Atondido Stories
“Why?” Betushka faltered.
“When you went away this morning I started to reel that
yarn. I reeled and reeled and the spool remained full. One skein,
two skeins, three skeins, and still the spool was full. ‘What evil
spirit has spun that?’ I cried out impatiently, and instantly the
yarn disappeared from the spindle as if blown away. Tell me,
what does it mean?”
So Betushka confessed and told her mother all she knew
about the beautiful maiden.
“Oh,” cried her mother in amazement, “that was a wood
maiden! At noon and midnight the wood maidens dance. It is
well you are not a little boy or she might have danced you to
death! But they are often kind to little girls and sometimes make
them rich presents. Why didn’t you tell me? If I hadn’t grum-
bled, I could have had yarn enough to fill the house!”
Betushka thought of the little basket and wondered if there
might be something under the leaves. She took out the spindle
and unspun flax and looked in once more.
“Mother!” she cried. “Come here and see!”
Her mother looked and clapped her hands. The birch leaves
were all turned to gold!
Betushka reproached herself bitterly: “She told me not to
look inside until I got home, but I didn’t obey.”
“It’s lucky you didn’t empty the whole basket,” her mother
said.
The next morning she herself went to look for the handful of
leaves that Betushka had thrown away. She found them still ly-
ing in the road but they were only birch leaves.
But the riches which Betushka brought home were enough.
Her mother bought a farm with fields and cattle. Betushka had
pretty clothes and no longer had to pasture goats.
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