Seyusi - this is how the Tupi Indians call the seven stars, and by the same name they call the terrible witch who is always tormented by hunger. Old Seyushi is always chasing someone to eat him. It can haunt a person all his life. Listen to how she pursued one young man.
They say that once a young man was fishing while sitting on a platform of poles. He didn’t even notice how the glutton Seiusi swam up the river branch, dragging a fishing net behind her. From a distance she noticed the shadow of a young man on the water and threw the net right over it. The net pulled, thinking that the young man was already there, but the young man only laughed, looking at the old woman from his high platform, hidden by the greenery.
Seiusi the glutton heard this laughter and raised her head.
- Oh, there you are! Get down to the ground, grandson.
The young man answered:
- Me? No, I won't cry. The old woman said:
- Look, I’ll find wasps!
And she sent the most ferocious ones. But the young man broke off a branch from the tree and killed all the wasps.
The old woman said:
“Get down, grandson, or I’ll send you some tokandir ants.” These are very scary ants - large, black, armed with a sting, like wasps; their bite is unbearably painful, and their bite causes a severe fever.
But the young man was not afraid and did not get off his flooring. Then the old woman sent tokandir ants to attack him, as she had promised. The ants attacked the young man in such an avalanche that he had no choice but to jump into the water to escape from them. This was all the gluttonous witch needed: she deftly threw a net over the young man, entangled him so that he could not even move, and dragged him into her home. Arriving home, she left the net with the spoils at the doorstep and went into the forest to collect brushwood to light a fire.
When the old witch left, her daughter came out of the house and said:
- How strange: when my mother returns from hunting, she always tells me what game she brought. She didn't say a word today. I'll take a look at what she has online.
With these words, the witch's daughter unraveled the net and saw the young man. The young man told her:
- Hide me.
The girl hid it, and then took the large wooden pestle with which the old woman had crushed the grain, coated it with wax and, wrapping it tightly in a net, placed it in the place where the captured young man had just lay.
Meanwhile, the old woman returned from the forest and lit a fire under a grill for roasting meat, mounted on four sticks with a fork at the end. Then she picked up the net with the catch and put it on the grill to fry. When the pestle began to heat up, the wax melted and began to flow down, and the burnt network burst. Then the witch saw that instead of the young man he was frying the pestle.
Glutton became furious and shouted at her daughter:
“If you don’t give me back my loot, I will kill you!” The girl was scared. She ran into the thickets where the captive was hiding and told him to cut palm leaves and weave them into baskets, then to turn them into different animals.
The young man listened to the advice of the witch's daughter and wove baskets from palm leaves. Before he had time to finish his work, the glutton Seyushi appeared and was about to pounce on him, but at that moment he shouted to the baskets:
– Turn into tapirs, deer, wild boars!
And the baskets turned into tapirs, deer and wild boars. And the witch devoured them all.
When the young man saw that the old woman had little food left, he ran to the river and made a trap, which caught a lot of fish.
When the old woman came to the river, she immediately saw the trap and, entering it, began to eat the fish.
While she was eating, the young man hurried to leave from there. The witch's daughter caught up with him on the path and said goodbye:
- When you hear the bird sing: Kinn-kinn, kinn-kinn, then know that my mother is close and can grab you.
The young man remembered these words and moved on. He wandered for a long time at random, when suddenly he heard a bird singing in the branches: Kinn-kinn, kinn-kinn. Then he remembered what the witch’s daughter had told him, and ran without looking back.
He ran and ran until he saw a whole crowd of monkeys on a tree eating honey. He ran up to them and shouted:
- Monkeys, hide me!
The monkeys put him in an empty pot. The old woman Seyusi came, did not find the young man and moved on. Then the monkeys pulled the young man out and released him in peace.
And he wandered on and wandered for a long time at random, when suddenly he heard in the branches: Kinn-kinn-kinn... Then he went to the hole of the surukuku snake and asked her to hide him. Surukuku let him into her hole, and when the witch approached, she did not find him and left with nothing.
In the evening, the young man heard the surukuku consulting with her husband on how to light a fire and eat the guest.
When they had already prepared the grill for roasting meat, somewhere on a branch a Makanan falcon, a famous snake hunter, screamed.
The young man said:
- Grandfather Makanan, let me talk to you.
Makanan heard these words, flew closer and asked:
- What happened, grandson?
The young man answered:
“Two surukuku snakes want to eat me.”
Makanan asked:
- How many holes do they have? The young man answered:
- Only one.
“Wait,” said the makanan, climbed into the hole and ate both surukuku.
Then the young man went further and came out of the forest into a clearing towards the lake. There he saw a giant jaburu stork, who, with a serious and gloomy look, was catching fish and putting them in a large reed basket. The young man approached the bird and asked:
- Take me across the river, jabur.
“Okay,” agreed the Jaburu, “only when I finish fishing.”
When Jaburu had caught enough fish, he ordered the young man to climb into the reed basket and rose into the air with him, spreading his huge white wings. They flew like this for a long time, and then Jaburu put the young man on a tree, saying that he was tired and couldn’t take him any further.
Looking around, the young man saw a house nearby. He climbed down from the tree and headed there. Approaching a small cassava field near the house, he saw an old woman with a kind face and next to her - a small forest rodent agouti. They quarreled: the woman scolded the agouti because the animal was eating her cassava.
When the young man approached and asked to rest, the woman took him into the house. There she began to ask him where he came from and why. The young man told this woman everything: how he went to the river to fish, how the witch Seyusi came, how she dragged him into her home. He was almost still a boy then.
The woman looked at him: now he was almost an old man and his whole head was gray.
The woman recognized him: it was her son. So he returned to his home.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru