“Build mine first,” said the Tsar, sitting in his sleigh and jiggling his feet to keep warm.
So they all labored together and made him a wooden palace, with stables for his horses and quarters for the coachmen and a big wooden terrace for his Majesty to walk on after dinner. Then they made their own houses close around, and a wall of brushwood, thorns and vines about the whole settlement, to keep the wolves and bears away.
Thus they lived for months and months in great misery. Soon all their food was eaten up, and the men had to go hunting, but they could not kill enough game to feed such a large population. Then the Tsar became quite terrified, for he knew that he must starve very soon if they found no help. Several times he sent messengers to the distant shore of the White Sea, to find out whether the snow had not melted and his city reappeared; but everyone who came back said no, the city was not to be found; you could not even tell where it had been.
At last ... he saw a tiny square of window light behind some thick holly bushes
“Oh, will no one tell me how I may recover my city?” cried the Tsar in despair.
“Perhaps the Wise Woman in the forest could tell you,” replied the Lord Chancellor. “She is King Winter’s mother—in fact they say she is the mother of all the kings in the world. And she is said to know everything. But it is hard to find her. You must come to her hut all alone, some cold night under the Northern Lights, and knock three times upon her door, calling, ‘Mother Mir! Mother Mir!’ Then perhaps she will answer you—and perhaps she won’t.”
So the Tsar waited for a cold, bright night, when the Northern Lights played across the starlit sky, and on that night he went out all alone into the deep forest. He wrapped himself in his richest purple cape, set his crown upon his head and put white ermine boots on his feet. As he walked unattended over the frosted snow, under the great pine branches, he looked so royal that the wolves in the forest stood at a respectful distance and did not dare to eat him, though he was all alone. He walked for an hour or more and wondered whether he had gone in the wrong direction to find the Wise Woman’s hut. At last, just when he was ready to give up the search, he saw a tiny square of window-light behind some thick holly-bushes, and following that, he came upon the hut.
It was low and covered with heavy moss, patched with snow and edged with black pine cones. The little window pane was a sheet of ice. (In summer it melted away, but then the Wise Woman would not need a window pane, for the air coming in would not be cold.) The door was made of rough bark and had a big, twisted root tied to it for a knocker. The Tsar picked up the root and let it fall three times: Thump! Thump! Thump!
“Mother Mir!” he called, and his voice sounded very big in the still, black forest, “Mother Mir! Mother Mir!”