SHELTER RE-POST

SHELTER

     I am looking out of the window at my boys chopping wood in front of the house. At least, that is what they are supposed to do! Dular is chasing the goat across the yard and Amur, his elder brother who should be more mature, is rolling in the grass, laughing at his younger sibling's antics.

     Two ordinary boys. One - 10, another - 12 years old. I never noticed anything different about them, except, may be, unusual kindness and an ability to elicit kindness from anyone: human or animal alike. 

     Yes, I read it in the diaries: Joon and Anita continued their work long after they came to Siberia. They enhanced their consciences; that's how they were able to earn sympathy and help of the Evenks. They enhanced their children's consciences. The diaries said that with each generation, the strength to follow ones' principles and getting others to do the same should grow. In fact, by Joon's calculations, my children should be able to trigger that kind of a response by only touching another person!

     Dular caught the goat and the two of them are now running into and bumping each other. The goat ended up rubbing against Dular and bleating ecstatically. Amur is smiling widely at a scene in front of him. 

     Somewhere in the world soldiers expend their lives defending interests of the greedy corporations. There aren't any governments anymore: all the power is concentrated in the hands of the global conglomerates. Decisions to use chemical or nuclear weaponry      belongs to them, and they don't hesitate to employ any means necessary to achieve desired goals. The only way to survive is to retreat to a hamlet like ours, protected by miles and miles of the impenetrable forest. But sooner or later, the distraction and violent death will come here too. 

     My boys have it in them to stop all that. With a touch. All I need to do is expose them to the world immeasurably crueler than anything they have ever experienced before. I don't know if I can do it!

     The winds from the East still bring smells of death. We heard tales of how, after the bombs fell and the land growled in anger, ugly dark clouds hung there for weeks, shedding black tears over taiga. The hunters who were dispatched to find out the reason for such calamity came back and, with tears in their eyes, told of great distraction of all life and forest on the other side of lake Baikal. This happened during summer, so the poison didn't spread to the West, but in about ten years after the catastrophe, strange, deformed animals began to make their way through taiga. The Evenks fear and destroy them on sight.
     One day, not so long ago, Amur and Dular played in the forest. They heard a whimper and went to investigate. They wouldn't have found the cub, but she (it was a female) rose to her unsteady yet paws, and the boys froze in their tracks. Small wolfling was green, with red stripes under her soulful brown eyes! Gathering their courage, they first made sure that she was alone. Ever since my kids were toddlers, the Evenks taught them the ways of the forest-dwellers. One of the rules was to never interfere in the life of wild animals. 

     The next day boys returned to check on the cub. She was hungry and thirsty. They scooped some water into the tree bark and gave to her. On the third day the mother still didn't appear. She, probably, abandoned her strange offspring.There were no fresh paw-prints around the animal's hiding place. Small wolf was so weak from the lack of nourishment that she couldn't even lift her head anymore. 

     Amur and Dular brought the tiny mutant home. As the news of that spread, the shaman made his way to our house. He gazed at a cub for a long time, his eyebrows furrowed in consternation, but as Dular hugged him and asked to allow the animal to live, the shaman couldn't resist. He announced to his people who gathered outside the house, that the cub didn't seem to present any immediate danger, and they should leave her alone for a while, until she can show her nature to them.

     Boys called the wolf cub Midori, which means green in Japanese: before my husband died, he managed to teach them a few words in his ancestors' language. For the first two years, they and Midori were inseparable, then she began to disappear in the forest. She was, obviously, able to hunt for herself, and I convinced my sons to let her follow her own path. Any time when they became lonesome for her, they would just call, and she'd turn up, to greet them effusively and poke her dark green nose into everything they were doing. 

To be continued...

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