Sister Alenushka and brother Ivanushka

Anna Nosak

I would begin to inform you about the story from describing the place where all the events happened: it was a little administrative unit situated far from urban life. A full family of mother, father, and their children Ivanushka and Alenushka lived there. But one day parents died. There was no social service nearby, so children were left to themselves and worked for their living.
According to the norms of the society, the younger brother needs to subordinate his older sister, but there are factors which make it difficult, especially in instances of satisfying the basic needs. Nevertheless, Ivanushka did not listen to Alenushka’s advice and drank water from the track of a goat and turned into the same animal. Both the sister and the brother felt frustration about this. As time passed on, there came a day when a rich man proposed to Alenushka, and thus it lead to the changing of the siblings’ status. Against the background of these events an evil witch appeared. She was very jealous of the happiness of a family and decided to take interrupting actions. As a matter of fact, in her mind she even had and idea of committing a crime. Having caught Alenushka near the lake where the girl was spending her time, the witch threw a rope with a stone on her neck and pushed her into the water. After that she adopted the image of Alenushka and began to look just like her.
At the same time, Ivanushka was a witness of that terrible event and intended to take an action to save his sister. Seeing that, in order to prevent the situation of revealing the truth the witch started persuading the man to kill the goat. The speed the goat can reach is very high, so Ivanushka in the goat’s body ran as fast as he could to the lake where his sister was. For some supernatural reason she was still alive. The servant of the man overheard the conversation between the siblings and rushed home to inform the man about everything he had just discovered. As a result, Alenushka was saved, Ivanushka turned back into human, the family lived happily ever since, and the witch was called to account for everything she had done.