RATHER SHYLY SHE OPENED THE BIG PAINTED CHEST
Though Treska went barefooted, her father was by no means a poor man. He owned large herds of cattle and flocks of sheep. During the summer months he lived in a shepherd’s hut across the valley, where he had a great sheepfold on the edge of the forest. Sometimes the whole family went to the hut and camped out there for days at a time. Treska loved that.
The next morning Masha’s aunt suggested that the two girls should go mushroom hunting for the day and spend the night at the hut. She gave them a lunch of black bread and smoked sheep’s-milk cheese and some poppy-seed cakes. They started off merrily, each carrying an earthen pot for strawberries.
It was a glorious day. Masha stood speechless at sight of jagged mountain peaks, glistening with snow in all their crevices. She had never seen anything so beautiful, so mysterious and terrible.
Below them spread the blue-black forests, reaching down to the fields where the patches of grain and corn and ploughed ground looked like a rag carpet spread over the hills. The fields were full of flowers and the mushrooms grew thickly among them along the edges of the wood.
The pack on Treska’s back began to fill out. At night the girls would sit by the fire and split the mushrooms and string them in festoons to dry.
Passing through the fields they met Janko, Treska’s brother, guarding sheep, and with him Suzanne, a little girl from their own Village.
‘Come on,’ called Treska. ‘We’re going up the hill to pick strawberries.’
Janko shook his head. ‘I can’t leave the sheep,’ he said, swinging his feet as he sat on the fence rail. He was a licensed shepherd now, and very proud of the brass badge, which he wore pinned to the front of his tunic with a long thorn.