Once upon a time there lived two brothers. And although they were born from the same father and the same mother, they did not resemble each other at all. The eldest was greedy and stingy, and therefore rich, the younger, although he was a poor man, but in honesty no one in the entire district could compare with him. The younger one more than once turned to the older one for help - after all, sometimes the need was so pressing! He didn't ask for much, just food - that's all. And the rich man is like not his own brother.
- Here's another! - shouts. “I’ll start messing with the idlers,” and he drives the poor man away from the house.
It happened one day that the younger one completely disappeared from hunger, but the older one kicked him out without any compassion. The younger brother went into the forest to look for some roots.
I searched and searched, searched the whole forest, found nothing, only carrion apples under a wild apple tree. He didn’t pick and choose that the apples were sour and would only set his teeth on edge, he ate to his fill, fell to the ground and, without noticing it, fell asleep. He sleeps and dreams that his left hand itches, and in his little house the fire is burning in the hearth.
The poor man was chilled to the bones from the cold, woke up, looked, and night was already falling.
“Oh, where can I, poor thing, warm myself,” he thinks. “My brother won’t let me in, and in my house there has been a hearth without a fire for a long time.”
He stands, thinks about what he should do, and then suddenly it dawns on him: “I’ll try to go to the Glass Mountain; people say that an eternal fire burns there. Eh, come what may! If people don’t regret it, maybe someone else will have mercy.”
He got up and went.
From afar, the poor man saw that a huge fire was burning on the Glass Mountain, and twelve strange figures were positioned around it. The poor man plucked up courage and headed straight towards them. He approached, bowed and began to ask:
“Oh, good people, have mercy on me, I’m a poor man, no one cares about me, I’m cold, and there’s no fire or wood in my little house.” Let me warm up at least a little near your fire.
All twelve looked at him and said:
- Sit down, son, with us and warm yourself to your health!
The poor man sat down. Everyone is silent, and he is afraid to utter a word; he just looks into the fire and takes a closer look at these twelve. He sees that they change places with each other all the time. They walked around the fire, and everyone found themselves back in their place. And suddenly an ancient old man, a gray beard to the waist, a bald head, rose from the flames - and turning to the poor man, he said:
- Don’t waste your time here, buddy, be hardworking and honest! Take hot coals from our fire and go on your way!
Then all twelve got up, poured a full bag of coals and put them on the poor man’s shoulders. The poor man thanked him and walked along the path with the full bag. He warmed up, and the burden did not seem heavy.
He came home, was glad that at least there would be a fire in the fireplace, he began to pour out the coal and oh, a miracle! Each coal, barely touching the floor, turned into a gold coin!
You can imagine how happy our poor man was! He poured and poured without stopping until he poured everything out. There is a whole heap of gold in front of him and it all belongs to him! He can't believe his eyes! I grabbed a handful of gold coins and became convinced that it was true!
And then he wanted to measure this pile of coins, but he had nothing with which to measure it. He went to his brother and began to ask for a measure.
- Meru? - The rich man grins. - What should you, a ragamuffin, do with her? And the poor man humbly answers:
“A neighbor owed me some wheat, now he’s returned it, so I want to try it on.” Although my brother didn’t believe it, he gave me a measure, and to make sure, he smeared the bottom with resin.
The younger brother measures and measures the coins, he got a lot, he’s tired, he measured so much! He brought the measure back, and the rich man immediately saw that several ducats had stuck to the bottom. He got angry and started yelling at the poor man!
- Oh, you, so and so! He wanted to deceive me, but it didn’t work out! Are you afraid that I will covet your ducats? It hurts! And you tell me, everything is as it is, where did you get the money? Otherwise I’ll immediately report that you stole them!
The younger brother was an honest man and told the elder the whole truth.
Now the younger one began to live richly. He bought land for himself, bought livestock, and began to manage it according to his own good judgment. The house also needs a mistress; my younger brother got married. He took a pretty girl as his wife and lived with her in peace and harmony.
And they envy their older brother. Although he himself has plenty of everything, he still wants to grab more. He thought and thought and decided: to go to Glass Mountain. Maybe your luck will be no worse than the younger one?
He climbed the mountain, approached the fire and had the following conversation:
- Let me, poor man, warm myself next to your fire. The cold of the night has completely exhausted me, I have no strength to go further, and there is nowhere to warm myself.
Here one of the twelve answers him:
“You, son, were born in a happy moment, and you have plenty of wealth, but you are an evil and stingy person.” You can't fool us. You wanted to deceive us and for this you will not escape punishment.
The rich man, as if struck by thunder from fear, sat down among those twelve, sat not breathing, afraid to say a word.
Those twelve began to change places again, and when each one returned to his place, an old man, a gray beard to the waist, a bald head all over his head, rose from the flames, and said:
- Bad people have a bad time! Your brother is an honest man, that’s why we gave him gold, but you are evil and you will not escape punishment.
Here one of the twelve of our rich man picked him up, began to beat him without any pity, handed him to the second, the second beat him even harder, threw him to the third, the third to the fourth, the fourth to the fifth, the fifth to the sixth, and so on one to the other, until the very last, and the last one, having beaten him thoroughly, swung and threw him into the hands of the old man. He grabbed him and disappeared with him in the flames.
At this time, a rooster crowed in the village and all twelve, along with the fire, disappeared. The next day they began to look for the rich man, calling and calling, but nothing was heard of him. The younger brother guessed what had happened to him, but did not say a word to anyone.
The younger brother lived peacefully with his wife, oh well. They lived well themselves and helped others. But their happiness did not last long.
One day a husband went to the field, returned home, and his wife was nowhere to be found. He goes there, he goes here, calls his wife, asks everyone, looks for him, but his wife disappears, as if she had sunk into the water. The poor fellow is exhausted; he searches for his wife day and night, but all in vain. Nothing pleases him anymore, he finds peace nowhere. He was killed and killed and decided to go around the world to find his little wife.
He walks and wanders wherever his eyes look. He has been walking for many days and finally gets to the lake. There is a hut on the shore of that lake.
“I’ll take a break,” he decided, “maybe I’ll find out.”
I entered the hut, and something was wrong there. A woman is sitting in a hut, she saw our traveler, got scared, and shouts:
- Man! What do you want? What are you doing here? If you show your face to my husband, he will immediately eat you!
-Who is he, your husband? - asks the traveler.
- Don't you know? - the woman answers. — My husband is the King of Water. Everything wet is in his power. Run, run, he will come back and eat you right away!
- Oh, have pity on me, where am I going to go at night? Hide me so he doesn't find me!
He begged and begged, finally he begged, and she hid him behind the stove. Soon the King of Water appeared. Still at the door he shouts:
“Wife, it smells like a man here, give it here, otherwise you’ll have a bad time!” She tries to persuade him this way and that, but all in vain. The poor guy had to crawl out from behind the stove. He stands, trembles like an aspen leaf, and makes an excuse:
“I didn’t do anything wrong, I just came to find out if the King of Water had heard anything about my wife.”
“Well, if you are so brave,” the King of Water replies, “I will forgive you; but I can’t help you, I’ve never heard of your wife. Yesterday, however, I saw ducks on the water, maybe she was among them. You know what? Go to my brother, he is the King of Fire, he knows more than me.
The traveler was happy and lay down to rest.
The next day I went further. He walked and walked and reached the King of Fire. And he did not tell him anything, but sent him to the third brother - the King of the Wind. The poor fellow came to him and told him where he was going and why. The king became thoughtful, shook his head, and couldn’t really say anything. And then he says:
“It seems to me that I saw such a woman under the Glass Mountain.” Hearing this, our traveler turned back, because the Glass Mountain stands not far from their village. He did not go home to his house, but moved up the stream that ran under the Glass Mountain. Ducks swim in the stream and shout after him:
“Don’t go there, good man, or you’ll get lost!”
But he kept walking until he came to the very foot of the Glass Mountain. He sees a cave under the mountain, he climbed in, climbs further and further, and there are houses there. I walked around all the houses and finally entered the largest one. Then witches and witchers surrounded him from all sides, and they raised a terrible cry:
- What do you want here? What is needed here?
“I came for my wife, they told me that they saw her here.”
- Here, she is here! - the witches shouted. “But you won’t get it until you find it among a hundred others!”
- What a deal! - he answers. - How can I not recognize my wife! Look, look, there she is! - and he rushed to hug her.
And his wife hugs him too, and both of them are happy that they are finally together again. Then his wife whispers in his ear:
“Now you recognize me, but I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, because there will be two hundred of us standing next to each other and all dressed the same.” Go to the Glass Mountain at night, the King of Time and his twelve servants live there, ask him how to recognize me. If you are a kind person, they will help you, if you are an evil person, you will disappear there.
“Okay,” the husband quietly answers his wife. “I’ll go, but first explain why you suddenly ran away for no reason at all?”
“And I,” says the wife, “didn’t run away, it was the hunter who lured me to the stream, sprinkled me with water, we both grew wings and at that very moment we turned into ducks.” Like it or not, I had to follow him. He brought me here and turned me into a woman again. I want to leave with you, just get to know me.
That's where we parted. She went to the other women, he went to Glass Mountain.
The servants of the King of Time were still sitting around the fire. As soon as our traveler appeared, they immediately recognized him and asked what he wanted.
“Tell me,” he answered, “how can I recognize my wife tomorrow among two hundred others?”
- Oh, good man, we don’t know what to advise you, wait a little, maybe our master knows about it.
And then an ancient old man with a gray beard up to his waist and a bald head rose from the flames, the traveler began to ask him, and the old man answered:
“Everyone will be the same and dressed the same, only your wife will have a black thread on her right leg and on the tables.”
The traveler thanked him for his good advice and hurried down. The next day, among two hundred women, he found his wife along a black thread. No matter how much the witches raged, they had to return the wife to the husband and see him off as expected: they were given money, grain, and a cow for the journey.
There was a Christmas tree growing along the road, there were needles near the Christmas tree, there was a starling on the Christmas tree, and that was the end of the fairy tale.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru