The Scarlet Flower

He wanders through that dense, impassable, impassable forest, and what goes on, the road becomes better, as if the trees parted in front of him, and the bushes were often parting. Looks back. - arms? do not push it in, looks to the right - stumps and logs, the hare cannot slip through, looks to the left - and even worse. The honest merchant marvels, thinks he can't figure out what kind of miracle happens to him, but everything goes on and on: he has a long road under his feet. He walks from morning to evening, he does not hear the roar of an animal, nor the hissing of a snake, nor the cry of an owl, nor the voice of a bird: everything around him has died out. Now the dark night has come; at least gouge out an eye around him, but under his feet it is light. Here he goes, read it, until midnight, and he began to see ahead as if a glow, and he thought: "Apparently, the forest is burning, so why should I go there to certain death, inevitable?"

He turned back - you can't go, right, left - you can't go; thrust forward - the road is torny. "Let me stand in one place - maybe the glow will go in the other direction, al away from me, al will go out completely."

So he became, waiting; but it wasn’t there: the glow seemed to be coming towards him, and it was as if it was getting brighter around him; he thought, thought, and decided to go forward. There are no two deaths, and one cannot be avoided. The merchant crossed himself and walked forward.