Last summer brought such scorching days that the air above the field shimmered like a quivering sheet of water, and heat rose from the ground in a wavering haze that made every breath sear and drag. I was fixing my tractor right in the middle of the boundless field—the gearbox had failed, leaving the iron giant frozen helplessly among the golden wheat. The sun beat down mercilessly, its rays like red-hot needles from which there was no escape. Not a breath of wind, not the faintest hint of coolness. All around reigned a deafening silence, broken only by my measured breathing and the bright chirr of grasshoppers deep in the stalks.
Suddenly—like a long-awaited cloud drawn across a blazing lamp—a shadow fell over me. I looked up, wiping the sweat from my forehead with an oily sleeve, and saw her. An old woman stood right in front of me. Where she’d come from in this desolation was a mystery. She had appeared noiselessly, ghostlike, as if she had risen from the heat itself, from the quivering mirage.
“Would you spare some water, dear?” she said, and her voice, quiet and hoarse, sounded like dry leaves rustling underfoot in late autumn.
Wordlessly, I handed her my army canteen. She took it in her knotted, timeworn fingers and took a few small sips. All the while she kept her eyes on me. They were cloudy, whitish—eyes that seemed to hold the story of many lived years. Yet despite the milky film, her gaze was surprisingly sharp, piercing, as if it passed straight through me, seeing everything inside—every thought and secret.
“Your name is Lev. A mechanic. Your wife is Veronika, and your little boy is Artyom,” she said slowly, and a chill ran down my back despite the forty-degree heat.
I couldn’t hide my surprise, but I tried to keep calm. Our hamlet was small, just a handful of houses, and everyone knew each other, if not by sight, then certainly by name.
“You guessed right, Granny. And how should I address you?” I asked politely, taking back the canteen.
“They call me Maria. From the far hamlet beyond the forest, from Sosnovy. Thank you for the water, for your kindness. I’ll repay your good with good,” she said, and her hands began rummaging in the deep pocket of her worn apron.
She drew out a small stone. Completely ordinary to look at—gray, smooth, polished by time and, it seemed, by many touches. It could have lain on any riverbed or roadside, and I would never have paid it any mind.
“Take it,” she held it out to me. “When the darkest hour starts drawing near to you, when the greatest danger closes in—it will grow hot. It will heat up fiercely, burning like fire in your palm. Then you’ll know—it’s close. To the very day, to the very hour.”
“Oh come now, Granny, you’re telling tales,” I smirked, but I took the stone anyway. It was cold and smooth.
“These aren’t tales, Lyova. I have a gift—harsh and unbearable. I see when a person’s road comes to its end, when his path is finished. It’s a heavy burden. But you helped me, gave me water, didn’t turn me away, and I will help you. Carry this stone with you always. Don’t part with it.”
She turned and walked away slowly without another word, never once looking back. She dissolved into the shimmering heat just as silently as she had appeared. I looked at the stone in my palm, shrugged, and slipped it into the pocket of my work pants. A few minutes later, absorbed in repairing the complicated mechanism, I forgot the strange encounter completely.
A year passed. More than a year. September came, surprisingly rainy and raw. Heavy leaden clouds constantly blanketed the sky, pouring down endless cold streams of water. We were working in the far field, harvesting sunflowers, their wet, drooping heads nodding sadly under the lash of the raindrops. By noon the downpour grew so fierce that visibility shrank to almost nothing, and we were forced to stop work.
I was driving home in my tractor. The dirt road, blurred by rain, had turned into a viscous, slippery clay mush; the wheels spun, the machine kept fishtailing. I focused entirely on driving, trying to keep the heavy rig on a relatively safe line. And then I felt a sudden, stabbing burn in my pocket. As if someone had pressed a red-hot coal to my thigh. I cried out in surprise and pain and began feverishly groping in my pocket with one hand.
My fingers found the source of the heat. I pulled it out. It was that very stone. But now it was no longer cold and lifeless. It was blazing, as if just taken from a blacksmith’s forge. It was so hot I could barely hold it in my palm; the skin flushed at once and began to ache.
I braked hard and killed the engine. A piercing ringing filled my ears, and my heart pounded madly in my chest, trying to break free. And then it hit me. I remembered that scorching summer day, the old woman’s shadow, her quiet yet utterly certain voice. Her words echoed in my memory with terrifying clarity. I sat in the cab while the rain kept up its endless drumbeat on the metal roof, the patter merging with the thrumming in my temples. Fragments of frightening thoughts flashed through my head. What was about to happen? Would the engine explode? Would the tractor flip in this clay slop? Would lightning strike us? Danger was somewhere close—unseen but palpable, like an electric charge in the water-laden air.
So I decided. I decided to call my wife. Just to hear her voice. Just to tell her and our son how much I loved them. For some completely unthinkable contingency. The reception was terrible—voices breaking through static and interference—but I managed to get through.
“Veronika, how are you there?” I asked, and my own voice sounded strange to me, constricted.
“We’re home, Artyom and I. Where did you get stuck? Lunch’s been cold forever—we’re waiting for you,” came her calm, familiar voice through the phone.
And the stone in my hand grew hotter still. It no longer merely burned; it caused real pain, like a piece of molten metal. I clenched it so hard my knuckles went white.
“Veronika, listen to me carefully. If suddenly… if something happens to me…”
At that very moment I saw it. Straight ahead, about a hundred meters away, the old mighty poplar that grew right by our fence—the one I saw from my window every morning—began to lean at an unnatural angle. Its trunk, powerful and familiar, cracked loudly—audible even through the roar of the rain and the cab’s glass—and gave way. It was falling. Slowly and inexorably, like in a nightmare. It was coming down right across the road. Right onto the spot where I would have been in ten, fifteen seconds at most—if I hadn’t stopped. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The tree’s spreading crown, heavy with rainwater, was headed straight for the roof of my own house.
“Veronika, run out of the house! Now!” I shouted into the phone, and my cry was so desperate it scared me. “The poplar is falling! Right onto our house!”
I heard her frightened, breaking scream in reply, then a crash, the sound of shattering glass—and the connection abruptly died. The line buzzed with nasty tones.
I started the tractor again, my heart about to burst from my chest. I drove like never before, ignoring ruts and the sprays of mud from the wheels. As I neared the house, a horrifying sight met my eyes: the old poplar lay flat, its crown driven into the roof, tearing it open, and the massive trunk had smashed through the wall and crashed straight into the kitchen. The very kitchen where my wife should have been setting the table.
And then, from around the corner of the house, from under the shed’s overhang, two figures ran out. My Veronika—pale, shaking—and our Artyom, clinging to her leg. They were alive. They were safe and unhurt, aside from the terror frozen in their wide eyes. They had heard my desperate shout over the phone and managed to dash out of the house literally moments before the huge tree came down on our home.
I leapt from the cab and ran to them, hugging them both, feeling a tremor ripple through my whole body. Only then did I remember the stone. I thrust my hand into my pocket. The stone was cold again. An ordinary, smooth, cold pebble, giving no sign of its recent heat.
That evening, when the first emotions had subsided, when the neighbors had helped us clear the debris as best we could, and we were sitting at a table hastily set up on the makeshift veranda, I told my wife the whole story. The story of the hot day, of the old woman named Maria, and of the strange gift—the prophetic stone. Veronika listened without interrupting, and at first her face showed disbelief, but as I went on it changed to deep, focused thought.
“If not for your call…” she said quietly, looking toward the ruined kitchen. “If not for your voice—so frightened… I would have been setting the table. Artyom and I would have been sitting there… at that table…”
She didn’t finish, but I understood everything anyway. We sat holding hands in silence, and in that silence there was an entire universe of horror survived and bottomless gratitude.
The next day I went to the far hamlet of Sosnovy to find Maria. They pointed me to a small, almost toy-like house at the very edge of the settlement, right by the forest. I knocked on the crooked door.
“Come in, Lyova,” came the familiar hoarse voice from inside. “I knew you’d come today. Don’t be shy—come in.”
I stepped over the threshold. She sat at a simple wooden table and looked at me with her whitish yet piercing eyes.
“Thank you,” I breathed, feeling a lump rise in my throat. “You saved my family. You saved them.”
“Not I, dear,” she shook her head. “The stone warned you. And you did the right, human thing—you didn’t think of yourself in that moment, not of your own safety, but of those closest to you, of your family. That is the greatest strength.”
“Where does this… gift of yours come from?” I asked, sitting down on a stool across from her.
She sighed heavily, and her gaze drifted far away, as if she were peering at something very distant, invisible to ordinary people.
“From birth. My mother had it, and her grandmother too. We see the glow of life, and we see when it begins to dim, when it nears its end. Usually we keep silent, you know? Who wants to know their last hour in advance? It’s heavy knowledge. But you… you did me a kindness, freely, from a clean heart, asking nothing in return. People like you—helping them matters.”
“And the stone?” I pressed. “What is it?”
“Just an ordinary stone, from a river. Nothing special about it. But I spoke over it, tuned it to your fate, to your life. Now it’s tied to it by an invisible thread. If it grows hot, it means the greatest darkness is approaching. But know this, Lyova—its power isn’t limitless. It can work like that only once.”
“Only once?” I repeated, my heart giving a jump. “But it already worked! Yesterday…”
Maria smiled. It was a light smile, yet sadness lay in her eyes.
“The warning worked. You turned death aside—you outwitted it, changed what had seemed unalterable. Now you have a new date in the book of fates. Very far off. Very. The stone will grow hot once more, when your new hour comes. But that won’t be soon, Lyova. Not soon at all.”
“And when exactly?” I couldn’t keep from asking.
“I won’t say,” she replied firmly. “You don’t need to know. Such knowledge is a curse, not a blessing. Live your life. Raise your son, love your wife, help people. And carry this stone with you always. When it grows hot again, you’ll have a little time. Time to finish everything, to say everything, to say goodbye to everyone. That’s all I can give you. It’s the most precious gift.”
I left her with a heart unbearably heavy and crowded with thoughts. Yet it also held immense, boundless gratitude. Gratitude for a second chance.
Five years have passed since then. The stone is always with me. It lies in the deepest pocket, always cold, ordinary, unremarkable. Sometimes—especially in the evenings—I take it out, lay it on my palm, and simply look at it. I try not to think about the future, not to guess, not to make predictions.
I have learned to live. To live each new day as if it might be my last—I hug my Veronika tight in the mornings, I teach my growing Artyom how to handle the tractor, I help the neighbors mend fences and bring in the harvest. Because I know—when that little gray stone in my pocket grows hot again, there will be no second chance. There will only be time. Time to say goodbye.
I never saw Granny Maria again. A year after our talk, I learned that she had slipped away quietly. She simply fell asleep and did not wake up. She knew her day—I have no doubt whatsoever. She knew and she was ready.
Just before her death she sent a small envelope through a neighbor. Inside was a note, written in uneven, trembling script: “Give the stone to your son when he grows up. He’ll have need of it. M.”
A strange, unbearably heavy gift that woman had. The burden of seeing what is hidden from ordinary eyes. But she used it for good. She didn’t give people knowledge of the end—she gave them the value of every lived moment.
And now I keep this stone. I wait. But I do not wait in fear. I simply live. With lungs full, with love in my heart, with gratitude for every new dawn, for every clear, cold day granted to me and my family.
And the stone in my pocket is silent, and in its silence lies my whole life.