Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [15]
Wonderingly, he followed the tiny rivulet: it led him for fifty yards through the greenery until he reached a pair of low rocks with a hazel bush growing in the crevice between them. There he paused. He touched the rocks: they were warm, almost hot. He felt suddenly thirsty, hesitated for a moment to drink from the magical stream, and then, his thirst overcoming him, knelt on the grass and scooped up the crystal water with his hands. How sweet it tasted, how fresh.
Then, to get a better view of where he was, he began to scramble on to one of the rocks. There was a ledge just above him. He raised his hand overhead, cast about for something to grasp.
And felt his hand close upon a snake.
He himself could not have said how, a second later, he came to be ten feet away from the rock, trembling from head to foot. His head made tiny, convulsive movements, jerking this way and that, as he looked at the trees, the stream, the rocks, for signs of the snakes that might be about to strike him. A stalk of grass brushed his foot, and he jumped into the air.
But the snake on the rock had not moved. He could see the end of its tail lying along the edge. For two long minutes he waited, still trembling. Nothing on the ground stirred, though high above a buzzard, wings stiff and still, swept noiselessly over the scene.
Slowly, his curiosity overcoming even his terror, the little boy crept forward again.
The snake was dead. It lay in a twisted mass on the broad ledge. Fully extended, it would have been two, perhaps three times as long as he was. Its head had been split open and gouged: he wondered how – by an eagle perhaps? He could see that it was a viper – there were several varieties in the region – and although it was dead, he could not help shuddering as he looked at it.
Yet even as he looked, he realized something else: something that, despite his fear, made him tremble less and even smile. Yes, indeed, this was the magic kingdom. The snake lay under the shadow of a bush that grew in the crevice between the two rocks. And it was a hazel bush.
‘So now I’ll be able to find my bear,’ he said aloud.
For the dead snake could give him one of the greatest secrets in the world – the secret of the magic language.
The magic language: it was silent. All the trees and plants spoke it, so even did stones and streams; animals too, sometimes. And you could obtain the secret in several ways – no less an authority than his grandmother herself had told him. ‘There are four ways to discover the secret language, Little Kiy. If you save a snake from the fire, or a fish from being caught, they may give it to you. Or second, if you find fern seed in the forest at midnight on Midsummer’s Eve; or third, if you find a frog when you’re ploughing and put it in your mouth. Or lastly, if you find a dead snake under a hazel bush, you must bake it and eat its heart.’
If I could speak to the trees and the animals, they’d soon tell me where my bear cub is, he thought. And he gazed at the fearsome snake with satisfaction. Only one big problem remained though: how to bake it? For there was no fire. Perhaps, he considered, I could take it back to the village.
He did not take his eyes off the snake. It lay only a few feet away and it had not been dead for long. Except for its torn head, it looked as if it might come back to life at any moment, and as he felt the heat of the rock through