Once upon a time there lived an old man and an old woman. Their children died. Only the last son, Ivan, grew up healthy. When Ivan turned seventeen, he began to ask his parents to send him to some kind of training.
“Is there any point in studying here,” said the father, “when we can barely make ends meet anyway?”
But the son did not deviate from his own, and the parents had to respect his request.
The mother baked some cakes, the father went to see his son off. They walk through fields and meadows, reaching the edge of the forest. We decided to rest.
Ivan was just about to sit down on his favorite stump when the white-bearded old man Ukh appears from under the stump and takes him underground with him.
The father asks and begs to return his son, but old man Ukh does not want to listen to him.
“Come back in a year,” he says, “and don’t show up before.”
A year passes, the father takes food with him in his pouch, says goodbye to his wife and goes to a familiar place. He sits down on a familiar tree stump and sighs:
- Oh-oh!
In response to his sigh, old man Ukh - White Beard immediately crawled out from under the stump.
- Did you show up? - asks the old man and takes him underground through the crack.
In the underground world, it turns out, just like on earth, meadows are green, rivers flow, forests are noisy.
They come to White Beard’s house, the old man puts a candle in the front corner and says: “I’ll be right back,” and leaves. The son appears. He has changed so much in a year that it is difficult to recognize him.
Father and son hugged and kissed.
“I came for you,” says the father.
“It’s not so easy to get me out of here,” the son sighed heavily. - The old man will assign you many different tests. Listen to what I say and remember. The old man has twelve people like me. First he will make us pigeons. We will all be the same, pen to pen, and you will need to get to know me. Notice: in flight, I touch the floor with one wing. Then he will turn us into twelve greyhounds. We will all be the same blue-black color, and we will run around you. Be careful: as I run past you, I will lower my left ear. After that, he will make twelve black trotters out of us. Watch out: when I pass by you, I will wave my tail. Then he will turn us into twelve girls. We will all be indistinguishably similar to each other and dressed identically. I can be recognized by the ring on the finger of my right hand; passing by you, I will sparkle with my ring. In the end he will make us twelve guys, similar to each other, like twelve drops of water. Be careful: as I pass by you, I will move my left hand back and wave it...
As soon as the son finished these words and left, old man Uh showed up.
-Didn’t you miss me? - the old man asks cheerfully.
“I didn’t have time to get bored,” Ivanov’s father answered him in the same tone.
- So, do you want to pick up your son? - the old man continues. - Well, so be it, I’ll give it to you. But I will give it only if you can recognize him among twelve others like him. Watch and find out.
With the last words, White Beard opens the left door and twelve doves fly into the room. The pigeons are all the same gray, feather to feather. But one of them touched the floor with his wing in flight. Ivan's father noticed this and said:
- Here he is, my son.
- Oh, damned one, I found out! - the old man grumbled angrily.
The pigeons flew away and the door closed. At that same moment the right door opened and twelve greyhounds ran in. They jump around Ivanov’s father, bark, and everyone has their tails like a pipe and their ears stick up. Only one dog has a drooping left ear. Father says:
- Here he is, my son!
Old Man Ukh frowns his white eyebrows and takes a nice drink of water in his mouth. He claps his hands and the greyhounds run away. The middle door opens, and twelve trotters of the same black color fly in with a loud neigh. Try to tell them apart! But one trotter waves his tail, and Ivanov’s father says:
- Here he is, my son!
Old Man Uh becomes darker than a cloud. He waves his hand and twelve girls smoothly enter the room like swans. Everyone is slender, beautiful and everyone has the same dresses. One of the girls managed to catch a ray of sunlight on her ring and turned the ring so that the ray fell on Ivanov’s father’s face.
- Here he is, my son! - said the father.
“Well, now the last test,” says White Beard, and one can hear annoyance and despair in his voice.
Twelve guys enter the room. Tall, stately, clear-eyed, fair-haired. Father Ivanov looks at them with all his eyes, but cannot distinguish one from the other. And then one of the guys, passing by him, lightly waved his left hand.
- Here he is, my son! - the father exclaimed joyfully.
Old Man Ukh, recognizing himself defeated, remains silent. Silently he treats Ivan and his father to a farewell dinner and leads him out of the underworld.
A father and son are walking along the earth and cannot get enough of the fact that they are walking under a blue sky and a clear sun.
Suddenly a kite came out of nowhere and flew over their heads with a scream. Ivan immediately became sad. The father noticed this and asked:
“Did you understand what the kite said?”
Ivan doesn’t want to answer, he denies it, saying that a kite is generally a bad omen.
- And what is this sign? - the father insists. “What does it mean?”
“It means that you will have to drink your fill of the water with which I will wash myself.”
Now the father has become sad. “But is it worth paying attention to all sorts of signs?” - he thinks and soon forgets about the kite.
Father and son come home. During this time, since they were not at home, the entire economy fell into disrepair. They lived poorly before, and now even more so, even if you put on a beggar’s bag and go around the world.
“Come on, father, let’s do this,” Ivan suggests. “Tomorrow I will turn into a trotter.” You take me to the market and sell me. Ask for a thousand rubles. If they give it, give it back, but don’t sell the bridle.
The next day, Ivan becomes a black trotter. His father leads him by the bridle to the market. Everyone praises the trotter, but they don’t give him more than eight hundred. But then White Beard appears at the market and immediately agrees to a thousand rubles. But when he asks for a bridle, the father does not give the white-bearded old man a bridle.
With the money raised, the father buys all sorts of food and returns home. He looks at the purchased food - his soul rejoices, he remembers that his son is not nearby - sadness takes over. He came home and shared his sadness with the old woman. And the son asks from the stove:
-Are you back, father?
The father and mother rejoiced, hugged their son, and seated him at the table in the red corner.
And the son has already planned something new.
“Tomorrow I’ll turn into a heavy-duty batsman,” he tells his father. - Take me to the market and sell me for fifteen hundred. But don't give up the reins.
The next day the father goes to the market again. They immediately give him a thousand rubles for the horse, but he asks for one and a half thousand. At this time, the white-bearded old man Ukh appears at the market and, without haggling, lays out fifteen hundred. The father forgot to leave the bridle, the workers of the old man Ukha harnessed the heavy truck to a cart and went home.
Just in front of the white-bearded old man's house, the harness relaxed, and when the workers stopped the heavy truck to straighten it, Ivan became a pike and - jump! - into the river along the bank of which there was a road.
The workers ran to White Beard and told him what happened to the heavy truck. The old man scolds them at all costs, runs to the river, turns into a catfish and begins to chase Ivan. At this time, a beautiful girl approaches the river with buckets. Ivan became a golden ring and fell into a bucket. He fell and said to the girl:
“Now a white-bearded old man will appear here and ask you for a ring.” Don't give it to me. If he insists, you say: “Let it be neither for me nor for you!” and throw the ring on the ground. Then I will become millet and crumble on the road. You step on one grain and don’t move. And then, when I become a hawk, touch my wing with your hand.
Meanwhile, old man Uh appears. He, of course, notices the ring and says:
“This is my ring, I’ve been looking for it for a long time.” The girl doesn't give it back. Then he says:
- Let it be neither for me nor for you! - and throws the ring to the ground with force.
The ring is scattered with millet grains. Old Man Ukh immediately turns into a rooster and starts pecking at the millet. The girl managed to step on one grain and is standing on it.
The rooster pecks all the grains, except the one under the girl’s foot, jumps up on the fence and shouts:
- Ku-ka-re-ku! I won, I destroyed Ivan!
Then the girl shifts from foot to foot, Ivan turns from a millet grain into a hawk, flies at the rooster and all that remains is fluff and feathers.
This is how the white-bearded old man Uh met his end.
And the girl comes up to the hawk, strokes it, and the hawk turns into a fair-haired, clear-eyed good fellow. The girl looks at Ivan with surprise and admiration and can’t get enough of him - she liked him so much.
Ivan did not keep the girl waiting long. The next day he sent matchmakers and they got married. All the wealth of the white-bearded old man Ukha passed into the hands of Ivan, so they lived comfortably.
One evening, an old beggar asked to stay with them for the night. The Okies let him in, fed him and put him to bed. At night, after a hearty dinner, the old man became thirsty and asked for water. The owners told him:
“In the front room, on the bench, there is kvass, and there’s a ladle hanging there, drink up.”
The old man must have been hard of hearing and instead of kvass he scooped it up with a ladle from a basin that stood under the washstand on a block of wood.
When I found out about this in the morning, Ivan remembered the cry of the kite and immediately recognized the poor old man as his father. From then until his death, the father lived with his son and daughter-in-law in complete contentment and prosperity.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru