In many years I arrived to the village where I was born. I was so worried! I went by familiar road, by which visited the grandmother and grandfather. When we moved to live in other place often I walked to them for about eleven kilometers. Oh, how much I thought while was going by this road! And again I go here.

I remembered that always stopped in one village to drink water and take a rest. There, in one house, lived a boy who fancied me very much. He always felt my approach and ran out towards me. His eyes shone as two sparkles, and I was becoming joyful. He was bringing me out cucumbers, salt and bread.

We sat, ate the bread with cucumbers and were silent. His silence was more eloquent than any words. I knew that he loves me. But my heart was occupied by another boy. I very much tried to show that I too love him, but in a different way. He understood it and therefore we fiercely ate cucumbers and talked.

When softly and gently I bit off a cucumber, he read my sign of friendship. I gave the cucumber to him, he desperately bit it, and the crunch of cucumber spoke to me: "But I love you more, than a friend!"

Then I repeated, having gently bitten the cucumber: "Forgive, but I can't love you as you - me". He was taking the cucumber and inertly bit it, and I understood - he is afflicted and upset, he doesn't want to live. Then I again bit the cucumber, and in silence sounded: "Forgive me, I can do nothing. But you shouldn't be afflicted. Surely somebody will fall in love with you. And I will eternally love you, as a sister.

He didn't want to bite any more, and I would silently rise and leave further. "Why is God so unfair to us? Why he loves me, and I love another?" This question tormented. I didn't find an answer. Only I felt that God is, in many respects, not right. He is unfair.

Since then I don't like to eat cucumbers with somebody.

Also I remembered that after the boy in the sailor's form left, I was on friendly terms with my cousin brother Valera, and for some reason everyone teased him baystryuk. But he was very nice, and we went to the river together, and he taught me to catch fish. That was so good with him, he never disturbed my dreams.

We almost didn't talk, only silently sat with our rods, and everyone thought of his own. But between us there was some hidden thread, it tickled very gently and spread a distinguished sweet languor over the backbone. He felt the same.

We were silent because only his and mine presence at the river changed all paints and colors. Everything became bright, distinct and shining. Every moment flew as a firebird and was alive. I felt myself as a blue sky, and he was - a sun, and our feelings were - clouds and wind. It can't be seen, it can only be felt. Pleasure - that's how it called! And we enjoyed by each other.

Then I learned that he was teased baystryuk because my aunt gave birth to him not from the husband, but from a beloved man. The husband forgave her. But residents of the village didn't forgive. The aunt Tanya was very hardworking person, but often rowed. She didn't like idlers and maybe like that she was protecting herself from people.

After the death of my father, in some years, the aunt Tanya also died. After her her husband also gone. Let all of them be good in another world.

And the road leads me further. Why in the childhood I and all our relatives was called "kajukas"? What did it mean?

A family - a mother and a daughter were our neighbors. All their house was covered with icons. Everybody, except my grandmother, laughed at them. The mother was called Hadosya, and the daughter - Masha. Very kind women. Always treated me with something tasty. Masha didn't marry, she was about forty. She only worked and prayed all the time.

My memoirs broke... A bus approached and stopped. I asked where it goes. It was going there where I needed, in Mytnichi! I decided to travel on it and entered. The full bus of people, and near me there is a little fragile woman. I hear that she talks about a church's celebration, so she goes from a church. By her look, she is about seventy. Some feeling prompts to me that she is Masha. I ask: "Please tell, you are not Masha?" - "Yes, Masha. And who are you, child?" Tears on my eyes: "Aunt Masha, I am Maria, your neigbour, Avdey and Tatyana's daughter". Masha looks at me with kind tender eyes: "My God, Jesus, you are the granddaughter of the grandfather Kajuka! Manechka!" - and the aunt Masha burst into tears. Happy, she conducts me to her home.

And there the same hut, only lop-sided. And the same icons. And it is same clean in the house. We sat and recalled, and recalled. I felt such a tenderness to this wonderful, painfully simple person that I wanted to burst out crying at the top of my voice. "How is that?! More than thirty years has passed? And she still lives in the same poverty?! But she is a saint!"

And I wanted to fall to her feet and to apologize that she is, such poor, sits here and prays about us that we lived well. And at that moment I understood that, thanks to the heart of this old woman, THE PEOPLE LIVE ON EARTH AND WE ARE SAVED AND RESCUED BY HER PRAYERS.

Why I didn't understand it earlier?! Why?! Why never I remembered the aunt Masha, Hadosya? I looked for God, kindness, love anywhere, and he was near me - in my grandmother, in these kind people. Whom did I served all my life? Why not them? Why - some others? Why my life brought me so far from my village, from these kind people in a strange town? And where is Hadosya?

It appeared that Hadosya already died, there was only the aunt Masha. And what good did I do for them? NOTHING! And I pledged that I will remember these people and surely I dream for them something nice.

After all, if I revive them in my memory they can get alive. And for the aunt Masha I imagined that she becomes young, beautiful, and finds herself a big love, marries, and gives birth to many children. After I started to dream that all together - my grandmother, Hadosya, and the aunt Masha - we travel around the world on my ship with a scarlet sails, and I show them some different countries, buy beautiful things, and treat with sweets.

Dear friend, be not surprised, nothing changed in me since that children's time. I still like to imagine. And suddenly... I saw faces of the dead, - only very young and happy. This is an honest truth.

I was lost in day dreams, and the aunt Masha suddenly told: "We will go, look at the place where was your house and the garden. You loved one cherry, it is alive". "How does she knows it about cherry?" - the thought flashed.

And here I stand where my house was. It is so interesting! There where two windows to the garden were - now two huge bushes of lilac grow, instead of the stove - a huge rosebush, real pink tree, and at the entrance to the house - grows a huge elm. What an amazing house of my childhood, house of my birth.

And the cherry? Where is she? I'll find her with closed eyes. "You are here, my darling. You remember how I liked to pick your stiffened tears, which became a fragrant and transparent pitch and chew them? You remember my dreams. My God, you became such old. But there is a force in you and desire to live!". "She doesn't give berries any more, but doesn't die, Look, Manechka, lives. All trees here are gone, and it... lives! I didn't cut it. I would look at the cherry and remember of you, Manechka and pray for you and your grandmother, Eudoxia, let the earth be as down for her. Very kind your grandmother was. And Kajuka so ferocious, oh so ferocious was". – "Aunt Masha, but why he was named Kajuka? And for me this nickname is also got pasted".

Masha revealed a secret, with which I struggled for many years. It appears, the grandfather with a huge severity scolded the warded collective farmers and always began the speech so: "I will tell you..." ("Kaju-ka...") - and further there was a tirade from which each collective farmer had a frost going over his back, and people after these speeches couldn't sleep peacefully. So they began to call him "Kajuka".

Imperceptibly the day has passed, and I began to say goodbye to the aunt Masha. I needed to pass by all roads, on which my children's foot went. Masha began to fuss and told: "Manechka, after all, you wander around the earth. Come on, take". And she got out from a small knot some greased hundreds. I froze. "I don't have any more". – "What are you doing, aunt Masha! It isn't necessary!"

But she looked at me in such way that I took this money and store them, as a biggest shrine. After all, THEY WERE LAST AND AND FROM THE PURE HEART. She didn't understand if it's a lot or a little. After all, she never had these money!!! Probably someone gave her, and she kept them and gave me. Never I tested such feelings - a pleasure and grief, and pride for people, an inutility and a selectness at the same time I felt at this moment.

Dear, lovely, surprising Russian woman that's YOU SHOWS GOD ON EARTH! It's his hand stretched me out this money! From excitement I nearly fainted. I collected all will in my fist, hid the feelings, quickly said goodbye and almost ran out from the house. I thought if a second more I will stay here - I will choke, die. I didn't feel feet. I didn't go, but flew over the earth.

What a violent vegetation as though I go not in the native village, but in a rainforest. I saw a poplar road conducting to the neighboring village there where the brother of my father Ivan has lived.

I marveled - to clasp one poplar would be necessary at least five people! And their height! From the tops they go directly in the sky. What became with my village?

Also I remembered... sad and tragic. When the Chernobyl's APS blew up, a highest dose of radiation dropped out on this area, therefore also such a huge vegetation is here. I was told that they suggested to everyone to move, but my cousin grandmother who is around ninety, told: "But who will go and where if nobody saw this radiation?" And everybody stayed.

Imperceptibly I got to Mokhonovka, and my other grandmother is still living. Thin as a fuzz, bright and smiling old woman in a white kerchief nestled to my heart. "Oh, you are just dug-out Maria!" Maria was the father's sister who died in the blockade of Leningrad. She fell in love with one seaman and escaped with him from the house. And here the war has burst out. She perished in Leningrad without trace.

I tell the grandmother about a new era in which people will live till 1000 years. "Thanks, granddaughter. But some try to frighten us by radiation." – "Grandma, but to live till 1000 you should stop eating meat." - I am an advocate of vegetarianism for many years.

And the grandma tells: "Child, I already for twenty years don't eat any meat because there are no teeth. And it is good to live, oh how it is good! And I regoch and regoch" (on the local dialect means - I laugh).

And actually all the time while we talked, she radiated some wonderful laughter. There are sparks in her eyes, and it is cheerful and easy to be near her.

Then she went to see me off, she was going with such prompt step that I was hardly managing after her. "Here is your radiation!"

Apparently the radiation did the grandmother good. We said goodbye, and the grandma told mysteriously: "See, there a gup... They fenced it and told us not to go - radiation! But... It's no one there. And that is so silent there and nice. Good!" - She winked and rocked with laughter.

I regarded it so: she incited me to go there. Okey then, I will. If the grandma went and now always laughs, maybe this place will help me also become cheerful. And I went.

I enter quietly, almost without breathing. There is unbelievable silence, and some huge trees. Never I saw such big trees. Just in case I greeted and I asked don't know whom: "Can I enter?"

I stand, don't breathe and wait. And suddenly... something unfamiliar, very big and kind touched my body and got into the brain. I thought: "Perhaps seems?" But no - the feeling amplified, and I began to cry of not clear happiness, from contact with an unknown world.

This world appeared on my earth after the explosion in Chernobyl. It leads his own life, feels and somehow interacts with our terrestrial world. And it studies me. At that moment I knew for sure that it won't do me any harm, and I will try not to harm it.

So we met and made friends. It entered me, and I - it, as in a soft cotton wool. Also I thought: "Perhaps people shouldn't be afraid of radiation? Probably, it is simply another reality, which also not pleased to be on our earth. After all, we caused it without having asked its consent. And if so happened, maybe we shouldn't protect from it, but - try to make friends. It can teach us to something. But if not the grandma, maybe I didn't feel anything? The grandmother doesn't know fear, probably it was also transferred to me?"

Hello, fairy-tail reality! Hi, everything! I came from the world of big lights, roar of cars, noise of large cities to YOUR SILENCE, TO MY CHILDHOOD!

                I RETURNED FOREVER!