Just after dawn, Nastaya walked up the hill outside Mirosk, where she'd been told the cottage of an old man named Fyodor could be found. Fyodor, people said, could give you answers to questions that no one else could, though he was not a scholar, nor a priest, nor a man of learning. Fyodor of Mirosk was an just an old fool.

But he was no ordinary old fool.

Fyodor was a holy fool, and Nastaya knew that people came from miles around to seek out his foolishness, which was of a particularly blessed variety. Of course, many also said that he was only a common fool, and that folks simply read their own meaning into his ramblings. But Nastaya had nowhere else to turn.

Not long ago her parents had perished in a fire that consumed their home and all that they'd owned, leaving her alone in the world. She was bereft, but beyond that she also had no prospects, no dowry, and scarcely a penny to her name.

Nastaya's was without a home, her heart was broken, and she did not know what to do. In her desperation, she was willing to see if perhaps this holy fool did know.

She crested the hill and came upon the cottage, a humble little house of thatch and stone. On low stone wall that ran about the small house, a young man sat, whittling a piece of wood with a knife.

That was not old Fyodor, she was certain, for he was ancient by all accounts. It was doubtless one of the caretakers who looked after the old man. The lad looked up from his whittling, and gave her a curt nod, but he said nothing, and went back to his quiet work. That was the way of things, she'd been told -- you did not speak, at the old fool's cottage. You waited for him to speak to you.

And wait she did for quite some time, standing before the old cottage, until her legs were wobbly from standing so long. She feared to move, or to sit like the young man, terrified that in doing she would break some taboo she hadn't been warned about, and offend Fyodor -- perhaps even offend God Himself, from whence the man's foolish wisdom was said to flow.

The sun was high in the sky, before Fyodor finally emerged from his cottage. The rumors had not lied -- the stooped old man looked as ancient as the Earth, with wrinkles like deep canyons across his gaunt face, and a wispy white beard that hung down to his waist. He hobbled out onto the green around his house with the aid of a gnarled oak branch, moving slowly and with great care.

Nastaya hardly dared to breathe, as she waited for him to speak. But to her dismay, he seemed not to notice her.

He puttered around on his little patch of lawn, humming softly to himself. He paused to regard a red tuft-eared squirrel in a tree,

"Invest wisely, young man -- wisely, now!" he admonished the little beast.

He then hobbled over to another tree, to poke with his stick at a cluster of toadstools among its roots.

"Good, good. Just like that! Keep up the good work," said to the mushrooms, approvingly.

Nastaya's heart began to sink as she watched this display, listening with growing trepidation to the old man's meaningless one-sided conversation with beasts, birds, and plants. A part of her began to see how desperate people might make too much of a poor old man in his dotage, who was only giving voice to half-faded memories as his wits were failing him.

Her hope returned somewhat, when suddenly he turned to her.

"Sorry!" the old man said, looking suddenly abashed, and hobbling quickly toward her.

She almost said it was alright, that she hadn't minded the long wait, but then she remembered the injunction she'd been given not to speak. Regardless, she soon discovered that had not been why he'd apologized.

He gestured with his branch to the ground at her feet, where a small clump of flowers grew. "I'm sorry about those, young lady. There was no other way to go about it, you see."

Nastaya blinked in bewilderment.

"It's the way of the world, I'm afraid." he said, shaking his head sadly. "I'd love to grow flowers from honey, truly, but it just won't happen, not this side of heaven, my dear. I had to use other things, foul things, to be sure. Ashes, and bones, and foul night soil -- all sorts of awfulness."

Then he stepped close to her, eyes suddenly wide and pleading. "But...but they are lovely aren't they? Aren't they?"

Not knowing what else to do, she nodded, and Fyodor smiled at her, seeming relieved. Then he blinked stupidly, and gave his head a shake. He looked at her as though seeing her for the first time, and he frowned.

"What?" he said, suddenly fixing her with a disapproving frown. "Young woman! This is unseemly, very unseemly! Your husband in the churchyard is beside himself!"

She opened her mouth to reply, then closed it, remembering the rules. She didn't understand. She had no husband -- she had no one at all.

Fyodor shook his branch at her vigorously, and continued his admonition. "Have you no care for your reputation, woman? For mine? Imagine, wandering about outside a handsome bachelor's cottage, when your own husband has need of you! Be gone!"

She danced back with a surprised squeak, avoiding a clumsy swing of Fyodor's branch. She looked at the young man seated on the wall, wide-eyed, but he only jerked his head toward the path down the hill, and then went back to his whittling.

Head bowed, she retreated, and trudged back down the hill. It seemed the people who said Fyodor was only a mad old man had been right. She supposed she did not blame him -- not really. He had surely not asked for his mind to fail him in his old age, and probably had no idea what he was doing, or why all these people were visiting him. But her heart, already leaden with grief, was now heavier still, her last faint hope expended on a fool's errand.

But then, as she passed, the old village church, she heard a sound.

It was a sound she knew too well, so familiar to her that she touched her throat, half-expecting to find that it was her own voice crying out. That sound had emerged from her lips and rung in her ears long into the night for many days, now. It was the sound of inconsolable sorrow, of utterly desolate grief.

Hesitantly, she followed it.

There, in the graveyard behind the old church, she found its source. A young man dressed in black, beside a fresh grave adorned with flowers. She could see there had lately been a funeral there, but when all others had departed, this man had stayed. Whoever had been with him could not tear him away from the graveside, and had finally left him alone with his grief.

As if in a trance, Nastaya walked to him then, slowly and haltingly, as though while dragging the weight of her own sorrow, a portion of this lone mourner's grief had begun to descend on her shoulders as well, until it almost drove her into the ground with its weight. And yet, she bore it, because when it had been her, wailing by the ashes of her parents' home, she had borne all that sorrow alone. She could not let this stranger do the same.

At last Nastaya reached the stranger, and quietly knelt by his side. Silently sobbing as he mourned aloud, she bravely bore his pain. In the days to come, he would bear hers as well, and by bearing each other's suffering they at last would emerge together from night into day once again. And just as they had shared each other's suffering, they would also thereafter share each other's joy, and love, and finally peace, until the very end of their days.

Far above them, on the hilltop, Fyodor smiled.