This all struck the man as very strange-the way the woman and boy changed before his very eyes, literally in an instant. The man even grew frightened.

“Well, if he’s yours, I won’t bother you anymore,” the failed father said, turning away. “I’ll go. My train is leaving soon.”

He dressed hurriedly and went away.

It was already growing light out, and the path, strangely, was clear and well-beaten, as if there had been no blizzard the night before. Our traveler went away from the house quickly and after several hours of walking found himself at a house exactly like the one he’d left. No longer surprised, he went in without even knocking.

The hall was the same, the room was exactly the same, and just as before there was a teapot on the table and some bread. The traveler was tired and cold, and so without pausing he gulped down the tea, scarfed down a piece of bread, and lay down on the bench and waited. But no one came. Then the man leapt up and threw himself at the trunk. Once again there were kids’ clothes inside, though this time they were warm little clothes-a little coat and hat, tiny little felt boots, warm little flannel pants, even a resplendent snowsuit, and at the bottom of the trunk a little fur sleeping bag with a hood. The man immediately thought that the boy must have nothing to wear outside-sure, he had some shirts, and all sorts of junk, but that was it! Apologizing to the empty room, he took only the most necessary items-the fur sleeping bag, snowsuit, boots, and hat. Then he also grabbed the sled, which stood in the corner, because he noticed there was another one in the other corner.

Once again begging forgiveness, he took from the pile of felt boots behind the trunk one adult pair that looked like they would fit a woman-she had been barefoot! With this load he ran as fast as he could through the cold back to the first hut. Already there was no one there. The teapot was still hot, and there was bread on the table. The trunk was empty.

“She must have dressed him in silk and lace,” said the failed father. “But that’s so silly-I have everything he needs!”

He ran out the door onto the other path and, dragging the sled behind him, soon caught up with the woman, who could barely stand and even swayed a little. Her bare feet were red from the snow. She carried the child wrapped in all his silky things.

“Hold on!” cried the father. “Wait! This won’t do at all! First you need to dress a fellow up. I have everything he needs.”

He took the child from her, and she, obediently, closing her eyes, gave him her burden, and together they walked back to their hut. Only then did the father remember the strange old lady whose bags he had carried home, and he asked the woman: “Tell me, did the old woman give you the address, too?”

“No,” said the woman, who was nearly asleep on her feet, “she only told me the name of the train station, Fortieth Kilometer.”

But just then the child started crying, and both of them rushed to change his clothes, and he was suddenly so small that no boots could fit him, and instead they had to put him in diapers, wrap him up in a blanket, and that’s when the fur sleeping bag with its hood came in handy. The rest of it they tied up in a bundle. The woman put on her new boots, and the three of them continued back together. The newfound father carried the baby, and the woman dragged the things, and along the way they forgot all about how they met, and the name of the station. They remembered only that there had been a trying night, a long road, and painful loneliness-but now they’d given birth to a child and found what they’d been looking for.

The Cabbage-patch Mother

THERE ONCE LIVED A WOMAN WHO HAD A TINY LITTLE DAUGHTER named Droplet. The girl was just a tiny droplet of a baby, and she never grew. Her mother took her to doctors, but as soon as she showed her to them, they refused to treat her! No, they said-and that was that. They didn’t even ask any questions about her.

So then the mother decided to play a trick: she wouldn’t show her little Droplet to the next doctor. She went to his office, sat down, and asked: “What should you do if your child isn’t growing properly?”

To which the doctor replied, as a doctor should: “What’s wrong with the child? What’s the child’s medical history? What is the child’s diet?” And so on.

“This child wasn’t born,” the poor mother explained. “I found her in a head of cabbage, young cabbage. I took off the top leaf, and there she was, a little cabbage-patch girl, a little dewdrop, this big”-she showed him with her fingers-“a little droplet. I took her with me, and I’ve been raising her ever since, but she hasn’t grown at all, and it’s been two years.”

“Show me the child,” said the doctor.

The girl’s mother took out a matchbox she kept in her breast pocket, and out of this matchbox she took half of a hollowed bean, and in that cradle, wiping the sleep from her eyes with her tiny little fists, sat a tiny little girl.

The mother took a magnifying glass from her purse, and with this magnifying glass the doctor began examining the child.

“A splendid girl,” the doctor said under his breath. “In good health, well nourished-you’ve done an excellent job, mother. Now get on your feet, little girl. That’s right. Good.”

The little droplet climbed out of her little bean and walked around on the doctor’s desk, back and forth.

“Well,” the doctor said. “I’ll tell you this: She’s a splendid girl, but this isn’t the right place for her to live. Now where exactly she should be living, I can’t tell, but definitely not here with us. We’re not the right crowd for her. This isn’t the right place.”

The mother said: “It’s true. She tells me she has dreams about her life on a distant star. She says everyone there had little wings, and they flew through the fields-she did, too-and she ate pollen and dew from wild flowers, and they had an elder, who was preparing them, because some of them would have to leave, and they all waited in terror for the day their wings would melt-because then their leader would take them to the top of a high mountain, where there was an opening to a cave, and steps leading down to it, and the ones whose wings had melted would descend into the cave, and everyone else watched them as they went down, farther and farther down until they were as small as little droplets.”

Sitting on the desk, the girl nodded.

“And then my little princess also had to leave, and she cried and walked down the steps, and that’s where her dream ends, and she wakes up on my kitchen table, in a cabbage leaf.”

“Interesting,” said the doctor. “And, tell me, what about you? What’s happened in your life? What’s your medical history?”

“Me?” said the woman. “What’s it matter? I love my girl more than I love my life. It’s so terrible to think she’s going to return to the place she came from… As for my history, well, my husband left me when I was pregnant, and I didn’t have the baby… I went to a doctor who referred me to a hospital, and there they killed my baby inside me. Now I pray for him. Maybe he’s in that place, in the land of dreams?”

“Interesting,” said the doctor. “I see now. I’m going to write you a note, and you’ll take it to a certain person. He’s a hermit, and he lives in the forest. He’s a very strange man, and sometimes it’s impossible to find him, but he might help you. Who knows.”

The woman put her little girl back into the cradle made out of a little bean, put the bean back into the matchbox, put the matchbox back into her pocket, and took her magnifying glass and left-directly for the forest, to look for the hermit there.