“Eh! eh! what’s that? Get along out of my house, you bless’d daughter. I don’t want bless’d people.”
She dragged Vasilissa out of the room, pushed her outside the gates, took one of the skulls with blazing eyes from the fence, stuck it on a stick, gave it to her and said:
“Lay hold of that. It’s a light you can take to your stepsisters. That’s what they sent you here for, I believe.”
Home went Vasilissa at a run, lit by the skull, which went out only at the approach of the dawn; and at last, on the evening of the second day, she reached home. When she came to the gate, she was going to throw away the skull.
“Surely,” thinks she, “they can’t be still in want of a light at home.” But suddenly a hollow voice issued from the skull, saying:
“Throw me not away. Carry me to your stepmother!”
She looked at her stepmother’s house, and not seeing a light in a single window, she determined to take the skull in there with her. For the first time in her life she was cordially received by her stepmother and stepsisters, who told her that from the moment she went away they hadn’t had a spark of fire in the house. They couldn’t strike a light themselves anyhow, and whenever they brought one in from a neighbor’s, it went out as soon as it came into the room.
“Perhaps your light will keep in!” said the stepmother. So they carried the skull into the sitting-room. But the eyes of the skull so glared at the stepmother and her daughters—shot forth such flames! They would fain have hidden themselves, but run where they would, everywhere did the eyes follow after them. By the morning they were utterly burnt to cinders. Only Vasilissa was none the worse.[193]
[Next morning Vasilissa “buried the skull,” locked up the house and took up her quarters in a neighboring town. After a time she began to work. Her doll made her a glorious loom, and by the end of the winter she had weaved a quantity of linen so fine that it might be passed like thread through the eye of a needle. In the spring, after it had been bleached, Vasilissa made a present of it to the old woman with whom she lodged. The crone presented it to the king, who ordered it to be made into shirts. But no seamstress could be found to make them up, until the linen was entrusted to Vasilissa. When a dozen shirts were ready, Vasilissa sent them to the king, and as soon as her carrier had started, “she washed herself, and combed her hair, and dressed herself, and sat down at the window.” Before long there arrived a messenger demanding her instant appearance at court. And “when she appeared before the royal eyes,” the king fell desperately in love with her.
“No; my beauty!” said he, “never will I part with thee; thou shalt be my wife.” So he married her; and by-and-by her father returned, and took up his abode with her. “And Vasilissa took the old woman into her service, and as for the doll—to the end of her life she always carried it in her pocket.”]