The Fire (Tolstoy)
Division into chapters is editorial.
Másha starts a fire while grandmother sleeps
During harvest season, all the adults in the village went out to work in the fields, leaving behind only the elderly and very young children. In one small hut, a grandmother was left to care for her three grandchildren while their parents labored in the fields. The old woman had been tending to household duties and decided to make a fire in the oven before taking a much-needed rest.
Exhausted from her work, the grandmother lay down to rest. Flies kept bothering her, alighting on her face and biting her skin. To escape their persistent buzzing and biting, she covered her head with a towel and soon fell into a deep sleep. While she slept peacefully, unaware of the danger that was about to unfold, her youngest granddaughter Másha was exploring the house with the curiosity typical of a three-year-old child.
The little girl opened the oven door and scraped some glowing coals into a potsherd. Carrying her dangerous prize, she wandered into the vestibule where sheaves of grain lay waiting to be bound by the women when they returned from the fields.
Másha brought the coals, put them under the sheaves, and began to blow. When the straw caught fire, she was glad; she went into the hut and took her brother Kiryúsha by the arm
Panic as the fire spreads through the vestibule
Excited by her success in creating flames, Másha fetched her baby brother Kiryúsha to show him what she had accomplished.
She proudly declared to him what a wonderful fire she had kindled. The sheaves quickly caught fire and began burning and crackling loudly. As the vestibule filled with thick, choking smoke, Másha suddenly realized the danger and became frightened. She ran back into the house, but in her panic, Kiryúsha fell over the threshold, hurt his nose badly, and began crying loudly from pain and fear. Másha pulled her injured brother into the house, and both children hid under a bench, terrified by what was happening.
Meanwhile, their eight-year-old brother Ványa was playing outside in the street when he noticed smoke rolling out of the vestibule.
When he saw the smoke rolling out of the vestibule, he ran to the door, made his way through the smoke into the house, and began to waken his grandmother
However, the old woman was dazed and confused from her deep sleep. In her panic and disorientation, she forgot about the children entirely and rushed outside to run to the farmyards to call for help from other people. The grandmother heard nothing of the children's cries and did not wake properly to assess the situation.
Ványa rescues his siblings through the window
With their grandmother gone and the fire spreading rapidly, the three children were left alone to face the growing danger. Másha sat quietly under the bench, trying to stay hidden, but little Kiryúsha continued crying because his nose hurt badly from his fall. Ványa heard his brother's cries and looked under the bench to find both younger children huddled there in terror.
Ványa heard his cry, looked under the bench, and called out to Másha: 'Run, you will burn!' Másha ran to the vestibule, but could not pass for the smoke and fire
Seeing that the normal exit was blocked, Ványa quickly thought of another escape route. He raised a window and told Másha to climb through it to safety. When she managed to get through the window, Ványa picked up his heavy brother and tried to drag him toward the window. But the frightened child was difficult to manage - he cried, pushed against Ványa, and would not cooperate. Ványa fell down twice while struggling to bring Kiryúsha to the window, and by the time he dragged him there, the door of the hut was already burning.
Then Ványa cried to Másha: 'Pull him by the head!' while he himself pushed him behind. And thus they pulled him through the window and into the street