The Charmed Wife by Olga Grushin

Author:Olga Grushin [Grushin, Olga]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B0871L1H98
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

Part Two

In the Forest Clearing

The wood is just as I imagined it, just as I dreamed it. Leaves have not yet fallen but are already shot through with copper and bronze, and the trees stand tall, like columns in some mysterious autumnal cathedral carved out of gems, wrought out of precious metals, all rubies and amber and gold. Paths crisscross and disappear into the russet-colored dusk. I inhale the smell of ripeness, the smell of rain, the smell of wild things growing, dying, changing freely. It is neither day nor night under the trees, but a lingering in-between gloaming. The path I follow seems to have a will of its own, twisting, turning, always taking me deeper and deeper in. The farther I go, the more ancient the beeches, aspens, and elms, the more pungent the scents, the more solemn the world around me—and the less afraid I feel, as though with every step into the unknown, I am shedding a bit of my familiar past, losing a bit of my familiar self.

The wood is quiet with a profound, churchlike silence, but as I keep walking, I begin to sense stealthy presences all about me, traveling along invisible forest roads on hushed errands of their own. Enormous white moths that look like flowers—or else flowers that look like moths—glide slowly, weightily, from one pool of shadow into another. Glinting eyes stare at me from under misshapen roots, from inside hollowed trunks, yet when I draw nearer, they are quick to blink out of sight or turn into innocuous fireflies that zigzag across my path, winking in and out, before dissolving in the canopy above. The path soon takes me to the edge of a clearing, runs alongside it. I can hear water trickling somewhere nearby. It is dark on my left, light on my right: pale dawn has begun to glow between the giant oaks that line the clearing. I glance over, squinting after the dimness of the forest—and catch my breath.

A circle of slender sprites, translucent like leaves held up against the morning sun, are leading a swaying fleet-footed dance in the grassy glade. Without thinking, almost without knowing what I am doing, quite as if summoned, I abandon the path and rush out toward them.

Then I stand blinking in the brightness.

The clearing is empty, the grass undisturbed by footprints; only a breeze is moving long branches of willows back and forth, back and forth, above a shallow fast-running brook. Oddly, it seems that autumn has not touched this place at all: the grass is verdant here, the leaves vivid, the air full of midday summer warmth. There is a smell here, too, a sharp, clean smell that I cannot name, yet that reminds me of the wild, exhilarating way the night smelled when I walked out of the palace and ran to the crossroads, the now-empty velvet pouch at my hip still filled with my husband’s fingernails, with my mother’s flowers—was it only hours before?

It feels like another life—or else, a life of another.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.