and tried to escape but she could not because it is the fate
of a Yezinka not to be able to move if ever a human being strikes her
over the hands with a switch of bramble.
So Yanechek took her two hands and bound them together with the long
thorny switch while she wept and struggled.
"Help, sisters! Help!" she cried.
At that the two other Yezinkas came running and when they saw what had
happened they, too, began to weep and to beg Yanechek to unbind their
sister's hands and let her go.
But Yanechek only laughed and said: "No. You unbind them."
"But, Yanechek, how can we? Our hands are soft and the thorns will
prick us."
However, when they saw that Yanechek was not to be moved, they went to
their sister and tried to help her. Whereupon Yanechek whipped out the
other two blackberry switches and struck them also on their soft
pretty hands, first one and then the other. After that they, too,
could not move and it was easy enough to bind them and make them
prisoners.
"Now I've got the three of you, you wicked Yezinkas!" Yanechek said.
"It was you who gouged out my poor old master's eyes, you know it
was! And you shall not escape until you do as I ask."
He left them there and ran home to his master to whom he said: "Come,
grandfather, for I have found a means of restoring your eyes!"
He took the old man by the hand and led him through the woods, along
the bank of the river, and up the grassy hillside where the three
Yezinkas were still struggling and weeping.
Then he said to the first of them: "Tell me now where my master's eyes
are. If you don't tell me, I'll throw you into the river."
The first Yezinka pretended she didn't know. So Yanechek lifted her up
and started down the hill toward the river.
That frightened the maiden and she cried out: "Don't throw me into the
river, Yanechek, and I'll find you your master's eyes, I promise you I
will!"
So Yanechek put her down and she led him to a cave in the hillside
where she and her wicked sisters had piled up a great heap of
eyes--all kinds of eyes they were: big eyes, little eyes, black eyes,
red eyes, blue eyes, green eyes--every kind of eye in the world that
you can think of.
She went to the heap and picked out two eyes which she said were the
right ones. But when the poor old man tried to look through them, he
cried out in fright:
"I see nothing but dark treetops with sleeping birds and flying bats!
These are not my eyes! They are owls' eye
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