Atondido Stories
baby to his wife and said:
“You have always wanted a little son and here you have one.
The river has given him to us.”
The fisherman’s wife was delighted and brought up the child
as her own. They named him Plavachek, which means a little
boy who has come floating on the water.
The river flowed on and the days went by and Plavachek
grew from a baby to a boy and then into a handsome youth, the
handsomest by far in the whole countryside.
One day the king happened to ride that way unattended. It
was hot and he was thirsty. He beckoned to the fisherman to get
him a drink of fresh water. Plavachek brought it to him. The king
looked at the handsome youth in astonishment.
“You have a fine lad,” he said to the fisherman. “Is he your
own son?”
“He is, yet he isn’t,” the fisherman answered. “Just twenty
years ago a little baby in a basket floated down the river. We
took him in and he has been ours ever since.”
A mist rose before the king’s eyes and he went deathly pale,
for he knew at once that Plavachek was the child that he had or-
dered drowned.
Soon he recovered himself and jumping from his horse he
said: “I need a messenger to send to my palace and I have no one
with me. Could this youth go for me?”
“Your majesty has but to command,” the fisherman said,
“and Plavachek will go.”
The king sat down and wrote a letter to the queen. This is
what he said:
“Have the young man who delivers this letter run through
with a sword at once. He is a dangerous enemy. Let him be dis-
patched before I return. Such is my will.”
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