the Ringing cedars of Russia Vladimir Megre English translation by John Woodsworth

IN OTHER MEASUREMENT

- Some time ago, Vladimir, on Earth as you know, came Ice Age. In regions which the glacier approached the climate changed. The cold snap did not give the chance to grow to many species of plants. Places, earlier plentiful the woods, orchards and violent herbs mixed up with flowers, gradually turned into the valleys covered only with a poor vegetable cover.

The people living at that time in one of foothill valleys counted: former life in the conditions of a cold snap is impossible. They decided to leave the houses and to direct on searches of places with more favorable climate.

Forward men left. On their trace the chief of family Wood took away from the settlement of children, women and old men.

The gray-haired, hundred-twenty-year-old aged man, he went ahead of a caravan from eleven mammoths loaded with wattled baskets in one of which children were seated, and in others the food stock is difficult - it is unknown how many the travel will last.

On both sides of a caravan from mammoths, on horses and pedestrian, people of its sort and all those living creatures moved that lived in the patrimonial settlement. It seemed, all live understood need to go to new regions and followed the person. In the settlement there were only plants which do not have an opportunity to move. The plants doomed to death.

Wood reflected, trying to answer the questions raised to himself:

Why there were undesirable changes in the nature because of what the cold snap began?

Whose will started this accident?

Whether it will become accident of all Earth?

Whether are put in the person of force to undertake something for its prevention?

Whether there is a dependence of accidents on actions of the person?

Wood understood: if answers are not found, his children and grandsons, all its sort is expected by a sad fate. He saw: all adults going now in a caravan regard natural changes as the tragedy, their persons are sad and thoughtful. Even children became silent and pricked up the ears. Only one his favourite, the six-year-old great-granddaughter Anasta, frolics - started a game with the leader mammoth going at the head of a caravan.

Askance glancing, Wood watched the great-granddaughter's game with the leader of mammoths. Having charged with a tip of a trunk of a huge, seven-ton mammoth to itself on плечико, she pretended as if she drags an enormous animal. And he, a mammoth, also accompanies it. Of course, it holds a trunk on the weight itself, only slightly touching the child's shoulder. From time to time Anasta stopped, as if taking breath, wiped nonexistent sweat from a forehead and kept saying: "Oh, and big you, heavy and lazy".

As if agreeing, the mammoth nodded, looked blank, wiped a trunk the forehead and again put its tip on плечико girls as if it could not move a little without her help. This game was ridiculous and harmless. And here other game started then the great-granddaughter, was not pleasant to Wood. It consisted in the following.

Anasta clambered on a trunk to the head of a mammoth, and it helped it, bending the huge trunk and pushing the child his tip up. Having settled above, Anasta some time sat on the head of a moving mammoth, then suddenly said frightened "ah" and quickly slid on a trunk down. The mammoth had to show big dexterity to manage to pick up the child at the earth, not to allow to hit or get under his massive legs.

Wood reflected on the past, trying to find in it the cause of accident, forced people to leave the native valley, but reflections its all the time were interrupted by memoirs pictures from the great-granddaughter Anasta's life. It did not drive away these pictures, they were pleasant to it and distracted from sad thoughts concerning the incident.

At some point, having remembered as at one of lessons Anasta stated a protest to the approved opinion, Wood even smiled. He saw this picture in all details and the slightest details.

The lesson was led then by Wood. Before it, under a branchy oak, children of different age and three adults sat a circle. Wood began a lesson with words:

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