There is a small village of fifty houses. On one side of the village is a small river, on the other side of a dense forest, which stretches for hundreds of kilometers. There lived in this village a little girl, and she had only one friend, a German shepherd dog. Both the girl and the dog were six years old. They were born on the same day, and when the girl was brought from the hospital, her uncle, her father’s brother, brought the puppy as a present to the young family. Inseparable friends, as the villagers called them. Where there is a girl, there is a dog. Where there’s a dog, there’s a girl.
Trouble happened that rainy summer, the girl disappeared. She didn’t come back for dinner, and she didn’t come back for supper. The dog was put on a leash that day, because her mother’s own sister had come to visit from the city, and the dog did not like her for some reason. Parents busy with guests missed the girl only in the afternoon. Went around the village, no one has seen the girl. Only an octogenarian grandmother kind of saw her in the morning by the wood, she was picking strawberries. But whether it was her or not the grandmother was not sure. The parents ran to the forest, looked by the river, but the girl was nowhere to be seen.
Meanwhile, it got dark and it rained. The villagers began to gather near the girl’s house. What to do, where to look for the girl? There was no sense in going to the woods at night, there were three lanterns for the whole village, and they were out of order, the batteries were dead. We decided to start searching at daybreak. Before morning people left, leaving their parents and a whining dog.
A little before dawn, about thirty people gathered outside the house. All but the elderly and the children had come. Someone said that they should unhook the dog, let him look for his friend, though it was useless, the rain had not stopped since yesterday evening. The dog had got loose from the chain and rushed away in the direction of the forest and disappeared in the thicket. The people had split up. Some had scattered along the river. The youths were diving and exploring the bottom. The other part, together with their parents, went off to search in the woods. The rain poured on and on.
It was the fourth day that the girl was missing. The ranks of searchers noticeably thinned. Several people caught cold and lay with a fever. Others sustained minor injuries in the course of the search.
In the yard of an empty house, a dog was lying on the ground, an exhausted girl hugging her arms around him. Dirty scraps of dress barely covered the small, scratched and bruised, frail body. They were seen by the same octogenarian grandmother, passing by. Immediately the entire village gathered, an ambulance was called, parents were found in the woods.
The girl was taken to the hospital. The dog remained lying in the middle of the yard, he was dead. The dog’s eye was swollen from the bite of a viper. From the yard toward the forest stretched a trail on the wet ground. The dog was already dying, dragging his friend toward the men with the last of his strength. The last thing he saw was his friend’s paw, swollen from insect bites. He tried to lick it, but he had no strength left. The dog died knowing that the girl would now live. People were shocked by the human act of the dog. People cried. The whole village cried. Have you ever seen the whole village cry? God forbid you should see such a thing.
The dog was buried on the outskirts of the village by a birch tree. The girl’s father put a huge boulder stone in the place where the dog was buried. The girl became more and more silent; she was now often seen near her friend. There were a lot of flowers around the boulder.
Now a grown woman, coming to her native land, first of all goes to her friend. She gently strokes the boulder and tells the dog the news of her life.
