“Oh!” Petunia was surprised and nearly dropped the fishing rod.
Catching herself, she grabbed the handle more firmly and started cranking the reel as fast as she could, winding in the line.
For several minutes she felt desperate resistance on the other end, then a sharp jerk, and after that the line came in easily.
“It got away,” she stated and kept reeling.
There was a hint of disappointment — such a quick bite, and she, scatterbrain that she was, had missed it.
But there was plenty of time ahead, and a pile of worms lay nearby on some leaves, so Petunia looked at the future with enthusiasm.
Tonight there would be fish barbecue for dinner!
She’d boil broth from the head and bones.
And the guts could go toward fertilizer.
The empty hook flew out of the water.
The bait had been licked clean, not a trace left.
Petunia clamped the rod between her thighs, caught the hook, baited it with another worm, and cast again.
The bobber bobbed on the pond’s surface.
The ripples the rain made on the water created the illusion of a bite.
Petunia tried with all seriousness to concentrate on the bobber’s movements, but her thoughts kept drifting back to all the fish recipes she knew, and she tried to figure out which ones she could adapt to her semi-civilized life.
When the hook jerked again, she didn’t react in time, and the fish got away a second time.
Petunia clicked her tongue in annoyance, repeated the maneuver, and stared intently at the bobber, focusing all her attention on it.
The way mediums on television stare down spoons and keys to make them stick to their bodies.
She wondered what kind of fish lived in this pond.
It wasn’t a large pond, but the water was clean, with only a few aquatic plants along the bank and no duckweed at all.
On a sunny day you could see the bottom with a sparse growth of algae and little fish flickering among the underwater greenery.
Petunia had noticed small, silvery fish a couple of times.
Maybe they were crucian carp?
Or roach?
She’d eaten both pretty often when she lived with her parents, and her tongue immediately remembered the taste.
Thinking now about this and that, now remembering she needed to stay alert, Petunia stood there for quite a long time.
Her hands got cold.
The rod, which should have been light, grew heavier and heavier by the minute, threatening to become completely unmanageable.
On top of that, the wind and rain picked up, and though her cloak and boots reliably protected her from the water, they couldn’t protect her from the cold.
And the fish still weren’t biting.
Petunia bit her lip stubbornly and stared at the bobber, barely even blinking.
She was honest with herself.
If this were just fishing for fun, she’d have already dropped everything and gone home to the warmth of the hearth.
But in her situation, even the smallest fish was a supplement to her diet — which was quite — and that was putting it mildly!
— monotonous.
The bobber jerked again.
But since Petunia was on alert, she immediately started cranking the reel and pulling the rod toward herself.
The other side wasn’t about to give in either, and for several minutes they fought — the girl and the fish — to see who would win.
At one point Petunia even caught a glimpse of yellowish scales flashing in the roiled water, and she had already begun to feel joy when a sharp jerk from the other side left her empty-handed again.
“I’ll catch you anyway, you menace!” she promised with feeling and shook her fist at the unseen fish.
“I’ll catch you, gut you, fry you, and eat you!
Or boil you!” It was now a matter of honor, not just a question of a varied dinner.
Petunia picked the fattest worm with care, baited the hook, said a short prayer under her breath, and cast again.
Then she settled in to wait.
Time passed.
The sun, which had never once peeked through the thick clouds, was surely already rolling toward the horizon.
She could only tell indirectly, by how dark it was getting around her.
On top of that, the rain intensified, and the wind, which had changed direction, began generously pouring water under the edges of Petunia’s hood.
It got cold all at once.
A cold droplet crept down her spine, making her want to drop the rod, wrap her arms around herself, and run for the house, but Petunia just bit her lip stubbornly and stayed put.
The thought flickered that she could at least have brought a stool from the house.
She pulled herself up short again — she’d started thinking about nonsense unrelated to fishing — and just in time.
The bobber twitched slightly differently than before, when the waves and wind were tossing it side to side, and Petunia reflexively gripped the damp rod handle tighter.
There it was!
The moment she tensed her fingers, the rod jerked in her hands as if she’d hooked a wild mustang, no less.
Petunia couldn’t even reel in the line because she was afraid she couldn’t hold on with one hand, and she was just trying to keep her footing on the muddy bank.
Without letting go of the rod, she slowly backed up toward the trees, her boots slipping on the wet ground, and each jerk of the rod threatened to topple her into the water.
A sharp gust of wind lashed rain straight into her face, making her squeeze her eyes shut and cough from inhaling a little water.
A fleeting pain burned in her lungs, and her ears caught solemn chanting in an unfamiliar language…
Petunia shook her head, shaking both the water droplets from her face and her hood.
Blinking rapidly, through the raindrops caught in her lashes, she focused on the bobber, which had nearly sunk beneath the surface.
The invisible line trembled with tension, and the bamboo rod crackled.
Petunia suddenly got scared the rod would break, leaving her not just without fish, but without fishing altogether.
For a moment, the fingers gripping the rod lost their hold, and the fish, sensing the slack, lunged with renewed strength; the rod handle slipped through her wet palms, but at the very last moment Petunia grabbed it tight and fell to her knees, losing her balance.
Her fall was caused by the fish’s last attempt at freedom.
The frantic jerking stopped, though tension remained in the line, but it no longer thrashed from side to side.
Petunia sat back on her heels, stuck the rod into the ground between her knees, and, wiping her hands alternately on the dry parts of her pants, began hauling in her catch.
The line came in heavily, even though the fish was barely resisting.
It was just that Petunia was so exhausted that the little fish she’d barely managed to catch seemed like a huge catfish.
But she gritted her teeth stubbornly and kept cranking the reel.
Soon the rain-stirred water was broken by a fish body that leaped out and landed on the grass.
“Oh my…” was all she said.
The crafty fish, sensing the line had gone slack, began flopping toward the pond across the wet grass.
Petunia dropped the rod, grabbed the bucket, and, getting the hang of it, covered the fish from above like a sandcastle mold.
Only then did she catch her breath.
And realized she was completely dirty and wet, despite the cloak and waders.
That her knees, scraped in the fall, were aching, and her back was threatening to fall off after hours on her feet.
The fish, covered by the bucket, was still thrashing, hitting the metal sides, but growing weaker with each blow.
When it grew still, Petunia turned the bucket over and examined her catch.
It was a carp — she recognized it immediately because she’d often seen them in the fish shop.
Only the carp in the shop were small, about a foot and a half long, with dull, tiny scales.
But in the bucket, barely fitting, lay a king among carp — nearly three feet and correspondingly heavy; no wonder it had been so hard to pull in!
The color of its scales in the twilight seemed yellowish, and each scale was round and shiny, no smaller than a sickle.
“The spirits really are favorable today,” Petunia repeated and added to herself that they were selectively favorable.
Catching two or three small fish would have been plenty for her, instead of wasting the whole day on this giant.
She was so tired she probably couldn’t cook it right now.
How she didn’t want to go to bed on an empty stomach…
She crawled to the pond, scooped some water into the bucket with her hands, and then stood up heavily, grabbing the nearest tree.
Her body felt heavy and sluggish.
The attempt to pick up the rod nearly cost her another fall, but somehow she stayed on her feet.
The bucket was heavier than she’d thought — thirty kilos, at least — and brutally dragged on her already tired arms as Petunia slowly trudged home, not even thinking about how she managed to avoid the trees in near darkness.
All her thoughts now were on a hot bath!
To scrub herself clean and lie in clean, pleasantly scented water, enjoying the fatigue and cold leaving her body.
These dreams were clouded by only one thing: to take a bath, she’d have to make another four or five trips to the pond with the bucket to fill the tub.
And wait for the water to heat up.
And, of course, she had nothing to add for a nice scent.
She should probably look for flowers…
The sight of the little house with its cheerfully lit window gave her strength.
Petunia hobbled to the porch, threw off her cloak, hung it on a nail by the door, set her boots beneath it, and hurried inside, into the warmth.
And her first move was to rush to the fire, sit on the floor beside it, and hold her frozen hands close.
The flame flickered questioningly.
“I caught a fiiiiish this big,” Petunia couldn’t deny herself the pleasure of showing the size, even if it came out a bit larger than reality.
“Can you imagine?” The flame flickered, as if it could imagine perfectly and was proud of her.
“But now everything hurts,” Petunia complained.
She wrapped her arms around her knees and yelped when she accidentally touched the scrapes.
“My legs hurt, my back hurts, my arms hurt.
I’m soaking wet, frozen through, and covered in mud on top of it all!
And I touched worms with my bare hands!” The flame crackled something soothingly mocking.
Like, don’t cry, you’re a big girl now.
But look what a good job you did.
“Easy for you to say,” she continued.
Between the warmth and the exhaustion, she’d grown drowsy, and perhaps Petunia wasn’t fully aware of who she was talking to.
It felt like someone big, strong, and reliable was listening to her.
Maybe a little prickly and sharp, but attentive and caring.
Even if not especially talkative — the important thing is being able to listen, isn’t it?
“But I still have to haul water to wash.
And I’m so tired…” she sniffled.
“And I think I’ve caught a cold on top of everything.” She swayed to the side but didn’t fall, putting out a hand to steady herself.
The hard floor beckoned — how wonderful it would be to sleep right in front of the fireplace.
It was so warm here she didn’t even need a blanket.
She could even manage without a pillow; sleeping on a hard surface was healthier…
Petunia’s head drooped, the hand propping her up relaxed, and her body began to tip sideways.
Her eyes closed as if on their own, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t pry them open.
So she didn’t see how the flame froze for a moment, swelled, opened like a blossoming flower, and from its very heart flew a tiny firefly, shining like a little star.
It circled a bit, gauging, and carefully landed on the drowsy girl’s forehead, right above the bridge of her nose.
The firefly flashed for an instant and vanished, as if it had melted away…
Petunia swayed, tipping onto her side, and startled awake.
“I almost fell asleep right on the floor,” she said, shaking her head.
She pushed off the floor with her hand and got to her feet.
Not entirely easily, but not as if she were carrying the whole vault of heaven on her shoulders like some Atlas.
She rotated her arms, did a couple of bends — the fatigue had receded, as if after a short nap.
Petunia threw a quick glance at the alarm clock, but it showed that barely fifteen or twenty minutes had passed since she’d returned from fishing.
“Some kind of miracle…” But she decided then and there to think about it tomorrow, just like the heroine of that famous book.
She transferred the fish into the biggest pot, rinsed the bucket, and in a few trips hauled enough water to fill the tub.
Because of the rain, she had to set the tub up right in the room.
Armed with the poker and the metal shovel she usually used for cleaning the fireplace, Petunia carefully pulled a large, red-hot flat stone from the hearth and dropped it into the water.
The stone sank to the bottom of the tub with a hiss, and a big cloud of steam rose from the surface.
A second stone followed the first, and Petunia waited for the water to heat up.
She thanked her habit of reading everything that had letters on it.
How else would she have learned such a strange but effective way to heat water?
She’d probably be boiling it in a pot.
While the water was heating, Petunia stripped off her dirty clothes and quickly wiped the mud from her body.
The scrapes on her knees turned out not to be serious — just the skin rubbed off, bleeding a little — and she carefully washed them with warm water and soap.
Too bad there was nothing else she could do.
She didn’t have a first-aid kit.
Well, she could pick some plantain tomorrow…