Chapter - 1. Creaking along a broken road (it was difficult to name it and the road: just two runaway tracks), a cart was moving. Without urging and ducking the horse, the old man sat on it, holding on to the reins, as if afraid to fall. For more than three hours they dragged, so a strange and bizarre forest. Having lived for more than a dozen years (and who counts them - they go to themselves, yes they go) and, having traveled around the world, my grandfather has never seen such a forest anywhere. The trees that come close to the road looked strange. Some were twisted into a spiral, while others were curved so that it was painful to look at them. And the third to the very top were without branches, as if they had been deliberately cut down, leaving only the crown...