Tanya had never expected her life to turn out like this. From the day she entered the large house, confused and eager for a fresh start, she never imagined that she would be enslaved by the very family she thought would offer her a home. When she married André, a man whose promises were as empty as his words, Tanya had no idea that the house she had come to live in wasn’t even his.
It was Zinaida Nikitishna’s house, a vast and intimidating place that seemed to dwarf Tanya’s existence. Zinaida Nikitishna, André’s mother, was a woman of iron will, a farmer with no care for anyone except herself. But Tanya was stuck, bound by the shackles of an unhappy marriage and the silent pressure of living under the roof of a woman who disliked her more each day.
“Zinaida Nikitishna, there must be no more mushrooms!” Tanya exclaimed, feeling the weight of her day pressing against her shoulders. Her aching back and the cold drizzle outside were the least of her concerns—what was worse was the constant barrage of commands and disdain from the older woman.
“If there aren’t any, too bad!” Zinaida replied, not even looking up from her knitting. “But maybe there are some left somewhere? Come on, hurry up, let’s go quickly!”
Tanya wanted to scream, to walk out of the house and never come back, but she couldn’t. It was impossible to argue with Zinaida. She had been living with the woman for three years, trapped in a cycle of servitude, feeling like a stranger in her own home. André, the man Tanya had married, had left her for another woman, on the other side of the world. He had fled without a word, leaving Tanya behind, still officially his wife but abandoned in every other way.
At first, Tanya had cried herself to sleep every night, her youth and beauty wasted under Zinaida’s watchful eye. Then, as the months dragged on, Tanya began to lose herself. She worked the fields, milked the cows, and harvested vegetables to send to André and his new lover. She had no choice, no voice. Zinaida’s demands came before everything else.
“You’re a good worker, Tanya,” Stepanovna, the neighbor, had said to her once. “But look at you—doing everything for that woman, when she treats you like dirt! You should leave her! You don’t need to live like this!”
But Tanya didn’t know where else she could go. She couldn’t face the streets alone, with nothing but the memories of a broken marriage. Even if she left, what would she have left? A future of nothing.
But today, something in her shifted. Zinaida’s latest command—to go search for mushrooms in the forest—seemed so absurd, so far beyond any reasonable request, that it sparked something in Tanya. Maybe this was the push she needed to leave. But first, she would find the mushrooms, just to get away from the house for a moment of peace.
“Go to the ‘enemy zone,'” Zinaida had called it, dismissing her with a wave. “The chanterelles are there, I know it!”
The enemy zone. A place in the forest that Tanya had never been, a place where no one from the village dared to go. Zinaida’s dismissive attitude toward the place only fueled Tanya’s curiosity. If it was so terrible, why would she want her there? But the desire to escape was stronger than any fear of the forest, so Tanya went. The damp chill of the evening air wrapped around her as she walked into the trees, unsure of what she was looking for or why.
As darkness began to settle in, the shadows between the trees seemed to lengthen, and Tanya hesitated. What had she gotten herself into? The path ahead was obscured by the growing gloom. But then, as if beckoned by some unseen force, she saw them.
Chanterelles. They rose before her eyes, glowing like golden treasures in the underbrush. The mushrooms stood in clusters, as if waiting for her to find them, to claim them for herself. Tanya smiled for the first time in what felt like years, the weight of the world momentarily lifted by the unexpected beauty of the scene.
For a moment, Tanya just stood there, letting the forest consume her with its silence. She thought of the years she had spent trapped in the house, serving Zinaida without question. She thought of André, who had abandoned her, of the life that had never been hers. She thought of the words Stepanovna had said: “You could do more, Tanya. You’re more than this.”
With the mushrooms in hand, Tanya knew she could never go back to the life she had known. The forest had given her more than just chanterelles. It had given her a choice.