Classics fantasy – 9

And infinite crowds of the people do not disperse yet. Watch that will be farther with Volga. Wait for extraordinary. But Volga as if tries human patience. Its level increases almost imperceptibly for eyes.

Go to look at the river below a dam. There it is more interesting. Water quickly falls down.

– Shallows! In the eyes dries out!. – the uneasy, cheerful voice is heard. The crowd of curious hurries there.

Yes, Volga shallows. From under water sandy islands – tops of “cans”, rifts are shown. Here and bottom. Sand, silt layers, the sunk anchors acquired a mold the dark remains of once sunk fishing vessels and barques… The nose of the fishing boat semi-brought by sand with the broken sail sticks out. River cemetery. Volga reveals the underwater secrets.

Several unlucky fishes who were not in time to go in time with water down fight at a sandy bottom, sparkling scales silver in the spring sun.

– Look! Som! – the same cheerful voice shouts. – Усища! Usishcha!

– And it is right. Got, smart guy! Well and som! Poods on six. Drag on catering establishment!

The huge moustached som remained in the hole filled with water. Fights. Tychet in sand a stupid snout, vzmetat a tail dirty splashes.

And the crowd discusses the plan how to get a catfish.

– And well, children, for me, by the sea, a yak on dry land! – with desperate cheerfulness the young guy shouts and tries to reach som. But legs stick in damp silt. Having waved hopelessly a hand, the guy gets out on the coast.

– Here and itself you will be gone together with som!

– To put boards! – someone offers.

Till the night crowded curious on river banks.

The barrage did the part. By the night Volga began to fill in the left coast slowly. Its plentiful waters went to offensive at the desert, to extinguish the fire of the earth.

11

Matvei on the steppe on a dun horse goes, sings the song. Dun as if listened with delight, trudges a short step and ears spins.

– And well, select legs, Koska-a more cheerfully! – Matvei shouts and continues the song.

To Volga Matvei goes behind goods for collective-farm cooperative. Time spring is expensive, here and left at night that by the morning to return.

Koska again ears spins and a tail twists. Or the song is not pleasant? It is possible another. But the horse does not calm down. Forward extended the head, air smells, sniffs. Even shivers as though. What for the reason? Scented an animal? But what here an animal in the steppe? One gophers.

Stop! There was Koska as driven prt back, sniffs. Opportunity! Matvei on the cart stood up and suddenly sees… and to the eyes does not trust.

very far in the steppe by the light of a month water is silvered by a wide strip. Volga? Yes also halfway did not pass! Perhaps seemed?

– But, went! – There is no horse. The back moves back.

And the silvery strip on the horizon is poured by blue light, grows, spreads. River not the river, lake not the lake. And suddenly dawned on a thought: Volga moved.

Spoke about it to Matvei, warned, but not really he worried: “Until Volga reaches us, twenty times will manage to return!” And here was not in time, took.

Matvei pulled reins, turned the cart back. Koska as if only also waited for it. From where and the speed undertook! Jumps – it is not necessary to adjust.

And water follows them, quietly so as if effortlessly, fills in yes fills in steppe open spaces.

And suddenly water at first on back wheels, then on lobbies rustled, filled in legs of a horse and swept forward, dimming the steppe. Matvei looked at the earth – in water month is reflected.

– Take out, Koska! – Matvei shouts.

And Koska to the course reduced at once: sticks in dirt.

Koska hardly touches legs. Splashed still a bit on water and became. The cart got stuck in fat steppe dirt. You will not get out… To descend, perhaps, in ice cold water yes to help a horse?

Well water is also cold! And there is nothing to do. Matvei Bultykhnutsya, began to pull the cart, urges on a horse…

12

And waters go further and further.

Here they found the bed of the dried-up small river and, squeezed by coast, began to flow quicker. They draw the new map of the region with new lakes, gulfs, the rivers.

Collective farmers of the Dry Dale since midnight are on duty near new huts on the high hill. On radio the message was already carried: there is water! Where there was a waterless steppe, the river will begin to flow.

The children who got up on roofs, uvidal the first.

– Water! To Ida-from!.

At beams of a rising sun the melted gold water flowed, filling in the old river bed left, perhaps, one thousand years ago.

– Trophîme! Drag network! Fish on a visit all right!

– Our dry Dale of a teperich wet leaves!

– Ded Panas! It is advisable to remain to you in an old hut! There would be you the grandfather water now and fish would order!

Panas shchurit old eyes from light, smiles. And suddenly new shout from a roof:

– Steamship all right!

It with anything not in conformity! All heads turned on the West. There among a water smooth surface some black point which was slowly coming moved.

– What steamship! It is the boat!

– The devil on a devil, really!

At last the black point came nearer; the person astride a horse goes.

Tired, all wet, approached Matvei who abandoned the cart into steppes.

13

The new river, still anonymous, flows on the East, moistening air and the earth. It came here, to the adust steppe to extinguish the fire of the earth. Felt the way, carefully as blind, groping all roughnesses of the soil, filling in holes, sometimes branching off aside, and suddenly – stop! Came across, blind, a wall. Stood a bit and turned on the South, having changed the way planned by it the old course.