THE BROOK OLD HEART AND OTHER STORIES

(ВЕРСИЯ НА АНГЛИЙСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ)

K.M. Vladimirovich

THE BROOK OLD HEART

AND OTHER STORIES

Complete Collection of the Saga of One Courtyard

Spring 2026

Author: Mark Kukushkin

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Dedication

To the one who looks at the water and sees more than just water.

To the frogs who simply live.

To the Guardian on the five-centimeter tussock.

And to the brook that remembers everything.

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BOOK ONE: THE SOURCES

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Chapter 1. The Old Heart

Somewhere underground, beneath the concrete of an old bomb shelter, a spring pulses.

No one knows where it came from. Maybe from the very depths, maybe from a forgotten river, maybe simply because the earth also wants to be alive.

This spring is the Old Heart. It beats always. Winter and summer. In heat and in cold. At minus twenty and at plus thirty-six. It doesn’t care.

From the bomb shelter, the water goes into a rusty pipe. The pipe emerges at the foot of a hill. And there the Brook is born.

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Chapter 2. Winter 2023. The Revelation

We came to the bomb shelter as usual. And there – a hole. Huge, black, collapsed into the ground.

We turned on our flashlights and looked inside.

There, in the depths, a geyser was pulsing. Not warm, not hot – icy, powerful, endless. The water burst forth from under the ground, and it didn’t care that above it was winter, snow, minus twenty.

We stood and watched. And suddenly we understood: all this time, all these years while we walked past, played, hid, forgot – life was pulsing beneath us.

From that day, the bomb shelter became the Old Heart. And the brook, its breath.

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Chapter 3. The 1990s. The Attack and the Breakthrough

Mom told the story.

When she was little, the brook flowed without bridges. People just stepped over it. Kids jumped across. The water asked no one for permission.

Then the hooligans came. Ordinary boys, the kind there were plenty of in the 90s. They decided to fill in the pipe – just because, out of curiosity: “What will happen?”

They threw in stones, dirt, branches. They plugged the opening.

And one of the channels – the one fed by that pipe – went dry. Completely. As if it had never existed.

But the brook gathered its strength. There, in the depths, underground, beneath the fill, the Old Heart kept beating. The water pressed, searched for a way out, refused to give up.

And it burst through.

Not a thin trickle – it gushed. Stones scattered, earth washed away. The water overflowed its banks and flooded the landscaped fields. It stood there, breathing, claiming territory.

Then it receded.

Returned to its channel. And flowed again as before.

Like a person who could have gotten angry, but chose calm.

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Chapter 4. Summer 2023. The Drop

It was very, very, very hot.

The Brook shrank, contracted, turned into a drop. A tiny, transparent, last drop. Hanging from the end of the pipe, not knowing whether it would fall today or tomorrow.

The grass turned yellow. Frogs hid. The Guardian stood on his tussock and watched the dry channel.

Then the rain came.

The puddles filled. They stood, breathed, waited. Then they began to feed the brook. The water from the puddles returned to the channel. The drop became a trickle. The trickle became a stream. The stream became a brook.

And it recovered.

The Brook almost died. But it knew something we didn’t: the rain will come. You just have to hold on.

And it held on. As a drop.

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BOOK TWO: IMPROVEMENTS

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Chapter 5. Summer 2025. The Great Works

In the summer of 2025, Several People came.

Not the authorities, not a commission, not bosses. Just those who looked at the brook and saw not dirt, but potential.

They did:

– Replaced the fan with a real mini-hydroelectric plant

– Laid a new pipe for irrigation

– Assembled a water supply mechanism

– Deepened the channel: from 15 cm deep and 12 cm wide to 1 meter deep and 127 cm wide

– Expanded the Frog Delta

– Dug a new lake next to the delta

And most importantly – placed a clay Guardian.

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Chapter 6. The Frogs. The Division

After the new lake was dug, the frogs divided:

– The Conservatives stayed in the historic delta

– The Progressives moved to the new development

Both tribes lived peacefully. Sometimes they would meet, croak, discuss business.

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Chapter 7. The Guardian

It was a copy of the monument at the Volzhskaya Hydroelectric Station – the one where a man points his hand toward the dam. But only 20 centimeters tall and made of clay.

The facial features were simple:

– eyes – two dots

– mouth – an arc

– a smile

He stood on a five-centimeter tussock right by the bank. And looked at the water.

No one knew why he was placed there. Maybe to remind us: here is a place where water is respected.

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Chapter 8. Autumn 2025. The Guardian’s Miracle

In autumn, a heavy rain came.

The Brook flooded. Water covered everything around: the road, the field, the puddles, the islands. The water rose higher than ever before.

But the Guardian stood on his five-centimeter tussock.

And the water went around him.

It did not touch the little clay man with the dot-eyes and the smile-arc.

Because the water knows: “This one is a friend. He was placed with kindness. He can be left alone.”

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Chapter 9. The Law of the Irrigation Channel

An old pipe ran from the brook – the irrigation channel. Rusty, but alive. It went straight into the landscaped field, where cucumbers, dill, onions, and everything planted in spring grew.

And this channel had a law that everyone knew:

“If water flows through the pipe – there will be cucumbers.”

Simple. Clear. No alternatives.

The people in the courtyard didn’t think about the philosophy of water. They simply knew: flowing – good. Not flowing – wait for rain or carry it yourself.

But the brook rarely let them down. It remembered about the cucumbers.

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BOOK THREE: WINTER AND THE FLOOD

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Chapter 10. Winter 2025–2026. Ice Rinks

The winter was changeable: sometimes warm, sometimes cold.

One night it got warm – you could go without a hat.

The Brook froze. And its floodplains turned into ice rinks. Kids skated, fell, laughed, skated again.

The water turned to ice, but it didn’t disappear. It was just waiting.

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Chapter 11. February 2026. The Great Flood

The thaw came. At night it got warm – you could go without a hat. Silence. And then – a sound.

The Brook woke up and stood to its full height.

The water rose higher than anyone remembered:

– Spilled across the road and went into the field

– Flooded vast territories of the courtyard

– Formed new lakes – with bushes and trees in the middle

– A sandy island remained in the middle of the water – small, proud, unyielding

– Distant puddles filled with water, even though from the brook to them – by water’s measure – was very far

And from above, rain fell. Water from the sky met water from under the ground. They embraced right there in the courtyard.

The Guardian stood on his tussock. The water again did not touch him.

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BOOK FOUR: THE FROG SPA

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Chapter 12. The Old Faucet and the Eternal Flow

Next to the delta was a ghost channel.

It was always drying up. Even when it rained, the water lasted a few minutes – and then disappeared. A dry wound on the earth.

And in a house, on a shelf, lay an old faucet. Useless to anyone. Iron, cold, forgotten.

Then someone had a thought: “Why not connect them?”

A water supply was assembled from little tubes. The faucet was stuck into the beginning of the channel. They turned it.

At first, the water flowed weakly. It flowed – and fell silent. Then it was made constant.

And the channel came alive.

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Chapter 13. The Frog SPA

Water flowed through the channel. Quiet, steady, always.

The little frogs didn’t want to soak completely – why would they? The water was cold, they were small. They just sat on the banks and put a paw into the trickle, or their belly, or just watched.

These were their personal baths. A spa-salon for the courtyard’s amphibians.

The channel was named “The Frog SPA”.

It worked 24/7. Without weekends. Without breaks.

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Chapter 14. March 3, 2026. The Launch

March 3rd. The air smelled like April. At night it was warm – you could go without a hat.

Mark went to check on the brook.

The Brook had already given back – released winter, turned its face toward the warmth.

Mark approached the old faucet. Turned it. Silence. A second. Two. And then – drip. Then another. And suddenly – a thin, living trickle.

The Frog SPA had started working.

The frogs were still asleep. But the water was already waiting.

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BOOK FIVE: THE MICRO-DESERT

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Chapter 15. Lithops. Uninvited Guests

Along the edges of the brook, in the most unexpected place, grow lithops – living stones.

These are succulents from South Africa. They need sand, heat, minimal water. Yet here – a brook, clay, grass. There’s no special soil, nothing they need. But they grew.

How did they get there? Maybe the wind brought them. Maybe a bird. Maybe just a miracle.

Next to them – a tiny desert. A patch of sand the size of a passenger car. Sometimes, when the wind is strong, the sand scatters, and the desert becomes the size of a truck. Then shrinks back.

There, in that sand, lithops also grow. And sometimes – dandelions. All together: African stones, yard flowers, water nearby – it’s a single miracle.

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Chapter 16. The Sandstorm

One day, something terrible happened.

A strong wind scattered the sand. The desert began to grow. Then the sand came at us – at Mark, at his sister, at their friends.

They got scared.

But not for themselves.

They got scared for the brook and the creatures.

The wind carried sand, the courtyard was turning into a real storm, and they looked toward the water: “How are the frogs? How are the little fish? Will the brook be harmed?”

The storm passed. Half the courtyard became a desert. Sand covered everything.

Then it disappeared.

Carried away by the wind? Absorbed into the earth? It doesn’t matter. What matters is this:

The little deserts remained.

The same ones with the lithops. They survived. They remember the storm, but they didn’t give up.

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BOOK SIX: PEOPLE AND HOLIDAYS

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Chapter 17. Children and Hooligans

After the improvements, something unexpected happened.

Even the meanest and most mischievous children started coming to the brook. Not to break, not to throw stones, not to fill in the pipe – but to watch.

They stood at the edge of the deepened channel, watched the baby fish in the new lake, touched the damp clay of the Guardian with their fingers.

The Brook stopped being background. It became a place of attraction. A quiet, silent agreement between everyone who lived here:

“This – is good. This – cannot be touched. This – just needs to be seen.”

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Chapter 18. Maslenitsa 2026

February. Still cold. Still snow. But you could already feel it – soon.

We made Maslenitsa ourselves. From twigs, old fabric, paper. Not beautiful – ours.

Then we carried her to the brook. Not to the square, not to the field, not somewhere far away. But here. To the water.

We placed the effigy by the bank. Lit it.

The fire crackled. Smoke rose upward. And below, under the ice, water flowed. The Old Heart beat and waited.

We stood and watched the fire eat the winter. How the black smoke carried away everything old.

When the effigy burned out, we stomped around a bit, threw snow onto the ashes, and went home.

But the brook remembered.

Now it has a holiday. Fire coming to water to bid farewell to winter.

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EPILOGUE

The Brook still flows.

From the Old Heart, through the pipe, through the channels, through the Frog SPA, past the Guardian, past the delta, across the road, into the field, into the earth, into the air, back into the sky, and down again.

Next to it – a tiny desert with lithops. African guests by Russian water. They remember the storm, but they didn’t leave.

The frogs croak. The Conservatives in the delta, the Progressives in the new lake. Sometimes they meet, discuss business.

The baby fish swim. Cucumbers grow. Kids skate, fall, laugh.

The Guardian smiles on his five-centimeter tussock. The water goes around him. It knows.

And Mark watches.

And writes it down.

Because the water flows – that means life continues.

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AFTERWORD

This saga is not finished.

It will be added to each time:

– the snow melts

– the frogs wake up

– you come

– a storm happens

– Mark approaches the faucet and turns it

Because the story of a quiet brook is the story of a place that is loved.

And such stories never end.

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End of the Saga.

But not the end of the story.

Hi English-speaking friends, what do you think of the saga? I’d really appreciate it if you left a comment—I translated it into English specifically for you.