looked like ferns but curled into spirals at the tips; and a scattering of the first rose hips.
And if she had picked the spiral leaves by following her new knowledge, she had stumbled onto the rose hip thicket completely by accident.
In her excitement, she almost stripped the whole bush.
She stopped only because she should leave some berries for the forest dwellers too.
Oh — let’s hope it’s not a bear, and that she doesn’t meet one.
Even without her new useful knowledge, Petunia had no doubt that meeting a wild animal was a bad idea from the start.
And there really were a lot of spring onions.
They hadn’t lied!
Delighted, she crouched down and started pulling them out of the ground quickly, laying them in her bag.
The pile of food in the bag grew right before her eyes, and the looming threat of hunger receded a little.
Maybe she should ask the storeroom for a cookbook for young foragers.
Or try putting a note in the mailbox — the devil might be in the details…
In the middle of pondering how to cook and eat everything she’d found, there was a crunch.
Petunia flinched.
Her right hand, with some unfamiliar motion, darted to the knife and closed her fingers around the handle.
She turned cautiously, trying not to make any noise.
On a neighboring clearing, separated by a couple of pines, stood a stag, its head turned toward her, crowned with a pair of antlers golden in the sunlight.
It was snow white, without a single dark spot.
It was looking in her direction, puzzled by the encounter, shifting its gleaming hooves uncertainly.
Petunia let out a gasp of admiration.
What a beautiful creature…
Unconsciously, she reached out a hand, for its snow-white fur seemed to beg to be touched.
At that moment, a dry twig crunched under her foot.
A sharp, report-like sound rang through the entire forest, and the stag, snorting loudly, instantly darted away, fast as an arrow, and disappeared.
As if it had never been there.