Now, the fair Tsarévna had been noticing the horseherd for a long time, for a very long time, for how could so fair a maiden overlook the beautiful boy? She wanted to know why the horses he kept were always so much shapelier and statelier than those which the other herds looked after. “I will one day go into his room,” she said, “and see where the poor devil lives.” As every one knows, a woman’s wish is soon her deed. So one day she went into his room, when Iván Tsarévich was giving his horses drink. And there she saw the mirror, and looking into that she knew everything. She took the magical cloth, the mirror, and the pipe.
Just about then there was a great disaster threatening the Tsar. The seven-headed monster, Ídolishche, was invading his land and demanding his daughter as his wife. “If you will not give her to me willy, I will take her nilly!” he said. And he got ready all his immense army, and the Tsar fared ill. And he issued a decree throughout his land, summoned the boyárs and knights together, and promised any who would slay the seven-headed monster half of his wealth and half his realm, and also his daughter as his wife.
Then all the princes and knights and the boyárs assembled together to fight the monster, and amongst them Dyád’ka. The horseherd sat on a pony and rode behind.
Then the Woodsprite came and met him, and said: “Where are you going, Iván Tsarévich?”
“To the war.”
“On this sorry nag you will not do much, and still less if you go in your present guise. Just come and visit me.”
He took him into his hut and gave him a glass of vódka. Then the King’s son drank it. “Do you feel strong?” asked the Woodsprite.
“If there were a log there fifty puds, I could throw it up and allow it to fall on my head without feeling the blow.”
So he was given a second glass of vódka.
“How strong do you feel now?”