And the locals lived across the river. They lived here for a long time, at least they thought so themselves. They lived, but they clearly drew a line where they could enter without fear, and where it was better not to interfere. Therefore, if anyone wandered across the river, he returned from there with gray hair and a mass of fables, from which there were even fewer people willing to visit the forests and swamps.
The forest inhabitants only looked to outsiders as something single, monolithic, but in fact, even within this closed community, which tried not to let outsiders in, a stormy life was in full swing. Baba Yaga, after leaving the military swamps, called herself their successor, which the Walking Oaks, who had lived in these places for thousands of years and therefore considered Baba Yaga to be an alien, openly disagreed with. The forest and water inhabitants did not want change, having become accustomed to the life that had been here for centuries and therefore aggressively perceived any outside interference. The swamp spirits that settled in the local swamps lured passing locomotives with their spells of mechanical magic, and periodic damage and other witchcraft of Baba Yaga were neutralized by the manifestations of the magic of the local flora and fauna. To a large extent, the locomotives were simply lucky…
The histories that are given below just tell about the events that took place in this corner of the Poltava region, not mapped on any map, where, as you know, every second old woman is a witch, and every third cat is Bayun.
001. Like Baba Yaga, Chu-Chukhina wanted to melt the train into spoons
In one dense forest that grows somewhere near Poltava, away from the main roads, there is an old depot. Previously, it was used by the military, but then the military left and left everything as it was, taking only their locomotives and armored trains. But the civilian depots turned out to be unnecessary – they already had enough of their own. So the depot was left empty in the middle of a dense forest, fenced off from the outside world by huge trees, wide rivers and marshy swamps that stretch for tens of kilometers. At first, the depot was empty, but then, crossing three bridges as abandoned as the depot itself, wandering locomotives began to wander into it. Some moved on after spending only a short time at the depot, while others immediately liked the place and stayed to live here, and the depot became their home. But the locomotives were bored just sitting in the hangars; they loved to travel along the rails, accelerate, brake, carry cargo and passengers, and also sound their horn at the stops. Therefore, the locomotives first repaired the military telegraph, sent out telegrams to everyone asking them to send requests for transportation, and when such requests came, they gladly accepted them.
In the mornings, before leaving for business, the locomotives gathered behind the hangar, released steam and smoke into the sky, drank engine oil and told stories. Naturally, Chu-Chukhin was the most cheerful and talkative. Chu-Chukhin that morning celebrated exactly one month since he settled in the depot and treated everyone to the machine oil he had brought from the flight yesterday.
– Good is not enough! – the locomotives praised him.
– You should leave it for the evening, – others hinted that they had prepared a festive dinner.
– I’ll bring more, – Chu-Chukhin answered them and joyfully sent thoughts into the sky. “I’ll take two carloads of firewood and I’ll definitely pick it up on the way back.”
– Aren’t you afraid to ride along unknown paths? – a cat passing by, nicknamed Oil Can, asked him. The cat worked here as a mechanic, wore oiled overalls, checked the bearings of steam locomotives before setting off on a voyage, and lubricated everyone with his oil can, which is why he got his nickname.
– Yes, after the Lost Swamps, the Cemetery of Old Locomotives and Baba Yaga, I’m no longer afraid of anything! – answered Chu-Chukhin.
– Baba Yaga?! – one of the locomotives was surprised. – And who is it?
– How? – now Chu-Chukhin was also surprised. “Didn’t I tell this story?”
It turned out that no, he didn’t tell. And then, a lover of various stories, Chu-Chukhin began.
– This, I tell you, my friends, is a very interesting and educational story. This happened about a month ago, just before I got here. Then I was a traveling locomotive who sleeps on sidings, and when he’s not sleeping, he rolls wherever his eyes look, refueling with whatever comes to hand, and undergoes technical inspections from time to time, which is why I get sick often. And he doesn’t have any mechanics at all.
I was driving that day, it seems, from the direction of Poltava. I had been driving for a long time and it began to seem to me that the road was going somewhere in the wrong direction, somewhere to the side. Then I stopped, looked around, thought a little and went off the rails. The weather was beautiful, the sun warmed my sides, the breeze easily drove back the smoke escaping from the chimney. In this weather it was nice to take a walk in nature. Walk a little, and then get out on the tracks in the right place, stand on them with your wheels and move on.
I didn’t want to waste half the day making a big detour and only reaching the desired point in the evening. Judging by the map, and I always travel with a map, here it was possible to take a shortcut through the forest and in an hour reach the necessary paths, and from there it’s just a stone’s throw towards Kyiv.
From the very first minutes it began to seem to me that something was wrong with my card. I only found out later that the map of these places was drawn up by the military and, of course, they compiled it in such a way as to hide everything that they did not want to show – depots, hangars, warehouses, and military equipment that once stood here, and, Of course, the railroad diagram was also drawn incorrectly. I didn’t know about this and naturally trusted the card, which had already helped me out more than once.
I descended from the embankment, galloped through a shallow swamp, from hummock to hummock, from bush to bush, in one place I even had to wade into the swim. True, it wasn’t deep there, only half the wheel. And having passed the swamp, he got out to the edge of the forest. I somehow didn’t like the forest right away. Thick, gloomy, silent. The old trees immediately closed their crowns over my chimney, and not even a ray of light broke through their foliage. On a fine sunny day it suddenly became dark, damp and uncomfortable. I wanted to turn back, but something wouldn’t let me. I think it was some kind of witchcraft. Probably some kind of magnetic witchcraft that pulls ships aground and lures planes into air pockets.
There was talk about magnetic witchcraft, to which all metal objects, and even more so steam locomotives, were believed to be susceptible, and everyone took it seriously.
“And the further I made my way through the thickets, the more I was drawn forward,” continued Chu-Chukhin. “And the thickets were getting denser, I had already scratched all my sides, hit a tree trunk once or twice, dented the ramp guard, dented the cabin, and even began to limp on a couple of wheels. And when light began to break through behind the dark green foliage, I was happy and ran faster, not even paying attention to the fact that it was squelching under the wheels, and with every meter I began to plunge deeper and deeper into the dirty swampy water.
And then, up to my very axis in the water, I got out of the forest, and there, on one of the hills, an old woman stood and picked berries. I don’t know what kind of berries they were, but there was almost a basket full of them. The old woman was thin, hunched over, with a large nose and hooked long arms, and from under her burgundy scarf a strand of ashy gray hair was sticking out.
The old woman straightened up slightly, looked in my direction and spread her arms:
– Oh, how did you get here, my dear?! – she shouted. – You can’t come here.
– It is forbidden! It is forbidden! – her two cats shouted. One was black as night, the second was probably once white, but he lived for a long time in the forest and in the swamps and therefore got pretty dirty. I somehow didn’t