“Yes, I will give thee my blessing,” agreed the Tsar.
So Hanka knelt down in the snow, and the Tsar gave him a blessing for the journey.
Hanka travelled for many days through deep and drifted snow. Over his head the black crows flew from tree to tree, and all night when he crouched by his brushwood fire he heard the wolves howling and the foxes barking in the great forest. But no beast or bird or prowling robber ever tried to hurt him; that was because he traveled with the Tsar’s blessing on his head.
At last he came to a great field of ice and snow that he supposed was the White Sea. He took his axe and began to chop the frozen floor, because he was a fool and did not know that there was really solid land under his feet. Suddenly his axe struck on something that cracked like wood.
“What’s this?” cried Hanka, jumping back and dropping his axe. “It can’t be ice, for it isn’t clear; it isn’t wood, for it’s too white; it isn’t stone, for it’s too brittle; I know!” and he jumped up and down with pleasure because he knew. “It’s ivory!”
It really was ivory. Hanka was standing on the buried city, and his axe had broken the ivory roof of the Tsar’s palace!
He went on chopping, and digging the snow and splinters away with his hands. At last there was such a big hole that he could jump into it. There was a deep, dark chamber underneath, but Hanka was not afraid, so he let himself down through the hole.
Here he stood, in the empty, snowed-up palace of the Tsar! Of course he had never been in it before, and though it was dark and damp, and had not been cleaned for a year, he thought it was almost too splendid to be real. He took a match from his pocket, struck it on the wall and looked round by its feeble flare.
“Golden chairs,” he whispered, so much impressed that he could not speak aloud, “and velvet rugs and such bright, brocaded curtains! I have heard people talk about these things, but I have never believed they were real. Here is a door, and a stairway; that must lead downstairs. Oh, I will go all through the palace and look and look!” He went softly down the stairs, striking matches to light his way, and putting the burnt ends into his pocket so as not to litter the floors.
The whole palace was just as the Tsar and his people had left it in their flight. From some of the rooms they had carried off the bed-clothes and things, but in others the beds were unmade and odd stockings and handkerchiefs and powder-puffs lay around, that no one had thought to take along. Hanka picked them all up and put them neatly on a chair. Here he found a candle, too, so he could light his way without striking matches all the time.