One day the kite went to the market. He sold the kola nuts and bought himself the moon. The son of the Moon, Star, saw this purchase and said to his brother:
- Look, the kite has something similar to our father. We need to tell him about this.
He told his father what little thing he had seen on the kite, and he gave the Star a lot of cowrie shells so that he could buy it. The son of the Moon went to the market, but did not take the shells with him. He bargained for an image of the moon from the kite, and ordered him to come for the payment himself. He said that he would come in two days.
Two days later the kite went to collect the payment. But the path was too far, and in a day he did not have time to reach the place where Father Luna lived. This happened several times. And every evening the kite returned to his place with nothing. On the way, he met chickens every time. One day they asked him why he was always flying back and forth. Kite told them that he couldn’t get his cowries because he couldn’t get from himself to the moon in a day.
“And you can spend the night with us,” said the chickens. - Tomorrow at dawn we will wake you up, and you will have time to get to the Moon.
And so it happened. Early in the morning, the chickens woke up the kite, and he came to the Moon.
- Who taught you how to get to me? - Father Luna asked him.
- Nobody, I did it myself.
“I don’t believe it,” said Father Luna. “If you don’t tell me who taught you, you won’t get your cowries.”
Kite told him about the advice of chickens.
“If that’s the case,” said Father Luna, “you can take the chickens as payment.”
Korshun went to the chickens and said that they were given to him as payment.
“Well,” said the chickens, “just don’t take us now.” Come pick us up in two days.
Two days later the kite came for the chickens, but there was no trace of them. They fled to a neighboring village and asked to live there, because, they said, there was no place for them to live in the forest.
Kite came to the village and asked the leader:
— Has anyone else appeared at your place?
“He appeared,” answered the leader. - Chickens live with us now.
“These are my chickens,” said the kite, “Father Moon gave them to me as payment.”
The leader called the elder rooster to him and asked if they were going to settle accounts with the kite. The rooster began to ask that they be exempted from paying. But the leader decided: if they cannot pay off in any other way, let them be slaves of the kite. Since then, the kite has grabbed chickens whenever it wants.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru