But sometimes they look out the window. If they spot a Chechen, they're supposed to cry "Chechens, Chechens!" and then people from all the settlements run out and start beating pots with sticks, to scare the Chechens. And the Chechens skedaddle. Once, two people approached the town from the south, an old man and an old woman. We banged on our pots, stomped and hollered up a storm, but the Chechens didn't care, they just kept on coming and looking around. We-well, the boldest of us-went out to meet them with tongs, spindles, whatever there was. To see who they were and why they came.

"We're from the south, Golubchiks," they said. "We've been walking for two weeks, we've walked our feet off. We came to trade rawhide strips. Maybe you have some goods?"

What goods could we have? We eat mice. "Mice Are Our Mainstay," that's what Fyodor Kuzmich, Glorybe, teaches. But our people are softhearted, they gathered what there was in the izbas and traded for the rawhide and let them go their way. Later there was a lot of talk about them. Everyone jabbered about what they were like, the stories they told, how come they showed up.

Well, they looked just like us: the old man was gray-headed and wore reed shoes, the old woman wore a scarf, her eyes were blue, and she had horns. Their stories were long and sad. Ben-edikt was little and didn't have any sense at all then, but he was all ears.

They said that in the south there's an azure sea, and in that sea there's an island, and on that island there's a tower, and in that tower there's a golden stove bed. On that bed there's a girl with long hair-one hair is gold, the next is silver, one is gold, and the next is silver. She lies there braiding her tresses, just braiding her long tresses, and as soon as she finishes the world will come to an end.

Our people listened and listened and said: "What's gold and silver?"

And the Chechens said: "Gold is like fire, and silver is like moonlight, or when firelings light up."