In Memory of my friend Maxim Popov

Yury Zachek

THE MAGIC CAVE

A Fairy Tale

For all those who seek.

PART I

Chapter 1. Loss

By a dark, unfriendly river lived a lonely, sorrowful Hedgehog. He was grim and reclusive, a hermit who dwelled all alone in a small house on the edge of the village and spoke to no one. The other animals in the village thought him a grumpy oddball and preferred to stay out of his way.

For instance, if the kittens or puppies, while playing ball, accidentally tossed it over his fence, the Hedgehog would get irritated, stomp his feet, grumble angrily, and, after puncturing the ball with his sharp quills, throw back nothing but a deflated shell. Because of this, the villagers steered clear of his home.

And so the years passed. The path to his house became overgrown with weeds, the fence leaned and turned mossy, and the gate rusted shut. The Hedgehog was completely forgotten.

No one knew that, in truth, the Hedgehog was deeply unhappy and terribly lonely. His parents had abandoned him when he was just a child, and from that moment on, he had been alone. Deep down, he dreamed of having friends and a family, but he didn’t believe it was possible. He didn’t love himself—he was ashamed of his quills and thought life had treated him unfairly. He would often gaze into the river’s reflection for a long time, and what he saw always saddened him.

“Why, oh why do I look so awful?” he would think. “Why these terrible spikes? How did I end up being born like this? No other animal has such unpleasant, ugly, inconvenient quills. No one will ever want to be friends with me, and no one—ever—could love a prickly freak like me. Even my parents left me. Everything I touch gets hurt. I can’t even play ball with the children—my quills just pop it. Poor, miserable me… Why, why did life curse me like this?”

The years went by, and the loneliness only deepened. He grew to despise his life more and more, until eventually he began to hate himself entirely. He fell into a deep, dark depression. He even stopped eating and, in turn, grew very weak. The hardest moments were the nights, when he tossed and turned in bed, unable to sleep, listening to the eerie rustles and cries of the night birds, sobbing silently from despair.

One such night, as the rain poured in sheets and a May thunderstorm raged overhead, the Hedgehog felt more hopeless than ever. Читать далее «Yury Zachek. The Magic Cave. Fairy Tale»