Then the old woman sent them all to their homes in hidden places, forests, and thickets; went to her magic book, opened it, and that instant two giants appeared. “What is thy pleasure; what dost thou wish?”
“This, my faithful servants,—bear my son-in-law and me to the ocean sea wide, and stop just in the middle above the very abyss.”
Immediately they seized the sharpshooter and the old woman and bore them on like a stormy whirlwind till they stopped just in the middle above the abyss. They stood up themselves like pillars, holding the old woman and the sharpshooter in their arms. The old woman cried out with a loud voice, and all the fishes and living things in the sea swam to her in such multitudes that the blue sea could not be seen for them: “Hail, fish and worms of the sea! Ye swim in all places, ye pass by all islands; have ye not heard how to go to the verge of destruction, where lives Shmat-Razum?”
All worms and fishes answered in one voice, “No; we’ve not heard!”
All at once an old limping frog, who had been thirty years out of service, pushed her way to the front and said, “Kwa-kwa! I know where to find such a wonder!”
“Well, then, my dear, thou art the person I need,” said the old woman. She took the frog, and commanded the giants to bear them home. They were at the palace in a flash. The old woman asked the frog how her son was to go.
“Oh!” said the frog, “that place is at the rim of the world,—far, far away. I would conduct him myself, but I am very old; I can barely move my legs,—I couldn’t jump there in fifty years.”
The old woman took a bowl with some fresh milk, put the frog in it, gave the bowl to Fedot, and said: “Carry this in thy hand; she will show thee the way.”
The sharpshooter took farewell of the old woman and her daughters, and went on his journey, the frog showing him the way. Whether it was near or distant, long or short, he came at last to a flaming river, beyond which was a lofty mountain with a door in the side.
“Kwa-kwa!” said the frog. “Put me down out of the bowl; we must cross the river.”