Ka | Padaret Vienam Is Maziausiuju Broliu

“Brother, what are you doing?” asked Pilkas. “Drink! Save your strength!”

Mažius looked up, his small sides heaving. “The old badger told me,” he whispered. “This sapling’s roots reach deep, deeper than the sickness. If it lives, it will filter the ground. In one year, the Stream of Clear Water will be pure again.”

Rudas laughed, a dry, rasping sound. “One year? We will be dead in one week.” ka padaret vienam is maziausiuju broliu

“Maybe,” said Mažius. “But the forest won’t be.”

That night, the three brothers drank from the slow, clean trickle of the hidden spring. The next day, while Rudas and Pilkas rested, Mažius continued his work. By the second day, Pilkas, ashamed, began to dig a small trench from the spring to the sapling. By the third day, Rudas, moved by a feeling he could not name, guarded the spring from a curious lynx. “Brother, what are you doing

They did not hunt. They did not fight. Day by day, mouthful by mouthful, they watered the sapling. The rains came late that winter, but the sapling, its roots now strong, held on. The sickness in the great stream slowly faded.

The brothers searched, but the forest was vast. They were about to give up when they heard a faint, rhythmic tap-tap-tap . Following the sound, they came to the edge of a cliff. There was Mažius. He had found a thin, hidden crack in the rock—a forgotten spring. Water trickled from it, drop by drop, into a small hollow he had lined with clean moss. “The old badger told me,” he whispered

“We must find a new stream,” Rudas declared. “We must fight the beavers upstream,” said Pilkas. “They have dammed something poisonous.”

One autumn, a great sickness came to the forest. The Stream of Clear Water, the only source of drink for miles, turned bitter and dark. The deer left. The rabbits hid. Rudas and Pilkas returned from their hunts with empty bellies and dull eyes.