In ancient times, a farmer had a son. He sold his field, bought three fathoms of linen and went to foreign lands to trade.
On the way, he met a crowd of children who tied a mouse to a string and threw it into the water, and then pulled it out. He began to beg the children to take pity on the mouse and let it go. And the children are insolent in response:
- What do you care? We still won't let you go! Then he gave them one fathom of linen, and they released the mouse.
As soon as he walked away, he met another crowd of children, these caught a young monkey and beat it mercilessly, and they themselves said:
- Jump! Jump well!
But the monkey was no longer able to move and only grimaced.
He stroked the monkey and wanted to let it go, but the children did not agree. He gave them the second fathom of canvas, and they released the monkey.
Then he comes across a crowd of children with a small bear cub on his way. They chase him and beat him, ride him. Here he had to part with the last fathom of canvas in order to persuade the children to let the bear cub go into the forest.
He has nothing to trade and nothing to eat, so he thinks: “What should I do now?”
He thought and thought, but he kept walking along the road and suddenly he saw on a reed meadow a piece of silk embroidered with gold - apparently very expensive. “Here, heaven sent you instead of a canvas for your kind heart,” he says to himself. But soon everything went differently.
People came up to him, saw the silk and asked:
—Where does such expensive silk come from? This fabric and other things were stolen from the khan's treasury. Well, we finally found the thief! Where did you put everything else?
They brought him to the khan, and the khan said to him:
“I’ll have you put in a large box, lock it with a wooden lock, put two loaves of bread in it and throw you into the water.”
And so they did. But the box floated to the shore and stopped. The air in the box is stale, the poor young man is suffocating. Suddenly someone began to cross themselves and shout to him:
- Now lean a little against the lid.
He rested against the lid, it opened slightly, he breathed in fresh air, and through the crack he saw a mouse, which he freed.
The mouse says to him:
“Wait, I’ll go call my comrades, otherwise I can’t do it.”
The mouse soon returned with the monkey and the bear cub. The monkey opened the crack so that the bear could stick his paw through and break the chest. The young man walked out onto a green lawn on an island in the middle of the river. The animals brought him fruits and various foods.
The next morning he saw something sparkling on the shore, and sent a monkey to look.
The monkey brought him a shiny pebble. This pebble was magical.
The young man wanted to have a palace, and immediately a palace grew up in the middle of a large square, with all the services, outbuildings, in rich decoration, and trees blossomed around it, and water clear as crystal gurgled from marble fountains. He settled in this palace and kept the animals.
A little later, merchants came to this country. They were dumbfounded with surprise and asked:
-Where did this palace come from? There used to be an empty place here!
They asked the young man about this, and he showed them the magic stone and told them everything that happened to it.
Here one of them says:
- Take from us everything we have and give us the magic stone.
The young man did not regret it and gave them a stone, but did not take anything from them in return.
“I’m already happy,” he said, “what I have is enough for me.”
The merchants were not as grateful as the animals, because they were merchants and generosity, like many other things, was considered simply stupidity.
The next day, in the morning, the young man wakes up and sees that he is again on the lawn and that all his wealth has disappeared.
He sits, saddened. His animals come up to him and ask:
-What happened to you? He told them everything.
They say:
- We feel sorry for you. Tell us where the merchant went with your stone. We'll go find him.
They come to the merchant. Here the monkey and the bear say to the mouse:
- Come on, mouse, poke around and see if you can find a stone somewhere.
The mouse began to scour all the cracks and ended up in a richly decorated room where the merchant who had received the magic stone was sleeping. And the stone was hanging, suspended from the end of the arrow, and the arrow was stuck into a pile of rice, and two cats were tied near the pile of rice. The mouse did not dare to approach and told his friends about everything.
But the bear was lazy and simple-minded, he heard this and said:
- Well, then there’s nothing to be done, let’s go back.
Then the monkey interrupted him and said:
- Wait, we'll come up with something else. Mouse! Go to the merchant and gnaw off some of his hair, and the next night see who will be tied to the headboard near his pillow.
In the morning the merchant saw that his hair had been gnawed off by a mouse, and in the evening he tied the cats near his pillow.
And the mouse again could not reach the stone.
“Well,” says the bear, “now there’s nothing we can do, let’s go back.”
The monkey says:
“Wait, we’ll come up with something again, don’t talk us out of it.” Mouse! Go and chew the rice so that the arrow falls and then bring back the pebble in your teeth.
The mouse dragged the pebble to the hole, but the pebble was too big to fit into it. The mouse came again with his grief to his friends.
“Well,” says the bear, “that’s it now, let’s turn home; the monkey and I can’t even get through the mouse hole.”
But the monkey dug a hole, and the mouse crawled into it along with the pebble.
They went back, reached the river, got tired, the mouse sat on the bear’s ear, and the monkey climbed onto his back, holding a pebble in his mouth. They began to cross the river, and the bear began to boast that he, too, was not sitting idle:
“It’s good that I can carry you all on myself: a monkey, a mouse and a magic stone.” This means that I am stronger than all of you.
And the animals are silent in response. The bear got seriously angry and said:
“If you don’t answer me, I’ll throw you into the water.”
“Don’t drown, do me a favor,” said the monkey, and a pebble from her mouth fell into the water.
They crossed the river, monkey, and let's grumble:
- You bear, you cudgel! The mouse woke up and asked:
- What's wrong with you?
The monkey told everything as it happened and said:
“There is nothing more difficult than getting a stone out of water.” Now we have no choice but to separate.
And the mouse says:
- Well, I’ll try to pull out the pebble. Move away.
The mouse began to run back and forth along the shore, as if it was worried about something. Suddenly water inhabitants come out of the water and say:
- Mouse, what’s wrong with you? The mouse answers them:
- Haven’t you heard that a large army is gathering and wants to drive out all the water inhabitants from the water...
“We are in trouble,” the water inhabitants were frightened, “advise what we should do now.”
“Now,” answered the mouse, “you have no choice but to throw all the stones out of the water and make a dam out of them on the shore.”
Before she could say anything, stones fell from the bottom of the river. And finally the big frog drags the magic pebble and says:
- This thing is not easy.
“Well done, mouse,” said the monkey when he saw the stone.
They came to the young man, but he couldn’t wait for them. They gave him the pebble, and he wanted to have the same palace as before.
Since then, the young man never parted with the magic stone and left his three faithful friends to live with him. The bear did nothing but eat and sleep; the monkey ate and danced, and the mouse also ate and scurried around all the holes and crevices, and the young man never kept a single cat in the palace.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru