Read King Stakh's Wild Hunt for Free Online Page B

concerning one’s origin are pure foolishness, but you cannot fight them. These fireplaces, this necessity for one of the heirs to live in this house, the ban on selling it... Whereas we are actually beggars. And this house, this awful house... It is as if some curse has been put upon us. We were twice deprived of our family coat-of-arms, were persecuted. Almost none of our ancestors died a natural death. This one here in the red cloak was still alive when the church performed the funeral service over his body. This woman here with an unpleasant face, a distant relative of ours, by the way, also a distant ancestor of the writer Dostoyevsky, killed her husband and attempted the same with her step-son. She was condemned to death. It cannot be helped, all this must be paid for by descendants, and with me the Yanovsky family ends. But sometimes I ache so to lie in the warm sun, in the shade of real trees, trees that do not grow here. At times I dream of them – young, very large, airy as a green cloud. And spas, such bright, such full spas that take your breath away, that make your heart stop with happiness. But here this ugly, loathsome quagmire and gloom, these firs...”
    The flames in the fireplace had brought a slight flush to her face. Behind the windows the dark night had already fallen and a heavy shower seemed to have begun.
    “Oh Mr. Belaretsky! I am so happy that you are here, that a living person is sitting at my side. Usually I sing aloud on such evenings, though I don’t really know any good songs, all are old ones from the manuscripts gathered by my grandfather. They are full of horrors. A man leaves a bloody track on the dewy grass, a bell that was long ago drowned in the quagmire tolls at night, just tolls and tolls on and on...”
    The days come and the days go,
    she began her song, her voice deep and trembling.
    The days come and the days go,
A shadow looms over the land.
Skazko and Kirdziay, the Rat,
Raging, fight day and night.
Blood everywhere flows,
Flames spread, steel rings.
Falls our Skazko and calls:
“Where are you, my friends?”
Unheard are his cries.
But Lubka Yurzheuna hears.
Gathers her brethren.
Mighty and brave
Far and wide
They stormily rude
To the distant red marshes.
    “The rest is bad, I don’t wish to sing it. Only the last lines are good:”
    And they loved each other
And in concord they lived
While over the land
Sunshine did reign
Till into the ground
Together were laid.
    I was touched, to the very depths of my soul. Such a feeling can arise in a person only when he deeply believes what he is singing about. And what a wonderful song of olden times!
    But she suddenly buried her face in her hands and began to sob. Upon my word of honour, my heart bled. I couldn’t help it – I have an inexcusable and deep compassion for people.
    Today I don’t remember the exact words I found then to comfort her. I must say, dear reader, that up to this point in my story, I have been a severe realist. You must know that I do not very much like novels in the spirit of Madam Radcliffe, and would be the first to disbelieve, were anybody to tell me the things that took place later on. And therefore the tone of my story is going to change significantly.
    Believe me, were this a product of my imagination, I’d have invented something entirely different. I sure hope to have a good taste, but not a single novelist with even a slightest amount of self-respect would dare to offer serious people anything like what I am about to tell you.
    Mind you, I am relating the simple truth, as I mustn’t lie. The subject concerns me personally, so important it is for me. Therefore I shall tell everything just as it happened.
    We were sitting silent for some time; the fire was dying out and darkness had settled in the corners of the enormous room when I looked at her and was frightened: so wide were her eyes, so strangely bent her head. And her lips so pale, they were invisible.
    “Don’t you hear anything?”
    I