In the middle of the night, the rumble of stones tumbling down a mountain came through her sleep, as if a rockslide had occurred somewhere.
Petunia stirred, waking up, but almost immediately the first drops of rain began tapping on the roof, and she fell back asleep.
Her sleep was so deep that even the alarm clock, ringing at exactly six, didn’t wake her.
Petunia slept until she herself awoke.
Rested and a little lazy, she rolled onto her back and stretched.
Rain drummed on the roof above her head.
From her pillow, she could see through the little window a piece of the outside world — distorted and wavering, like a magical vision.
She lingered in bed a little longer, enjoying the chance to laze around.
Then she remembered she’d planned to go fishing and jumped out of bed.
This morning’s breakfast was especially wonderful.
The rose hips she’d gathered yesterday perfectly complemented the oatmeal that had grown tiresome, and Petunia tossed a few berries into her cup, pouring boiling water over them.
She ate slowly, savoring every spoonful of the porridge, which tasted especially good today.
Then, sipping her rose hip tea, she clicked the buttons on the television.
Tomorrow’s weather promised another sunny day, and the fortune teller announced that the spirits were in a good mood today.
Sticking her nose outside, Petunia assessed the situation.
From a sky shrouded in gray clouds, silver streams of rain stretched down to the earth.
Drops beat merrily against leaves and blades of grass, bending them toward the ground.
Endless circles spread across the puddles’ surfaces, and bubbles of various sizes drifted by from time to time.
Some puddles were nearly the size of a small garden pond.
At first glance, it was clear that Petunia’s cute blue umbrella was useless.
She sighed and knocked on the pantry door.
She had her doubts, of course, that this request would qualify as necessary, but what the hell…
The spirits really were in a favorable mood, Petunia concluded, seeing a dark green bundle and a pair of tall swamp boots on the pantry floor.
When she unrolled the bundle, it turned out to be a military raincoat-tent — worn, but sturdy and, most importantly, waterproof.
A similar coat, Petunia recalled, had belonged to her grandfather.
It kept you dry in the rain and could also provide shade from the sun.
She immediately threw on the coat, pulled up the hood, and spun around.
Too bad there was no mirror.
Did she look like a swamp witch?
The boots, however, were too big.
From books, Petunia knew the mysterious word “foot wraps.” Book heroes used these, whatever they were, instead of socks and in cases where their shoes were too big, to avoid blistering their feet during long treks in search of El Dorado or the Lost World.
It’s not very pleasant, you know, hunting for treasure with a blister on your heel.
“I think socks will do,” Petunia said thoughtfully, and put on three pairs on each foot.
Properly equipped, she took a bucket and a hoe and went to dig for worms.
Her grandfather used to say, when teaching his granddaughter this wisdom, that worms were simple, guileless creatures.
All it took was rain — and they’d crawl right out of the ground.
All you had to do was collect them.
And indeed, from the porch Petunia could already see a couple of long, pearly-pink worms crawling about their wormy business right on the path.
She carefully picked them up with two fingers and tossed them into the bucket.
Petunia looked around.
Looking at the grass, pressed to the ground by the streams of rain, she suddenly felt an iron certainty that no one had approached her cottage during the night.
Even if the rain had already washed away all tracks…
As she looked around, her eyes swept over the trees and suddenly caught a dark spot among its branches.
“A nest,” she realized immediately, and thought about it.
How long had it been there?
How many times had she walked past this tree toward the pond and never noticed it?
She had only heard the birds chirping.
“No way,” she said slowly, unable to take her eyes off the nest.
Just yesterday she had complained to the ghost that she didn’t know how to get bird eggs, and now — there it was.
A coincidence?
Hardly…
The strangeness with her survival skills had started right after meeting the ghost.
First she gave him water, and the next day she magically learned to find edible plants.
Yesterday — she fed him.
And now she could find bird nests or even…
she looked at the grass again, and a chill of delight mixed with fear ran down her spine…
or even read tracks!
There wasn’t a word about such magic in any of Lily’s books.
Overwhelmed by jumbled thoughts, she looked around, trying to figure out what she was now capable of, and her gaze was drawn to a small mound of loose earth.
Crouching beside it, she carefully dug into the soil with her hoe and discovered a whole clump of worms tangled together.
Petunia winced, but before the worms, sensing the raindrops, could scatter, she grabbed them with her hand and threw them into the bucket.
Then she spent several minutes wiping her palm on the wet grass until it was clean.
“I think that’s enough,” Petunia looked at the worms fruitlessly trying to crawl out of the bucket, and smiled: “Today, gentlemen, you’re going to help me catch a tasty fish.
I can count on you, right?” What the worms actually thought — or whether they thought at all — about this remained unknown.
One could assume they were hardly thrilled, but…
who cares about the feelings of worms?
As she walked back to the house for her fishing rod, which was still leaning by the door, her attention was caught by the raised red flag on the mailbox.
Petunia was surprised at first.
Had Mr.
Cory decided to write her again?
But then she remembered yesterday’s experiment with the product chest and hurried over to it.
As soon as she approached, the lid of the chest swung open invitingly, revealing an empty interior, while in the mailbox she found a small cloth pouch with something pleasant jingling inside.
Dropping the bucket on the porch, Petunia ran inside, not minding that water was dripping from her coat onto the floor, forming puddles, and hastily untied the pouch’s drawstrings.
As soon as the opening widened, a coin fell onto the tabletop, then another, and another — a whole waterfall of coins.
Petunia slapped down a couple of particularly frisky circles that dared to roll off the table and swept all the coins into a pile.
At first glance, the coins were completely unfamiliar to her.
Not the usual shillings and pence, she concluded, picking up a medium-sized silver coin and examining it.
On the obverse was a hideous winged beast, and above it was an inscription reading “one sickle.” Petunia blinked and picked up another coin, smaller and copper-colored.
It was one knut.
She quickly sorted the money.
On the table in front of her lay one gold galleon, five sickles, and a whole handful of knuts.
Wizarding money, just like what her parents had received at the goblin bank when exchanging pounds before school!
Not knowing what to make of this, Petunia looked inside the pouch, hoping for an explanation.
Inside, there was indeed a note — a strip of thin tissue paper, on which, in Mr.
Cory’s already familiar handwriting, was written: “Three sickles per bundle of leek and green onion, seven sickles for fern fiddleheads.
Ten sickles as a bonus for your first sale.
Took the liberty of breaking one sickle — who knows when you might need knuts.
Keep it up.
M.K.” Too bad she had no idea about magical prices and couldn’t check whether Mr.
Cory had actually given her a “fair” price, as he’d promised.
And where was she supposed to spend these coins anyway?
Petunia pursed her lips in disapproval, but they stubbornly spread into a pleased smile.
There was something immensely satisfying about getting paid for something she’d done with her own hands — even if it was just gathered forest herbs.
She admired her first earnings for a bit, then swept the money back into the pouch and put it in her satchel.
The clock already showed it was nearly noon.
Petunia gave a start — half the day had passed, and she still hadn’t caught anything!
Grabbing her fishing rod, she dashed out of the house into the rain, not even pulling up her hood.
She decided to fish in the farm pond, the one where she got her water.
Every time she came for water, she’d noticed flexible silver bodies flashing in the depths.
The number of fish varied; maybe it wasn’t a pond but a small lake fed by an underground stream?
Either way, she still didn’t know the area well enough to try her luck elsewhere.
The home pond, as she mentally called it, seemed like the perfect place for a first fishing trip.
On the way to the pond, Petunia plucked a few large leaves from the bushes.
Laying them overlapping on top of each other, she tipped the worms onto the makeshift “plate” and rinsed the bucket, carefully splashing the dirty water to the side.
Bending over the pond, Petunia peered into the water, as her grandfather had taught her, trying to spot the slightest movement in the depths.
But in such overcast weather, when the gray sky hung low over the earth, almost brushing the tops of the tallest pines with the lower edge of the clouds, the fish were impossible to see.
But the spirits were favorable to her today, she thought, remembering the fortune teller’s advice.
Otherwise, she’d hardly have gotten such a good coat and boots from the pantry — boots that were still a little too big even with three pairs of socks.
Catching a particularly lively worm that had already half-crawled off the leaf plate, Petunia threaded it onto the hook.
It didn’t work on the first try, of course, but this was apparently like riding a bike — once you learned, you never forgot.
After five attempts and two worms, she finally managed to neatly impale the third on the hook and, with a swing, cast the line far out into the pond.
And began to wait.
The rain fell, running down her hood and the skirts of her coat, drumming on the leaves, drawing endless circles on the water.
The bright red-and-white bobber swayed on the waves about halfway across the pond.
Petunia looked both at it and past it, falling into that meditative state familiar to every fisherman.
In that state, you seemed to stop being yourself and became everything around you: the water, the wind, the bamboo rod in your hand, the thin fishing line.
An experienced fisherman went unnoticed not only by fish but sometimes even by wild animals, or even people.
When Petunia was little, her grandfather had taken her fishing for the first time.
Honestly, she hadn’t been very interested in fishing.
While her grandfather, having cast his line, sat on a stool on the riverbank, Petunia picked flowers and pretty stones.
And at one point, turning away to admire a ladybug crawling along a blade of grass, she turned back to the shore — and couldn’t see any trace of her grandfather anywhere.
He’d been sitting right there, not taking his eyes off the bobber, and now he was gone.
Scared to death, she started crying.
With a loud splash, the fish came off the hook, and her grandfather, pulling out the empty line with annoyance, began to comfort Petunia.
Then he explained to her that it was just a special kind of fisherman’s magic.
Everyone who was good at fishing could do it.
And she, Petunia, would learn too.
But she never could manage it.
Sometimes a pretty butterfly would distract her, sometimes someone on a passing boat would shout something cheerful, sometimes her own thoughts wouldn’t give her peace.
Then…
then her grandfather died, Lily turned out to be a real witch, and Petunia never picked up a fishing rod again.
Because her sister said there was no such thing as fisherman’s magic — she’d read all about it in her textbooks!