Page 62 of Tiger's Trek
a cherished family tin,
and with the help of God, you’ll
place it right in front of you,
while playing the most dangerous game.
Please remember your mother.
Sleep, good boy, my beautiful,
bayushki bayu.
“I didn’t understand it when she sang it,” Nik confessed.
While he stared at the box, the big man said, “My mother told us that until the day he died, my grandfather insisted that when his brothers and sisters started disappearing, a beautiful angel, his own mama, came to him, wrapped him up in a blanket, and lowered him into the well. She told him it was a game. That he had to stay very, very quiet until she came to fetch him, and that when he came out, she’d leave him the key to a tin containing the family secrets or family treasure or some such thing.
“Turns out, she never did come to get the lad. When he finally crawled out after he was nearly dead himself from hunger, he discovered his entire family was gone, including his father. The key, which was left at the top of the well, was forgotten. When he did return to retrieve it, the key slipped back into the well and was never recovered.”
“How old was he when it happened?”
“I don’t remember. Five or six, I think. I was named after him. He was called Eldar.”
“Was Eldar the last baby your prababushka had before she died?”
“Yes. Why?”
Nik nodded. “No reason. It’s just... I think she wants us to recover that key.” Nik put one hand on Eldar’s shoulder and his other one on Andrey’s. “I have a fairly strong rope, but I’ll need the two of you to pull me back up.”
* * *
Nikolai soon found himself dangling painfully from a very thin rope wrapped over his shoulders and between his legs, supporting him like a harness. Strapped to his chest was a too-hot lantern that dribbled oil on his pants and threatened to send him up in flames. It wasn’t the best of his ideas, but it was all he could think of in that moment.
It didn’t take him long to search the rocks at the top, which was where he’d hoped the key would be found, but there was nothing there. Once he got past the rocks, he knew there was no place for the key to go but all the way to the bottom. Nik also knew the likelihood of finding it was slim to none.
Pressing on, the two men lowered him down, down, down, until the tiny circle of light at the top became so small Nik felt like he’d descended into the depths of hell itself. The only way he could cope with the tiny space that closed in on him, stealing the breath from his lungs, was to shut his eyes and focus instead on the pain caused by the rubbing of the ropes on his skin.
When his boots finally splashed into water, he breathed a sigh of relief that he could at last focus on the task at hand. Oh, how he wished he could use them for their magic, but the best they could do at the moment was give a weak flutter of shoelaces. They were barely more useful to him than a regular pair. In fact, they were even letting foul water into the top, soaking his feet and turning them numb with cold—something he hadn’t experienced since he’d owned them.
“Zamechatel ’no,” he mumbled to himself before calling out, “I’m down!” But there was no answer from above. It was likely they couldn’t hear him, which was soon proven true when he was lowered further, not that it mattered much. The water was only thigh-deep anyway. It was frigid though. He knew he wouldn’t be able to work very long before he lost feeling in his hands as well as his legs.
“This is ridiculous,” he said, standing there, lantern raised over the black water, shivering with cold. Letting out a sigh, he hooked the lantern on a root that protruded out into the well and, seeing no other options, sucked in a breath and dove underwater, using his hands to feel for a key.
When diving in a well, one finds a myriad of strange and awful things, especially when probing with bare fingers. The men had given him a bag with which to collect items, so anything Nik brushed against that felt hard and smallish went into the bag. He was fairly certain some of them were pebbles, but he couldn’t tell.
He didn’t consider himself a squeamish fellow, but the amount of mucus-filled globules and pulsating, tentacled things he found shocked him. When he exited the well, he was sure he’d spend the next few hours focused on the sanitation of his person. The only problem was that the well was the place from which he drew his bathwater.
When Nik was absolutely sure he had to leave or else lose his extremities, he yanked on the rope and then began the slow ascent. He couldn’t remove his fingers from the rope by the time they pulled him out.
“Gaw! Boy’s near froze off his yaytsa! Better put him near the fire.”
“Ya know I don’t like goin’ into the house.”
“I’m not much for it either, but we got no choice if we want to save the lad. Ghost won’t let us have the treasure if we don’t. She’ll hide it from us again. You know what she’s like. She’s taken to this one.”
“You’re sure there’s a treasure?”
“Durak. I told you my family was wealthy. Look at this place. There has to be an inheritance. Why do you think I’ve been coming out here facing these ghosts all these years?”
