There lived an old man. He had seven sons and one daughter. One day the eldest son went into the forest to look for a tree and make a boat out of it. I found the right cedar in the forest and cut it down. A tree fell. The guy began to chop off the top of the cedar. Difficult - the tree is thick and knotty. Finally he managed it and cut off the top. As soon as he finished, he sat down to rest, and he saw the devil coming out of the thicket towards him. He approached the guy and said:
- Hey, grandson, what are you doing here?
- Well, grandpa, I cut down a tree for a boat. The forest old man asks:
- Is your plague far away?
- Yes, far, very far.
- Well, grandson, let's go to your tent.
- No, grandfather, I need to make a boat.
“And you take the cedar home, and you’ll do it there.”
-Grandfather, how can I carry away such a big cedar? I can't.
- Eh, grandson, when I was young like you, when I cut down a thick cedar with many branches, I also separated the top, and then easily, without difficulty, took it home. What about you?
- Grandfather, try - maybe now, like in your youth, you can lift a cedar?
The forest old man turned, looked at the tree, picked it up and said:
- Okay, grandson, go forward, show me where your chum is. The guy picked up his ax and ran home to the tent. The old man of the forest does not lag behind him. We approached the plague. The old man threw the tree to the ground and entered the tent together with the guy. They sat down in the chum. Father says to son:
- This man needs to be fed; What are we going to feed him?
Here the youngest son sat down by the fire. He took the bow in his hands, put the tamar (arrow) on the string, pulled the bow and shot at the root of the fire in the hearth. Tamar went to ashes and went into the ground. Everyone sits quietly in the chum. Suddenly they see a trembling tamara shaft appear at the bottom of the fire. The eldest son jumped up, pulled the shaft up and pulled out a three-year-old baby mammoth.
- Here's a treat for the guest!
The old man's daughter jumped up, grabbed the cauldron, put the whole baby mammoth in it, filled it with water, and hung it on the fire. Everyone sat for a while. We sat and waited. So my daughter took off the cauldron, filled a wooden trough with the meat of the baby mammoth and set it to the old man of the forest. The forest old man ate a little and left it. Then I gave it to my older brother, who ate it all and drank the soup too. We ate. They are sitting. The forest old man is also sitting. Then the father, the Old Man of the Sea Cape, says to his sons:
- Why is this guest sitting? He ate, sat - what else does he need?
His eldest son got up, took his hat from the sleeping place, sewn from the skin of an animal’s head, put it on and left the tent.
Quite some time has passed. The old man of the sea cape says to the forest old man:
- Why are you sitting? Your friend has gone somewhere, maybe he’s waiting for you.
The forest old man doesn’t seem to hear, he sits. Finally he got up, left the chum, and went to the shore. He sees a shore in the sea with a cape, stretched out. At the top of the cape there are seven steel pillars. On the seventh steel pillar sits the son of the Old Man of the Sea Cape. The old man of the forest came there. He sees a lot of bones piled up near the pillars. The pile reaches to the sky - all the dead forest people-vines. The Old Man of the Forest grabbed hold of the son of the Old Man of the Sea Cape and began to fight. No one can overcome. Then the old man of the forest said:
- Let's compare our wisdom. Let's fly across the sea, whichever one of us makes it wins.
They held hands and flew. We had not yet reached half of the sea, and the old man began to get tired. The son of the Old Man of the Sea Cape drags him by the hand. A little later the Old Man of the Forest became completely exhausted and fell into the sea. Drowned. The guy held him so tightly that he pulled out his hand with the spatula and flew across the sea. Then he turned and flew home. Came to the tent and went to bed.
This is how we lived and lived. One day the eldest son went into the forest again to look for a good tree. He took the ax, tucked it into his belt, took the adze, and put it on his shoulder. Walking through the forest. All the bent and crooked trees come across. Here I saw a larch - a crooked larch. He hit her with an adze and the adze got stuck. He looked higher - and this is a forest vine, with his hand outstretched, standing like a larch with a knot. The adze caught this vine. The guy strained himself, tore out the adze, threw it to the ground, threw the ax too, grabbed the vine and began to struggle. We fought for a long time. The forest vine fell to his knees, blood flowed through his mouth like foam. The son of the Old Man of the Sea Cape hit the vine, and it split in two. As he fell, Loz growled:
- Well, okay, now you’ve won, but just wait, you’ll remember me.
The guy went home. At home I didn’t say anything to anyone and went to bed. The next morning he woke up and saw that only his younger brother and his sister were sitting alive, and the other five brothers and father and mother had all died. Everyone sits and grieves.
So we were left alone. One day brothers say to sister:
“You live in our tent, and we’ll go look for vines.”
It was they who sent us such trouble.
Went; the eldest of them went to the side of the night sky, the youngest went to the sunny side of the sky. A fairy tale with the youngest will work.
He walked and walked and walked for a long time. He was hungry, he was about to die of hunger. One day I saw tracks: a deer was apparently walking. The younger one walked along the deer path and saw a sleeping deer lying there. And then what can he do? He doesn't have a bow, he doesn't have anything. There is only a staff. The guy threw his staff at the deer and it hit him. The deer stretched out here. I went up to him, cut off a piece of meat, ate a little, and went to bed. He wakes up and sees a cloud growing in the sky ahead of him, black as soot. It’s as if she has wings on her sides, fire sparkles in her. She came closer. The guy sees that the sled has arrived. Such animals are harnessed to them - fire bursts out on both sides of the mouth. And a man sits on a sled, his hat is high, it reaches the cloud, its edge furrows. A man approached the guy and asked:
- What land are you from, man, and what do you want here? - I don’t want anything. The vines of my father, mother and brothers were destroyed. Only two of us, brothers, and my sister remained alive. My brother went to the night side of the sky to fight with the vines, I went to the sunny side to find out why my parents and brothers died.
The man ordered the guy:
- Come on, sit on my sled. And the guy responded:
- How can I climb such a high sled? The man took the guy by the shoulders, lifted him up and put him on the sled. He closed the door and moved forward. The runners of his sled scrape the ground like thunder. Here we stopped. The man, you can hear, came up, pierced the wall of the sled with his finger in front of the guy’s eyes and said:
- Look at our games.
The guy looks through the hole and sees: seven heroes on one side and seven on the other playing with huge stones and throwing them to each other. The man turned, picked up a stone even larger than those the heroes play with, and threw it. It was as if thunder thundered, and where the stone fell, a waterless, treeless, clean place became. He closed the hole where the guy was looking and, you can hear, drove on. I drove and drove and stopped again. He opened the hole and said:
- Look, we will soon be approaching your land. True, the guy sees that they began to approach the place where his tent was standing. And then the guy sees: a big cloud is growing, and there his brother’s vines completely overpower him, he is already crawling on his knees. The guy shouted to the man:
-Where have you gone? Don’t you see, the vines are about to kill my brother!
The man on the sled turned around, grabbed the bow and tamar, took aim and fired - the treeless, waterless desert became land. A little later this land became a sea. Some time passed, the water gradually disappeared, and the earth dried up. The guy looks - what is this? His parents and brothers seemed to come to life. We drove up to them; the joy lasted for a long time.
The old man of the sea cape gave his daughter to that man as his wife. The man went home. The son of the Old Man of the Sea Cape said goodbye to him:
- If you get into any trouble, remember me, call me.
- Okay, I'll remember. Perhaps heaven or earth will overtake you with misfortune, too, remember me. And so they began to live.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru