Page:Tales and Legends from the Land of the Tzar.djvu/230

214 "Yes, dear brother," ansnrered the birds, "and you would have slept still longer had it not been for us. But now let us return to our different homes, and you must come back with us, King Vladimir, and make a short stay, or a long one, as you like, with each of us!"

"Many thanks, dear friends, but I must go in search of my wife, Marie-Marevna."

Then King Vladimir arrived at the skeleton's palace, and after finding his beloved wife—who was greatly astonished at seeing him alive again—he said to her,—

"I see it is perfectly useless to try and get out of the skeleton's hands, unless we can find a horse as good or better than his. Now I have no idea where to find one; so I want you to ask the skeleton how he came by his, and all about it; then you can tell me.

When the skeleton came home, and King Vladimir had left, to return again on the following day, Marie-Marevna found an opportunity of asking the necessary questions about the horse.

"I found him in the twenty-seventh kingdom, on the other side of the fiery river, where a dreadful old fairy lives, who has any amount of these wonderful horses. I served her for three days as a herdsman, and because I did my work properly, and did not lose any of the horses, she gave me one as a reward."

"But how did you cross the fiery river?"

"I have a magic handkerchief in my possession. When I waved it three times to the right, a very high bridge appeared, so high that the flames could not reach it."