ABSTRACT
In a certain tsardom there lived a tsar and tsaritsa and that tsar and tsaritsa had no other children, just one son. The son lived with them as a child. He went out into the open steppe, into the wide prairie, into the green meadows, just to go for a walk. An unclean spirit fell upon him and carried him off across the thrice-nine land into the thrice-ten tsardom. And he lived there with that unclean spirit for a year, then two, then three, and he was already coming of age. And he grew not by the day, but by the hour, and the unclean spirit trusted him and he began trusting him with the keys to all the rooms. And once the unclean spirit was riding off to war and he said to him: “Well, Ivan Tsarevich, you may go into any of the rooms except that you are not to go into this one room, and keep these doors fastened with bast straps.”
