Along the path. Through the forest. Uphill. Downhill. Autumn, winter, spring. In all weathers. Running. Always running. Last night was bitterly cold, and this morning – school. The grown-ups say it’s only four kilometres to school, but they never walk us there. Only rarely, on the coldest days, if there happens to be a free parent and a free horse, we, the village kids, are taken to school by sleigh.

‘Get in!’ a parent says then, pointing his whip towards the sleigh standing ready at the edge of the village.

Then, in the crystal blue of the morning, we clamber up onto the crisp hay and sit there, inhaling its sweet scent, pressing against each other, like garden sparrows.

‘Well, my sweetheart!’ says the parent-coachman, and picks up the reins.

The horse breathes out white steam and, knowing the route well, sets off briskly. A bell trembles on the shaft bow. The dark forest is still asleep. Milky white snow illuminates our journey. The sleigh glides smoothly along well-worn tracks. Snow creaks comfortingly under the runners, like old floorboards. At first, the path goes uphill, then downhill, straight to the village of Tugaikino and our school.

‘Freezing?’ turns and asks the parent, clad in a sheepskin jacket and fur hat.

‘No-o-o!’, we chorus.

And all around are snowbanks, piled up, layer by layer, by storms and blizzards. They are frequent visitors here in winter; in summer, a dry wind comes in their place. In the forest, from time to time, the freezing cold makes the trees creak, scaring lonely birds. The birds caw grumpily and flutter from branch to branch.

In the sleigh, Arkashka, a village boy, says, ‘Lyuda, you have a crooked nose!’ and pokes my friend in the side.

‘What about your nose!’ replies Lyuda.

‘And it’s all snotty!’ Arkashka adds, not backing down.

‘Yours is snotty too!’ says Lyuda.

The parent looks at us, shakes his head and smiles into his beard. Fluffy frost coats everyone’s eyelashes – ours, the horse’s, the parent’s. The darkness thins out.

Before the soviets came to power, our school was a village church: two onion domes with sharp points, previously adorned with crosses, sit atop a log building with a small bell tower. Lessons start at eight. We are all seated around the big table in the classroom when dawn breaks through the window. Night flies off into the sky, the young sun rises, the snow shines, like a silver frame of an old icon in the trembling candlelight at home. All around shimmers with light – white from the land, blue from the sky, gold from the sun. My eyes burn.

But this is only in the coldest weather. On normal winter days, neither horse nor parent is wasted on us, so we walk to school, or rather, we run. At home, before we set out, we wrap ourselves in hand-me-downs from the adults: worn out shawls, headscarves and old stoles, so that only our eyes remain visible – two bright embers. In such weather, if your nose is left uncovered, it quickly goes white and could get frostbitten. Mama knows how cold it is from the tips of our noses. On each hand we wear two holey mittens, otherwise the frost nips at our fingers throughout the journey.

A skimpy padded jacket doesn’t save you from the cold. My old felt boots are tight, my cloth stockings – short. I run around all winter with bare knees. Under my child’s sackcloth shirt my sackcloth pants are held up by a piece of string. We run in a little gang, we all look like each other. By sleigh the journey to school is quick, but on foot, it is a long way.

The younger children rush off without looking back, then quickly get tired and fall behind. Sometimes they get so cold on the way that they start to cry, quietly at first and then they sob. Others suffer at first and then wet themselves, before they make it to the well-heated building of the school, where they sit in class and dry their frozen pants with their body heat. With the hem of my shirt, I wipe their snotty noses and dry their tears.

‘Lida, come on, help me,’ Mama said this morning before school, while my two older sisters sat at their spinning wheels, spinning wool by the kerosene lamp to make socks for soldiers at the front and missing their lessons.

I put down clean straw for the sheep and the cow, gave them hay, brought firewood in from the yard and piled it in the corner. Mama was fussing at the stove with an oven fork and a fragrant pot of soup.

When I rushed, out of breath, to the edge of the village, the village kids had already raced up the white path, disappearing from view. In November I turned eleven, but this is only my second year at school, so I really don’t want to miss any lessons. Now I am running alone, with all my strength, uphill, through the powdery, squeaky snow. On it are fresh prints left by the village children’s felt boots. My books ‘Mother Tongue’ and ‘Arithmetic’, tied together with a piece of old string, keep falling to my feet from under my arm. My feet get stuck, my knees are burning.

It used to be quiet here. The war with the German fascists started in June, and wolves came to our forest. They fled from afar, from places where fighting had broken out and scared them away. No-one has seen them yet, only heard them howling, on the coldest nights, hungry, around the village. But the adults are not worried about us. When we go to school on the sledge or run in a gang along the path, the wolves are wise enough to keep themselves away. They won’t bother humans unnecessarily, unless it is a rabid or starving wolf, or a she-wolf protecting her young. That is what the grown-ups say in the village. And children are small people, so the beasts won’t bother us either.

Now, without my usual travel companions, the forest is dense and dark. Huge, silent trees close ranks and freeze, like evil soldiers carrying out someone’s evil orders. The branches hang, bent under the weight of the snow, like tired shoulders under the weight of a rifle, casting blue-black shadows on the thorny, impassable undergrowth. My heart stops with every step – suddenly a bough cracks and flies down, hitting other branches, as if someone is creeping around in the snow, then a bird cries out plaintively, as if pierced in the very heart. A drum beat bounces off the closed cupola of the sky. A woodpecker is harming, or maybe healing the trees. I don’t know. Faster. Faster.

Uphill is hard. I am breathing quickly, loudly. Steam is pouring out of my mouth.

‘In cold weather breathe through your nose,’ Mama says in winter. ‘That way you won’t get a sore throat.’

Forget about my throat! My padded jacket has tightened, squeezing the life out of me, the cold has turned hot, the air scorching. I unwrap my neck to breathe.

Finally, here it is, the small triangular fir-tree, a little away from the rest of the big forest. This means I have come half way. Further on, it is easier, as the path flows downhill. Before the war, in May, we would lie on the soft needles under this bushy tree, catching our breath, looking up into the sky far above and making plans. Stopping briefly now, I take the familiar branches by the tips, the snow falls in lumps to the ground.

‘I am late for school,’ I tell the fir-tree.

‘Who hasn’t been?’ it replies silently.

The white canvas of the road rushes to meet the rolling horizon, and there, beyond the horizon, is the village and our school. From here on the hillock, if you look closely, it seems you can make out white columns of curling smoke going into the sky from the stove chimneys. From here the forest thins out, the sky gets higher and wider, the space around me grows, my breathing slows. Over the land, the last gloom of night melts away and the white globe of the sun climbs to the tops of the trees. Not long now. Soon I’ll see the school.

Downhill, I look at the snow, I want to follow in the footprints of my village friends.

‘These are Lyuda’s footsteps and these are Arkashka’s,’ I tell the path.

The kids in the classroom will be so surprised when they see that I have come on my own. And our teacher, Praskovya Stepanovna, will ask for an explanation. Then, first of all, I shall press the palms of my hands to the warm, rough stove, to let my fingers warm up so that I can write. And then, you see, it’s not long before break, and the round school teapot with a mug of hot tea made from leaves, roots and twigs.

Running has made me thirsty. Bending, I rake up a handful of snow, lick it off with my tongue. The snow burns the roof of my mouth, then quenches my thirst with its freshness.

‘Mmm!’ I close my eyes.

Suddenly it gets very quiet. The air stands still. Abruptly, its smell thins out and sharpens. Only a moment ago everything was different. Sensing the change, my heart pounds against my ribs. My eyelids become heavy.

I force my eyes open. My eyes are met by another pair of eyes. Slanted. Yellow. Humanlike. Or doglike? My heart jolts and drops. I am rooted to the spot. Ten paces away, across the white path, stands a piebald wolf. Grey and brown, yellow stomach. Like a picture from a text book. A grey hairy muzzle bigger than that of a she-wolf. The size of a large dog. A rounded, stooped back. A bedraggled tail. The wolf is frozen mid step, a crooked front paw raised, its head turned towards me. I, too, am frozen. Paralysed. We watch each other.

‘What should I do? Shout ‘Help!’ to the entire forest?’ I think. ‘No-one will hear.’ I answer myself. ‘It won’t hurt me without a reason, unless it is rabid, starving or evil. But who knows? Don’t move and stand still.’

And so I stand still. And the wolf stands still. His eyes are watering but his piercing stare nails me to the spot. His left ear twitches a little. He lifts his head slightly and carefully stretches his black wrinkled nose in my direction.

‘Nosy,’ I think and smile.

The wolf wrinkles his snout, baring crooked yellow teeth. His pink wet tongue does not move inside his mouth. He tilts his head and growls. Briefly and a little wearily. I take a step back. He stays on the spot.

‘Come on, good boy, move!’ I say to him very quietly. ‘I need to get to school.’ He listens and stays silent. Shakes his head.

‘I won’t hurt you. God’s speed, get back on your way.’

He bares his teeth, wrinkles his nose, growls. I stand my ground and wait.

Of course, I could turn round and run back to my village. He might chase me. Then I could climb a tree and wait until the gang of kids run home from school. But why should I surrender the path to an old wolf? While I think about this, something rustles in the undergrowth at the side of the path, maybe a hare running past or a bird fluttering. The wolf turns his grey muzzle towards it, sniffs the air and slowly, swaying and hobbling, crosses the path. I wait. I wait until he disappears into the undergrowth.

‘That’s it! That was close!’

My heart soars back into my chest. My strength returns. I rush down the white path without looking back. Soon, in the valley, in the first rays of sunshine and the early morning haze, the village appears. Steppe hills embrace the village on three sides. The chimneys smoke, the roofs wear tall hats of snow, the houses prop up snowbanks. The first two streets, then another one, our school is on the fourth. Village dogs follow me, jumping and barking cheerfully right up to the school.

In the corner of the school porch, there is a little brush, which Avakum, the school caretaker brought in. We always brush the snow from our felt boots at the entrance. If we don’t, then it melts in the warm classroom, forming a puddle on the floor, and there are a lot of us children, so the whole floor will be wet. The door into the classroom is heavy and stiff, like all village doors, padded with felt or an old quilt for warmth.

In the warm room, kids of all ages are settled at the big table left behind by the family of the priest, with their heads bent over their books. All of the school years sit together, but study from different textbooks. Praskovya Stepanovna assigns work according to level. The room smells of firewood brought in from the cold, and tea.

A few kids and the teacher lift their faces, turn away from their books and look in my direction. The teacher silently nods and gives me a smile. Quietly I say hello and go to the stove in the corner. Even though he grins into his thick moustache like a good-natured grandfather, I try to avoid the gaze of comrade Stalin. He watches everyone from his tiny portrait hung high on the wall of the classroom like an icon.

‘Comrade Stalin sees everything!’ Praskovya Stepanovna tells us, often.

Avakum is pottering about by the stove with his noisy wooden leg from the 1914 war, which he lovingly calls ‘my decoration’.

‘Hello, Uncle Avakum,’ I whisper to him.

‘Hi!’ he replies. ‘Go to the stove, warm up!’

On an ordinary winter morning, as soon as we see the domes of the school, we race to its warm building. We jostle each other at the entrance, everyone rushes to get a place by the stove, where we stand and press ourselves against the iron plating, until it thaws our bodies and souls. The younger children seem glued to the stove, drying their wet pants.

Avakum lives by the school, gets up long before dawn and heats up the stove, which has cooled overnight, for us and Praskovya Stepanovna. At the door, he shakes his head and laughs into his beard, ‘Tearaways!’, when we burst in, shouting and pushing, into his sleepy school, letting in the cold. Then Avakum hobbles quickly back to the stove on one wooden and one healthy leg, kneels down on his good leg and feeds the greedy furnace one log after another. The stove crackles with pleasure.

I press my pants against it, waiting for the end of the lesson.

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Olga Utrivanova was born and raised in the Soviet Union. After graduating from university in her home town of Tver with a degree in English, she moved to the UK. Now based in London, Olga works as a psychotherapist and teaches Russian. Olga writes short stories based on the oral narratives of the women of her extended family from the Middle Volga region of Russia. The Path was previously published in Russian in Yunost’ (Youth). Another story of Olga’s was published in an online literature magazine Pashnya in 2023.

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Sam Heley lives in Leigh-on-Sea and works as a speech and language therapist in the UK. She studied Russian at Girton College, Cambridge and UCL School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies.  Sam and Olga met at Pushkin House Reading Group in London and now work collaboratively to translate Olga’s work.