Лютик перевод романа на английский

Prologue
In the village of Zarechnaya, nestled in a valley between two hills, they knew: if you were so ill that neither a healer nor a herbalist could help, you had to go to Lyutik. Not to the flower, but to the girl. She had no other name. Her real name had worn away, like a soft stone would wear away in a stream, under the weight of looks that mixed hope, despair and fear.
Buttercup lived on the outskirts, in an old hut built by her great-grandmother. The hut breathed dried herbs, honey and silence. And Buttercup... Buttercup was like her flower - fragile, with golden sparkles in her eyes, but with a bitter, poisonous secret inside. She gave health to others, but she herself was eternally sick - other people's pain ate into her, leaving pale patterns on her skin, similar to frost patterns on glass, and draining her strength during long nights.
Her gift was a curse. And a blessing. And the only thing she had.

Part One: Dew on the Petals
Chapter 1
That day began with fog, white and milky, enveloping the valley. Buttercup, as always, woke up from her own quiet moan. Icy goosebumps crawled down her spine - an echo of yesterday's healing. Old man Grigori suffered from heart pain, and now her own chest was squeezed by a heavy, alien lump.
She stepped out onto the porch, barefoot, however, on the thin canvas of her shirt. The fog licked her ankles, cold and damp. Breathing in the air that smelled of rotten leaves and river water, she tried to stop shivering. Her hands reached out to the bed by the fence – not to the vegetables, but to a family of modest, bright yellow flowers. Buttercups. She touched their petals, and for a moment she felt better. They were her anchor, her namesakes, her pain and her joy.
Returning to the hut, she began her usual chores: hanging bunches of oregano, checking the St. John's wort infusion. Suddenly, she heard footsteps and ragged breathing outside. The door swung open, and the neighbor's girl, Mashka, appeared on the threshold, her face flushed from running.
- Buttercup! Run to us! Father... from the field... blood... - the words were confused, tears rolled down the cheeks.
Buttercup didn't ask about anything. She grabbed her tattered bag with herbs, ointments and clean rags and ran after the girl.
Mashka's hut smelled of fear and iron. Semyon, her father, was lying on a bench, pale as a sheet. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up, a torn wound from a scythe gaped on his forearm, the blood oozed stubbornly and thickly. His wife, Arina, was helplessly tossing and turning, clutching bloody rags to her chest.
“Get away,” Buttercup said quietly, her voice, usually soft, taking on a metallic tone.
She knelt down, took a vial of clear liquid from her bag – an extract of cobwebs and yarrow – and began to wash the wound. Then her thin fingers flew around the edges of the wound. Buttercup closed her eyes. The silence was broken only by Semyon’s heavy breathing and the ticking of the wall clock.
Arina and Mashka froze, watching the familiar and therefore no less terrifying ritual. They saw how the skin on Lyutik's face became transparent, how blue veins appeared through it. They saw how her lips turned white, and sweat appeared on her forehead. But the wound on Semyon's hand seemed to come to life under her fingers: the flesh tightened, the bleeding stopped, leaving only a pinkish strip of new skin.
When it was all over, Buttercup stepped back, leaning her palm on the floor. She was shaking.
“Thank you,” Arina whispered, already handing her a bundle of food – eggs, a piece of lard, flatbread. This was payment. Lyutik never took money.
The girl nodded, unable to speak, and staggered out. On the way home, she vomited into the bushes by the path. Bitter bile mixed with the taste of someone else's pain. She dragged herself to the hut and collapsed on the bed, in a state of oblivion where there was neither sleep nor reality, only the chaos of someone else's suffering.

Chapter 2
She woke up from a knock on the door. The sun was already setting in the west, painting the walls of the hut golden. The knock was persistent, but not frightening. Alien.
A stranger stood on the threshold. Tall, in a traveling cloak, with a knapsack over his shoulders. His face was tired, but his eyes were attentive and alive. He looked at her not as the villagers looked – not with hope or fear, but with curiosity.
"Sorry to bother you," his voice was low and pleasant. "My name is Artem. I'm looking for a healer. They say there's a girl named Lyutik living here."
She stepped back silently, allowing him to enter. He was the first traveler in a long time to come looking for her specifically.
“Are you ill?” she asked, sitting him down at the table and pouring tea from a ladle.
- No. I'm... a researcher. I collect stories about folk medicine, about rare gifts. There are legends about you.
Buttercup smiled bitterly.
— Legends are usually embellished. I do not cast spells. I simply… take the pain of others upon myself. For a short time. Then it goes away, leaving me with only a small part to remember it by.
Artem listened attentively, without interrupting. He took out a notebook, but did not write anything down, he just looked at her hands, at her pale skin, at the shadows under her eyes.
“It must be unbearably hard,” he said at last.
These simple words, spoken without servility or horror, touched her more than all the pleas for help. They brought a lump to her throat. She turned away.
- This is my share.
He stayed with her for several hours. He told her about his travels, about the books he had read, about other people with unusual abilities he had met. The world for her, who lived within the four walls of her hut and other people's suffering, suddenly expanded. He was the first to see in her not an instrument, not a miracle, but a person.
Seeing him off at the gate, she unexpectedly asked herself:
— Will you come again?
Artem smiled.
- If you allow me. It seems to me that your story is just beginning.
She watched his figure dissolve into the evening twilight, and for the first time in many years she felt not pain, but a nagging, unfamiliar feeling - a mixture of longing and hope.

Part Two: Roots and Poison
Chapter 3
Artem began to come often. At first once a week, then almost every day. He helped her with the housework: he fixed the sagging porch, chopped wood. They talked for a long time. He asked about her gift, and to her own surprise, she began to tell. About the first time, when at five years old she put her hand to the cheek of a crying friend, and she stopped crying, and Lyutik's cheek swelled and turned red. About how her mother, who also had a gift, but weaker, taught her to relieve pain little by little, so as not to die herself. About how her mother died, exhausted by other people's illnesses.
"She said that our gift is like a buttercup," Buttercup said quietly, looking at the flames in the furnace. "Bright, attractive, but poisonous to the one who carries it within. We heal people, but they fear us. They use us and turn away, as if we remind them of their own weakness.
Artem took her hand, carefully, like a jewel. He studied the barely noticeable white scars on her wrists and palms.
- Have you ever thought about giving up? Stopping healing?
“They won’t,” she shook her head toward the village. “And I can’t. If I find out that someone is suffering, and I can help… it’s not a choice anymore. It’s a need. A thirst. Like hunger.
One day he brought her a book, a thick volume in a tattered binding. "The Herbalist and the Bestiarium." There were drawings of plants she didn't know, descriptions of creatures she didn't believe existed.
"The world is huge, Lyutik," Artem said. "And there are many types of power. Not just the kind that brings pain."
He read her poetry, and the words about love, about distant seas, about stars fell on her soul like a healing ointment. She began to change. She fell into mute days after healing less often, and smiled more often. A spark began to appear in her eyes, always sad – not the reflection of a golden flower, but her own, inner light.
But the village was not asleep. First there were whispers. Then open conversations.
"The alien is hanging around our healer. He'll put the evil eye on us and teach us God knows what."
"She has become stingy with healing. Yesterday Petru came with a toothache, and she almost threw him out the door, saying she had no strength. And she herself is walking through the woods with that clerk!"
"She's probably brewing a love potion for him. Why else would a healthy man go to her?"
Fear of what they do not understand was mixed with envy and malice. Their benefactress, their sufferer and atoning victim suddenly wanted to have something of her own, something personal. And this "mine" was someone else's.

Chapter 4
The storm broke out when the headman's son fell ill. The boy, playful and cheerful, caught a fever. The village healer threw up his hands. The headman, an important and arrogant man, came to Dandelion.
- Go and help. I'll pay you anything.
Buttercup glanced at him. She had just returned from a walk with Artem. There was a smile frozen on her lips, and her body was not exhausted by pain. She felt… alive.
- I can't, Ignat Petrovich. I can't today. I'm weak. Give me a day, just one day.
- How can you not? - the elder's voice thundered. - My son is dying, and you can't? Is it because of that charlatan who confused you? He won't let you treat him? I'll whip him out of the village right now!
A fire flared in her eyes. Before, she would have lowered her gaze and obediently walked away. But now there was something new in her – a sense of self-worth, sown by Artem.
- You won't touch Artem. And I'll rest today and come to the boy tomorrow. The fever won't kill him overnight.
The elder turned purple. He was not used to being contradicted, and especially not by some witch from the outskirts.
- Oh, really? - he hissed. - Well, watch out, Dandelion. If something happens to my son, your visitor will be in trouble. And you too. We've taken you in, we're feeding you, and you...
He didn’t finish speaking, turned around and left, slamming the door.
Buttercup sat by the window all night, wrapping her shoulders in a shawl. She felt guilty. But for the first time in her life, she also felt a right to her life, to her weakness. She cried – not from physical pain, but from fear and injustice.
In the morning the boy felt worse. Lyutik, unable to bear it, went to them. She healed him, spending several hours and all her strength on it. She was carried out of the elder's hut unconscious. She came to in her own bed. An anxious Artem was leaning over her.
“What did they do to you?” His voice trembled with rage.
“It’s me… I’m always like this…” she whispered.
- No, not always! You never faded away like this before! You're struggling, Buttercup. You're torn between duty and the desire to live. It's eating you up from the inside.
He was right. Her gift was fed by her submission. Resistance only made it more poisonous.
"You need to leave here," Artem said firmly. "Come with me. I'll show you the world. You'll learn to live for yourself.
Leave? Abandon Zarechnaya? It was unthinkable. It was the equivalent of death. Or rebirth. She looked at him with horror and longing.
- I can't. They... they won't let me go.
"They will kill you," he said sternly. "Slowly and gratefully."
That night a crowd gathered outside her house. Led by the headman. They demanded that she come out.
- Come out, witch! Your visitor was seen picking belladonna in the swamp! He poisoned the well! Our cattle are dying!
It was an absurd, wild slander. But people's fear made it real.
Artem went out onto the porch to reason with them. A stone thrown by someone from the crowd hit him in the temple. He fell without a sound.
The scream that Buttercup let out was not human. It was the cry of a wounded animal, despair and rage unleashed. She ran out of the house and fell to her knees next to him, touching his face, his wound.
And then something new happened. All the pain, all the anger, all the resentment accumulated over the years poured out of her, not inward. Not healing energy, but a destructive wave. The flowers in the garden bed by the fence withered in an instant. People in the crowd felt sudden nausea, dizziness, weakness. They were seized by an inexplicable, animalistic horror. They rushed away, crushing each other.
Buttercup didn't see it. She was concentrating on Artem. She was drawing out his pain, his damage, taking him into herself, as always. But this time, along with the pain, something else entered her – his love, his memories, his strength. She healed him, but she didn't become exhausted, she became... filled. His life became her shield.
He opened his eyes.
— What… what happened?
She looked at him, and in her golden eyes burned a new fire - strong and clear.
— I made a choice.

Part Three: Blooming
Epilogue
The cart, loaded with simple belongings, left the village at dawn. No one came out to see them off. The shutters were closed. Zarechnaya was left behind – sleeping, frightened, poisoned by her own fear.
Buttercup sat next to Artem, who was driving the horse. On her lap lay a pot with a yellow flower. Buttercup.
She looked at the road running away into the distance, into unfamiliar lands. On her hands, hugging the pot, fresh scars were white - the last marks of the village. But there will be no more new ones.
“Where are we going?” she asked quietly.
“Forward,” Artem answered, touching her hand. “Just forward.”
She nodded and smiled. For the first time, she smiled in a way that didn't leave her eyes sad. She was no longer a flower, poisonous only to herself. She had become a healer, finding her source of strength not in suffering, but in love. And she had her whole life ahead of her.
Their carriage disappeared around the bend, and in Zarechnaya there were legends for a long time about Dandelion the sorceress, who could not only heal, but also punish. But now these were just fairy tales to let the children in. The real Dandelion left to seek her happiness, taking with her her gift, her pain, and her bright, invincible, like spring, flower of hope.