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 cord as once I bound your father. Let me see if you are as strong as he was and able to break the cord.”

Vitazko smiled and lay down and allowed his mother to bind him with the woolen cord. Then he stretched his muscles and burst the cord asunder.

“Ah, you are strong!” his mother said. “But come, let me try again with a thin silken cord.”

Suspecting nothing, Vitazko allowed his mother to bind him hand and foot with a thin silken cord. Then when he stretched his muscles, the cord cut into his flesh. So he lay there, helpless as an infant.

“Sharkan! Sharkan!” the mother called.

The dragon rushed in with a sword, cut off Vitazko’s head, and hacked his body into small pieces. He picked out Vitazko’s heart and hung it by a string from a beam in the ceiling.

Then the woman gathered together the pieces of her son’s body, tied them in a bundle, and fastened the bundle on Tatosh who was still waiting below in the courtyard.

“You carried him when he was alive,” she said. “Take him now that he’s dead—I don’t care where.”

Tatosh rose on the wind and flew home to St. Nedyelka.

The old wise woman who knew already what had