The Tale of the Ebony Horse. Ebony horse

Chit R. Plyatt

TALE ABOUT THE MAGIC HORSE

Arabian tale
Read by Rostislav Plyatt

This happened in ancient times. It occurred to the powerful ruler to get rid of the young Scheherazade; It was his custom to kill his many wives one after another. But I must say that nowhere in the world could one find such a beauty, and even an expert in telling magical, whimsical tales in which miracles did not end, but followed each other...
And so, in order to delay the day of her death, Scheherazade began to tell fairy tales. Her endless fairy tale lasted a thousand and one nights, and the mighty, formidable ruler, like a child, listened to them and asked for more and more...
Thus, says the old legend, the famous tales of the Arabian Nights were born. Sheheraada not only escaped death then, she lived in these tales for many centuries. And he still lives!
Arabian tales... They are about many things - about miracles and sorcerers, about huge, powerful and incredibly evil genies, about beautiful Peri girls, about unrighteous and good kings, brave princes, about kidnappings and dangers.
And now we will hear an Arabic tale - about miracles, about wizards and a brave prince. True, Prince Hasan is not quite like those brave knights we meet in many fairy tales. Most often, they go to distant lands on their faithful horses to get some miracle. They have a whole camping equipment behind them, huge swords in their belts, which were forged by the most skilled gunsmiths, and loyal servants always ride next to them... Yes, you can’t go on such trips lightly.
But our hero Hassan had no intention of going anywhere, much less as far as he happened to. Therefore, he had no other weapon except his own intelligence and cunning, and he did not think about any miracle, because he lived quite well in the royal palace; he was the only son of the great king, and his father, of course, spoiled him.
...One day three great sages came to the king. Each one had something in his hands for which he hoped to receive a great reward. We won’t talk about the first two, who invented really useful and beautiful things. But the third one...
In his hands was... a horse, only, of course, not an ordinary one, but a magical one. It was made of ivory and ebony. But this horse looked just like a living one, only it didn’t move or breathe...
Of course, this sage was very smart and learned, but, as we learn later, he was also an evil, ugly old man. Neither the tsar nor the prince knew this yet. The sage looked with contempt at the gifts of the other two and began to boast of his own. “Oh, lord! - he said in his raspy voice. “These gifts are worth nothing compared to my horse.” Have you ever seen horses flying through the air? And when the sage started talking about the reward, the king did not rush into it, but wanted to test the horse first. It was then that Hasan appeared next to him. He jumped on a wooden horse and... “flew faster”!
True, the prince did not know at all where he was flying. However, he not only did not crash, but, thanks to the magic horse and his dexterity, he put the old sage to shame and obtained the most wonderful miracle in the world. One can imagine how the king behaved when he saw that his only son was flying away to God knows where... but it is much more difficult to imagine what he did when Hassan returned with his miracle and a wooden horse. Perhaps the best thing to do now is to put on the record and listen to a fairy tale about a magic horse, an evil sage, a cunning prince and a wondrous wonder!
N. Puchkina

■ W 0>m
apt. j 1-5. tsema yaa-.^-.

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The arrival of old Milentyevna, Maxim’s mother, had been talked about in the house for several days. And they not only talked, but also prepared for it.
Maxim himself, for example, rather indifferent to his household, like most childless men, did not straighten his back on the last day off: he went through the heater in the bathhouse, straightened the fence around the house, cut into logs the spruce ridges that had been lying under the windows since the spring, and finally, in complete darkness , threw some boards near the porch so that my mother wouldn’t swim in the dewy grass in the morning.
Maxim's wife Evgenia was even more zealous.
She washed everything, scrubbed everything in the huts, in the entryway, on the tower, laid out elegant colorful rugs, polished the old copper washstand and basin to a shine.
In general, there was no secret for me that a new person was about to appear in the house. And yet, the old woman’s arrival was like a surprise to me.
At the time when the boat with Milsntievcha and her youngest son Ivan, with whom she lived, approached the village shore, I placed a net on the other side.
It was already a little dark, fog covered the village shore, and I guessed not so much with my eyes as with my ears what was happening there.
The meeting was noisy.
The first, of course, to run to the river was Zhuka, a little neighbor's dog with an unusually ringing voice - she runs out at the roar of every engine, then, like a bell, the iron ring I knew rang and began to ring; it was already Maxim who, having fucked the gate, ran out of his house, then I I heard Evgenia’s thin, whiny voice:
“Oh, oh! Who came to us!..”, then more, more voices from woman Mary, old man Stepan, Prokhor. In general, it seemed that almost all of Pizhma had met Milentyevna, and, it seems, I was the only one who cursed the old woman’s arrival at those moments.
For a long time now, for many years, I have wanted to find a corner where everything would be at hand: hunting, fishing, mushrooms, and berries. And so that there would certainly be a reserved silence - without these forced street radio speakers, which in a rare village now do not thunder from early morning until late at night, without this iron roar of cars, which I am tired of in the city.
In Pizhma I found all this in abundance.
A village of seven houses, on a large river, and all around there are forests - dense spruce forests with upland game, cheerful mushroom pine forests. Walk - don't be lazy.
True, I was unlucky with the weather - it was rare that it didn’t rain on a day. But I did not lose heart. I found one more occupation - the master's house.
Oh, what a house it was! There were only four living quarters in it: a winter quarters, a flat room, a tower with a carved balcony, and a side room. And besides these, there was also a bright vestibule with a staircase to the porch, and a cage, and a veil about seven fathoms long—they used to drive up to it in pairs—and below, under the vegeta, there was a courtyard with various machines and stables.
And so, when the owners were not at home (and during the day they are always at work), there was no greater joy for me than wandering around this amazing house. Yes, wander barefoot, slowly. Waddle. To feel past times not only with your heart and mind, but also with the soles of your feet.
Now, with the arrival of the old woman, this revelry around the house must be put an end to - this was clear to me. II in my museum classes - that’s what I called collecting old peasant utensils and dishes scattered throughout the house - I’ll also have to put a cross. How can I drag some dusty birch bark into the hut and look at it this way and that under the nose of the old mistress? Well, as for all sorts of other habits and pleasures, like throwing yourself on the bed in the middle of the day and tarring a cigarette, there’s no point in thinking about that.
I sat for a long time in the boat, anchored to the shore.
The fog had already completely shut up the river, so that the fire lit on the other side, in the owners’ house, looked like a dull yellow spot, the stars were already pouring out in the sky (yes, all of a sudden - both fog and stars), and I just sat and sat and heated himself up.
They called me. Maxim called, Evgenia called, but I bit the bit and didn’t say a word. At one time I even had the idea of ​​going for the night to Rusikha-Bolshaya Dersvsho, four or three kilometers down the river, but I was afraid of getting lost in the fog.
And so I sat like an owl in the boat and waited. I waited for the fire to go out on the other side. In order to postpone the meeting with the old woman at least for a short time, until tomorrow, until morning.
I didn’t know how long my seat in the boat lasted.
Maybe two hours, maybe three, maybe four. In any case, according to my calculations, during this time it was possible to have dinner and drink more than once, and yet on that throne they did not even think about putting out the fire, and the yellow spot still loomed in the fog.
I was hungry, just now, having come from the forest, I was in such a hurry to go fishing that I didn’t even have lunch, I was shaking from the dampness, from the cold of the night, and in the end, I didn’t want to disappear, I took up the oar.
The fire on the other side served me invaluable service. Focusing on it, I quite easily, without wandering in the fog, moved across the river, then just as easily along the path, a mile of the old bathhouse, through the garden, up to the house.
The house, to my great surprise, was quiet, and if not... there was a bright fire in the window, one would think that everyone there was already asleep.
I stood and stood under the windows, listening, and decided, without going into the hut, to go up to my tower.
But I still had to go into the hut. Because, opening the gate, I rattled the iron ring so hard that the whole house shook from the ringing.
- Have you found it? - I heard a voice from the stove. - Well, thank God. And I lie there and keep thinking, at least everything would be okay.
- What’s wrong? - Evgenia said with irritation. It turns out she wasn't sleeping either. “I put out a lamp just for you,” Evgenia nodded at the lamp standing on the windowsill behind the back of the wide nickel-plated bed. “So that the guest doesn’t get lost in the fog,” he says. The child is a guest! He himself won’t figure out what’s what.
“No, anything can happen,” the old woman answered again from the stove. - How many years ago my owner swam along the river all night, barely hitting the shore. There was such a fog.
Evgenia, groaning and wincing, began to get out of bed to feed me, but how could I care about food at those moments? It seems that never in my life have I been so ashamed of myself, of my reckless temper, and I, not daring to raise my eyes upward to where the old woman lay on the stove, left the hut.
In the morning I woke up early, as soon as the owners started walking downstairs.
But today, despite the fact that the old wooden house hummed and trembled with every log and every ceiling, I forced myself to lie down until eight o’clock: let at least today there be no guilt before the old man, who naturally wants to rest from the road.
But imagine my surprise when, coming down from the tower, I saw only Evgenia in the hut!
-Where are the guests? — I didn’t ask about Maxim.
After a day off, Maxim went to his tar factory for a whole week, where he worked as a foreman.
“But the guests were there and gone,” Evgenia answered in a cheerful patter. Ivan went home - didn’t he hear how the mo-yur thundered, and his mother, as you know, left behind her lips.
- Behind the lips! Did Milentyevna go pick up mushrooms?
- And what? - Evgenia quickly glanced at the antique clock with grass patterns hanging on the front wall next to the cherry china cabinet. - It wasn’t five before she left. As soon as it began to get light.
- One?
- Has she left? How not alone. What you! How long have I been living here? Eighth, probably. And there hasn’t been a year that she hasn’t come to us at this time. Deals in total. And salty, and junk, and berries. Beauty Nastya. - Here Evgenia quickly, looking around like a woman, switched to a whisper: - Nastya lives with Ivan because of her. By God! She said it herself in the spring, when she took Ivan to the city to treat her for wine. Gorky was crying here. “If only I hadn’t suffered with him, the devil, for a day,” he says, “I feel sorry for my mother.” Yes, that’s the kind of Milsntevna we have,” Evgenia said, not without pride, taking up the poker. “Maxim and I come to life when she arrives.”
And that's true. I have never seen Evgeniya so light and active, because in the mornings, padding around the house in old worn felt boots and a quilted padded jacket, she always moaned and groaned, complained of aching legs, in the lower back - she had a hard life, like, however, all the village women, whose youth fell on the military suffering: only with a hook in her hands, she walked the entire river thirteen times from the top to the mouth.
Now I couldn’t take my eyes off Evgenia. Some kind of miracle just happened, as if she had been sprinkled with living water.
The iron poker did not move, but danced in her hands. The heat of the stove flickered on her dark, youthful face, and her black round eyes, so dry and stern, were now smiling softly.
I, too, was attacked by some incomprehensible enthusiasm. I quickly rinsed my face, put my feet in galoshes and ran out into the street.
The fog was terrible; only now I realized that it wasn’t the curtains that were turning white on the windows. The river and its banks were flooded. Even the tops of the coastal fir trees on the other side were not visible.
I imagined how somewhere there, across the river, in this damp and cold fog, old Milentyevna was now wandering with a box, and I ran into the barn to chop wood. In case you have to flood a bathhouse for a frozen old woman.
I ran out to the river three times that morning, and Evgenia probably ran out the same number of times, and yet we did not watch for Mnleptevna. The eye appeared suddenly. While Evgenia and I were having breakfast.
I don’t know whether it was because the gate on the porch was not locked, or whether Evgenia and I were talking too much, but suddenly the door leaned back, and I saw her, tall, wet, with the hem tucked in peasant style, with two large birch bark boxes on your hands, full of small mushrooms.
Evgenia and I jumped out from the table to accept these boxes. And Milentyevna herself, not stepping very firmly, walked to the counter by the stove and sat down.
She's tired, of course. This was evident both from her thin, thin face, washed pale by the current abundant fogs, and from her noticeably shuddering head.
But at the same time, there was so much blissful satisfaction and quiet happiness in her blue, slightly closed eyes. The happiness of an old man, who has worked hard and proved again and again to himself and to people that he is not living in this world in vain. And then I remembered my late mother, whose eyes used to shine and shine just as brightly when she, having worked her butt off in the field or mowing, returned home late in the evening.
Evgenia, gasping, wailing: “That’s what kind of grandmother we have! We’re still sitting here, filling our bellies, but she’s already worked her butt off!” she began a flurry of activity. As befits an exemplary daughter-in-law. She brought a light shell from the canopy, washed, evaporated, prepared in advance for pickling mushrooms, ran to the crate for salt, broke fresh fragrant currants in the garden, and then, when Mlentievna, having rested a little, went to change clothes for the other half, she began to turn up the hut in the middle colorful rugs, that is, prepare a place for salting.
- Do you think she will drink and drink now? - Evgenia spoke, as if explaining to me why she didn’t bother about breakfast for her mother-in-law first. - Never! Old regime man. Until he picks up the mushrooms, it’s better not to mention food.
If we are right on the bare floor, in a heap, foot to foot. Sunbeams flickered around us, the mushroom spirit mingled with the warmth of the hut, and it was so nice, so pleasant to look at old Mlentsvna, who had changed into a dry cotton dress, at her dark, wiry hands, which she kept plunging first into a box, then into the ear, then into an enamel pan with salt - the old woman, of course, salted it herself.
The mushrooms were selected and strong. Young yellow russula with sweet hemp, which in the north is eaten like a turnip, white dry pipit, saffron milk cap, volushka and the king salted milk mushroom, which lives up to its name especially well on a sunny day like this one - and it seems that in Ghee melts in lumps on his saucer.
I slowly, with great care, took the mushroom from the box and each time, before I began to clean off the specks from it, I raised it to the light.
- Haven’t you seen such gold? - Evgenia asked me. She asked thoughtfully, clearly hinting at my rather modest offerings from the forest. Well, you walk in the same forest, but there is no good mushroom for you. Do not be surprised. She has had a friendship with this spruce forest across the river since her wedding night. She almost lost her stomach because of these mushrooms.
I looked at Evgenia in confusion: what, exactly, are we talking about?
- How? - she was terribly surprised. - Didn’t you hear? Didn’t you hear how her husband shot her with a gun?
Come on, mom, tell me how it went.
“What can I say,” Milentyevna sighed. - You never know what happens between your own people.
- Between your own... But this one didn’t kill you enough!
- If it’s not enough, it doesn’t count.
Evgeniya’s black, dry eyes widened wildly.
- I don’t know, you, mom... Everything is all wrong. Maybe you can also say that nothing happened? Maybe you didn’t get a headache after this?
Evgenia tucked a stray strand of hair behind her small ear with a red berry-shaped earring with the back of her hand and, apparently deciding that her mother-in-law would be of no use anyway, began to tell the story herself.
“At the age of sixteen, our Milentyevna was pushed into marriage. Maybe there were no breasts yet. I haven't had one these years, by God. Did you think about how the girl would live before? Father, dear father, set his sights on the groom’s living. Odd guy in the house, you'll show off. And what beauty is it when the whole village is savage against savage?
“Yes, maybe, at least not all of it,” Mlentyevna objected.
- Don't protect, don't protect! Whoever wants to say. Savages. Yes, I remember too. It used to be that on a holiday they would come to our big village - a horde of hordes. Everyone is in a crowd - married, unmarried. With beards, without beards. They walk, they shout, they bully everyone, they spoil the air, and the whole village is fired upon. And at home, no one sees it, and it’s even cleaner. Everyone with some kind of foolishness and fun. One runs around like a woman in a sundress, the other - Martynko the little siskin - all went on skis to fetch water from the river. In the summer, when it’s hot, he’ll even put on a fur coat with the wool on top. And Isak Petrovich, he was again obsessed with the bishop. It used to be, they say, that he would wait until evening, light a torch in the front huts, put on a blue stuffed shirt, and babkin’s sarafan, walking and walking from hut to hut, singing psalms. Right, mom? Am I lying?
“People are not without sin,” Milsntevna answered evasively.
- Not without sin! What kind of sins did you have at the age of sixteen to shoot a gun? No, that's the breed. All your life in the forest and away from people, you will inevitably begin to wander and go crazy. And they threw a sixteen-year-old girl into such and such an abuser. Whether you want to survive or die is your business.
Well, our mother decided, first of all, to win over her father-in-law and her blood to her side. To please them. And what could be done to win over the old people in the old days?
Work.
And so, on the first night, the newlyweds are showing mercy and admiring, and Vasilisa Milentyevna got up before dawn and was looking for mushrooms across the river. In the fall, mom, were you extradited at this time?
“It seems like it’s in the fall,” Milentyevna answered not very willingly.
“It doesn’t seem like it, it’s true,” Evgenia said with conviction. “In the summer there are a lot of lips in the forest, but you broke the box in an hour or two.” When were you supposed to walk around the forest with your husband waiting for you at home?
Well, Milentyevna is returning from the forest. Glad.
There is not a single smoke over the village, everything is still filmed, and it’s already with mushrooms. Here, she thinks, they will praise her. Well, he praised me."
As soon as she moved across the river and took one step away from the boat, a boom shot in the face. A terrible husband meets a young wife...
Old Milentyevna's veins on her thin, wrinkled neck were stretched like ropes, her hunched back straightened - she wanted to stop the trembling, which had noticeably intensified. But Evgenia didn’t see any of this. She herself, no less than her mother-in-law, experienced the events of that distant morning, known to her from the stories of others, and the blood flowed in and out of her dark face in waves.
- God, God took death away from my mother. How far is it from the garden to the bathhouse? And my mother just came up to the bathhouse when he was pointing the gun at him, yes, apparently his hand was jumping after the drinking, otherwise he would have panicked. Fraction is still sitting in the door of the bathhouse. Haven't you seen it? - Evgenia turned to me. - Look, look. Hubby brought me here for the first time, where do you think he took me first? Show your towers? Show off your golden treasury? pet, to the black bath. “This, he says, is what my father taught my mother...” What a leshak! That's it, they're all like that here. For everyone the prison cries...
I saw that old Milentyevna had been burdened by this conversation for a long time; our unceremonious importunity was unpleasant to her. On the other hand, how to stop yourself when you are already completely captivated by this unusual story? And I asked:
- Why did all this fuss catch fire?
- Is this the gunfire? — Evgenia liked to call everything by its proper name. - Yes, because of Vanka the Bald. Look, he, the leshak, God forgive me, it’s not right to call your father-in-law that way, he had enough this morning... Where did you sleep, mom? On poveti? Back and forth with your hand - no. He flew out into the street. And here she is, the young wife. It comes from the district. So he got angry. And, he thinks, well, did you go to Vapka the Bald?
On a date?
Milentyevna, by this time, must have regained control of herself, asked, not without mockery:
- Do you even know what your father-in-law thought?
- Yes, it’s almost impossible to know. People won't let you lie. Ivanlysa used to get drunk: “Guys, from a young age I was registered in two villages: with my body at home, and with my soul in Pizhma.” He spoke until his death. He was a handsome man.
Oh, why bother? Mom had a lot of suitors.
They took it for beauty. You see, even now, even if we give her away in marriage, she flattered Evgeniy’s mother-in-law and, it seems, for the first time in all the time she was telling her, she smiled.
Then, somehow coyly, squinting her black, joyless eye, she spoke playfully:
- Well, I don’t praise you either, Mom. No matter how young she was, she should understand why people get married.
Anyway, I think, not to go mushroom hunting on the first night...
Oh, how old Mileiteviya’s blue eyes sparkled here! It was as if a thunderstorm had passed outside the windows, as if a red-hot cannonball had exploded there.
Evgenia immediately became confused and drooped, and I also didn’t know where to put my eyes. For some time everyone sat in silence, choosing a variety of mushrooms with special diligence.
Milentyevna was the first to voice her voice for reconciliation. She said:
“Today I was remembering my life.” I walk through the forest, but with my mind I keep trampling the path back. It's been ten years now...
- Seventy, how did you marry Tansy? - I clarified.
“At least she didn’t come out, but they pushed her out,” Milentyevna said with a slight grin. “She’s right in what she says: I didn’t have a youth.” And to put it in modern terms, I didn’t love my husband...
“Well,” Evgenia exclaimed, not without malicious triumph, and confessed! And I won’t open my mouth. Everything is wrong, everything is not okay.
“But when they cut at a living place, and the old tree creaks,” Milentyevna said, still conciliatory.
The mushrooms were running out.
Evgenia, placing an empty box on her knees, began to select berries from the mushroom trash - wet, overripe blueberries and large lingonberries, just in their ripest stage. She was still sulking, although no, no, and from time to time she cast curious glances at her mother-in-law - she again took up the past.
“Old people like to praise old times,” Milentyevna said in a quiet, reasonable voice, “but I don’t praise.” Nowadays the people are literate and stand up for themselves, but from a young age we did not know the will. I was married off - now it’s impossible to say without laughing - because of a fur coat and because of a shawl...
- Really? - Evgenia exclaimed in terrible excitement. - I haven’t even heard of it.
There was no trace left of her recent anger. The greedy woman's curiosity, so deeply rooted in her nature, took precedence over all other feelings, and she fixed her flaming gaze on her mother-in-law.
“Yes,” said Milentyevna. “You see, our father built buildings, erected mansions, every penny was valuable, and then I began to grow up. It would be dishonorable if a daughter went to a playdate without a new fur coat and shawl, so he couldn’t resist when the matchmakers arrived from Pizhma: “We’ll take it without the fur coat and shawl...”
-Where were the brothers? - again, unable to bear it, Evgenia interrupted. Mom had good brothers. The trouble is how they pitied her. Like carrying a candle in your arms. She was already married, the boys themselves had full huts, and everyone helped their sister...
“And the brothers,” said Mplentevna, “were in the forest at that time.” The wood for the yard was cut down.
Evgenia nodded briskly:
- Well, then it’s clear, clear. And I keep racking my brains, how such brothers, the first people in the village - from a good life, mother brana - could not defend their beloved sister. And here it is - they weren’t at home when they matched you...
After that, clarifying more and more details unknown to her, Evgenia again began to take the conversation into her own hands. And soon it all ended with Milentyevna’s quiet voice completely falling silent.
Evgenia experienced her mother-in-law’s long-standing drama with her whole being.
- Trouble, trouble, what could have happened! - she waved her arms. - The brothers heard: the son-in-law shot his sister, and they galloped up on horseback. With guns. “Just one word, sister! Now let’s release the spirit.” They were cool. The bear's strength is bent into an arc, not like a human. And then mother said to them: “And don’t be ashamed of you, dear brothers, to make a fuss in vain, to trouble good people. Our young owner tried out a gun, he’s getting ready to go hunting, and you took God knows what...”
That's how smart and intelligent she was! This is at the age of sixteen! Evgenia looked with pride at her downcast mother-in-law. - No, Raksim raise your hand on me, I couldn’t stand it. I would have sued him and put him in jail where he should be. And she shakes her head and scolds her brothers: “Where are you going? Do you have a head on your shoulders? It’s too late for me to turn back now, when my head is covered with a woman’s warrior. I need to settle in and get along here.” That's how it gave the whole thing such a turn.
Evgenia suddenly sobbed. She was, in essence, a kind woman.
- Well, yes, her father-in-law didn’t just kiss her for that. What are you, what are you, because there could have been murder.
The brothers were incensed - what did it cost them to turn heads on Myron? I was little, I barely remember Onika Ivanovich, but old people still remember him. No matter where it comes from, no matter which direction it comes from, it is always a gift to your wife. And if he goes on a spree, they start persuading him to stay overnight: “Pet, no, shy, I won’t stay. I'll get home. I miss my Vasilisa the Beautiful.” He called everything he drank Vasilisa the Beautiful.
“I called you,” Mlentyevna sighed, and it seemed to me that her old, battered eyes became moist.
Evgenia apparently noticed this too. She said:
- There is, there is something to remember Onika Ivanovich with a kind word for. Maybe he and the man were the only ones in the village. And here everything is as it is. — In Pizhma everyone bears the same surname - Urvaevs. - II Miron Onnkovich, my father-in-law, snatched it too. And what a catch. Would anyone else in his place know how he behaved after such a story?
Quieter than water, below the grass. And this is such a crossbar - for everything.
Milentyevna raised her head, she apparently wanted to stand up for her husband, but Evgenia, who had again gone into a rage, did not allow her to open her mouth.
- Nothing, nothing to paint over. Everyone knows which one. If I had been good, wouldn’t I have let you out of Pizhma for ten years? Mom has never been anywhere, not with her parents, not on a walk. Yes, and kudslyu used to spin alone, and not at a party. That's how jealous the devil was.
What can I say? - Evgenia waved her hand. - For everything there is a demand and a penalty. For mercy's sake, is it the wife's fault that all the children look like her, and not their father, and he has a penalty for that: “Whose pigeon is this scattered at the table?” He kept asking his mother when he got drunk. Why, it seems, interrogate? He himself is dark, unassuming, like a smoked firebrand, his face covered in shadrin, he suffered from smallpox, like, say, the sheep were tortured... Yes, you should be happy, you should always pray to God that children are not your thing...
I don’t know whether Milentyevna didn’t like the way her daughter-in-law treated her past, or whether she, like a peasant woman of the old school, was not used to sitting idle for a long time, but she suddenly began to rise to her feet, and our conversation ended.
Maxim's house is the only one in Pizhma that faces downstream of the river, while all the others face the river with their backs.
Evgenia, who did not really like pazhemtssv, explained it simply:
- Urvai! Out of spite, people exposed their filthy asses.
But the reason for such development, of course, was that Pizhma is located on the southern bank of the river, and how could one turn away from the sun when it does not often appear in these forested areas.
I loved this quiet village, smelling through and through of young barley hung in plump sheaves on spinning poles. I liked the old wells with the cranes held high, I liked the spacious barns on pillars with cone-shaped hems so that the midges could not rise from the ground. But I was especially fascinated by the Pizhem houses - large log houses with wooden horses on the roofs.
However, the house itself with a ridge is not uncommon in the North. But I have never seen such a village where every house was crowned with a ridge. And in Pizhma - everyone.
You walk along the window sill along a narrow grassy path, which the village road has turned into due to the lack of people, and seven wooden horses look at you from the sky.
- And before we had more of them. The wooden herd was counted at two dozen,” noted Milentyevna, who was walking next to me.
The old woman surprised me once again during these days.
I thought that after breakfast she, an old person, would first think about rest, about peace. And she got up from the table, crossed herself, brought a birch bark pestle from the hallway and began tying straps from an old linen towel to it.
-Where to, grandma? Not back to the forest? - I asked.
- No, not into the forest. I can go to see my eldest daughter in Rusikha, Milentyevna put it in the old-fashioned way.
- Why the pester?
“And then the pester said, everything’s fine, tomorrow morning I’ll go into the forest.” The milkmaids will go milk the cows and grab me. You see, I can’t waste time. I was given a short break this time, for a week.
Evgenia, who had not yet intervened in our conversation - she was getting ready for work - could not stand it here:
- Tell me, it’s been released a little. Always like this. He won’t rest, he won’t sit idle. No, it’s up to me to lie there all day. And what? Is it really possible that a person will only be born to break the devil from morning to evening?
I volunteered to accompany Milentsvna to the transportation - what if the carrier was on a spree again and the old woman needed help.
But Milentyevna had assistants besides me.
For we did not have time to reach the stables, an old dilapidated barn on the edge of the village in the clearing, when Prokhor Urvaev flew out from there with a robber whistle and whoop. On a rattling, unoiled cart, harnessed to Gromoboy, the only living horse in Pizhma.
Once upon a time this Thunderbolt, one must assume, was a proper trotter, but now, due to old age, he looked like a walking skeleton, covered with skin rotted from deprivation, and if anyone else could make this skeleton rattle with old bones, it was Prokhor, one of the three men remaining in Pizhma.
Prokhor, as usual, was under the weather; he reeked of cheap cologne.
- Theta, theta! - he shouted, driving up. - I remember your kindness. I've been on duty with Thunderbolt since the morning, because I know you need transportation. So, theta? Was Prokhor wrong?
Milentyevna did not refuse the services of her nephew, and soon the cart with her and Prokhor rolled across a green, mown meadow, to a sand spit yellowing in the distance, where the carriage was located.
I am back.
Evgenia was no longer at home - she had gone to the field to help the women harvest peas, and it would be just the right time for me to go about my business - I don’t even have a net across the river, and I need to go into the forest when it’s such a nice day again.
And I entered the empty hut, stood restlessly under the threshold and went to the story.
Maxim introduced me to povetya on the very first day (at first I wanted to sleep in the hayloft), and I remember I just gasped when I saw what was there. A whole peasant museum!
A horned reel, a cut-home loom, a spindle, painted spinning wheels (from the Mezen), ruffles, all kinds of boxes and baskets woven from pine shingles, birch bark and roots, birch bark bread bins, tues, wooden unpainted cups, which they used to travel with to the forest and to distant hayfields, a lamp for a torch, a salt shaker and a duck and many, many other dishes, utensils and tools, dumped in one heap like unnecessary trash.
“We should throw away all this junk,” said Maxim, as if making excuses for me, “there’s no use now.” Yes, somehow I can’t raise my hand - my parents fed on this...
Since then, it’s been a rare day that I haven’t looked at the story. And not because all this outdated antiquity was new to me - I myself came out of this wooden and birch bark kingdom. The beauty of turned wood and birch bark was new to me. This is what I noticed before.
All my life, my mother did not let go of the birch ripple from her hands, the same ripple that is used to process flax, but did I ever notice that it itself was linen in color - just as delicate, lazy-matte, with a silvery tint? And the bread box is made of birch bark. Should I not remember its golden radiance? After all, it happened that every time, like the long-awaited sun, it descended on our table. All I remembered was what and when it was in it.
But the weight - no matter what I took, no matter what I looked at - the old rusty sickle with the fore-end polished to a shine, and the soft, as if honey, cup carved from a strong birch tree - everything revealed to me a special world of beauty. Beauty, discreet in Russian, even shy, made with an ax and a knife.
But today, after I met the old owner of this house, I made another discovery for myself.
Today I suddenly realized that not only an ax and a knife are the masters of this beauty. The main turning and polishing of all these scythes, sickles, pesters, plows (yes, Andreevna was there too, standing like an antediluvian bark in a dark corner) took place in the field and in the reaping. Peasant calluses were rolled and polished.
* * *

The next day it started to rain in the morning, and I stayed at home again.
Just like yesterday, Evgenia and I did not sit down at the table for a long time: just about, I thought, Milentyevna would come.
“She shouldn’t wander too far today,” said Evgenia. - Not a small child.
But time passed, the rain did not stop, and on the shore I did not leave the window - there was still no one. In the end, I threw on my cloak and went to flood the bathhouse: well, from the current forest font and straight onto the hot shelf.
The baths in Pizhma, black, with heaters, stand in a row not far from the river, under vegetable gardens, which seem to be basking on a hillock.
In the spring, during high water, the baths are flooded, and on the upper side against each of them log bulls are dug to contain and crush the pressing ice floes, and in addition, from these bulls to the baths there are still powerful strands, twisted from birch wicks, so that the baths stand as if on a joke.
I once asked Maxim: what is all this wisdom for? Wouldn't it be easier to put the bathhouses on a hill where the vegetable gardens are located?
Maxim, in Urvaev’s style, as Evgenia would say, laughed.
- To make life more fun. In the spring, you know, it happened that we would open fire on these ice floes! Oh-oh-oh!
NZ all guns.
I noticed traces of pellets in the old, smoky door back in the first days of my stay in Pizhma - it was completely riddled with holes, and now, having flooded the bathhouse and remembering Evgenia’s story yesterday, I even tried to determine what kind of pellets there were from the charge that I once fired. then according to young Milentyevna, her husband.
But, of course, nothing came of this. Yes, frankly speaking, I had no time for the past. Because it was really nasty in the forest today, and how is old Milentyevna doing? Is she okay?
Evgenia was also worried about her mother-in-law. She couldn't sit at home and came to me.
“I don’t know, I don’t know what to think,” she shook her head sadly. It was she who had set her sights on Bogatka in no other way. What a stubborn old lady! Either say it or not. In the summer, in such rain, you can walk in the forest.
Covering her face with her dark hands folded like a visor, Evgenia looked at the river and said even more definitely:
- I combed it, combed it, there’s nowhere else to go. Last year it was the same: we wait and wait, all eyes overlooked it, and she drove off to her Bogatka.
I knew about Bogatka, a cattle village three or four miles from Pizhma up the river, but I had never heard that there were a lot of mushrooms and berries there, and I asked Evgenia about it.
Out of habit, when things seemed clearer to her, she widened her black eyes:
- Why! What mushrooms are there on Bogatka? Maybe now there is - everything is overgrown with forest, but before there were reapings there. Only Onika Ivanovich, my mother’s father-in-law, supplied up to a hundred cartloads of hay. She’s been going there every year and this Bogatka has begun for her. She's the mastermind behind the whole thing.
And before my mother was not on Pizhma, no one had heard such a word. Some cattle and some cattle - that's all.
Evgenia nodded towards the village:
—Have you seen wooden horses on the roofs? How many are there? There are not so many in all of Rusikha. Tell me, how often have the gates been painted before? This is just a rich man, what a village ace. But here, on Pizhma, it’s all over. Sometimes you walk past that shore and it’s scary when the sun is setting. So it seems that all of Tansy is on fire.
Well, they got all this from Bogatka, where Milentyevna discovered the treasures for them.
I still didn’t understand anything: what treasures is Eugenia talking about? What is true in her words and what is fiction?
Thick smoke pouring out of the entryway forced us to move towards the small window. There we sat on a bench under a perch with dry birch brooms of the current mating.
Evgenia, coughing from the smoke, scolded her (?to make it easier for her husband - he moved the heater well! - then at the same time she went through the other residents of the village:
- Everything here is ruined! Yesterday, for the sake of my mother, I praised Opika Ivanovich, but to tell the truth, he snatched it too.
No matter how you grab it. Until he was old, he forced his old woman to wear her best clothes at night. It’s as if it’s better for people to go out in public or for a holiday, but for him it’s better to wear silks for the night. That's what a person's pores are. But what would a gray man think about when in the house, wherever you turn, there is a hole and a gap everywhere.
Mom, mom brought them all out into the open,” Evgenia said with conviction. “Under her, the harvest began to grow...
- But as?
- How did you get into people? L through Bogatka. Through clearing. From time immemorial the North has been in the process of clearing. Whoever has cleared the sheaths and dug up as many fields as he can has so much grain and livestock. And Milentiy Yegorovich, my mother’s father, was the first to clear things out in Rusikha. Four adult sons - you know how strong she is!
And on Pizhma, these idiots have everything topsy-turvy.
Their first priority is hunting and fishing. But there was no diligence towards the ground. As much as the grandfathers dug up and cleared, that’s how they lived.
There was not always enough bread until the new year. True, when there is a harvest for the animals in the forest, they sing. And when the forest is bare, and they are like hungry owls.
And so my mother lived like this for a while, suffered, and then she saw that this couldn’t be done. We must take up the ground. Well, the path to her father-in-law’s heart has already been trodden. Ever since that newlywed night. She and let’s start dripping: Daddy, you need to come to your senses, Daddy, let’s live on the earth...
OK. He agreed, there was no father-in-law and daughter-in-law, and most importantly, he did not interfere. The mother of her brothers called out: so and so, dear brothers, help out your sister. They know that they are ready to turn the devil for their Vasya. They chose the right area, cut down the forest, burned it, and sowed rye that same fall.
This is where they snatched their hair and started combing their hair. Trouble is, what kind of rye did you grow? - not quite on par with the spruce trees. You know, by arson how it will be born. The hunt is over, goodbye fish. They took up the axe.
Well, they were timid! I don’t remember, I was still young, but my mother kept telling us how she saw them at work on this very Bogatka Street. I was walking, he said, through the forest, looking for a cow, and suddenly, he said, there was a fire, so big, he said, right up to the skies. And naked men are jumping around this fire. “I, my mother says, at first froze, I can’t take a step: I think they’re leshaks, there’s no one else. Otherwise it’s snatched. They are doing the clearing. And to keep it cool, they took off their shirts, and it’s a pity for Lonotin, it’s not the current time.
And the children were tortured! Sometimes Maxim starts to remember, I don’t believe it. Is it conceivable that a child can be tied with a string like a dog? And they knitted.
They'll pour milk into a cup, put it on the floor, and crawl around on a string all day while mom and dad are at work.
They were afraid, you know, that the guys wouldn’t start a house fire.
“So, so the Urvai ran wild,” Evgenia emphasized once again. - And what? They haven’t worked for ages, they’ve been shooting birds - you know how much strength they’ve accumulated.
Oh, mom, mom... She wanted the best, but brought trouble.
After all, they were killed when collective farms were born...
I didn't ooh or aah at those words. Who would be surprised nowadays by this old, old fairy tale about the chips that fly when the forest is cut down!
Evgenia, however, did not like my silence. She took him for indifference and said in a voice full of resentment:
- The old time is not held in high esteem. Everyone has forgotten how collective farms did things and how they went hungry during the war. I don’t blame young people, young people know that they want to live, there’s no time to look back, but nowadays even the old women are not the same. Look, when they go to Rusikha to get their pension, one is fatter and healthier than the other. There are no bones left of their children, who died during the war, and what they have in mind is how to live longer so that there is no war. And what about the fact that their fields and meadows are overgrown with forest, and they won’t groan. Full. The pension drips every day.
I’m asking Grandma Mara once: does it hurt, I say, to your eyes? Doesn't it sting? Earlier, I say, I looked at the fields from the window, and now at the bushes. She laughs: “That’s good, girl, the rose is closer.” Think about it, what's on the old man's mind? Urvaiha, pure urvaiha! My Maxim is the same: all the laughter and hahakn, even a flood all around.
Evgenia paused, then sighed heavily:
- No, I’m some kind of geek, but not these days.
All I have is worries and sadness. Everything is getting on my nerves. And because of my mother-in-law, I broke my heart. What you!
Robila-robila, and it’s your fault. That's the time we had. “Yes, my mother says, it’s okay, I could have endured it.
“What is it like,” he says, “to lead people under a monastery.”
- What people?
Evgenia quickly turned to me. There was an intensity in her black, unblinking eyes again.
— Five farms were gutted. What are you talking about, even during the civil war they raked out grain from the barn, but they had already left for the collective farms. Well, what a catch.
Everything is one to one. If only they had quietly and peacefully, maybe they wouldn’t have touched them - who doesn’t know why they started? Otherwise, they came to enroll them in the collective farm, but they: I don’t want to. We already have a collective farm. So the authorities freaked out and didn’t like them. Well, it’s true, four men were returned, and my father-in-law, my mother’s husband Miron Onikovch, returned, albeit sick, but Onika Ivanovich himself remained there.
Trouble, trouble, what happened then! What a year my mother was talking about here, I was not glad that I began to listen. She burst into tears.
Evgenia noisily widened her nose and wiped her eyes with a handkerchief.
“Just think how things turn out sometimes in life.” Mom was just threshing rye on the threshing floor when a thunderstorm fell over them. Yes, on the threshing floor, she nodded, thinking a little. - He’s happy. Here, he thinks, God has given bread again. A good, large rye has appeared, perhaps the likes of which have never been seen in our entire life. And suddenly the girl comes running: “Mom, run home quickly. They're taking Tatya and Grandpa around."
And so, my mother says, I myself know that I need to run. Then they turned around abruptly, once and farewell forever, but my legs, he says, gave way. I can't move. So, he says, I crawled to the gate on my knees.
Scary. Because of her, retribution came. If she hadn’t encouraged her father-in-law to do these same clearings, who would have touched the Urvaevs? The century is rolling.
Well, it wasn’t fear that my father-in-law killed my mother, but a kind word.
She didn’t expect anything for herself, what kind of executions she didn’t prepare for—you know what a person can do at such a moment, and her father-in-law suddenly sees him getting on his knees.
Yes, with all the honest people. “Thank you,” says Vasilisa Milentyevna, for making us fools into people. And don’t think, he says, there is no harm in your heart. All my life, until my last breath, I will bless you..."
Evgenia began to cry and finished speaking, choking on tears:
- So mom never said goodbye to Onika Ivanovich.
Dropped dead...
Mplentevna returned from the forest at four o'clock in the afternoon, neither alive nor dead. Po with mushrooms. With a heavy birch bark box that creaks as it goes.
Actually, from the creaking of this box, I guessed its approach to the hut on the other side, under the spruce trees - I still could not stand it and moved across the river.
Evgenia, even more exhausted by the anticipation than I was, began to scold her mother-in-law like an unreasonable child as soon as we crossed the threshold of the hut.
Baba Mara supported her.
Baba Mara, a healthy, red-faced old woman with gray impudent eyes, and Prokhor, both on edge, visited us today not for the first time. And every time they repeated the same thing: where is the guest? Why are you hiding from people?
Mileitievna did not have a dry thread, she turned blue and wrinkled from the cold, like an old mushroom, and Evgenia first began to take off her wet scarf and wet coat, then she took out heated felt boots from the stove and pulled red tires on them.
- Well, let’s quickly take off our damp boots and go to the bathhouse.
“But you can’t go to the bathhouse, Teta,” Prokhor said gravely. He sat by the small stove and smoked in his little stove.
- Sit! - Evgenia shouted at him. “They’ll pour the balls, you don’t know what they’ll start grinding.”
- Why don’t you know? In medicine.
- In medicine! Is it forbidden to go to the bathhouse due to medicine?
- Well! She might have pneumonia. Whereas?
Evgenia hesitated. She looked in confusion at Milentyevna, breathing heavily, with her eyes closed, sitting on the counter by the stove - she looked at me, who understood even less about medicine - but in the end she decided not to risk it.
In short, Milentyevna was placed on the stove instead of a bathhouse.
Baba Mara, who the entire time there was an exchange of opinions about the bath between Evgenia and Prokhor, was shaking her large head in a red satin warrior with a grin, then said:
- Well, tell me where you were, what you saw.
“And I saw what I needed,” Milentyevna answered quietly from the stove.
“Tell us what,” Baba Mara grinned. - Look, you were on Bogatka again and looking for treasure?
“Okay, come on,” Evgenia remarked peacefully, “whatever you’re looking for is none of your business.” See, she barely got there, she can barely breathe.
Baba Mara laughed deeply, and I was surprised to see that all her teeth were intact, and so strong and large.
- Proha, you said that they began to give reaps to the collective farmers, those who were covered with bushes, but they didn’t say anything about our clearings?
A long and empty conversation began about clearings, about virgin lands.
Prokhor demanded from me, as a person, in his words, who lived in the same city with the main authorities of our life, a clear answer: why in the southern regions are they plowing up virgin lands again, while in our country, on the contrary, we are heading for alder and aspen? (That's how he put it.)
I began to say something not very definitely about the unprofitability of farming in remote forest areas, and Prokhor, of course, immediately pushed me to the wall.
“So, so,” he exclaimed, not quite in his own voice, other than imitating some local speaker, “isn’t it profitable now?” And during the war, dear comrade? Was it profitable, I ask you, during the Great Patriotic War? Only the women, you understand, and the children sowed everything down to the last inch...
Baba Maraei immediately joined Prokhor. For some reason, she always took pleasure in bullying me.
Finally, I figured out what argument to defeat my opponents with - a bottle of Stolichnaya.
True, the housewife and housekeeper Evgenia did not really like this method of sending uninvited guests away, but when they, having emptied the bottle, went out into the street with a song and an embrace, she breathed a sigh of relief.
Evgenia expressed her final attitude towards the revelers when she began to clear the table - she could not stand any kind of disorder or disorganization.
“Pet, apparently, not only the fields are becoming forested, people are also becoming forested.”
Lord, have you ever heard of drunken thugs breaking into Millsitievns’ house? Yes, the river will soon go back.
It used to be that mom was walking and the kids were playing pranks near the adults:
“Shut up, you've been captured! Vasilisa Milentyevna is coming.” And when he passes by: “Well, now run wild. At least walk on your head.” So in the early days they revered their mother. How will you sing? - Evgenia asked her mother-in-law, who was quietly moaning all this time. - Will you come down? Should I put it on the stove?
“No need,” Milentyevna answered barely audibly. — — Then we’ll eat.
- When later? I haven't eaten anything since morning. Come on, eat.
We have good abalone today. with pepper.
- Pete, I'm full. I had some bread with me.
Evgenia never managed to persuade her mother-in-law to eat, and she again lamented:
- That's the problem. What should I do with you? Are you maybe sick, mom? Maybe we should go get some fershalitsa?
- No, it’s okay, I’ll go away. I'll warm up and get up. It would be nice if you cleaned up your lips.
Evgenia just shook her head:
- Well, mom, mom! And what kind of person are you? Do you really need to think about lips now? Lie down, for God's sake. Throw this forest out of your head...
Nevertheless, Evgenia picked up the birch bark box with mushrooms from the floor (it was empty), and we went to the other half. To give peace to an old man.
This time the mushrooms were unenviable: red russula, old wavewort, gray pipit, and most importantly, they had no appearance. Some kind of wet mess mixed with garbage.
The astute Evgenia drew a very sad conclusion from this.
“That’s the problem,” she said. - After all, Milentyevna fell ill with us. I've never seen lips like these on her.
She sighed meaningfully.
- Yes Yes. So my mother began to give in, but I used to think she was made of iron. Doesn't take anything. Oh, yes, during her life, it’s not so amazing that she began to stumble, but how she’s still alive. My husband, something happened to his head, he shot himself three times, what is it like to survive? My husband was buried - bang war. Two sons were killed dead, the third, my man, was missing for so many years, and then Sanyushka threw a noose around her mother... That’s how many worries she has in her old age. Spreading out ten is a lot. L here on one shoulders.
- Sanyushka’s daughter?
- Daughter. Haven't you heard? — Evgenia put aside the kitchen knife she was using to peel the mushrooms. “Mom’s only lost up to twelve hoops, but only six survived.” Martha, the eldest daughter, the one who was extradited to Rusikha, under her walked Vasily and Yegor - both died in the war, then my man, then Sanya, and then that drunkard Ivan.
Well, Mnlentyevna sent her sons off to war, and a year later it was Sanya’s turn. In a hurry, they ordered me to roll the forest. Just like going to war... Oh, and she was a beauty! I have never seen anything like this in my life. Tall, white-white, full-length braid, down to the knee, all, they say, like her mother, and maybe she was even more beautiful. And this one won’t muddy the waters. Not like us, skvalyzhins. And it was through this quietness that she made up her mind. She ran into some scoundrel and knocked her up.
I’m not surprised, I’m not at all surprised that it all turned out this way. This is someone who has lived his whole life close to his parents and has never been anywhere, let him gasp, but since I was thirteen I went into the forest - I’ve seen enough of everything.
It used to be that you would come from the forest to the barracks in the evening and you could barely stand on your feet. And they, the devils, haven’t stopped working, they’ve been fiddling with a pencil all day, and they’re just glaring at you. Don’t take off your shoes, don’t change your clothes, they’ll quickly drag you into a corner...
And so, perhaps, such a devil stood in the way of my mother’s Sanya. What will you do with him? If she had teeth, she would have shooed him where he should be, otherwise she wouldn’t be able to tell him.
I remember, on a holiday before the war, in Rusikha, I came and blushed: the women didn’t take their eyes off, like, tell me, what kind of angel is standing, and the guys were stunned, they came in droves. And here, perhaps, the mother, when she was packing for the journey, gave a warning: whatever you want to lose on a foreign side, daughter, just bring the girl’s honor home. This is how it used to happen in good families that people were punished.
I don't know, I don't know how it all turned out. It’s better not to ask your mother about this - you’ll be worse than anyone’s enemy.
Evgenia listened and spoke in a heated whisper:
“I wanted to hide it from people.” They say she didn’t let anyone close to her dead daughter. She took it out of the noose herself, washed it herself and put it in the coffin herself. Can you hide your belly from people? The same girls who were in a panic with her said it. Sanka, they say, began to swell before our eyes, and Efimka the carrier noticed. “You, Sanka, don’t seem to be like that.” Why would Sanka be like this when she’s going to the Last Judgment? Well, look, daughter, into the eyes of your own mother, tell me how honor is on the other side of the blue.
And so she, bitterly grieved, approached her home, but did not dare to step further than the porch. She sat on the threshold and sat there all night. Well, when it began to get light, she ran behind the threshing floor. I couldn’t look the day in the eye, let alone my mother.
Evgenia, listening again, raised her black arched eyebrows warily.
- He's sleeping, that's right. Maybe he’ll still have a rest. I asked my mother, she spoke again in a whisper, just in case, - is it really, I say, that my mother’s heart didn’t suggest anything? “It suggested it,” he says. That night, he says, I went out into the hallway three times and asked who was on the porch. And as it began to get light, he says, it struck me in the heart. Like a knife." She told me this, she didn’t hide it. And she was talking about that when she saw the boots on the porch.
Think about what kind of girl she was. I myself am dying, I am ruining my young life, but I remember about my mother. You know how it was with the boots during the war. We used to wander barefoot on a rafting trip, and the ice would carry us along the river. And so Sanyushka says goodbye to life, but does not forget about his mother, his last concern is about his mother. He goes barefoot to execution. So my mother ran to the threshing floor following her footprints. It wasn’t too early, the next day of covering, every finger in the snow was visible.
She came running - what can you do to help? She’s already, Sayyushka, cold, hanging on her belt with homespun, and on the side her quilted jacket is folded honorably and a warm scarf is on it: wear it, dear, to your health, remember me, wretched one...
The rain outside did not stop. The ancient iridescent glass in the frames sobbed as if alive, and it seemed to me that there, behind the windows, someone was quietly crying and scratching.
Evgenia, as if reading my thoughts, said:
“I’m terrified of living in this house.” I can't spend the night alone anymore. I'm not a mom. In winter, when it starts howling and howling in all the stoves and chimneys, and the ring on the porch starts ringing, you might go crazy. First of all, I tried to persuade Maxim to live at home. What have we not seen on the other side?
And now, perhaps, I’ve profited too. In winter there is no way from us to people. We go skiing to Rusikha...
Milentyevna lay in bed for two days, and Evgenia and I began to seriously think about calling a paramedic. And besides, we decided that her children should be notified about her illness.
However, fortunately for us, none of this was required. On the third day Mnlsntevna got down from the stove herself.
And not only did she get down, but she also got to the table without our help.
- How are you, grandma? Have you recovered?
- I don’t know. Maybe I haven’t recovered at all, but I have to go home today.
- Home? Today?
“Today,” Milentyevna answered calmly. - My son Ivan should come for me today.
Evgenia was no less taken aback by this message than I was.
- Why would Ivan go in such rain? Look, what's going on on the street? Mom, you've had a brain problem, or what?.. You haven't even used mushrooms yet.
- The mushrooms will wait, and tomorrow is a school day - Katerina will go to school.
- Is it you who are going to go for Katerina?
- Necessary. I gave my word.
- To whom, to whom did you give your word? - Evgenia already choked in amazement. - Well, mom, you say so. She gave it to Katerina! Yes, all of Katerina is still as big as a mitten. Snot slanted. I was here in the spring. If he climbs into a corner, you won’t hear him.
- Whatever it is, we must go, since the word has been given. - Milentsna turned in my direction: - My granddaughter is nervous, and the girl is unlucky with her eyes: she’s squinting.
And then the neighbor decided to scare the girl: “Where are you letting grandma leave the house?” Don't you see how cute she is? He will also die on the way.” Well, my poor thing, she started crying. All night I didn’t let go of my grandmother’s neck from my hands...
Mplentyevpa sat at the window all day, waiting for her son from minute to minute. In boots, in a warm woolen scarf, with a bundle at hand - so that there would be no delay because of her. But Ivan did not come.
And in the evening, when the ancient clock struck five, Milentyevna suddenly announced to us that since her son had not arrived, she would get there herself.
Evgenia and I looked at each other in horror: it was raining on the street; the glass in the frames was swollen with water bubbles, she herself was completely sick, passing cars walked along the highway across the river from time to time... But this is suicide, certain death - that’s what her idea is.
Evgenia tried to dissuade her mother-in-law as best she could. She frightened, cried, begged. Of course, I wasn’t silent either.
Nothing helped. Mplentevna was adamant.
She didn’t shout, didn’t argue with us, but silently, shaking her head, threw her coat over herself, once again tied the bundle with her belongings, and looked around her home hut with a farewell glance...
And then, in these minutes, for the first time, it seems, I understood how young Milektyevna conquered the Pizhemsky animal farm.
No, not only with his meekness and great patience, but also with his firmness, his flint-like character.
I alone accompanied the sick old woman across the river. Evgenia was so freaked out that she couldn’t even go down to the porch.
The rain didn't stop. The river had noticeably increased in these days, and we were carried away about two hundred meters below the log to which the boat is usually attached.
But the most difficult thing awaited us in the forest, when we entered the forest path. Along this path, even in dry weather, it squelches and squeals under your feet, but can you imagine what was happening here now, after three days of continuous rains?
And so I wandered ahead, shook the moving swamp, grabbed the wet bushes and waited every second: now this will happen, now the old woman will collapse...
But, thank God, everything turned out well. Milentyevna, leaning on her faithful assistant, a light aspen bag, went out onto the road. And not only that, it came out. I got on the car.
Of course, we were incredibly lucky with this car.
Some kind of miracle just happened. For as soon as we began to approach the road, a motor suddenly began to rumble.
I furiously, with a furious cry, rushed forward as if on an attack. The car stopped.
Unfortunately, there was no place in the cabin next to the driver: his pale wife was sitting there with a newborn in her arms. But Mnlstyevpa did not hesitate for a single second whether or not to travel in an open body.
The body was huge, with high forged sides?,:”, and she dived into it like into a well. But under the dark arches of the spruce forest, which tightly surrounded the road, for a long time I saw a swaying white spot.
It was Milentsvna, dangling along with the truck over potholes and ruts, who waved a farewell handkerchief to me.
* * *

After Milentyevna’s departure, I didn’t live in Pizhma for even three days, because I suddenly became tired of everything, everything seemed like some kind of game, and not real life: my hunting wanderings through the forest, and fishing, and even my magic over peasant antiquities.
I was irresistibly drawn to the big and noisy world, I wanted to work, to do good to people. To do as Vasilisa Mileityevna, this unknown, but great in her deeds, old peasant woman from the northern forest wilderness, does and will do until her last hour.
I left Pizhma on a warm sunny day. Steam rose from the drying log buildings. And steam came from old Thunderbolt, frozen stiffly near the cart at the stable.
I called him as I passed by.
Gromobon stretched his old neck in my direction, but did not speak.
And just as silently, with their heads hanging dejectedly from the planked roofs, the wooden horses saw me off. A whole school of wooden mines, once nurtured by Vasilisa Milentyevna.
And to the point of tears, to the point of heartache, I suddenly wanted to hear their neighing. At least once, at least in a dream, if not in reality.

Page 1 of 5

Ebony Horse (Arabian Tale)

They say that in ancient times, in a vast country called Persia, a wise and just king named Sabur, beloved by the people, ruled. And he had three daughters, each like the young moon, and a son, Prince Kumar, whose beauty and nobility were not inferior to the daylight.

The country prospered, and the king often organized luxurious feasts for court nobles and foreign guests. And each invitee was given generous gifts. But even the most pitiful beggar could come to the palace, and no one left its doors hungry.
On one of these feast days, three wise men came to the king. They knew that Sabur loved cunning mechanisms driven by magic and funny toys, and they hoped for a good reception.
The elders were skilled in crafts and inventions, possessed rare knowledge and comprehended the secrets of magic. They spoke different languages, for they came from different countries. One is from India. One is from Greece. And one is from the Maghreb.

An old man from India stepped forward. He bowed his head, respectfully greeted the king and placed a wonderful thing in front of him. And it was an archer forged from gold, wearing a helmet decorated with feathers and studded with diamonds. In his hands he held a long golden trumpet.

– Why this warrior? - asked the king. - And how will he serve me?
- Oh, incomparable! – The Indian bowed his turban. “Set him as a guard at the city gates.” Day and night he will guard your peace. If the enemy approaches the city, he will raise a trumpet, and its sound will kill any adversary.
“If this is true,” the king rejoiced, “you can take from me whatever you want.”
The Greek took a step forward and, falling on his face, kissed the ground between the king’s shoes. He placed in front of him a large silver nest in which sat a golden peacock surrounded by twenty-four golden chicks.
– Is this bird just for beauty and fun? - asked the king.
And the sage answered:
- Oh, insightful! This peacock is counting the hours of the day and night. After each hour, he hits the correct number of chicks with his beak. And so on until the last, twenty-fourth hour disappears. And when the month ends, the full moon will roll out of its beak.
“If your words are true,” said the king, “you can take from me what you want.”
And the last sage approached the king. And behind him came the slaves and brought in a horse carved from black ebony. A fancy pattern curled across the golden leather saddle, and the bridle was adorned with an emerald. King Sabur was amazed at the beauty of the wonderful horse and asked:
– Is this horse suitable for use or decoration?
- Oh, incomparable! - said the sage from the Maghreb. “This horse can soar into the clouds and in a single moment take its rider to places that you couldn’t get to in a year.”

The king admired all these miracles and wished to experience them right away. At a sign from the elder from India, the golden archer raised his trumpet, and a sound was heard that shook the walls of the palace. The Greek wound the peacock with a golden key, and it began to peck the chicks, marking noon. And the sage from the Maghreb saddled a black horse, soared into the sky and, emerging from the clouds, descended to the ground.

The king accepted the gifts of the sages with pleasure and said:
“Now I’m ready to fulfill my promises.” Demand what you wish to receive in exchange for these amazing wonders.
It must be said that the fame of the beauty of the three princesses reached the most remote ends of the earth. And the sages said in one voice:
“Give us your daughters as wives, and we will become your devoted sons-in-law.”
The king was so fascinated by magical things that, without thinking for a moment, he agreed and ordered the vizier to immediately begin preparing three weddings.

And the princesses hid behind the curtains and heard everything that was said. They looked with horror at the old men whom their father intended to be their husbands. These elders, as one, were unspeakably ugly. But the most disgusting of them was the Maghreb. Small, bow-legged, with a face as yellow and shriveled as an apricot, with tiny red eyes and a huge nose hanging like a pear between his cheeks. Sparse rotten teeth stuck out in his mouth, and his hair looked like a matted lump of dry grass.

The youngest daughter, who was to marry this freak, flexible as a vine, tender and beautiful as a rose petal, disappeared in horror into her chambers. Not daring to contradict her father, she buried her face in the pillows and sobbed in despair.

It happened that her brother, Prince Kumar, was passing by. Hearing the girl’s bitter sobs, he went in to her and asked who dared to offend his beloved younger sister?

- Oh, woe is me! – the young maiden shed tears. “My father is giving me to the ugly freak in exchange for some wooden horse.” It’s better to die, it’s better to spend your whole life on the street among the poor and homeless!

The prince, shocked by her words, hurried to his father.
- Is it true, oh fair king! - he exclaimed. “Is it true that you are ready to give my sister to the old sorcerer in exchange for a wooden horse?”
Hearing these words, the Maghrebian was instantly filled with hidden anger. He realized that the prince could stand between him and the desired reward.
“But, my son,” the king tried to calm him down, “you have not yet seen the wonderful horse given to us by this sage.” He just flew into the skies before our eyes!
Kumar, who was an excellent horseman, frowned.
“Show me this horse,” he demanded, “I’ll saddle it myself and see what miracles it performs.”
The Maghrebian with a sly smile helped the prince into the saddle. But no matter how much the rider spurred the horse, or urged it, or pulled the reins, it did not move.
“Show him what needs to be done,” the king ordered.
“Let him touch the lifting lever, which is hidden on the right side of the horse’s neck,” said the elder.
As soon as the prince carried out the advice of the Maghreb, the horse soared into the sky and disappeared from sight along with the rider.

Eastern fairy tale

In ancient times there lived a great king. He had three daughters, like full moons, and a son, as agile as a gazelle and beautiful as a summer morning.

One day three strangers came to the royal court. One carried a golden peacock, another carried a copper trumpet, and the third had a horse made of ivory and ebony.

What are these things? - asked the king.

“He who has a golden peacock,” answered the first stranger, “will always know what time it is.” As soon as one hour of the day or night passes, the bird flaps its wings and screams.

“He who has a copper pipe,” said the second, “should not be afraid of anything.” The enemy will still be far away, but the trumpet itself will blow and warn everyone of the danger.

And the third stranger said:

Anyone who has an ebony horse will go to any country he wants.

“I won’t believe you until I experience these things myself,” answered the king.

It was approaching noon, the sun was directly overhead, then the peacock flapped its wings and screamed. At that moment, a petitioner entered the gates of the palace. The trumpet suddenly blew out of nowhere. The king ordered the stranger to be searched, and the servants found a sword under his clothes. The stranger confessed that he wanted to kill the king.

“These are very useful things,” the king rejoiced. - What do you want to get for them?

Give me your daughter as a wife,” asked the first stranger.

“I also want to marry the princess,” said the second.

The king, without hesitation, took the peacock and the trumpet from them and gave them his daughters as wives.

Then a third stranger, the owner of an ebony horse, approached the king.

“O lord,” he said with a bow, “take yourself a horse and give me a third princess as my wife.”

“Don’t rush,” said the king. “We haven’t tested your horse yet.” At this time the king's son came up and said to his father:

Let me mount this horse and test it.

Test him as you wish,” answered the king.

The prince jumped onto the horse, spurred it, pulled the bridle, but the horse stood rooted to the spot.

Have you lost your mind, you unfortunate thing?! - the king shouted at the stranger. - How dare you deceive the lord? Get away with your horse, otherwise I will order you to be thrown into prison.

But the stranger was not embarrassed. He approached the prince and showed him a small ivory button that was on the right side of the horse’s neck.

“Press this button,” he told the prince.

The prince pressed the button, and suddenly the horse rose to the clouds and flew faster than the wind. He rose higher and higher, and finally the prince completely lost sight of the earth. He felt dizzy and had to grab the horse’s neck with both hands to keep from falling. The prince already regretted that he mounted his horse and mentally said goodbye to life.

But then he noticed that the horse had exactly the same button on the left side of its neck. The prince pressed it, and the horse flew slower and began to descend. Then the prince again pressed the button on the right side - the horse again flew upward like an arrow and rushed like a whirlwind above the clouds. The prince was glad that he had discovered the secret of the horse and could control it. Excited by the fast ride on the magic horse, the prince began to fall and then rise. He experienced such pleasure from flying that no mortal had ever experienced before.

When the prince was tired, he pressed the button on the left side and began to descend. He descended all day until he finally saw land.

It was a foreign land, with lakes and fast streams, with green forests, where there was a lot of different game, and in the middle of the country stood a wonderful city with white palaces and cypress groves.

The prince sank lower and lower and finally directed his horse towards a palace built of golden bricks. The palace stood far from the city among rose gardens. The prince sank onto the roof of the palace and dismounted from his horse. He was surprised that everything around was so quiet, as if everything had died out. There was no noise, nothing disturbed the silence. The prince decided to spend the night here and go home in the morning. He sat down comfortably and began to watch how the night enveloped the treetops.

So he sat, leaning on the legs of a wooden horse, and looked down. Suddenly he noticed a light in the rose garden. It seemed to the prince that a star had descended into the garden, it was getting closer and closer, growing, breaking up into ten lights, and then the prince saw beautiful slave girls in silver veils with lamps in their hands.

They surrounded a girl, such a beauty that as soon as the prince looked at her, his heart sank. The girls entered the palace, and immediately the windows were illuminated with bright light, beautiful music began to play, and the air was filled with the wonderful smell of incense and amber.

The prince could not control himself, he unwound his turban and went down it to the window, from which the brightest light poured. Through the window he climbed into the room where the girls were sitting. They ran away screaming, and only the most beautiful one did not move from her place, as if he had bewitched her. She could not take her eyes off the prince's face. Love unexpectedly blossomed in their hearts.

They told each other about themselves. The beauty told the prince that she was the king's daughter. The king built this palace for her so that she would have somewhere to have fun when she gets bored in her father's house.

Meanwhile, the girls from the princess’s retinue ran to the palace, woke up the king and shouted:

King, help! An evil spirit flew through the window to the princess and does not let her go.

The king did not hesitate. He attached the sword to his belt and ran to the palace to the princess.

He burst into her room, thinking that he would see his crying daughter in the clutches of a terrible genie. But instead he found her talking with a handsome young man. The girl smiled cheerfully at him. Then the king was overcome with rage.

He rushed with a naked sword at the stranger, but the prince also drew his sword. The king did not dare to engage in a duel with the dexterous young man, full of strength, and lowered his sword.

Are you human or genie? - he shouted.

“I’m the same person as you,” the young man answered. “I am the son of a king and I ask you to give me your daughter as a wife.” And if you don’t give it, I’ll take it myself. The king was surprised to hear these bold words:

He entered the princess, bowed to the ground and said:

Just try it,” he exclaimed. - My army is in the city.

I will defeat all your warriors.

The prince did not think that the king would take him at his word.

Okay,” said the king, “I will give you a princess as a wife only when you have fought in the field with forty thousand horsemen.”

The prince was ashamed to admit to the princess that he was unable to do this, and he told the king that tomorrow he would fight with his army. The king invited the prince to spend the night in his palace, and all three headed there. In the palace, everyone waited for the morning in their own way. That morning it was to be decided whether the young stranger would become the king's son-in-law.

The prince immediately fell asleep like the dead: he was tired of the rapid flight above the clouds.

The king tossed and turned on his bed for a long time before falling asleep: he was afraid that his soldiers would kill the prince and he would lose his dear son-in-law. The princess did not sleep a wink all night, she was so afraid for her lover.

As soon as the sun rose, forty thousand horsemen lined up in the field outside the city, ready for battle. The king ordered the best horse from the royal stables to be brought for the prince, but the prince politely thanked him and said that he would only mount his own horse.

Where is your horse? - asked the king.

“On the roof of the princess’s palace,” answered the prince.

The king thought that the prince was laughing at him: how could the horse get onto the roof? But the prince insisted on his own, and the king had no choice but to send his servants to the roof to get the horse. Soon two strong servants returned and brought a horse. He was so handsome that the king and his entourage opened their mouths in surprise. But they were even more surprised when they saw that this horse was made of wood.

Well, on this horse you cannot cope with my army,” said the king.

The prince did not answer a word, jumped on the magic horse, pressed the button on the right side, and the horse soared into the air like an arrow. Before the king and the soldiers had time to come to their senses, the horse and the prince were already so high that they seemed like a tiny swallow in the blue sky.

They waited and waited, but the rider on the magic horse did not return. The king went to the palace and told the princess what had happened. The princess began to sob; She told her father that she would not live without her lover, and went to the palace of golden bricks. She locked herself there, didn’t eat anything, didn’t sleep, and just grieved for her prince. Her father tried to persuade her to get the young stranger out of her head.

After all, this is still not a prince, but a sorcerer, unless anyone else can fly through the air,” said the king.

But no matter how much he convinced or begged, the princess was inconsolable and became seriously ill from melancholy.

Meanwhile, the prince on a magic horse rose so high that he lost sight of the earth. He enjoyed the flight and still missed the beautiful princess. But the young man decided that he would return to her only after he saw his father, who probably did not sleep from grief and worries about his son and was looking for him throughout the country. The prince flew and flew until he saw the towers of his native city below. He landed on the roof of the royal palace, dismounted from his horse and ran straight to his father.

How happy everyone was when they saw that the prince was alive and well! He told his father about how he learned to ride a horse, how he ended up in a distant foreign country and fell in love with a princess there. And then he asked what happened to the owner of the magic horse, that foreigner who wanted to take the king’s daughter as his wife as a reward.

This rogue was thrown into prison because you disappeared through his fault,” said the king.

Did you throw him into prison because he gave us such a wonderful thing? - exclaimed the prince. “After all, he rather deserves to have the whole court fall on his face before him.”

The king immediately ordered the stranger to be released from prison and granted him the highest court rank.

The stranger politely thanked him for this honor, but deep down he harbored a grudge. He wanted to marry the princess, but he didn’t get her. But the sorcerer did not give himself away and waited for an opportunity to take revenge.

Soon the prince became bored with his home. He could not find peace for himself and yearned for the princess from a distant foreign country. In vain the king begged his son not to expose himself to danger: the prince did not listen. One day he jumped on an ebony horse and flew away. He flew and flew until he found himself in that foreign country. The prince again sank onto the roof of the palace made of golden bricks, which stood in the middle of the rose gardens.

The princess lay in her room, pale and haggard, there was silence all around. But then someone pulled back the curtain and her lover entered the room. All illness disappeared from the princess as if by hand. Beaming, she jumped up from her bed and threw herself on the prince’s neck.

Do you want to go with me to my kingdom? - asked the prince. The girl nodded, and before the frightened maids had time to come to their senses, the prince picked her up and carried her to the roof of the palace. There he put her on a magic horse, jumped on its back and pressed the button on the right side. And now they were already flying above the clouds, huddled close to each other, intoxicated by the meeting and enchanted by the magical flight.

Below, in the palace of golden bricks, an alarm was raised, the servants called the king, but it was too late. The king tore out his hair and mourned his missing daughter. He thought that he was not destined to see her again.

And the prince and princess flew and flew and did not even remember the old king. Finally they found themselves above the city where the prince’s father ruled, and landed on the ground in one of the royal gardens. The prince hid the princess in a gazebo, around which lilies, daffodils bloomed, and jasmine smelled fragrant; He placed the wooden horse nearby, and he went to his father.

Everyone was happy that the prince had returned home again, and the king almost lost his mind with happiness. The prince told him that he had brought a beautiful bride and asked his father for permission to marry her. The Tsar thought that if the Tsarevich got married, he would forever give up these mad leaps through the air. Therefore, he immediately agreed to celebrate the wedding.

Residents began to decorate the city, and preparations for a luxurious wedding were underway everywhere.

The prince sent singers and girls with harps to the garden where the princess was hidden. He ordered a thousand nightingales to be released there so that they would brighten up her wait. And the stranger, the owner of the magic horse, harbored terrible anger in his heart and almost suffocated with anger when he saw the festive preparations. In order not to look at all this, he began to wander through the royal gardens. And it happened that he came to a gazebo surrounded by jasmine and daffodils. There he noticed his horse. The sage looked into the gazebo and saw a girl of rare beauty. The stranger immediately guessed that this was the prince’s bride, and decided that now he could take revenge on everyone for the insult and for the fact that his horse was taken away from him.

He entered the princess, bowed to the ground and said:

The prince, my lord, sent me here to hide you in another place. You are in danger here.

The princess, looking at his ugly face, was frightened. The sage immediately noticed this and said:

The prince is very jealous, so he sent me, the ugliest of his friends, after you, so that you would not like me.

The princess smiled. She was pleased that the prince was afraid for her. She extended her hand to the ugly stranger and walked out of the gazebo with him. The sage led the girl to the magic horse and said:

Get on your horse. The prince wanted you to ride on it.

The princess climbed onto the horse, the sage sat behind him, pressed the button on the right side, and the horse flew into the air so quickly that it immediately disappeared from sight.

After some time, the princess, alarmed that they were flying faster and faster, asked:

Are the royal gardens so huge that we have to fly for so long? Then the disgusting monster laughed evilly and said to the princess:

So know that I am a great wizard. I made this horse myself and took you away to take revenge on the prince.

The wizard began to boast of his power.

If I want,” he said, “all the stars will fall on my head, like wasps on a ripe plum.”

He had already invented this, but the princess didn’t care: when she heard his first words, she lost consciousness.

Meanwhile, a magnificent procession headed by the prince headed into the garden to take the princess to the royal palace, where a wedding dress was prepared for her. The prince was very surprised that he could not hear the music and singing of the nightingales. He left his retinue and ran to the gazebo in which the princess was hidden. But the gazebo was empty. Beside himself with horror, he ran out into the garden and only then noticed that the ebony horse had also disappeared. The prince called the princess, searched the jasmine thickets, but there was no trace of her. Then one of the harpist girls whom he sent to the garden told him that a stranger had come for the princess and that he had flown away with her on a wonderful horse. When the girl described the appearance of this man to the prince, he recognized him as the owner of the magic horse. The prince realized that the stranger had taken revenge on him for his insult. He almost lost his mind from grief, cursed the wizard and his evil fate, looked up, hoping to see a horse with the princess in the clouds. But even if the prince saw him, he still could not do anything.

The princess was far, far away. In the evening, the stranger directed his horse to the ground, they landed on a green meadow through which a river flowed. Here he decided to rest. And it so happened that just at that time the king of that country was returning from hunting. He noticed the old man and the girl and ordered his retinue to stop. The king began to ask what kind of people they were and how they got to his country.

“I guess from your appearance and from the retinue that surrounds you that there is a king in front of me,” said the sage. - So forgive me that my sister and I are sitting in your meadow. We were very tired after a long journey.

O king! “He’s lying,” exclaimed the princess. - I'm not his sister. He forcibly took me away. Save me, oh lord, and I will be grateful to you to death. The king immediately ordered the ugly wizard to be tied up and a stretcher prepared for the princess. Then he began to examine the ebony horse. He liked the skillful work and ivory patterns, but neither the ugly sage nor the princess revealed to him the secrets of the magic horse. The king ordered the horse to be taken to the royal palace. He escorted the princess there and ordered the most beautiful chambers to be set aside for her. And the evil wizard who kidnapped the princess was thrown into prison by the royal servants.

It seemed that the princess had escaped danger. But she fell from the frying pan into the fire. The king fell in love with her passionately and did not let her leave the palace. Soon he told the girl that he wanted to marry her.

Meanwhile, the prince, her real groom, dressed in simple clothes, walked from city to city, from country to country, and asked everywhere about the ugly old man, the beautiful girl and the ebony horse; but no one could tell him about them. He walked like this for a long time, and many months passed until happiness finally smiled on him. In one of the cities at the market, merchants talked about how the king of a neighboring country, returning from a hunt, noticed a beautiful girl in the meadow. He freed her from the hands of the old freak and fell passionately in love with her. There is nothing surprising in all this. But the wooden horse is truly a miracle of miracles: it is decorated with ivory, and it cannot be distinguished from a living one.

As soon as the prince heard about this, his heart jumped with joy in his chest, and he immediately went to the neighboring country. He walked all night, and then a day and another night, and finally came to the royal capital. And in the city there was only talk about the beautiful girl whom the king fell madly in love with. But people said that the girl was out of her mind. The king did everything to cure her, but no means helped.

The prince without hesitation went to the royal palace and ordered to report himself as a skilled doctor from a distant country who could cure any ailment. The king was delighted and told him about how he found the princess and how she now does not eat, does not sleep, does not let anyone near her, tears expensive bedspreads to shreds and smashes wonderful mirrors and goblets to pieces.

The prince listened to him and said:

Before I begin to treat the princess, I must take a look at that ebony horse.

The king ordered the horse to be brought into the courtyard, and the prince carefully examined it. And when the young man saw that the horse was intact and that nothing had happened to him, and, most importantly, both buttons were in place, he said to the king:

Put a guard on this horse, and take me to the sick girl.

The king escorted him to the princess's room. The prince asked not to disturb him and went alone to his bride. As soon as the girl looked at him, she instantly recognized her lover in the disguised doctor. The princess almost lost her mind from joy. The prince told her what she had to do so that he could free her, and returned to the king.

O king,” he said. “The girl is already better, but for her to be completely healed, I must cast another spell.” Order the horse to be brought to the meadow where you found the girl. And let your servants bring the princess there.

The king, delighted that the foreign doctor would cure his bride, did everything the prince asked him to do. The horse was already standing in the meadow outside the city; the servants brought the princess there. The king himself, surrounded by courtiers, appeared there and waited to see what the doctor would do.

The prince put the princess on a magic horse, sat behind her and pressed a button on the horse’s neck on the right side. And then something happened that no one expected. Who would have thought that a wooden horse would fly into the air like an arrow, like a winged bird, and immediately rise to the clouds. While the frightened king came to his senses and ordered the soldiers to pull the bowstring and shoot at the fugitives, the magic horse was already so high that it seemed like a tiny midge.

And the prince and princess no longer thought about the poor king in love and rejoiced that fate had united them again. They flew over mountains and valleys until they finally found themselves in the prince’s homeland. They immediately celebrated a magnificent wedding, to which the princess’s father arrived with his retinue. He forgave them when he saw how much they loved each other, and decided to himself that his daughter was happily married. And again the whole city was festively decorated. People feasted and had fun for many nights in a row. The clear moon rejoiced at their happiness, looking out from the heavenly windows, and below, the whole earth was covered with jasmine flowers.

After the wedding, the prince wanted to ride a magic horse. He looked for him everywhere, but did not find him. The old king ordered the horse to be broken so that his son would never be able to rise into the skies. The prince felt sorry for the ebony horse, but he soon forgot about it: even without the horse the young man was happy. And when many years later he told his children about the magic horse, they did not believe him and thought it was a wonderful fairy tale.

In ancient times there lived a great king. He had three daughters, like full moons, and a son, as agile as a gazelle and beautiful as a summer morning.

One day three strangers came to the royal court. One carried a golden peacock, another carried a copper trumpet, and the third had a horse made of ivory and ebony.

What are these things? - asked the king.

“He who has a golden peacock,” answered the first stranger, “will always know what time it is.” As soon as one hour of the day or night passes, the bird flaps its wings and screams.

“He who has a copper pipe,” said the second, “should not be afraid of anything.” The enemy will still be far away, but the trumpet itself will blow and warn everyone of the danger.

And the third stranger said:

Anyone who has an ebony horse will go to any country he wants.

“I won’t believe you until I experience these things myself,” the king answered.

It was approaching noon, the sun was directly overhead, then the peacock flapped its wings and screamed. At that moment, a petitioner entered the gates of the palace. The trumpet suddenly blew out of nowhere. The king ordered the stranger to be searched, and the servants found a sword under his clothes. The stranger confessed that he wanted to kill the king.

“These are very useful things,” the king rejoiced. - What do you want to get for them?

Give me your daughter as a wife,” the first stranger asked.

“I also want to marry the princess,” said the second.

The king, without hesitation, took the peacock and the trumpet from them and gave them his daughters as wives.

Then a third stranger, the owner of an ebony horse, approached the king.

“O lord,” he said with a bow, “take yourself a horse and give me a third princess as my wife.”

“Don’t rush,” said the king. - We haven't tested your horse yet. At this time the king's son came up and said to his father:

Let me mount this horse and test it.

Test him as you wish,” the king answered.

The prince jumped onto the horse, spurred it, pulled the bridle, but the horse stood rooted to the spot.

Have you lost your mind, you unfortunate thing?! - the king shouted at the stranger. - How dare you deceive the lord? Get away with your horse, otherwise I will order you to be thrown into prison.

But the stranger was not embarrassed. He approached the prince and showed him a small ivory button that was on the right side of the horse’s neck.

“Press this button,” he told the prince.

The prince pressed the button, and suddenly the horse rose to the clouds and flew faster than the wind. He rose higher and higher, and finally the prince completely lost sight of the earth. He felt dizzy and had to grab the horse’s neck with both hands to keep from falling. The prince already regretted that he mounted his horse and mentally said goodbye to life.

But then he noticed that the horse had exactly the same button on the left side of its neck. The prince pressed it, and the horse flew more slowly and began to descend. Then the prince again pressed the button on the right side - the horse again flew upward like an arrow and rushed like a whirlwind above the clouds. The prince was glad that he had discovered the secret of the horse and could control it. Excited by the fast ride on the magic horse, the prince began to fall and then rise. He experienced such pleasure from flying that no mortal had ever experienced before.

When the prince was tired, he pressed the button on the left side and began to descend. He descended all day until he finally saw land.

It was a foreign land, with lakes and fast streams, with green forests, where there was a lot of different game, and in the middle of the country stood a wonderful city with white palaces and cypress groves.

The prince sank lower and lower and finally directed his horse towards a palace built of golden bricks. The palace stood far from the city among rose gardens. The prince sank onto the roof of the palace and dismounted from his horse. He was surprised that everything around was so quiet, as if everything had died out. There was no noise, nothing disturbed the silence. The prince decided to spend the night here and go home in the morning. He sat down comfortably and began to watch how the night enveloped the treetops.

So he sat, leaning on the legs of a wooden horse, and looked down. Suddenly he noticed a light in the rose garden. It seemed to the prince that a star had descended into the garden, it was getting closer and closer, growing, breaking up into ten lights, and then the prince saw beautiful slave girls in silver veils with lamps in their hands.

They surrounded a girl, such a beauty that as soon as the prince looked at her, his heart sank. The girls entered the palace, and immediately the windows were illuminated with bright light, beautiful music began to play, and the air was filled with the wonderful smell of incense and amber.

The prince could not control himself, he unwound his turban and went down it to the window, from which the brightest light poured. Through the window he climbed into the room where the girls were sitting. They ran away screaming, and only the most beautiful one did not move from her place, as if he had bewitched her. She could not take her eyes off the prince's face. Love unexpectedly blossomed in their hearts.

They told each other about themselves. The beauty told the prince that she was the king's daughter. The king built this palace for her so that she would have somewhere to have fun when she gets bored in her father's house.

Meanwhile, the girls from the princess’s retinue ran to the palace, woke up the king and shouted:

King, help! An evil spirit flew through the window to the princess and does not let her go.

The king did not hesitate. He attached the sword to his belt and ran to the palace to the princess.

He burst into her room, thinking that he would see his crying daughter in the clutches of a terrible genie. But instead he found her talking with a handsome young man. The girl smiled cheerfully at him. Then the king was overcome with rage.

He rushed with a naked sword at the stranger, but the prince also drew his sword. The king did not dare to engage in a duel with the dexterous young man, full of strength, and lowered his sword.

Are you human or genie? - he shouted.

“I’m the same person as you,” the young man answered. “I am the son of a king and I ask you to give me your daughter as a wife.” And if you don’t give it, I’ll take it myself. The king was surprised to hear these bold words:

Just try it,” he exclaimed. - My army is in the city.

I will defeat all your warriors.

The prince did not think that the king would take him at his word.

Okay,” said the king, “I will give you a princess as a wife only when you have fought in the field with forty thousand horsemen.”

The prince was ashamed to admit to the princess that he was unable to do this, and he told the king that tomorrow he would fight with his army. The king invited the prince to spend the night in his palace, and all three headed there. In the palace, everyone waited for the morning in their own way. That morning it was to be decided whether the young stranger would become the king's son-in-law.

The prince immediately fell asleep like the dead: he was tired of the rapid flight above the clouds.

The king tossed and turned on his bed for a long time before falling asleep: he was afraid that his soldiers would kill the prince and he would lose his dear son-in-law. The princess did not sleep a wink all night, she was so afraid for her lover.

As soon as the sun rose, forty thousand horsemen lined up in the field outside the city, ready for battle. The king ordered the best horse from the royal stables to be brought for the prince, but the prince politely thanked him and said that he would only mount his own horse.

Where is your horse? - asked the king.

“On the roof of the princess’s palace,” answered the prince.

The king thought that the prince was laughing at him: how could the horse get onto the roof? But the prince insisted on his own, and the king had no choice but to send his servants to the roof to get the horse. Soon two strong servants returned and brought a horse. He was so handsome that the king and his entourage opened their mouths in surprise. But they were even more surprised when they saw that this horse was made of wood.

Well, on this horse you cannot cope with my army,” said the king.

The prince did not answer a word, jumped on the magic horse, pressed the button on the right side, and the horse soared into the air like an arrow. Before the king and the soldiers had time to come to their senses, the horse and the prince were already so high that they seemed like a tiny swallow in the blue sky.

They waited and waited, but the rider on the magic horse did not return. The king went to the palace and told the princess what had happened. The princess began to sob; She told her father that she would not live without her lover, and went to the palace of golden bricks. She locked herself there, didn’t eat anything, didn’t sleep, and just grieved for her prince. Her father tried to persuade her to get the young stranger out of her head.

After all, this is still not a prince, but a sorcerer, unless anyone else can fly through the air,” said the king.

But no matter how much he convinced or begged, the princess was inconsolable and became seriously ill from melancholy.

Meanwhile, the prince on a magic horse rose so high that he lost sight of the earth. He enjoyed the flight and still missed the beautiful princess. But the young man decided that he would return to her only after he saw his father, who probably did not sleep from grief and worries about his son and was looking for him throughout the country. The prince flew and flew until he saw the towers of his native city below. He landed on the roof of the royal palace, dismounted from his horse and ran straight to his father.

How happy everyone was when they saw that the prince was alive and well! He told his father about how he learned to ride a horse, how he ended up in a distant foreign country and fell in love with a princess there. And then he asked what happened to the owner of the magic horse, that foreigner who wanted to take the king’s daughter as his wife as a reward.

This rogue was thrown into prison because you disappeared through his fault,” said the king.

Did you throw him into prison because he gave us such a wonderful thing? - exclaimed the prince. - After all, he rather deserves the whole court to fall on his face before him.

The king immediately ordered the stranger to be released from prison and granted him the highest court rank.

The stranger politely thanked him for this honor, but deep down he harbored a grudge. He wanted to marry the princess, but he didn’t get her. But the sorcerer did not give himself away and waited for an opportunity to take revenge.

Soon the prince became bored with his home. He could not find peace for himself and yearned for the princess from a distant foreign country. In vain the king begged his son not to expose himself to danger: the prince did not listen. One day he jumped on an ebony horse and flew away. He flew and flew until he found himself in that foreign country. The prince again sank onto the roof of the palace made of golden bricks, which stood in the middle of the rose gardens.

The princess lay in her room, pale and haggard, there was silence all around. But then someone pulled back the curtain and her lover entered the room. All illness disappeared from the princess as if by hand. Beaming, she jumped up from her bed and threw herself on the prince’s neck.

Do you want to go with me to my kingdom? - asked the prince. The girl nodded, and before the frightened maids had time to come to their senses, the prince picked her up and carried her to the roof of the palace. There he put her on a magic horse, jumped on its back and pressed the button on the right side. And now they were already flying above the clouds, huddled close to each other, intoxicated by the meeting and enchanted by the magical flight.

Below, in the palace of golden bricks, an alarm was raised, the servants called the king, but it was too late. The king tore out his hair and mourned his missing daughter. He thought that he was not destined to see her again.

And the prince and princess flew and flew and did not even remember the old king. Finally they found themselves above the city where the prince’s father ruled, and landed on the ground in one of the royal gardens. The prince hid the princess in a gazebo, around which lilies, daffodils bloomed, and jasmine smelled fragrant; He placed the wooden horse nearby, and he went to his father.

Everyone was happy that the prince had returned home again, and the king almost lost his mind with happiness. The prince told him that he had brought a beautiful bride and asked his father for permission to marry her. The Tsar thought that if the Tsarevich got married, he would forever give up these mad leaps through the air. Therefore, he immediately agreed to celebrate the wedding.

Residents began to decorate the city, and preparations for a luxurious wedding were underway everywhere.

The prince sent singers and girls with harps to the garden where the princess was hidden. He ordered a thousand nightingales to be released there so that they would brighten up her wait. And the stranger, the owner of the magic horse, harbored terrible anger in his heart and almost suffocated with anger when he saw the festive preparations. In order not to look at all this, he began to wander through the royal gardens. And it happened that he came to a gazebo surrounded by jasmine and daffodils. There he noticed his horse. The sage looked into the gazebo and saw a girl of rare beauty. The stranger immediately guessed that this was the prince’s bride, and decided that now he could take revenge on everyone for the insult and for the fact that his horse was taken away from him.

He entered the princess, bowed to the ground and said:

The prince, my lord, sent me here to hide you in another place. You are in danger here.

The princess, looking at his ugly face, was frightened. The sage immediately noticed this and said:

The prince is very jealous, so he sent me, the ugliest of his friends, after you, so that you would not like me.

The princess smiled. She was pleased that the prince was afraid for her. She extended her hand to the ugly stranger and walked out of the gazebo with him. The sage led the girl to the magic horse and said:

Get on your horse. The prince wanted you to ride on it.

The princess climbed onto the horse, the sage sat behind him, pressed the button on the right side, and the horse flew into the air so quickly that it immediately disappeared from sight.

After some time, the princess, alarmed that they were flying faster and faster, asked:

Are the royal gardens so huge that we have to fly for so long? Then the disgusting monster laughed evilly and said to the princess:

So know that I am a great wizard. I made this horse myself and took you away to take revenge on the prince.

The wizard began to boast of his power.

If I want,” he said, “all the stars will fall on my head, like wasps on a ripe plum.”

He had already invented this, but the princess didn’t care: when she heard his first words, she lost consciousness.

Meanwhile, a magnificent procession headed by the prince headed into the garden to take the princess to the royal palace, where a wedding dress was prepared for her. The prince was very surprised that he could not hear the music and singing of the nightingales. He left his retinue and ran to the gazebo in which the princess was hidden. But the gazebo was empty. Beside himself with horror, he ran out into the garden and only then noticed that the ebony horse had also disappeared. The prince called the princess, searched the jasmine thickets, but there was no trace of her. Then one of the harpist girls whom he sent to the garden told him that a stranger had come for the princess and that he had flown away with her on a wonderful horse. When the girl described the appearance of this man to the prince, he recognized him as the owner of the magic horse. The prince realized that the stranger had taken revenge on him for his insult. He almost lost his mind from grief, cursed the wizard and his evil fate, looked up, hoping to see a horse with the princess in the clouds. But even if the prince saw him, he still could not do anything.

The princess was far, far away. In the evening, the stranger directed his horse to the ground, they landed on a green meadow through which a river flowed. Here he decided to rest. And it so happened that just at that time the king of that country was returning from hunting. He noticed the old man and the girl and ordered his retinue to stop. The king began to ask what kind of people they were and how they got to his country.

“I guess from your appearance and from the retinue that surrounds you that there is a king in front of me,” said the sage. - So forgive me that my sister and I are sitting in your meadow. We were very tired after a long journey.

O king! “He’s lying,” exclaimed the princess. - I'm not his sister. He forcibly took me away. Save me, oh lord, and I will be grateful to you to death. The king immediately ordered the ugly wizard to be tied up and a stretcher prepared for the princess. Then he began to examine the ebony horse. He liked the skillful work and ivory patterns, but neither the ugly sage nor the princess revealed to him the secrets of the magic horse. The king ordered the horse to be taken to the royal palace. He escorted the princess there and ordered the most beautiful chambers to be set aside for her. And the evil wizard who kidnapped the princess was thrown into prison by the royal servants.

It seemed that the princess had escaped danger. But she fell from the frying pan into the fire. The king fell in love with her passionately and did not let her leave the palace. Soon he told the girl that he wanted to marry her.

Meanwhile, the prince, her real groom, dressed in simple clothes, walked from city to city, from country to country, and asked everywhere about the ugly old man, the beautiful girl and the ebony horse; but no one could tell him about them. He walked like this for a long time, and many months passed until happiness finally smiled on him. In one of the cities at the market, merchants talked about how the king of a neighboring country, returning from a hunt, noticed a beautiful girl in the meadow. He freed her from the hands of the old freak and fell passionately in love with her. There is nothing surprising in all this. But the wooden horse is truly a miracle of miracles: it is decorated with ivory, and it cannot be distinguished from a living one.

As soon as the prince heard about this, his heart jumped with joy in his chest, and he immediately went to the neighboring country. He walked all night, and then a day and another night, and finally came to the royal capital. And in the city there was only talk about the beautiful girl whom the king fell madly in love with. But people said that the girl was out of her mind. The king did everything to cure her, but no means helped.

The prince without hesitation went to the royal palace and ordered to report himself as a skilled doctor from a distant country who could cure any ailment. The king was delighted and told him about how he found the princess and how she now does not eat, does not sleep, does not let anyone near her, tears expensive bedspreads to shreds and smashes wonderful mirrors and goblets to pieces.

The prince listened to him and said:

Before I begin to treat the princess, I must take a look at that ebony horse.

The king ordered the horse to be brought into the courtyard, and the prince carefully examined it. And when the young man saw that the horse was intact and that nothing had happened to him, and, most importantly, both buttons were in place, he said to the king:

Put a guard on this horse, and take me to the sick girl.

The king escorted him to the princess's room. The prince asked not to disturb him and went alone to his bride. As soon as the girl looked at him, she instantly recognized her lover in the disguised doctor. The princess almost lost her mind from joy. The prince told her what she had to do so that he could free her, and returned to the king.

O king, he said. - The girl is already better, but for her to be completely healed, I must cast another spell. Order the horse to be brought to the meadow where you found the girl. And let your servants bring the princess there.

The king, delighted that the foreign doctor would cure his bride, did everything the prince asked him to do. The horse was already standing in the meadow outside the city; the servants brought the princess there. The king himself, surrounded by courtiers, appeared there and waited to see what the doctor would do.

The prince put the princess on a magic horse, sat behind her and pressed a button on the horse’s neck on the right side. And then something happened that no one expected. Who would have thought that a wooden horse would fly into the air like an arrow, like a winged bird, and immediately rise to the clouds. While the frightened king came to his senses and ordered the soldiers to pull the bowstring and shoot at the fugitives, the magic horse was already so high that it seemed like a tiny midge.

And the prince and princess no longer thought about the poor king in love and rejoiced that fate had united them again. They flew over mountains and valleys until they finally found themselves in the prince’s homeland. They immediately celebrated a magnificent wedding, to which the princess’s father arrived with his retinue. He forgave them when he saw how much they loved each other, and decided to himself that his daughter was happily married. And again the whole city was festively decorated. People feasted and had fun for many nights in a row. The clear moon rejoiced at their happiness, looking out from the heavenly windows, and below, the whole earth was covered with jasmine flowers.

After the wedding, the prince wanted to ride a magic horse. He looked for him everywhere, but did not find him. The old king ordered the horse to be broken so that his son would never be able to rise into the skies. The prince felt sorry for the ebony horse, but he soon forgot about it: even without the horse the young man was happy. And when many years later he told his children about the magic horse, they did not believe him and thought it was a wonderful fairy tale.