Pyotr's hunger

Pyotr's hunger was the talk of town. The village, actually.

It was only an hour past noon on this unseasonably warm day. There was not a single cloud in the sky and it was sweltering out in the open.

The old women of the town sat in prayer, wearing long dark capes with brightly-dotted headscarves - tiny beads of sweat strung along the furrows in their brows, their eyes raised to the heavens. Their wizened cheeks appeared uncharacteristically flush like sun-dried apples, and their faces told of great anguish.

Pyotr had already consumed six bales of juicy grass. They kept bringing in freshly-cut harvest from the fields below, till someone suggested hay. Hay they pulled out too, from the rooftops and the barns in nearby hamlets, while he carried on chomping and burping.

In the meanwhile, his little friends carried on with their melee down below, sheltered by their parents from and hence merrily oblivious to the strange goings-on around them.

The boys ran around, playing Tretii lishnii and Gusi-gusi, brazenly jostling and elbowing each other in their dapper, white sailor-suits. The little girls wore turquoise and scarlet sarafans, and sat around a huge oak tree, whispering draznikas into each other's ears and bursting into giggles every so often. A separate, smaller group of girls sang and danced cheerily to popular tunes they had acquired watching their elders during the festivities earlier that spring.

This was no time for festivities, however. The cherubic Pyotr, darling of entire Velobshk, only child of the majestic Ivan Pyotrsky, heir to high nobility, was struck with a dreadful malady. Not only dreadful, but ominous and truly macabre.

The first signs had appeared early on this particular July day when young Pyotr, a few weeks after his fifth birthday, had been noticed by his mother in their summer kitchen eating something, his mouth smeared with white powder. When she had stepped forward to take a closer look, she had realized that it was raw flour, and had admonished him as a mother would a five-year old, with the usual mixture of tenderness and authority. Pyotr had announced in his endearing lisp that he was hungry. Not until she had she taken another look inside the three-foot high stone granary had she finally discovered what would sent her reeling into sudden stupor. The entire pood of flour had disappeared!

Marusya, their maid had noticed Pyotr in the garden later that morning, after she was finished cleaning the back porch. He had been digging the soil with his bare hands and stuffing his mouth with enormous lumps of root and dirt. Within seconds, her peripheral vision, surprisingly intact despite her advancing middle-age, had registered something terribly amiss aside from this bizarre spectacle.

The entire garden was gone! It had appeared as if the backyard had been invaded by a wild horde of elephants, uprooting and devouring every plant, bush, branch, leaf, flower, sapling in sight. Only there was no trace of elephants trampling about, only little Pyotr squatting on the ground, with a wild look in his deep blue eyes.

News of the strange incident had dispersed like a vile contagion. Marusya had scampered out of the usadba, howling for attention in a strange dialect borne of terror. Soon, the entire village had assembled around her. She had wailed hysterically for several minutes before she had finally summoned the courage to pick up her sobs and lead them back to her master's villa. The Pyotrskys, in the meanwhile, roused by the commotion outside their walls, had discovered their child and the ravaged remains of their fond garden.

It had first been planted by Alexander Pyotrsky nine generations ago, who was granted this dacha as a gift for his assistance to the Tsar's forces during the first battle for Sevastapool. The estate had been tended to by his comparably illustrious descendants ever since.

What a vision of splendor and delight it had been for centuries, surviving the harshest of winters and bloodiest of wars! And now it was all but laid waste, the entire tract including the top soil upturned, consumed, barren!

Volga - the little boy's mother - had plunked onto the rough-hewn wooden floor like a rag doll, against the kitchen wall for almost an hour. Only when the cook's assistant, Anya had noticed her on her way out amid all the bedlam that had followed, she had employed cold water and warm rubs to make her mistress came around.

"Pyotr. Pyotr. My darling child!", Volga had muttered as she sat up, holding her lowered head in her hands, disconsolate.

"Monster! Only a monster could have wreaked such destruction", usually dignfied grandma Tara had meanwhile exclaimed. She had been hit with severe denial. Surely not little Pyotr!

Till they had noticed the ghastly sight of an entire tree-stump going down his little white throat, like a python gorging down an antelope, antlers, sinews and all. He had been crouching, frantically chewing off the root-end - soiled white tubers stuck out from either end of his mouth, streaked all over his face like a giant spider.

Now he looked up suddenly and stared right through them. This went on for almost a minute. Then he blinked.

Ivan stepped towards his son, in a gait half-measured and half-staggered. The hush in the crowd broke into whispers as he inched closer. The child's empty gaze slowly filled up as his eyes narrowed and his pale, smudgy cheeks contorted into a eerily menacing smirk - the sheer incongruity of the sight made it all the more terrifying. His doting father thought he saw a hint of filial recognition but all everyone else saw was unnatural malice written all over the little boy's face. The onlookers shuddered and fell silent again.

Ivan was less than a couple of feet away when Pyotr's mouth suddenly opened wide and a high-pitched shriek filled the air. His father struggled to regain his balance as he was thrown back by the demonic force of the sound.

The next moment Pyotr was seen running into a path through the nearby thicket of blue honeysuckle shrubs peppered with yellow leaves, that hugged the outskirts of the village and criss-crossed the meadows, all the way to the hillock overlooking the entire settlement.

Thus he threw himself wholly to the task of clearing the meadows, one by one. By the time the petrified entourage below had gathered their wits and caught up with him, the little ogre had grazed half an acre.

For a while, they just stood mutely watching. Till somebody hit upon the desperate scheme of invading the barns. That's when they started hauling out the cropped grass and the hay, hoping that he would spare the cattle what was left of the season's worth of fresh grass.

Now, one could surely hatch ways to shoo away a rampaging herd but what of this - their master's own progeny, what was one to do? The young master's family was at an equal loss - how could they imagine stopping their scion from running amok without causing him harm? Moreover, the whole accursed affair spoke quite plainly of the devil's machinations - there wasn't a soul in sight ready to stand up to Beelzebub himself!

Taking turns between lurid orgies in lush green and dry pale, the little one showed little sign of satiation. Occasionally, he would pause to belch and then heave a few heavy sighs that sounded like wanton groans of some abominable, ventriloquous beast-squatter. At other times, he would stop to shake off the clumps of green that stuck to his tiny limbs like sea urchins clinging to a rocky outcrop on the seafloor.

And so the fledgling-baron continued to torment the poor village-folk unchecked, well into the evening, lunging from one pasture to another like a viciously tight swarm of cicadas, laying the land fallow.

It was nearing dusk.

All eyes now were fixed upon the tiny strip of green on which he stood, the last piece of the last meadow that still stood. Moist eyes. Wistful eyes. Burning eyes. Lowered eyes. Squinting eyes. Closed eyes. Anxious eyes. Hopeless eyes. Hopeful eyes.

Then the sun slid down behind the hills, and darkness fell abruptly. As if on cue, Pyotr's puerile breathing grew audibly closer.

"Mother", he gasped.