Once upon a time there lived a man named Cha. His father died long ago, and his mother went to work as a day laborer. Cha himself tended cows for a rich landowner.
One day he went to the field to cut the grass. I mowed the whole lawn, filled the bag and went home. The next day he comes to the same place, looks - and the grass there is as if it had never been mowed: thick, tall, juicy. He was surprised, again mowed all the grass on the lawn and took it home. When Cha came to this place for the third time, he again saw the same thing: the lawn was again overgrown with grass.
From then on, Cha began to come there every day, and every time the grass grew overnight, as if in a month. One day Cha thought: what’s the matter? The day before, cows walked here and plucked all the grass, but today everything is as if not a single cow had ever been here. Cha decided to look at the roots of this extraordinary herb. He dug into the ground, pulled out one root and suddenly saw something glowing in the ground. Cha put his hand in there and pulled out the pearl. The beautiful pearl sparkled and shimmered in the sun! Cha was delighted and ran home to show his find to his mother.
The mother admired the pearl and put it in a bowl of rice. And from then on, no matter how much rice Cha and his mother ate, their bowl always remained full. The mother was surprised at first, and then realized that this pearl was magical. She hid it in a box with money - and from that day on, no money was transferred in the house.
Mother and son lived richly and satisfyingly. But the richer Cha became, the more greedy he became. One day his neighbors came to him to borrow flour and money.
“I won’t give them anything,” Cha said to his mother, “there are a lot of them here, idle people!”
And drove the neighbors away.
Another time, one poor woman asked to spend the night with them. Cha didn’t let her in: he would rob the house!
Before, Cha was a cheerful and kind guy, but now he became angrier and stingier.
That year there was a big crop failure. The neighbors were starving, no one had any rice for a long time, people ate the bark from the trees. And Cha’s bins were bursting with grain; he even fed the chickens rice. The neighbors decided to go to Cha one last time and ask him to borrow rice.
“And I won’t talk to them, I’d rather leave,” said Cha, having learned about this.
He took his pearl, put it in his mouth and left the house.
Cha reached the forest and sat down to rest on a stone. He sat for a while and fell asleep, but in his sleep he did not notice how he swallowed the pearl.
He woke up from unbearable thirst. There was a burning sensation in my stomach, as if there was a fire burning there, my tongue and throat were dry. Cha returned home, drank two buckets of water, but did not get drunk. Then he went to the river, lay down on his stomach and began to drink straight from the river. I drank and drank, drank half the river, but I still wanted to drink. And suddenly Cha felt that his whole body was aching, his head hurt, his arms and legs were cramping. It became difficult to breathe, circles appeared before my eyes, and I wanted to drink even more.
With difficulty, Cha crawled closer to the river, bent down and saw in the water a terrible dragon with monstrous fangs, crooked claws on paws overgrown with fur, and a long tail covered with scales. Flames and smoke erupted from the dragon's mouth, its fangs clicked ominously.
And suddenly Cha realized that this was his reflection. He got scared, howled, and rushed about. But all his fury was in vain: he could not turn into a man again.
This is how Cha was punished for his greed!
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru