Alenoushka And Her Brother
by
Once upon a time there were two orphan children, a little boy and a little girl. Their father and mother were dead, and they had not even an old grandfather to spend his time in telling them stories. They were alone. The little boy was called Vanoushka,[3] and the little girl’s name was Alenoushka.[3]
They set out together to walk through the whole of the great wide world. It was a long journey they set out on, and they did not think of any end to it, but only of moving on and on, and never stopping long enough in one place to be unhappy there.
[Footnote 3: That means that they were called Ivan and Elena. Vanoushka and Alenoushka are affectionate forms of these names.]
They were travelling one day over a broad plain, padding along on their little bare feet. There were no trees on the plain, no bushes; open flat country as far as you could see, and the great sun up in the sky burning the grass and making their throats dry, and the sandy ground so hot that they could scarcely bear to set their feet on it. All day from early morning they had been walking, and the heat grew greater and greater towards noon.
“Oh,” said little Vanoushka, “my throat is so dry. I want a drink. I must have a drink–just a little drink of cool water.”
“We must go on,” said Alenoushka, “till we come to a well. Then we will drink.”
They went on along the track, with their eyes burning and their throats as dry as sand on a stove.
But presently Vanoushka cried out joyfully. He saw a horse’s hoofmark in the ground. And it was full of water, like a little well.
“Sister, sister,” says he, “the horse has made a little well for me with his great hoof, and now we can have a drink; and oh, but I am thirsty!”
“Not yet, brother,” says Alenoushka. “If you drink from the hoofmark of a horse, you will turn into a little foal, and that would never do.”
“I am so very thirsty,” says Vanoushka; but he did as his sister told him, and they walked on together under the burning sun.
A little farther on Vanoushka saw the hoofmark of a cow, and there was water in it glittering in the sun.
“Sister, sister,” says Vanoushka, “the cow has made a little well for me, and now I can have a drink.”
“Not yet, brother,” says Alenoushka. “If you drink from the hoofmark of a cow, you will turn into a little calf, and that would never do. We must go on till we come to a well. There we will drink and rest ourselves. There will be trees by the well, and shadows, and we will lie down there by the quiet water and cool our hands and feet, and perhaps our eyes will stop burning.”
So they went on farther along the track that scorched the bare soles of their feet, and under the sun that burned their heads and their little bare necks. The sun was high in the sky above them, and it seemed to Vanoushka that they would never come to the well.
But when they had walked on and on, and he was nearly crying with thirst, only that the sun had dried up all his tears and burnt them before they had time to come into his eyes, he saw another footprint. It was quite a tiny footprint, divided in the middle–the footprint of a sheep; and in it was a little drop of clear water, sparkling in the sun. He said nothing to his sister, nothing at all. But he went down on his hands and knees and drank that water, that little drop of clear water, to cool his burning throat. And he had no sooner drunk it than he had turned into a little lamb…