Page:Russian Wonder Tales.djvu/223

Rh though through her sleep she heard these bitter words, still she could not awaken, and at last the wounded Falcon, hearing no reply, shot up angrily into the dark sky and flew away.

In the morning, when she awoke, she saw how the window had been barred with knives set crosswise, and with needles, and how great drops of crimson blood were falling from them, and she began to wring her hands and to weep salt tears. "Surely," she thought, "my cruel sisters have made my dear love perish!" When she had wept a long time she thought of the bright feather, and ran to the porch and waved it to the right, crying: "Come to me, my own Finist the Falcon!" But he did not appear, and she knew that the charm was broken.

Then she remembered the words she had heard through her sleep, and telling no one, she went to a smithy and bade the smith make her three pair of iron shoes, and three iron staves, and with these and three church-loaves of stone, she set out across three times nine countries to the thirtieth Tzardom.

She walked and walked, whether for a short time or a long time the telling is easy but the journey is not soon done. She wandered for a day and a night, for a week, for two months and for three. She wore through one pair of the iron shoes, and