Once upon a time there lived a king, he had two sons. The king called the sage and ordered him to teach his sons all the wisdom of the world. So he began to teach the princes day and night. The brothers grew up, gained wisdom, but then disaster struck - their mother died.
A little time passed, and the king took another woman as his wife. As it happens, the stepmother did not like the boys, often offended them and fed them poorly. The sons began to complain to their father about their stepmother, but to no avail. The princes endured and endured, but all patience comes to an end.
“We must, brother, leave this prison,” the younger brother said to the elder. “Let’s try to earn our own bread.”
The eldest prince hesitated for a long time; he understood that he would lose the right to the throne, but then he agreed.
- Okay, let's leave tonight.
“No,” said the younger one, “let’s put off the escape until tomorrow; we must set off on the journey after eating well.” You know the saying: “Never set off on an empty stomach.”
The next day, after having a hearty lunch, they dressed in simple clothes, took two horses and, under the guise of grooms, left the palace.
They drove and drove, crossed the desert and stopped to rest under a banyan tree (a large multi-stemmed tree from the ficus genus). They had just sat down when a parrot and a starling landed on a tree and started a loud argument among themselves.
“You sat down in the place where I wanted to sit!” the parrot shouted.
- No way! Everyone knows that I am a more important bird than you. After all, having eaten me, a person becomes the first minister,” the starling answered proudly.
- What about the first minister! They say that whoever eats a parrot becomes king.
The princes heard this conversation and, taking out a bow and arrows, shot the talkative birds, plucked them, fried them and prepared to eat.
“You, like an older brother, eat a parrot, and I eat a starling,” said the younger one.
- No, let's divide them in half. After all, none of us will become either the first minister or the king while our stepmother is alive.
“But the stepmother is not eternal, she can die,” the younger brother argued. “And I, as the youngest, have no right to the royal throne.” You must eat the parrot.
So the older brother ate a parrot, and the younger brother ate a starling. After eating and resting, they moved on.
Before they had time to drive away, the elder brother discovered that he had lost his whip.
“I probably forgot it under the tree.” Wait, I’ll go get him,” he said.
“No,” answered the younger brother, “fate decided that you are the king, and I am the first minister, which means I should go for the whip.” - And galloped back.
He drove up to the banyan tree, and lo and behold, underneath it, entwined around the trunk, lay a huge python. And just as the prince wanted to grab the whip, the python attacked him and strangled him in its mighty embrace.
The elder brother waited and waited for the younger one, and now evening has already come, but the younger brother is not there. Then he thought that his brother had taken a different route, did not wait for him any longer and hurried to the city where they were heading.
I arrived there, looked, and there was terrible turmoil in the city, all the people were crying, killing themselves.
“What’s the matter?” he asks the townspeople.
“Oh, trouble, trouble, our king suddenly died,” people answer, “and we are now choosing a new king.” And our custom is this: all the townspeople pass by the sacred white elephant and the one he chooses becomes the new king. All our people had already passed near him, but he did not choose anyone. And so we decided: let all the foreigners pass by him, maybe he will choose one of them. So let's go to him.
The prince obeyed and, lo and behold, the elephant knelt before him, raised his trunk in greeting and sat him on his back. This meant that he chose him as king. But while reigning, the elder brother was constantly worried about his younger brother. Time passed, the brother did not appear, and the king appointed another person as first minister.
And this is what happened to my younger brother. Not far from the banyan tree where the python lived, there was a stream. Having killed the prince, the python crawled into its hole. At this time, a wizard and his wife approached this place. While the wizard was taking water, his wife went up to the banyan tree and looked - and under it lay a dead young man. Yes, such a handsome man that she had never seen before. She ran to the wizard and said:
“Come with me quickly, there is a dead young man lying under the tree, revive him.” After all, you always said that you could revive people.
The wizard did not like that his wife was so worried about this handsome young man, and he did not want to revive him.
“Oh, so!” the wife was indignant. “Since you don’t want or can’t revive him, I’ll call another wizard.”
“Okay,” muttered the jealous man, “go to the stream and bring a jug of water.”
A woman came up to the stream and looked, but it was dry - there was not a drop of water in it.
“There’s nothing to be surprised at,” said the wizard. - Let's go home and see what happens next.
And then this happened. The python and its offspring crawled to the stream to drink water, but it was not there. They suffered from thirst for three days, and on the fourth they went to the wizard and began to ask him to revive the stream.
“Okay,” answered the wizard, “I will make sure that the stream is filled with water, but on the condition that you revive the young man.”
The python revived the prince, and the wizard brought the stream back to life.
The Tsarevich opened his eyes and decided that he had been sleeping, and at such an inopportune time for so long. He quickly picked up his whip, mounted a horse that was feeding not far away, and hurried to his brother. Yes, in a hurry he drove along the wrong road and ended up in another city, completely different from the one where his brother reigned.
Tired and hungry, without a penny in his pocket, he saw an old woman there, a shepherd’s wife, and asked:
“Mother, give me something to eat, I’ll give you my horse for it.”
The old woman not only gave him food, but also sheltered him in her house.
Several days passed, the prince had already begun to get used to the shepherd’s family, when he suddenly felt that a shadow of great sadness had fallen over this house.
- Father, what happened? - he asked the owner.
“My son,” answered the shepherd, “a bloodthirsty witch recently appeared in our city, to whose devouring we must give every day one young man, a goat and a loaf of bread.” Only under this condition does she not touch other people. Today it's our turn. I can give a goat, bread, but is it possible to sacrifice my son?
“Why doesn’t anyone dare to kill her?” asked the prince.
“Eh-heh!” the shepherd’s wife intervened. “Many tried to kill this witch, but no one could cope with her, although the ruler of our city promised to give half of the kingdom and his daughter as a wife to the one who kills the witch. She devoured everyone who came close to her. - And the old woman began to cry.
“Don’t cry, mother, I’ll try to kill her,” said the prince.
“No, no, you shouldn’t risk your life,” the kind woman began to persuade him.
“Don’t worry, mother, I will do everything as it should,” answered the prince. “Just bake me a big, big loaf and give me the fattest goat.”
And with such a loaf and a goat in tow, the prince headed to the place where the witch held her feast in the evenings. There he tied the goat to a tree, laid the loaf on the grass, and hid nearby in the bushes.
A little time passed, and suddenly a terrible noise and roar was heard: a witch appeared. First she tore and ate the goat, then began to eat the loaf. Before she had time to swallow the last piece, the prince jumped out of the bushes with a saber raised high.
A terrible battle ensued. With her corpulent body and long arms, the witch almost strangled the prince, but the eaten goat and a magnificent loaf made her movements difficult, and in the end, the prince defeated her. Without hesitation, he cut off her head, tied it in a bag, and he himself, tired of this battle, decided to rest a little and fell soundly asleep.
A garbage collector came to the witch's feast every morning to clean it up. This time he did not see human bones; instead, a young man was fast asleep under a tree, next to whom lay a sack and the headless body of a witch.
The janitor began to wake up the prince, but he did not wake up. Then the cleaner quickly dug a hole, put the sleeping prince there and covered him with earth. And he himself took the witch’s head to the palace to the king and demanded from him half of the kingdom and his daughter.
The king began to doubt that the janitor killed the witch, but he could not keep his promise and gave him half of the kingdom. As for his daughter, he announced that she was young and needed to wait another year.
Meanwhile, potters came to the hole where the prince was buried for clay. As soon as they began to type it, they looked - and under it a man was lying and barely breathing. They took him with them and instructed their wives to take him out.
The prince woke up and began asking what happened to him and how he got here. But the women knew little, but they reported the good news that the cleaner had killed the witch and received from the king the promised half of the kingdom and that in a year he would marry his daughter.
Then the prince realized that the cleaner had deceived the king, but how could you prove it? After all, he himself does not have any witnesses who could confirm that it was he, and not the janitor, who killed the witch.
However, he had to live on something, and he decided to learn their skills from the potters. A little time passed, and the prince began to make magnificent pots. The fame of his art spread throughout the country. In addition, people soon began to say that he, and not the janitor, killed the witch.
Sensing something was wrong, the cleaner began to demand that the potters expel the stranger from their settlement. After all, all the land belongs to the king, he insisted, and a foreigner has no right to use clay that does not belong to him.
Then the potter, with whom the prince lived, and his family left the settlement and settled on one of the nearby hills. The prince also moved with him, who really liked these places. While extracting clay for his pots, he carved the gentle slopes of the hill into numerous terraces. From the spring that flowed at the top of the hill, he brought water through them and laid out a magnificent garden. The potter's family helped him plant flowers, and soon people from all the surrounding villages began to come here to relax.
One day the first minister decided to visit these places. The abundance of fruit trees, birdsong and the babbling stream flowing from one terrace to another delighted his daughter, and she began to ask her father to come here more often.
On another visit, while admiring the garden, she saw a young man sitting with a sad look by the stream, resting his head in his hands. Noticing her, he left without saying anything.
The beauty of the young man and his loneliness made a strong impression on the girl. Returning home, she told her father that she would neither eat nor drink until he married her to the young man whom she had seen in the terraced garden.
The first minister was surprised at her words and sent servants to find out who this young man was with whom his daughter fell in love. The servants reported: this is the man about whom they say that he killed the witch.
“If this is so, and I still don’t know anything and haven’t reported this to the king, then I could lose my post,” the vizier got scared. “That means he needs to be somehow removed from our area. But, on the other hand, how can we refuse our daughter’s request, because she could die of hunger?”
He thought and thought and decided: “Okay, I’ll marry this young man to my daughter, and then on their honeymoon I’ll send him sailing along the river. And there, at night, my servants will grab him and throw him into the water, and bring his daughter home.”
So he did.
The wedding was celebrated and the newlyweds were sent for a walk along the river. At night they threw the prince overboard, but, fortunately, there was a rope hanging from the ship, he grabbed it and, when everything was quiet, he quietly returned to the cabin. There he told everything to his young wife, and she hid him in a chest.
Morning came, the girl pretended to be sick, and when she was called for breakfast, she asked to bring food to the cabin. This is how she and her husband ate. The ship returned home, the girl with the chest was taken to her room, and the delighted father rewarded the servants with money and land.
And the daughter, having locked herself, opened the chest, released her husband, dressed him in women's clothing and left him with her as a servant.
At night, the prince told his savior the story of his entire life. Sympathizing with him, she also told about her life, about her hometown and how its ruler was elected by the sacred elephant. It was then that the prince thought that it was probably his brother. But how to get to him, how to make sure that it’s really him? And this is what he decided.
Knowing that every day a bouquet of flowers is sent to the king from the garden of the first minister, he went to the gardener’s daughter and suggested:
“Let me show you how you can make even more beautiful bouquets.” And, taking the flowers she had collected, he made a bouquet out of them the same way the gardener did in their home.
“Listen, gardener,” the king asked him the next day, “who made that bouquet that you brought me yesterday?”
“I did it...” answered the gardener.
“Don’t lie!” the king interrupted him sharply. “If tomorrow you don’t bring me the same bouquet, you’ll lose your head.”
The gardener trudged home barely alive, told his daughter about everything, she ran to the prince and began to beg him to make the same bouquet to save her father.
Now it became clear to the prince that the king was his brother. He collected a bouquet more beautiful than the first, put a note in it and sent it to the king. The king read the note, was delighted and demanded from the gardener to confess who made this bouquet.
The gardener fell to his knees and admitted that it was made by the maid of the first minister's daughter. Then the king dressed more simply, went to the gardener’s daughter and began picking flowers with her.
And then, lo and behold, his younger brother appeared in the garden dressed as a maid. The brothers hugged, told each other everything that had happened to them, and the king threw a feast for the whole world. He immediately fired the first minister and appointed his younger brother in his place.
This is how the predictions of the parrot and the starling came true: the elder brother became the king, and the younger brother became the first minister.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru