2023 Author: Adelina Croftoon | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-24 12:05
This incident happened to me in my youth in 1991. I was 15 years old. I lived and live in the capital of the Altai Territory, Barnaul. One day I had a very strange dream. I am sitting on the mountain.
Here it is necessary to clarify that for the summer every year I went to my grandparents, who live in the mountainous part of the Altai Territory and all the mountains in the vicinity of the village were familiar to me like the back of my hand. But here for some reason the landscape was not familiar to me, although the area was very similar. I had a local friend there by the name of Oroy, an Altai by nationality.
Well, going back to sleep. I had this dream when I was at home in the city, around the middle of spring. I am sitting on the mountain. Watching the clouds creeping across the sky. Suddenly I see. My friend Oroy is coming to me. But somehow very strangely dressed - in a white robe and a beekeeper's mask-hat.
This ends my dream. I don’t know why I remembered this dream, but after about three months, while on summer vacation, I was, as always, in the village with my grandmother. One day, in the morning, my uncle comes, who also lived in this village and says that tomorrow morning, his wife and grandfather and I are going to see his mother-in-law and father-in-law, who live in a village located further in mountains, about 80 km from our village.
The purpose of our trip, in addition to visiting relatives, was to collect wild red currants for making homemade preparations. Early in the morning, having gathered, we left. It should be noted here that my grandfather and I are avid fishermen, and in that village there was a mountain stream in which taimen and grayling were found. The trip was planned for one day without overnight stays.
There was no time for fishing rods and spinning, so we took some nonsense with us. Approaching the village of the father-in-law and the mother-in-law of the uncle, my grandfather and I "parachuted" with nonsense from the car, while giving instructions to the uncle to come for us in an hour.
After wandering along the river for about 30 minutes, catching a couple of dozen taymeshat and grayling, we didn't need more for frying, the grandfather ran into a willow branch hidden under the water in the form of a slingshot and tore his trouser leg to shreds. At the same time, by some miracle, without injuring his leg. I told my grandfather that the catch was quite enough and that it was already good to climb on the water with his pants ripped open, or else we’ll push for something else.
After waiting for the uncle's arrival, we threw off our wet clothes into a bag and moved into the house to our father-in-law. The father-in-law was a hereditary beekeeper and the day before he learned about our arrival, he was going to pump fresh honey. And the date for collecting honey was already approaching. But in a telephone conversation, the uncle convinced him that it is not necessary to pump honey, because, as everyone knows, bees are very "nervous" during this process and cannot calm down for a long time after.
Arriving, we hung up wet clothes on the fence, dressed in dry clothes and went to the mountains to collect wild red currants, called "sour" in our places. After wandering for an hour or two, we realized that we were far from the first who expressed a desire to stock up for the winter. We walked on the so-called "frills".
And it should be noted that neither I nor my uncle have ever found the process of picking any berries particularly entertaining and exciting and have always tried to avoid it under any pretext. To be honest, my consent to this trip was solely motivated by the desire to fish taimen and grayling. So, after wandering for an hour or an hour and a half, we together with the uncle said: - "Do we need it !?" and moved towards the village.
Approaching the house, I heard the characteristic sound of an approaching "exterminator", which in this case was a swarm of bees for my father-in-law. The very first bee that stuck in my head made me run uphill at a speed, I think, no less than the speed of the bee itself. Uncle at the same time, shouted at me in the trail: - "You just do not wave your hands and they will not touch."
But his advice drowned out my thoughts, filled with "popular" epithets to his father-in-law, who still did not heed the advice of his uncle and began to pump honey. Having run a decent distance up the hill, I sat down, out of breath, to rest. Five minutes later, the uncle's father-in-law rode up on a horse.
I, mentally apologizing for all the epithets that I had awarded him, told him that either his bees decided to act as a home guard, biting all strangers and unfamiliar ones, or they went crazy.
He immediately, almost at a gallop, moved towards the house. About 15 minutes later, looking around and the sky over which the clouds were crawling, I was shocked like an electric shock: - I saw that my friend Oroi was climbing up the mountain towards me. And yes … yes, in a white robe and a beekeeper's hat-mask. A dream three months ago literally surfaced before my eyes, and with it a swarm of thoughts about what he was doing 80 km from his home, and in such a strange outfit.
Coming to a closer distance, Oroy began to "turn" more and more into my uncle. The fact is that Oroi and my uncle were very similar in height and complexion and hair color, both pitch black.
But my beloved uncle, by the way, a novice beekeeper, imagining himself already an experienced beekeeper and did not show the agility that I possessed due to my youth, which the enraged bees decided to take advantage of - they boiled his face so much that it blurred to the size of a pronounced face representative of the Altai nationality, but they will not be offended by my words, moreover, with a characteristic cut of the eyes.
A couple of minutes later, my uncle's wife came out of the forest and, seeing us, immediately asked with undisguised surprise: - Oroi, hello! What are you doing here ?! And after a couple of seconds, recognizing her husband in "Oroy", she burst out laughing.
Laughed to my heart's content, to my uncle's disgruntled muttering, I asked him if they had found the cause of the enraged hive? The uncle, complaining that it was my grandfather and me, were to blame for everything, and said that the reason was the leg that was torn by his grandfather while fishing. At the place of the burst, the fabric in one place disintegrated into threads, into which one of the bees got entangled.
Buzzing and calling on her fellows, or rather, sisters, in a language they know alone, she literally aroused the righteous anger of the entire hive. And the father-in-law discovered this fact - a real professional in his field!
After the release of the bee, the hive calmed down literally in 10 minutes. Since then, I believe in prophetic dreams!
