One day a northerner went to replenish his supplies to the Southern Cape. He took the shortest route past the Eagle Lake Wasteland, and there was fog and bad weather, and he got lost and didn’t know where he was. In front of him were glaciers and off-road terrain.
Finally, he found a cave in the rocks, which he entered, and thought that now everything would end well. He took off his luggage and gave his horses hay. Then he went to explore further and saw a light ahead of him and heard a terrible howl.
Filled with horror, he went to take a closer look. He saw a pot on the fireplace and an ugly child in a bad bed. He went back, untied his knapsack, took a piece of meat and brought it to the child. He began to gnaw the meat and fell silent.
The fisherman went to his horses. Then something blocked the entrance to the cave, and he got scared. A huge skessa entered there with a large bunch of trout on its back, walked past the horses, threw off its burden anywhere and rushed to the child. She returned reassured, thanked him for her child and invited him to go closer to the warmth and talk. He did just that.
Then the woman took the whole trout and put it in the pot. He told her that she was doing wrong, took one trout, gutted it, chopped it into pieces, and threw it into a pot. She said she didn't have anything cutting; he gave her his fish knife, and she was so happy about it as if it were made of gold.
When the water boiled, she treated him to trout and said that she had to fish every day because she had nothing else to live on.
So he was with her for three nights and then began to get ready for the journey. The woman told him that a harsh winter was coming, and that when he came to the Southern Cape, he should release his horses in one place, which she indicated, and not remember about them until the Day of the Cross, then he should come for them to the same place.
He did so and found them so fat that there would not have been any fatter horses even if they had been fed near the house.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru