Previously, people lived in dugouts. In the fall, the men went hunting, but two women remained in the dugout. One of them is childless. In the evening, the childless woman took her skis and got ready to get some firewood - she needed to keep the fire burning all night. She goes and found a dry pine tree. I wanted to hit her with an ax, I looked around - the eratnik was sitting, laughing in a thin voice. The woman continued skiing. Where he stops at a dry tree, he hits with an ax - “hee hee!” is heard. She says:
“As often as I walk, all the trees come across damp.”
I tried a lot of trees and ran back home. She entered the dugout and said to another woman:
- Leave with the children quickly! I saw a scary one, with four fingers1, hairy.
She pushed the children into her bosom and ran after the hunters.
The second one is sitting on the street, sharpening a knife. He walks around:
- Hee, hee, hee!
She turned:
- Who are you?
- Eratnik!
- Why did you come?
- There are people.
- I'm alone here. If you solve the riddle, then eat me. I’ll climb to the top of the pine tree, and you listen to what I say. If you obey, I will give you a deer.
There was a reindeer team nearby. She poured sand into the hem and said:
- Open your mouth, eyes, nose, ears wider!
He opened; eyes, mouth stretches. The woman threw sand.
Eratnik says:
- There's some rubbish in there!
And she tells him to open his eyes even wider. He asked to take the dirty linen out of his eyes. She pulled out all her eyelashes, jumped on the sled herself, and drove off. He screamed, the little eratniks came running. She made a hole in the middle of the tundra and covered it with pine branches so that it would not be noticeable. He thinks: “They won’t catch up, in which case I’ll let the deer go.”
Little eratniks run and fall into the water. Baba laughs even more. The old man walks, blind, by touch. He shouts dashingly, went around the ice hole, and quickly chased along the road. She released the deer calf. He ran to the deer and grabbed it. Meanwhile, she reached her people. She told everything how it happened: that another woman ran away to the hunters with her children, that a terrible eratnik was chasing, and the little ones fell into an ice hole, she punished:
- Don't go to that tundra!
Since then, people have become afraid of the eratists.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru