In the morning Iván Tsarévich awoke, and when he looked out it was all done: there were no ravines and no crevasses, and the field was as flat as the palm of his hand, and the rye on it was red and so lofty that a jackdaw might hide in it. And he went to report his prowess to the Sea Tsar.
“Thank you,” said the Sea Tsar. “You have been able to fulfil me this service. Here is your second work. I have thirty hayricks, and each hayrick contains as much as thirty piles of white-eared barley. Thresh me all the barley clean, quite clean to the last grain, and do not destroy the hayricks nor beat down the sheaves. If you do not do this, your shoulders and your head will part company.”
“I will obey your Majesty,” said Iván Tsarévich, and again he went to the courtyard and was lost in tears.
“Why are you weeping, Iván Tsarévich, so bitterly?” Vasilísa the Wise asked him.
“Why should I not weep? The Sea Tsar has bidden me thresh clean thirty hayricks of barley without destroying a hayrick or a single sheaf, and all in a single night.”
“That is an easy task. Harder tasks are to come. Sleep in peace, for the morning is wiser than the evening.”
So Iván Tsarévich went and lay down.
Vasilísa went to her window and cried out in a threatening voice, “Hail, ye creeping ants, as many as there be of you in the white world, all creep here and pick out all the corn of my father’s hayricks quite cleanly.”
In the morning the Sea Tsar asked Iván Tsarévich if he had done this service.
“I have, your Majesty.”