Dan Millman - The Journeys of Socrates

EPIGRAPH

I VE KILLED D MITRI Z AKOLYEV .

This thought, this stark reality, played over and over in Sergeis mind as he lay belly down, straddling the moss-covered log, paddling as silently as he could through the frigid waters of Lake Krugloye, twenty-five kilometers north of Moscow. He was fleeing the Nevskiy Military School and his pastbut he could not escape the fact of Zakolyevs death.

Following a course roughly parallel to the shoreline, Sergei peered through the darkness to the wooded hills appearing and disappearing in the mist. The lakes black surface, lit by faint slivers of moonlight, shimmered with each stroke. The sloshing water and bitter cold distracted Sergei for a few more moments before he thought again of Zakolyevs body, lying in the mud.

Sergei could no longer feel his hands or legshe had to make land before the waterlogged timber sank beneath him. Just a little farther, he thought, another kilometer before I head for shore.

This means of escape was slow and dangerous, but the lake had one distinct advantage: Water left no tracks.

Finally he angled in toward the shore, slipped from the log, and waded through the waist-high water, sucking mud, and sharp reeds at the waters edge, up the sandy shore, and into the dark forest.

Sergei was fifteen years old, and a fugitive. He shivered not only from the cold, but from a sense of destiny, as if all the events of his life had brought him to that moment. As he threaded his way through thickets of pine and birch, he thought about what his grandfather had told him, and how it all began

T HAT AUTUMN OF 1872, chill winds blew west across the moss-covered Siberian tundra, sweeping over the Ural Range and north across the taiga, vast forests of birch and pine, lichens and shrubs, bordering the city of St. Petersburg, the crown jewel of Mother Russia.

Just outside the Winter Palace, wool-capped bodyguards of Aleksandr II marched along the Neva River, one of ninety waterways that flowed beneath eight hundred bridges, then past rows of small apartment buildings and church spires topped with crosses of the Orthodox Church. Not far from the river were city parks with statues of Peter the Great and Catherine and Pushkintsar, tsarina, and literary masterall standing sentry, bordered by street lamps just lit in the fading light of day.

Biting breezes snatched the last yellow leaves from thinning branches, tossed the woolen skirts of schoolgirls, and tousled the hair of two young boys wrestling in the front yard of a two-story home near Nevskiy Prospekt. In the bedroom window on the second floor, a gust of wind ruffled the curtains where Natalia Ivanova stood framed in the window. She pulled her shawl over her shoulders, closed the window a little, and gazed down into the small yard where her little son, Sasha, was playing with his friend Anatoly.

Anatoly ran toward Sasha, trying to tackle him. At the last instant, Sasha stepped aside and threw Anatoly over his hip, just the way his father had taught him. Proud of himself, Sasha crowed like a rooster. Such a strong boy, Natalia thoughtlike his father. She envied her sons energy, especially now, when she had so little of it herselftired most of the time since her belly had swollen with their second child. Natalias fatigue was no surprise. Yana Vaslakova, her neighbor, friend, and midwife, had warned her: A woman of your fragile nature should not bear another child. Yet she bore this new life and prayed daily for the strength to carry this child to full term even as the fainting spells had begun and a great fatigue had penetrated her bones.