Feather eight. Nick

A little boy, who will be three years old in a few days, keeps asking the question “Ah, please?”. I patiently explain and understand that I myself do not know the answers to the questions. Why is the sun red and the sky blue?

Why is it necessary to bypass the sewer manhole? Why did the icicles melt? Why is the wind so prickly? Why does my aunt, in the clinic, hurt when she takes blood from her finger? We adults are like gods to little children. They believe in us. They believe that we are omnipotent. That we know the answer to every question. How to explain to this little boy that there are questions that cannot be answered. I can remember all the patterns and try to answer the child based on what I have been taught throughout my life, but will such an answer be correct?

Yes, there are laws by which the universe lives, but these laws were created, discovered, by the people of the earth themselves, and they also live by these laws. I know that great scientists, before writing the law, spent almost their entire lives trying to derive these very general rules. But no one has come to earth to confirm or refute the very physical laws that govern life on earth and around the earth. Aliens prefer not to mess with the inhabitants of the earth. For good or for worse is another question.

The point is probably this.
 Have you noticed that on the eve of your birthday, life begins to flow in a different rhythm? Everything starts to go topsy-turvy for you, and sometimes even you begin to suffer from ailments? You are completing the annual cycle and approaching the point of your birth. You seem to relive the moment of birth. At this moment you are defenseless.

On your birthday, or shortly before it, your guardian angel leaves you and goes to God with a report on the year you have lived. Reports on their work. And therefore at this moment you are defenseless against any troubles. You may get sick, your wallet may be stolen, you may have problems at work, in your personal life. The plan is not fulfilled.

A little boy, for whom I am not a relative, is very fond of listening to fairy tales. He believes in them. He believes just as we believe in the laws of physics and chemistry. Most recently, the boy's mother kneaded a bun to later turn this bun into a cake crust. A little boy, sacredly remembering all the tales that he was told, gave his mother a sea of tears. He screamed and demanded that the bun be given to him and not let his mother cook further. I don't want to be boring and point you to an analogy.

You probably already got it. Even if we resist the flow of information that flows like a dirty river through us, we still need to believe in something. And we believe. Everyone believes in something different, and then we believe in something that everyone around believes in.
 And again about the little boy. Children do not like to donate blood from a finger. They protect their fingers as best they can. Someone desperately screams, and someone even kicks. You probably saw such pictures in children's clinics.

The kid in question could not calm down even after the nasty procedure was over, and the mother and child left the office where the laboratory was. The child did not want to calm down. He was offended. He began to throw himself at the door and demand that his mother open this very door and let the baby in there again. The kid believed in his rights. He wanted to give change to the evil, in his mind, aunt. He wanted her to feel as much pain as it had hurt him a few minutes earlier.

Are you shocked? Why, may I ask you? Yes, the baby is very small, but he also has his rights. And for the baby it doesn’t matter at all that the aunt-doctor takes blood from him for a good cause. To all my explanations, the kid asked again and again: “Ah, I’ll ask?”. He came from another universe, there, in this universe, they do not know about our laws and do not adhere to them.

The baby was born quite recently and still lives according to other laws. Another year or two, and he will accept the laws of the world he came into, our world. After a million "I'll ask?" he will come to terms with the fact that there are no answers to his questions, and will stop asking questions. Time will pass and he will forget what he asked. The torrent of knowledge that his teachers will use to choke him will discourage him from asking questions. Well, these are the laws of our world. The kid did not ask for someone to become his mom and dad, it is hard and uncomfortable for him in a world where he has to adapt to someone other than his parents.
 He clings to his mother. After all, mom is the tunnel through which he came from a world where everything is different.

Do you know that all three angels are unusually harsh with babies? Not? This is only later, by the age of five or six, when children gradually lose the gift of asking questions, the angels become less severe. This also has an explanation. It is very simple and you will learn about it when you read the epilogue. And now I will say goodbye to a little boy for a while.

The kid began to ask questions early - he is marked by an angel and nothing threatens him. He is protected. The angels will not let even a dark shadow approach him. The hero of our story is a completely different child. It's about a girl who stopped asking questions. For many years she was silent and therefore the angels simply did not see her.

So, I'm starting.

Once Nicholas had a dream. She and her mother are running away from someone. Mom is holding his hand, Kolya, and some girl. Nick is sure he knows the name of the girl, or rather he knew, but that was a long time ago. When Nikolai woke up, he wanted to ask his mother what such a dream meant, but forgot. Since then, the dream began to dream regularly, about once a month. The memory of dreams was not stored for long, about five minutes after waking up. If Nick wanted to, he could still remember some details, but usually he was not up to it. The dreams resurfaced before Nick fell asleep. However, Kolya's mother often worked the night shift and he had no one to ask what such a dream meant.

Mom and Nick's relatives lived far away, in Vladivostok. Mom worked in construction. Most recently, my mother and Kolya moved into their apartment. Before that, the family roamed the hostels. In general, everything is like everyone else. For the summer, mother sent her son to his grandparents in Vladivostok.

For almost a week, Nick rode the train, bought food at the stations, and sometimes dined at a restaurant. Kolya took a supply of books for a week, but already near Khabarovsk all the books were read. There was still a little more than a day to go, and Kolya already had nothing to do. The boy lay and just thoughtlessly looked out the window. He didn't think about anything. Just looked. However, at night, under the sound of wheels, he had a dream that was not like everything he had seen before. He saw the stop, himself, a very small boy, his mother and ... younger sister. The sister was sitting in the man's arms, and there were many soldiers around. The sister screamed and stretched out her arms to her mother, but the man hid the girl under the floor of his green and blue overcoat.

Then the train started moving, taking the mother and the boy farther and farther away. The wheels were rattling, but my mother was crying so much that she drowned out all the sounds that reigned in the train. Kolya saw himself from the outside. He even remembered the suit he was wearing. Mom bought this suit in Harbin, on the day when a stern man allowed her to go shopping for her son. The place where Colin's family lived was called Pingfan, it was a small Chinese town, and it was two hours away from Harbin. The man was Chinese, he was Kolya's stepfather and treated the boy well. The boy's half-sister was called Alla, the boy kept trying to make out in a dream a small face that the Chinese ruthlessly hid under a prickly overcoat when Kolya was awakened by the conductor.

“Boy, wake up,” she said cheerfully, “we have already passed Ussuriysk. Vladivostok in two hours.

On the platform, in Vladivostok, the boy was met by his grandparents. Suddenly, Kolya remembered this platform. It was here that Kolya and his mother returned after fleeing China. Every day the boy remembered more and more. He even remembered his sister's Chinese name. The father called the girl a beautiful name - Alate, the mother remade it in a Russian way and called the baby Alla.

In Vladivostok, Nick did not get bored. All his days were filled with sea, sea and more sea. Together with his grandfather, he went out on a motor boat far out to sea. They fished and swam. By mid-July, the boy was so tanned that his skin began to turn blue. The end of July turned out to be rainy, the rain poured incessantly. When there was no rain, fog hung over the city. There was all sorts of dregs on TV, and Kolya got bored. Mom called every day and Kolya did not want to go home yet. He wanted something that would shake up his whole life.

One day, the grandmother took out family albums, and the boy plunged into the world of photographs with pleasure. It was interesting for him to follow the photographs of how his mother grew and matured. The album page opened to a wedding photo. Mom and dad were in the registry office. The boy looked at photos of his happy father and mother and tried to imagine what they were thinking at the moment when the photographer asked them to smile.

Turning over a few pages, the boy saw his photographs. On them he was small and funny. Next to Kolya were Chinese children. The boy knew that he was filmed in a Chinese kindergarten. After the wedding, dad and mom left for the Chinese city of Harbin. Harbin was my father's place of work. There the boy was born. When Kolya was five years old, his father died. Mom didn't like talking about it. She said that the death of the pope is connected with his work. Mom was left alone, with a small child, and in a foreign country.

She was about to return to Vladivostok when an unexpected event happened: my mother was taken away by a Chinese friend of my father. Of course, he took away not one, but together with Kolya. It was a kidnapping. Mom didn't want to go. She did not succumb to the persuasion of a friend, until one day, he, almost by force, forced his mother and son to sit in a taxi and took them to the bus station. Mom did not make a scandal, it was enough for her that all the passengers on the bus looked at the woman with white skin with curiosity. Then there were few Russians in Harbin and its environs. When we arrived in Pingfang, my mother said that she wanted to contact the Russian consul. Father's friend - let's call him Lee, although in fact he has quite a another name, asked my mother to calm down and listen to him. He stated that he had promised his Russian friend that he would take care of his wife if something happened to the friend. Whether it was true or not, she didn't know. There was no one to confirm or refute Lee's words.

Lee settled mother and son in a nice apartment. He settled nearby. They didn't need anything. There was little cultural entertainment in Pingfan, but when Li took his mother and son to the suburbs of Pingfan a month later, there was no entertainment at all. Lee said that his mother was in danger and stated that now he will be with his friend's family all the time. They settled together.

Lee treated Kolya well. He taught him to speak Chinese correctly, taught him calligraphy and drew pictures for him, which showed that a battle was going on. Then Lee invited his mother to become his wife. The mother resisted at first, but Lee said that it would be easier for him to protect her and his son if he became the mother's husband. A year later, a girl was born to her mother and Chinese Li. Lee named her Alate. Mom called her Alla.

Among the photographs flashed a portrait of a little girl. The girl was pretty. She was very much like her mother and almost nothing like her father. The girl was white and tightly held her brother's hand in a family photo. When Kolya was nine years old, and Alate was three, my mother decided to go home to Russia. She respected Lee but didn't love him. By this time, they were already living in Pingfan again. Mom spoke Chinese well, and it was not difficult for her to secretly buy a bus ticket.

Lee left for work very early that day. The day before, my mother quarreled with her husband, and therefore the man left for work at dawn. Mom didn't take any of the things. Only photos of dad and things for Alla. She did not take anything for herself and Kolya. They left in what they were. Arriving in Harbin, my mother wanted to apply to the Russian consulate, but then changed her mind. She didn't want a scandal. The train to Russia left only late at night. Mom spent the whole day with a friend. The friend was the wife of one of her father's colleagues. In the evening, a friend took her to the station.

With 15 minutes left before the train left, Lee showed up. He did not come alone, there were representatives of the authorities next to him. Lee began to persuade his mother to return, when he realized that his mother was adamant, he said that he would take his daughter. Alate was a Chinese citizen and, according to Chinese law, her mother did not have the right to take the girl away without her father's consent. Now, after the lapse of time, Kolya understood that Lee loved his mother very much. The threat to take the girl was his last argument. He didn't really want to separate his daughter from her mother. There was sadness and pain in his eyes.

Lee fell in love with his mother at the very moment when he first met Kolya's father and became his friend. He would never have told his mother about his feelings, if not for the death of Kolya's father. Li was not cruel and treacherous, all his actions and thoughts were imbued with concern for the family. Kolya had never seen Lee come home drunk, never seen a man be cruel to his wife and children. But my mother did not love her Chinese husband and did not hide it. When Lee took Alate and hid her under his greatcoat, he was sure that his mother and Kolya would not go anywhere, but it happened differently.

The train was ready to move when my mother made a decision. She grabbed Kolya's hand and they jumped onto the running board of the speeding train. Later, in the compartment, my mother sobbed and fought in hysterics, but soon calmed down and did not utter a word until the very border with Russia. Mom and Kolya returned to Vladivostok. Lee wrote affectionate letters and promised to come as soon as Mom wanted. He sent photographs of Alate and her inept drawings.

One day, Lee was so overcome with longing that he wrote that he was busy with permission to go to Russia for a short time. Mom wrote that Lee would not find her in Vladivostok, because she was moving. Mom really went with Kolya to Moscow. Lee still sent letters to his parents, but mother did not answer, and gradually the flow of letters became rare. Kolya looked at the family photo for a long time, where they, all four of them, were filmed shortly before the mother's flight. Looking into Lee's face, Kolya suddenly noticed that it turned out that the man's face was kind. The photographer caught the moment when Lee looked at his mother. Love softened the sharp features of the Chinese face.

Suddenly, Kolya realized that his memories of Lee were based precisely on that last meeting on the platform. Kolya looked at a few more photos. After the connection ended, Lee continued to send pictures of Alate to his grandparents. At home, in Moscow, Kolya did not see these photographs. Mom forbade his parents to send Lee's letters, and now the boy could follow from the photographs how his beautiful sister was growing up.

Lee in each letter insisted that he respected his wife's parents, and since his own parents were no longer alive, they died during the years of Japanese occupation, he was ready to come personally and show filial attention and respect. Grandmother and grandfather really wanted to see their granddaughter, but they were afraid to upset their mother and therefore answered their son-in-law evasively. And then the letters stopped completely.

Li wrote that he was being transferred to another province and promised to write as soon as he settles down, but there was no more news from him. Now Kolya was 14 years old, and his sister Alata was 11. The last letter was a year ago. The black and white photo, in which Alate was 10 years old, could not hide the beauty of the girl. She had blond braids, but the face of the baby began to look more like dad, and not like mom.

In the four years since the escape, my mother has not married. Everything that there, in China, seemed so attractive in the memories of the Motherland, upon closer examination, it turned out to be completely different from what it seemed. More recently, after my mother got an apartment, a lonely man nailed to them. The man swore in love, and he himself tried to figure out what needs to be done in order to rewrite the apartment for himself. Having discovered this, the mother kicked the peasant out, and the life of the family went on as before.

The photographs showed that Lee had aged a little. Looking at the photos, Kolya remembered how Li taught him Chinese calligraphy and characters. This was before Kolya went to Chinese school. Arriving in Russia, the boy was surprised. He had never seen so many white people in his life. It was hard for him at the Russian school. Until now, in some subjects, he studied unimportantly. Looking at the postscript Alate, which the girl made in Chinese to the letter of the pope, Kolya suddenly realized with surprise that he had not forgotten the Chinese language and still reads easily.

The next day was sunny, and the boy soon stopped thinking about his distant sister and suffering stepfather. Summer flew by quickly. At the end of August, Kolya returned to Moscow, taking Lee's letters and photographs with him. He gave his mother everything he brought and said that he wanted his mother to transfer him to a school with a Chinese bias. To a reasonable question from his mother, Kolya explained that he was going to enter the Institute of Oriental Languages, the Faculty of Chinese Language Studies.

Mom did not answer, but a week later she announced that there was such a school in Moscow, but a lot of time would be spent on the road there and back. Two hours to get to school and the same to get home. If Kolya agrees to such difficulties, then his mother will give the documents to this school. The boy agreed, and he already met the morning of September 1 at the school where they studied Chinese. Time passed, several times Kolya noticed tears in his mother's eyes and saw traces of tears on the letters, but mother was silent. When Kolya was 17 years old, he entered the Oriental Institute.

Somewhere far away lived Kolya's sister, Alate - Alla, who was already 14 years old. Mom called her parents regularly, but there were no more letters from Lee. Kolya saw how his mother's face goes blank after talking with his parents. He even, secretly from his mother, wrote to Lee's old address, but received no answer.

The meeting of the sister and brother nevertheless took place, but only after a few years.
 I will say right away that it was the white angel who was responsible for the fact that the letters that Kolya secretly sent did not find their addressee at that moment. If even one letter had reached Li, Alate and her father would have returned to Pingfang. And this could not be allowed in any case.

Now the town of Pingfang is one of the districts of Harbin. When the Japanese began their aggression, which happened in 1931, Pingfang was just a railway station. The Japanese set up a bacteriological laboratory at this site. The official name of this place sounded like this: Detachment No. 731. Experiments were carried out on the Chinese, Mongols, Russians, Americans. People disappeared right from the streets of Harbin and no one else saw them. However, for the Japanese, these were no longer people. The experimental prisoners were simply called logs. Monstrous experiments went on until the moment when the Soviet army entered Harbin. Lee's parents died at the hands of the Japanese. This happened in 1940.

Lee was then three years old. I have already mentioned that when the experimental material of the Japanese ended, they simply abducted people from the streets of cities. The same thing happened with Lee's parents. Li's father was taken away immediately, the mother managed to escape, carrying her son on her back. When she realized that her strength was running out, she simply hid her son in the first sewer hatch that came across. Luckily, the hatch was half filled with debris.

Lee sat in the hatch for two days. He couldn't get out on his own. Fortunately for him, one of the passers-by heard his crying and pulled the boy out. Li was raised by his uncle, his mother's brother. The boy did not see whether his mother was saved or not, but the Japanese still probably caught the poor woman, because the son never saw his mother again.

The worst thing was that even in the post-war period, the echoes of the Japanese occupation sometimes surfaced and claimed the lives of people. When the Soviet Army entered Harbin in 1945, the Japanese began to hastily destroy the traces of their experiments. The remains of infected people, who were experimented on, were buried in the ground, burned, and dumped into the Songhua River.

The war ended long ago, and people continued to die, and the reason for this was the infection that remained after the departure of the Japanese. If an angel had tears, he would have wiped them away all his life. What the Japanese were doing was so monstrous that the angel just wanted to close his eyes and go into oblivion. But he could not close his eyes, he could not fly away without solving the problem at hand.

Then, in the early forties of the last century, the Japanese infected people with deadly viruses and recorded the process of dying and agony day after day. People were frozen, placed in red-hot chambers, organs were removed from living people. What happened in the laboratory cannot even be put into words, what was done there was so inhumane. Before starting the experiments, the person was fattened. Some were put in a cramped cage where a person could not even turn around.

If Li and her daughter had returned to Pingfang, the girl would have died from an outbreak of a terrible disease that would have claimed the lives of several dozen children in a short time. The builders, preparing the site for the future plant, would accidentally open one of the burial grounds in which the Japanese tried to hide the traces of experiments on people infected with plague and anthrax. Nearby was the school where Alate studied before leaving. The disease would flare up instantly. The city authorities would have acted promptly, but several dozen children would still have time to become infected.

If Kolya's letters had found an addressee, it was in this school that Alate would have continued her studies after returning to Pingfang. I told about how the angel prevented the brother and sister from meeting. Then the time has not yet come.

And now I'll tell you about how the family reunion happened. Nikolai by that time was graduating from the institute. Alate was about to turn 18 years old. The angel thrashed about, trying to prepare the situation for what was about to happen, but not everything depended on him.
 Alate was silent.
 She was generally a talkative but timid girl. She loved and respected her father, but she was afraid.

Girls in China grow up obedient. From childhood, they are instilled with respect and respect for their elders. In some families where girls grow up, gender discrimination reigns. From childhood, girls are hammered into the head that they are creatures of the lowest grade. They must remember that boys should always come first, and girls ...

Girls need to know their place.

However, things were not so in the Alate family. No one offended or humiliated the girl. Alate knew that her mother left her and returned to her homeland. The pain of her father tormented the little girl all her childhood, she sympathized with her harsh father, but was afraid to somehow express it. The father never married. Alate never asked questions, and an angel could not help a child who did not ask questions.

Alate had long wanted to ask her father about her mother, about her brother, whom she remembered very vaguely, but did not dare. The father believed that the girl was still too small and the time for a conversation had not yet come. And then one day a joyful event happened: Alate won the violin competition. There were a huge number of applicants for 1st place, in order to win, it was necessary to work almost 24 hours a day. Alate and worked. Nobody forced her. The father spent all his time at work, but secretly followed his daughter's progress.

And the girl won! When the father and daughter returned home, Lee noticed that the girl was depressed. Alate was hurt by the fact that on such a significant day her mother was not with her. The man chalked it up to fatigue, but Alate remained depressed all week.

When the weekend came, my father decided to make a holiday. Previously, the choice had always been with her father, but this time the girl was able to overpower herself and shook her head negatively when her father offered her several options to choose from. She was scared, she had never contradicted her father in her life, but this time was special. She deserved her present.

— What do you want? the father asked

“I want to know about my mother!” Tell me about mom. Tell me about your brother. Describe what mom was wearing when they left! Do you remember that day?

The father was silent for a long time, so long that the girl already regretted that she had dared to ask questions. However, when the father raised his head, there was no sternness in his face. He was glad that his daughter started this conversation herself. Stroking his beautiful daughter on the head, he began his story. He talked, sometimes stopping for a long time. Alate nudged him, asking questions. Then my father took out an album with photographs from the safe, and the whole day, and then the evening, passed in memories. From that moment on, events took off in leaps and bounds. The angel was proud of the victory that Alate won over herself.

A week later, one of Lee's co-workers called and said that many letters had come to his name. The letters were from Russia. Whoever wrote these letters made a mistake in writing the address. They could not understand in any way to whom the letters were addressed, until one of the postal employees guessed what the mistake was, and then everything fell into place. A colleague confirmed that Li's wife lives in Russia and everything became clear. The man asked what to do with the letters now? Send them over, or will Lee come and pick them up himself?

Li stayed up all night before leaving for Harbin. He did not know what was written in the letters, and who was the sender, but his heart beat with a vengeance. When Li and her daughter arrived in Pingfang, it was early in the morning. The old apartment met father and daughter with dust and desolation. Alate took up cleaning, and her father went to a colleague.

The fact that the letters were not from Elena, man I saw it right away. He perfectly remembered his wife's handwriting. The letters were from the stepson. The boy didn't ask any questions. He just talked about life in Moscow. Each letter ended with Kolya telling how sad her mother was, how she missed her daughter, how she looked at the photos of Lee and Alate, how she was crying. The letters were old, but Lee read them and reread them. After all, in these letters was the daily life of his wife and stepson.

Alate did not know Russian. And no one showed her the Russian alphabet. If the letter had been written in Russian, she would not have been able to read it. However, Nick wrote in hieroglyphs. There was another opportunity to be understood. It was possible to write in pinyin, but the boy wanted to show his stepfather that he remembers his lessons and did not forget anything. Alate couldn't wait for Papa to read the letter and put it aside to start the next one. However, even if the girl snatched the leaf from her father's hands, he would hardly notice it. The father became distracted and thoughtful. Love has returned to the Lee family home.

It seemed to the man that there was no separation, that his wife and stepson were nearby, here! It is enough to call and they will leave the next room. Week later. Lee had to decide what to do next. But the angel decided everything for him and for Elena.

The great date was approaching, the day when Japan was defeated, the surrender was signed, and the agreement with the Soviet Union. This year was an anniversary year, so the Chinese government organized a big celebration.

Elena received an official letter. She, as a widow, was invited to come to China and take home the order that the Chinese government awarded her husband posthumously. The fact is that Elena's first husband, Peter Nikolayevich, worked in a secret department in Harbin. This department was engaged in looking for traces of those who died in the dungeons of Detachment 731. Many people disappeared without a trace in those terrible years, and the relatives of these people still hoped that their relatives would be found. Employees from different countries worked in the secret department. Mongols, Americans, Australians worked in the department. In the same place, in the laboratory, the Chinese Li and the Russian military Peter worked.

That month, Lee was on a business trip and could not help a friend. Peter wrote to him that he had found the trail of one of the dead. This trail led to one of the secrets that the head of the laboratory, the Japanese Isshiyya, took with him to America after the war. Issiyya escaped retribution, the Americans were interested in the results of the laboratory's research, and Issiyya left for America. The secret was so monstrous that Peter did not dare to tell about it in a letter. He couldn't trust her phone, either. Peter had high hopes for Lee. He needed help.

Li interrupted his business trip and urgently flew to Harbin, but did not have time. There was an explosion in the department at night. There was no one but Peter in the office. The man had such a habit - to work late. All months of work burned to the ground. Before firefighters could put out the fire, two more departments burned down. Lee suspected the Japanese were involved, but he couldn't prove anything. Yes, and he was not.

His task at that moment was Elena and Kolya. Elena turned black and numb with grief. And little Kolya kept asking when dad would come. Peter did ask Lee to help Elena if something happened to him. He felt some kind of threat, too dangerous was the information that he accidentally stumbled upon. But even if a friend had not asked him about it, Lee could not remain indifferent to the grief of the widow.

But let's get back to the invitation from China and the great reception given by the Chinese government. Naturally, Lee also received such an invitation. True, he did not have to go far. The invitation caught him at the moment when he and his daughter were deciding what to do next. Leave Pingfang or not. The reception was supposed to take place in a week and a half. We decided to stay.

Time flew by quickly. The reception was to take place on Wednesday. On Tuesday morning, Alate woke up in a strange mood. She wanted to cry and laugh at the same time. Three days ago, dad showed his daughter a park where mom often walked with her newborn Alate. This morning, dad went on business, and the girl went to the park.

Suddenly, she heard music in her head. She had never heard this tune. Listening in amazement to the beautiful sounds, Alate realized that she had composed this music herself. Composed now, in this park. She urgently needed music paper or her violin to record or play what was born in her head. But there was nothing at hand. The girl looked back. There was no one around. Having imagined an imaginary violin, she picked up an imaginary bow, but nothing worked. The strings did not want to play under an imaginary bow. Then Alate began to search. She didn't know exactly what she needed. She was looking for a stick, a twig, or something similar. Unfortunately, nothing came across. The park was cleanly swept, almost licked.

And suddenly the girl's heart trembled, she saw something suitable, she saw a pen. The white feather was suitable for the role of the bow. Alate took the pen-bow in her hand, lightly touched the imaginary strings, and the music began to sound. The girl didn't know what for the tune that sounds in her head now, no equipment needed. Once born, this melody can never die. Because it's the melody of love.

On Wednesday, father and daughter woke up very early. Each of them was worried, but in their own way. Lee did not tell his daughter that he had seen the list of invitees and that among the guests there were Elena and her son. He was afraid that his wife would not come and did not want to worry his daughter ahead of time. What Alate was thinking about is unknown, but she was also very worried.

At first there was a solemn part. Everything was beautiful, strict and very exciting. Then the buffet began. There were a lot of invitees. The huge hall was packed to capacity.

At some point, Elena got up from her seat and left the hall. She needed, as they say, to powder her nose. The woman was disappointed. She was looking for a man with a little girl among those present. The woman understood that Alate had grown up, but her eyes were still looking for a little girl in the crowd.

Going to the mirror to tint her lips, Lena saw a tall girl who stood and just looked at herself. The girl had blond hair tied in a braid. Looking into the face of the blonde, Elena was taken aback, the mirror showed two women that were painfully similar. Elena did not immediately realize that her daughter was in front of her, but Alate, who only yesterday held a photograph of her mother in her hands, immediately realized who was in front of her. The girl rushed to the woman, whom she yearned for all her short life and screamed: “Mom!”. The word mother, in Russian and in Chinese, sounds the same.

The angel will circle over this family for another day and fly away. Now, he was just proud of the fact that the work was done well and on time. In a week, Alate was supposed to turn 18 years old. The angel managed to complete his mission before the girl's birthday. And now love has returned forever to Lee and Elena's house. Lee saw his wife a long time ago, but he did not dare to approach her yet. He was afraid that his wife remained adamant and would reject him. He was afraid of disappointment. But he recognized Kolya immediately, the young man became very similar to his father. Well, let's leave the Lee family. They have something to talk about and something to remember. They have someone to love and care about.



• So the eighth story has come to an end. And the afterword will be short. Let your little kids ask questions. Let your grown children ask questions too. A child who does not ask questions is either sick, or afraid of his parents, or knows that he will not receive an answer to his questions anyway. And this is wrong! Remember, if you want an angel to always keep your family under your wing, teach your child to ask questions, encourage him, let your child ask questions! May there always be love in your home!

EPILOGUE

God works in mysterious ways. There is no justice in what I say, because the angel's heart is disturbed. However, I so wanted to show you that our children are not alone. They are under the protection of an angel. He does not sleep day and night, whose eyes see everything, whose ears hear everything. The roar of the rocks woke him up one morning. The world to which he was accustomed collapsed. There was neither day nor night. White fog covered the world from horizon to horizon. And he humbled himself and fell, so as not to rise again. But the Lord commanded him:

— Arise! Rise up to protect the future.

I follow you, I follow your shadow. But I can't protect these kids because I don't have arms, because I don't have legs. Because my mouth is dumb and I can't shout words of warning!

- All this you will have! He smiled. And you don't need all this. You will have feathers! The feathers will unite into wings, and the wings will carry you!

But how do I know what I need to do? Who will show me the face of the one I have to protect?

"And you're worried again!" No need. During infancy, they gave you a game. You collected the whole from the pieces. And your blood rejoiced. And declared you reasonable. I did not hinder their joy. For I knew that this passion to combine small things into a whole would be useful to my glory. Three angels will always stand guard. White - to collect small things into a whole. Black - tear the whole into small. Brown - burn small things and water the ashes with tears. And each of the angels goes his own way.

You are white! That angel that was white before you has finished its journey and is now human again. For there is nothing sweeter: arms that hug, eyes that see, legs that go forward. The one who was a white angel is already standing on the ground, and the rain is pouring on his head. Water flows from his hair, and he is full of happiness. His service lasted for centuries and this is his reward: he feels! He feels his hair getting wet, his shirt soaking with water, his lungs breathing deeply!

Someday it will happen to you too! And you will be yourself again! In the meantime, there is no better fate for you than a child saved by you. The one who was before you did a lot. Sometimes angels - black and brown - were ahead of him, and white feathers died, burning in black or brown fire. The white angel asked me to release him from the torment, but the black and brown asked for the same! But everything must go on as usual, and the torment of the three angels is the torment of the whole world. Solstice Day I was the day I made the decision. And the angels changed colors. And even I did not know who took what color. The Lesson lasted exactly twelve months. When the next solstice came, each returned to his own color.

Now that each has known the other, equality has come. The angels realized their feathers could help. But only the child has the right to make a choice. Not always a child should choose one of the three. Sometimes the choice is already predetermined. The child knows: the black feather is his! And another child knows what awaits him if he lifts a brown feather. Only he who raises the white pen knows nothing. His future is a mystery. The bird will not cry, the forest reptile will not hoot, the white haze absorbs everything.

Occasionally there are children who are illuminated by the light of the future. This child is one in a billion. An angel is looking for this child. For if he finds it, his service to the pen will end. The little man knows what white means. A white angel saves a child after a child, but it is not given to him to know whether this is a child. Only when the child reaches the age of eighteen, then everything will become clear. You're afraid to ask me a question, and I don't want to give you an answer. I'll just say.

There is nothing above the number nine. The number ten, which follows the nine, is only a miserable repetition. Ten is just one and zero. You are smiling? Still, you, who know how to combine the small into a whole, easily understood what the number eighteen means. Eighteen is two nines. I didn't give you a hint. Didn't reveal secrets. You yourself discovered this secret. You will carry it on your own wings. Look for a child who is less than two nines.

Seek, but be calm and patient. Maybe in a century you will see this child. Maybe a millennium separates you from meeting him. Yes, I hear your thoughts and agree with you. There is a possibility that you will see this child tomorrow. As soon as his hands take your white feather, you will again become a man. For there is nothing better in this world than to be human.

It is not given to you to know who you were in a previous life, a man or a woman. Have you done good deeds or evil deeds? Was your death painful or easy. You wandered in the fog and heard the call of a white angel. And now you're an angel. You helped eight children, there is one more child left to help. This will be your first nine.

You still have a lot of humanity. Tears filled your eyes. It hurts where your heart once was. You were eager to help and do more than was in your power. You shielded the children from the black and brown angel. Well, that's okay! You tormented yourself with the question of why you help only selected children! But there are things that even I can't do. Free will or free human choice is what we cannot transcend.

Life is arranged in such a way that the present and future of children depends on their parents. Strange as it may seem, but you can only help those children whose parents did not have their own pen in childhood. This is true. The parent did not have a pen, but the child will receive his pen. There are exceptional cases. And somewhere, among these exceptions, there will be the fate of that child who will return you to the world of the living. But I repeat, these are exceptional cases. And basically, the work of an angel is hard work.

Year after year you will suffer, taking on children's grief, tears and cries of despair. Your soul will harden. And the time from solstice to solstice will seem to you endless. The year will drag on like a decade. You can't forget anyone saved.

But they will never forget you. For even if the child does not see the angel at the moment when the feather saves his life, the child still knows. He knows everything and remembers everything. Although sometimes he does not realize this report. The children you save will never again live a gray life. They will not spend a grain of life just like that, on themselves. They will grow up and help other children.

But you can't be happy for these kids. Every year human qualities will leave you faster and faster. Emotions will be replaced by experience. That is how it should be. Where an emotional, but inexperienced angel would fail, you can always easily solve the most difficult task. However, you will have to pay dearly for the experience.

But don't be sad. All lessons end sometime, and a change comes! The disciples run to freedom! Get out of stuffy rooms. You will definitely become a man! And you will become a free man!