It's nippy out now, steam comes out of his mouth, and his beard's frozen up. Still-what bliss! The izbas are sturdy and black, there are high white snowdrifts leaning against the fences, and a little path has been beaten to each gate. The hills run smooth all the way up and back down, white, wavy; sleighs slide along the snowy slopes, and beyond the sleighs are blue shadows, and the snow crunches in colors, and beyond the hills the sun rises, splashing rainbows on the dark blue sky. When you squint, the rays of the sun turn into circles; when you stomp your boots in the fluffy snow it sparks, like when ripe firelings flicker.

Benedikt thought a moment about firelings, remembered his mother, and sighed: she passed away on account of those fire-lings, poor thing. They turned out to be fake.

The town of Fyodor-Kuzmichsk spreads out over seven hills. Around the town are boundless fields, unknown lands. To the north are deep forests, full of storm-felled trees, the limbs so twisted you can't get through, prickly bushes catch at your britches, branches pull your cap off your head. Old people say the Slynx lives in those forests. The Slynx sits on dark branches and howls a wild, sad howl-eeeeennxx, eeeeennxx, eeenx-a-leeeeeennnxx!-but no one ever sees it. If you wander into the forest it jumps on your neck from behind: hop! It grabs your spine in its teeth-crunch-and picks out the big vein with its claw and breaks it. All the reason runs right out of you. If you come back, you're never the same again, your eyes are different, and you don't ever know where you're headed, like when people walk in their sleep under the moon, their arms outstretched, their fingers fluttering: they're asleep, but they're standing on their own two feet. People will find you and take you inside, and sometimes, for fun, they'll set an empty plate in front of you, stick a spoon in your hand, and say "Eat." And you sit there like you're eating from an empty plate, you scrape and scrape and put the spoon in your mouth and chew, and then you make to wipe your dish with a piece of bread, but there's no bread in your hand.