This chest was always with her, she did not tell anyone about it. The lizards regularly served the Lady of the Subsurface, food was brought from the ground too. She looked at the gems from the chest, but for a long time the chest could not be opened, the soul did not allow. The lizards did not advise her to keep the chest open.
After some time, a peasant wandered into the mountains to the lady of Nedra, who found her in the snow and took him to his house in the snow. I liked the peasant Lady Nedr. She clouded his thoughts and let go with God. At parting, she put a yellow stone in the peasant’s hand, a gem of unprecedented beauty, unheard of.
A peasant rose to the ground, lay down on a grass-ants, lay for a long time, could not remember anything, but he felt that the heroes came to him. A man jumped to his feet and, well, he ran towards the village. Where he was, where he found the stone – the man did not remember.
He remembered that he was wandering in the mountain caves, saw the light, went to him, and then everything seemed to disappear – and woke up with a stone in his hand. The stone is beautiful and shining, the sun is bright. The man decided about the fact that he does not remember, people do not speak, they say, he found a semi-precious stone, that’s all.
The Brown-eyed Khan could not calm down, that two chests with gems in the mountains remained, he sent his people after them, but the people returned without chests. People did not find Khan’s chests, did not allow them to find their way. The Lady of Nedur kept her chest with stones well. Finding her or her chest was impossible. The chest under the stones was the same, but something in it was superfluous.
Strange things were going on in that dungeon. The beasts that lived nearby died early and a strange death. From the trunk of the ladies of the Subsoil, goodness and health went, but from the buried trunk, the power was evil and people at that time were incomprehensible. None of the people knew and did not know about that chest. But people felt that the place where the chest was buried was not dug there, but they found different bodies of beasts. The people themselves in this damned place tried not to happen, but rumors were coming.
When Khan’s servants collected gems, one little man threw a pebble into that chest not semiprecious, but strange, which he wore in his clothes. The little man was a healthy man until he found this pebble.
He could not throw a pebble just on the ground, he wore it with him for a long time, and found it far from the mountains, when with the army of the Khan he walked along a strange steppe, in the Steppe country, where the locals sang songs and cumbersome.
In those steppes there was one enchanted place, the locals were afraid to go there.
One inhabitant of the steppes dug the land there and died soon, and no one understood why. Strong man was. The birds, the animals died there, their corpses decayed, and the crows did not touch their meat.
“Very bad place,” the residents said about him.
Unexpectedly for Catherine, her journey came to an end. Next to her was the owner of the Copper Triangle – Afanasy Afanasyevich. They came out of the cave of the Lady of Nedra, where a flying saucer and Theophan were waiting for them.
– Katerina, so why did one chest bring a lot of grief, and the other brought a lot of health? You now know the answer to this question.
She strained her convolutions and replied:
– In the second chest lay a radioactive stone.
– Right. You will follow his fate in the next flight, and now jump to your heel shoe.
Katerina came down the rope ladder from the flying saucer to the tiled courtyard. Her foot went into a forgotten shoe. She raised her leg. The foot rose with the shoe. Everything was OK. Students left the building. They surrounded Katerina. They looked at her admiringly.
– What’s the matter? – Catherine was surprised.
– Katerina, you are our hero. The country is proud of your sapphire flight.
And here a miracle happened.
Katerina was pushed into the past, which was with her ancestors in the house of the woman Tanya. Katerina could not move quickly from the past to the present, she was slowly sliding along virtual time.
Katerina was invited to the Marble Palace as the Queen’s maid of honor for a completely different reason. For her time, she was perfectly educated, had amazing beauty, pleasant in all respects – all of these factors became components of the reasons why she appeared in the Marble Palace. Queen maids of honor were most often girls from ancient Slavic clans.
At the responsible royal receptions, all the maid of honor should have been present and depict the crowd, through which the royal couple passed. Against the backdrop of beautiful maid of honor, the importance of the queen increased dramatically. Ambassadors stare at the maid of honor, and this played a positive role in business negotiations – they became more generous and accommodating.
Katerina came satin shoe on the edge of the dress.
– Oh, I almost spoiled the dress, and today is the reception in the palace! – she exclaimed.
Another reception in the Marble Palace was prepared fascinating: the ambassadors were entertained by an auction at which they sold new jewelry. The queen played with the ambassadors in the giveaway, and the ambassadors received gifts for nothing.
An ambassador liked so much the maid of honor of Queen Katerina, a gray-eyed, stately beauty that he gave her a yellow sapphire. Sapphire was fixed in a gold openwork disk, and the rim in its contour was in contact with a round straw box and held tightly in the box, as if someone had hidden the sun in the box.
“Sapphire” The Straw Widow, “said Ambassador Catherine. For security reasons, he decided not to accept the gift of the queen, or his premonition of danger was well developed.
Katerina put the casket with sapphire in the table secretary and locked it.
There was a knock at the door:
– Katerina, Katerina, open the door!
– Mr. Ambassador, I’m already sleeping.
– Sleep with me!
– Not! Not!
– Katerina, I will tell the queen that you are against peace between our countries!
– The Lord is with you, Mr. Ambassador!
The ambassador is gone. Soon came with the queen.
– Katerina, my mother, why do not you listen to Mr. Ambassador? – shouted through the queen’s door.
“Mother Queen, he demands love.”
– Katerina, open the door! Take peace between our countries for your soul!
The queen is gone. Katerina opened the door. Ambassador rushed into the room.
– Katerina, you are lovely! I am yours, my soul!
The ambassador, a thin man, somewhat thinner than the beautiful Katerina, was already dropping ball gowns. Katerina slowly took off her dress. The room was a wide and strong bed. Only now she realized all her mission in the palace. She was taken care of for a long time. But the ambassador was important. The maid of honor screamed, jumped up and ran out of the room.
Sometimes it seemed to Catherine that the moonlight was coming from the secretary. Especially he was clearly visible on winter nights. The light of a sapphire did not frighten her, there was some mystery in it. She lit candles in the candelabra and wrote poems under the glow of sapphire. At such moments, she opened the box and enjoyed the beauty of the stone – and fell asleep with strange fatigue.
Svetlitsa windows facing the embankment of the river. The view from the window was wonderful: the waves were splashing on the granite