The girl approached. She stopped beside me, standing straight as always.
"Tell me the truth, my daughter. You didn't just tend the barn. You knew from the beginning that Plato was evil."
Taisiya was silent for a moment. Then she nodded, just once, briefly.
"I knew it. But I kept quiet. Because Ulyana... had to see it with her own eyes. She shouldn't hear it from you."
Yevsey sighed deeply. He placed his large hand on her shoulder, not to caress her, but simply to support her, as if to relieve some of his weight.
“So, an iron man…” he began, but didn’t finish the sentence.
Taisiya looked up at him. There was neither triumph nor fear in her eyes. Only calm, deep water.
"He's not made of iron, Dad. He's just an honest man. And he's never promised anything he couldn't keep. He's just waiting. He's been waiting for three years now."
The wind carried a distant, low sound from beyond the Burnt Forest, like someone striking an anvil with a hammer. Single. Clean. Clear. Even from such a distance, the sound penetrated my chest like a warm wave.
Ulyana, still standing by the well, shivered and turned her head in that direction. For the first time in a long time, something alive flashed in her gaze: not hope, but curiosity. Heavy, cautious, like the first step on thin ice.
And Taisiya smiled, faintly, at the corner of her lips. That smile wasn't aimed at her sister or her father. It was aimed at something larger: at that invisible thread that had suddenly begun to stretch between the chief's hut and the forge beyond the forest.
The village didn't know it yet. But it would soon begin to bitterly regret it. Not out of pity. Out of surprise. Because sometimes the most powerful truth isn't hidden in the pomp of an accordion and the promises of the city, but in the soft, steady sound of a hammer striking red-hot iron. And this sound never lies. Never.
