She stood on a sandy high twilight-covered early morning slope. Steep slope, going down to the river itself. She stood and watched the night. To the light of the moon yellowing in the sky. She did not take her eyes off the glinting bright colors of the colors of the night water. And the coastal edge of the coast. It was heard, like in the stillness of a twilight morning, the waves were splashing water. Where, far away in the dark, the owl hooted, and the night crickets chirped. Two bats, one after the other, swept past the wolf in the night sky. Breaking the night cold air, they flew off to the other side of Berezena.

Down there at the very edge of the water were people. Two father and son. They sailed from another opposite river bank, apparently, with overnight on river islands. They fussed by a wooden, homemade boat and unloaded tackles and buckets. There was a fish. The catch was successful, and there was a lot of fish for the whole village and for the detachment hiding in the forests near their village of partisans.

It was amazingly quiet this morning. There were not even flashes from the explosions of bombs and shells there in front on the front line. Slowly the horizon rose pink, but the night shadow still lay on the slope of a high slope. And it was not visible here at the top of the high escarpment that runs straight to the fast river. She came from her forest. From there, with the swamps of her native swamps behind the village. I came to choose another victim. After hibernation and calm in these parts. She came back from the marshes in the form of a large gray wolf and wanted flesh and blood. That very night, she scouted around in high weeds. But there was no, no animals, no people. And hunger did not give rest to the she-wolf.

She woke up. I woke up to satisfy my hunger and fall asleep again during the periods of the summer full moon. The periods when its nature wakes up and the marshes come to life. When people are afraid even to pass near her forest.

She chose to sacrifice herself every time. And sometimes she tracked her for a long time, but today she didn’t care if she could satisfy her age-old hunger.

The she-wolf came from her world and the war did not concern her. Which was already the fourth year in these parts. She did not know anything about this world at all, but only fed on her, from time to time, replenishing herself with fresh blood and flesh. And that was what she needed tonight.

She lived a long time already near this village, and her mother and father also lived here for a long time. She lived in her own world. She lived for many centuries. From time to time, satisfy your hunger and go into long centuries of hibernation.

The fourth year was a war. And it was extremely difficult. Especially in a large front-line village, where there were mostly only old people and old women. For the fourth year in the village there was a well-battered Wehrmacht armored division and a German infantry corps. For the second year the village suffered from the dominance of the Germans and the motley filth they had warmed to. It was here, probably, as it is already accepted under this sky and by its nature it is supposed where war is, there have always been traitors of the motherland, naturally from local freaks. Nedobitkov dispossessed local fists and just runaway deserters and criminals. And as well as it should be in the war, there was always hunger. The fields burned out from the fire of war, and there was no grain. They lived on one potato, which was collected from their gardens and not always. Part of the food was taken by the Germans. Everybody, especially children, were starving. It was June 1944.

Here Vsevolod Artyukhov and his eleven year old son Pavel once again fed the partisans with fish. Silently at night leaving the river and fishing. So far everything has been going well. And here they were unloading, in the dark on the very bank of the river, pulling the boat out onto the sand and pouring fish into buckets from the boat.

They did not know that they were being watched. They observe not one, but two at once.A big gray wolf standing at the very top of a hillside directly above them in the darkness of the night and one of the local traitors to the police who hid in the tall grass and managed to hunt down father and son.

This scum nicknamed Toad, has long followed Vsevolod and sharpened a tooth on him. They somehow bit each other after the arrival of the fascists in their village during the looting of local villagers by the Germans. Just Vsevolod Toad filled his face and since then becoming a local policeman, this creature was digging under this rural peasant.

And then he tracked down who fed secretly from the Germans partisans and the whole village with fish, sometimes game caught on traps and killed while hunting over the river in the forest. Toad sniffed out even when Vsevolod traveled in a cart with a horse far into the woods, and knew which path he was on. He followed the hunter and fisherman Vsevolod Artyukhov and his son Pavel long and hard.

He watched in the dark and saw everything. As I saw him and those two big gray wolf. The policeman was preparing to report to the local military military

commandant of the village and quietly began to move aside, almost crawling in the direction of the swamps of the Wolf farm. He went precisely on the outskirts of the far side of the village, where the locals during this period, even on a white day, were afraid to appear.

Although the Toad was from a rural local, as, indeed, not all the traitors of the Motherland who had come to this Belarusian village, but he never went into local rural legends and fears because of his lack of thinking and ignorance. He was extremely far from the old folklore of his fellow villagers. He didn’t know now whose land a policeman’s foot had trod on him in a boot. And he tried imperceptibly to slip away over the woods in the still dark morning that stood by the edge of the swamp, bypassing the mountain slope on which the village stood and come from the other side of the village directly to the commandant's office. Just in the morning and at dawn.

It was four in the morning and it got light slowly and for quite a long time.

And taking advantage of this, Toad decided to quickly get around the mountain with a gentle slope and almost immediately run straight into the commandant's office with a denunciation of Vsevolod. He, bending down almost crawling, moved skipping to the forest, and the she-wolf looked at his boots in the darkness, and, leaving his father and son, rushed after the Toad. She finally decided who she would be today morning food. She chose a goal today. Toad ran in vain, just that his hasty escape in the dark of the early morning attracted her attention. In addition, she realized in what direction this scum rushed. Toad rushed in the direction of the Wolf Farm. Three very old abandoned log houses stacked from already blackened logs from a long time. With a low wicker fence and standing in the middle of a marsh swamp deep in the forest of pines and birch trees. There the path to anyone who came close to the edge of the swamp was ordered. No one has ever returned alive from those swamps. Either drowned, or his fate was to become food gray swamp wolf.

Nobody lived in this place. There were no animals, no birds, only the crows lived on top of the marshes in the black swamp, loudly croaking to the whole district. This farm was long empty and abandoned. He stood in the depths of the forest. On the sides of it were practically impassable swamps, going deep even into the forest itself. There were a lot of windbreaks from fallen pines and birch trees. And the places were considered wild and scary for the villagers living near this hamlet. Nobody had gone completely and for a long time already, considering these areas to be magical. They even frightened rural children. Anyone who lives in those areas of hells and witches. Especially wolves and apparently for good reason.

And now, in the footsteps of Toad, slithering, a big real gray wolf rushed. She was lit by a bright Moon in the morning sky. Yellow light, illuminating the forest itself, which became

thicker and more impassable.
The toad did not even notice hurrying that he was running through the mud of muddy water, slapping his boots. He rushed along the edge of the marshes, flickering between birch and pines, skirting the village.

In vain policeman Toad hoped to slip through this impassable forest area. He slowed down his progress. The toad began to stick its feet in the swamps among the trees almost near the shore of the swamp.

Tall grass tangled around his soldiers' boots. And on the black police coat of an overcoat with a white bandage on the sleeve “In the service of the Wehrmacht”, thick forest bushes of tall swamp plants whipped.

Toad knew ...