Under the boundless sky, in a village steeped in orchard greenery and the whisper of ripening grain, a legend lived on—a legend of a love so bright and pure that even decades later, the old-timers, recalling it, would sigh softly and look away, hiding the moisture in their eyes. It was the story of Arseny and Ariadna. Their names sounded as if from a beautiful old song, and they themselves seemed heaven-sent: he—tall, with a clear, steady gaze; she—frail, with hair the color of ripe wheat and bottomless eyes in which every boy in the district drowned.
They grew up together, and their souls fused with invisible threads. They swam in the river side by side, hid from the rain beneath the wide-spreading oak at the edge of the village, and hand in hand walked into first grade. Their love was not a feverish adolescent passion, but something far greater—a deep, unshakable feeling that everyone around them accepted as a given, like the sunrise. They were two halves of a whole.
After school they submitted their applications, without a second thought, to the same technical college in the neighboring town. The world beyond the village was vast and enticing, but their small universe still revolved around each other. They dreamed, they made plans, and the greatest of these was their wedding. Returning home for summer break after their first year, they already pictured themselves as husband and wife. But fate made a cruel correction.
Shortly before their return, Ariadna’s father left the family. Grief encased their house in an icy shell. Her mother, gaunt and gray with pain, took her daughter’s hand and, quietly but categorically, said, “A year, my girl. A year of mourning. You can’t have a wedding in a year of loss. It’s a bad omen.” They weren’t upset. A year? What was a year when a whole life lay ahead? They were absolutely certain of their love, and that certainty warmed them like the fiercest summer sun.
But they failed to account for one thing—someone else’s black, all-consuming envy.
Two houses down from Arseny lived Liliya. She loved him too—silently, fiercely, from those very school benches—but in her soul that bright feeling had curdled into a toxic, suffocating obsession. She saw the way he looked at Ariadna, and that adoring gaze burned straight through her. She understood that never, under any circumstances, would she find a place in his heart. The thought drove her mad. In her mind, like a venomous spider, cunning began to breed, weaving itself into a flawless, monstrous plan.
And her chance came that summer. Toward evening, as the sun tilted toward the horizon and painted the sky crimson, Arseny and his father were tossing into the hayloft the fragrant hay that smelled of honey and sun. Liliya, dressed up and feigning breathlessness from running, came up to Arseny’s father, Nikolai Petrovich.
“Uncle Kolya!” Her voice rang with false alarm. “We’re in trouble! In Zarechye my aunt has taken gravely ill—fever, cough. She’s been lying there three days. Mother begged me, pleaded… Your horse is already harnessed to the cart. Please, won’t you take me over? I need to bring her some bear fat—it always helps her. Please, help us!”
Nikolai Petrovich, a simple, kind man, never suspected a trap. “Well now, why wouldn’t we help?” he waved a hand. “Arseny! Come down! There’s a job to do!”
The road to the neighboring village was short, but dusk caught them on the way back. At the crossing of an old, creaking bridge over a narrow but treacherously silty little river, a wheel of the cart slipped off the planked decking. The wagon tilted; the horse snorted anxiously. Arseny jumped down at once, and Liliya after him.
Straining with all his might, he tried to lift the heavy cart. Liliya only pretended to help; her thin hands merely slid over the rough wood while her mind raced feverishly. She deliberately dragged things out, waiting for it to grow fully dark, for their return to be noticed and discussed. She pricked up her ears for every sound, hoping for witnesses to her lie.
And witnesses appeared. A fisherman passing by with a cart saw the two of them fussing with the wagon at dusk. That was enough.
When at last they got free, and Arseny—tired and angry at the mishap—brought Liliya home, his father was waiting in the yard. He stood beneath the old birch by the gate, his face grave.
“Son, what took so long? I’ve been worried. Been standing here an hour.”
“The wheel got stuck—we barely pulled it out. It’s a bog there,” Arseny snapped, not even looking at Liliya.
He didn’t see the triumphant smile flicker across her face. Her plan had worked.
The next morning the village exploded. Like thunder from a clear sky, a rumor rolled through: Arseny had taken Liliya to the collective farm hayfield and robbed her of her maiden honor. She, poor thing, had returned home past midnight, distraught and in tears, and told her parents everything.
The whirlwind of gossip, fanned by the idle village wind, swept down every street and peered into every cottage. By noon Liliya’s parents, their faces twisted with showy anger, were already in Arseny’s house. They demanded an answer. They demanded her honor be restored. They demanded a wedding.
Arseny was furious and despairing. He shouted that it was all lies, that nothing had happened. His father, Nikolai Petrovich, a man of strict principles and unbending peasant morals, wavered. He knew his son; he knew his love for Ariadna. But times were harsh, and the law of public opinion stood above the law of truth. A stain on the family’s reputation was more dreadful than any truth.
“That’s enough,” he cut off his son’s cries with an authoritative, steely tone. “Silence! We prepare for the wedding. We won’t disgrace the family. Get dressed—we’re going to ask for her hand. That’s how it’s done. That’s the custom.”
In such matters there was no time to lose. Three days later—enough for propriety’s sake—they gathered the closest relatives. It was a cramped, stifling feast with deadened eyes and tight smiles. And Liliya moved into Arseny’s home. That was how he married—not for love, but by the evil will of lies and entrenched prejudice.
As always happens in a village where walls have ears and fences have eyes, the truth came out fairly soon. It became known that Liliya had entered the marriage still a virgin. But by then it was too late to change anything. The anchor of an unhappy marriage had been dropped to the very bottom of their lives.
It is hard to imagine the abyss of pain that yawned between Arseny and Ariadna. She believed him. But belief is not the same as having the strength to fight the whole world. More than anything, they feared causing each other pain. And so, when Ariadna met him once by the well, she turned away and whispered in a broken, empty voice, “Be happy. Don’t come near me again. Please. I don’t want new gossip.”
Those words burned into his heart like a red-hot brand. He submitted.
Liliya, who had won the coveted status but not a drop of love, watched his every step. She quickly realized she had condemned herself to a life of icy loneliness for two. He spoke to her only when necessary, and then in monosyllables: “Yes,” “no,” “thank you.” His gaze held not hatred—worse, a complete, absolute emptiness. Perhaps she regretted what she had done, but she could no longer admit it, not even to herself.
Years passed. Two sons were born in their house. Arseny poured all his unspent tenderness into them, finding comfort in his boys. He built his own house not far from his father’s and lived, day in and day out, like a caged man. And on the next street, in her parents’ home—first with her mother, who suddenly seemed to age at once, and then quite alone—Ariadna was living out her days. She grew even more beautiful with the years; a deep, sorrowful wisdom appeared in her eyes. Suitors came—good, kind men who saw in her not only beauty but an astonishing strength of spirit. But she gave each one a polite, unequivocal refusal. Her heart was forever taken.
Nearly twenty years went by. They lived in the same village, breathed the same air, sometimes saw each other from afar. Their eyes would meet for a second, and in that second lived all the pain of twenty years of separation, all the unending longing and unchanging love. But he was afraid to approach her, fearing the shadow of his detested wife would fall upon her spotless reputation. As for her… she had simply grown used to living with that eternal pain inside, the way one lives with a wound that never heals.
Arseny’s sons grew up. The elder went to the city to train as a welder; the younger was fifteen. One day the father and the younger boy drove off to help Grandfather Nikolai put up hay for his goats. Left alone, Liliya decided to prepare a bathhouse for the men. She fired up the stove and went to throw on more wood. The armful of logs was heavy. Stepping over the high threshold, she stumbled on a loose board. Losing her balance, she pitched forward with a cry and struck her temple against the red-hot corner of the brick stove. Death was instantaneous. Thus, tragically and absurdly, ended the life of a woman who had built a prison of lies for herself and lived in it all her days.
Arseny was free. The first thing he did, coming to his senses after the shock, was go to Ariadna. He stood on her threshold—gray-haired now, no longer young, his hands trembling—and looked at her the way he had looked at sixteen. And in her eyes he saw not an aging woman but that very same girl with sky-colored eyes.
But even then she refused him. Not because she did not love him, but because she was afraid. Afraid his grown sons would not understand, that people would start talking again, that Liliya’s specter would rise up between them. She was afraid to destroy the fragile world she had so painstakingly built around herself.
He asked for her hand for three years—three long years, proving to her and to the whole world that their time had come. He came, helped with the chores, simply sat beside her in silence on the bench, and his solid, unchanging presence melted the ice around her heart.
They married when they were already nearing fifty. It was the quietest, most luminous wedding in the village. No noisy feast—just the two of them signing at the village council office, and a few of the closest people, happy with tears in their eyes.
And then a miracle happened—a miracle that erased all the years of suffering, all the pain, all the longing. They made up for lost time, bathing in their late, yet so bright and ardent love, as if trying to warm with it all those cold years they had lived apart. They did not part for a minute, and it seemed their souls had at last reunited, flooding every second of their shared life with light.
And one day Ariadna understood. She realized that life was giving them the most incredible, most generous gift. She was expecting a child—their child.
A girl was born. Alyona. A late child, begged from fate. “A child of love,” the neighbors whispered, but now without malice—only with tenderness and tears in their eyes.
Arseny and Ariadna were happy. It was such a simple and all-embracing happiness—readable in every glance, in every smile-line at the corners of their eyes, in their interlaced fingers, which they no longer unclasped.
Now Alyona, their daughter, the fruit of that love that overcame every obstacle, is finishing medical school. From childhood, listening to stories of kindness and wonders, she dreamed of treating children. She will be a wonderful doctor.
Recently, as she sat over evening tea in her parents’ home—where the air smells of apples and fresh baking—she leaned trustingly toward her mother and whispered, “Mama, I have a boyfriend. We… we love each other.”
Ariadna took her daughter’s hand, looked at her husband, who was gazing at them both with tenderness, and said quietly but very clearly, “My dear girl, I wish you only one thing—to marry for love. To marry the one your heart has chosen. And to live with him all your life without a single moment’s doubt in your choice.”
If anyone understood the weight of those words, it was she. And in her eyes shone not the pain of the past, but the serene, hard-won joy of the present and a quiet certainty in her daughter’s happy future. Their story, full of tears and torment, had at last found its bright, healing end.