Sokholylan had a good wife.
The yaranga was always clean, and the wife always had a supply of firewood and ice.
Sokholylan decided to marry his second wife. The wife found out about this, went to the tundra and said to everyone living there:
- Listen to what Sokholylan did to me! Sokholilan is getting married. Am I not good? Am I not the hostess? Who knows how to wrinkle skins like I do? Who can embroider so beautifully? I know he has many assistants, and they are all listening to me now. I want to punish Sokholilan. He will never see or hear from me again.
And she began to conjure earth, grass, worms, insects, evil spirits and birds. She shouted to the sky:
- Take my legs, arms and torso, constellation Rultepken! Take my entrails, constellation Yanut-layut! - and then she saw a small gray bird. - Oh, what have I done! I forgot about this bird!
“Yeah,” said the bird, “I heard everything and will tell Sokholylan!”
Then Sokholylan’s wife fell apart and flew to the constellations.
Sokholylan searches for his wife from early dawn until late at night. He goes further and further into the tundra. Sokholylan searched and searched, fell to the ground, cried and asked the ground:
- Earth, don’t you see where it is? But the earth was silent.
He began to ask all his assistants, they were silent. Sokholylan lies and cries.
A small gray bird flew in.
- Ay-ay, Sokholilan, are you crying? - And she told what she saw and heard.
Sokholylan made a beautiful canoe from a walrus tusk with a large and sharp hook at the back.
Sokholylan sat down in the canoe, and flew to the sky to look for his wife, and began to collect canoes from the stars with her hook. Sokholylan collected and laid down his wife. And he didn’t marry someone else. They lived together again.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru