This
happened a long, long time ago, when the cedar, the
fir, and the pine still had needles that yellowed and
dropped in the fall instead of staying green all
winter. Once in those olden times, a Tofalar
went out into the woods to hunt. He walked and
walked, and he came farther than any hunter had ever
dared to go. He saw a bog so vast that no beast could
have crossed it, no bird could have flown across.
And the Tofalar said to
himself: "If our animals can't run across
this bog, and our birds cannot fly across it, what
kinds of animals and birds live on the other
side?" The more he thought about it, the
more curious he became. "I must find
out," he said to himself. "Whatever
happens, I must get there.
And so he took a good running
start, and leaped right clear across the bog. He
looked around: the same earth, the same grass, the
same trees. "Silly!" he said.
"There was no need to jump." Suddenly
his mouth dropped open with wonder.
In a little clearing stood
seven harnessed rabbits. They stood quietly, waiting.
Then seven people came out of seven burrows in the
earth, exactly like all people, only tiny. When the
rabbits flattened their ears, the people were taller
than the rabbits. When the rabbits' ears stood up,
the people were smaller than the rabbits.
"Who are you?" asked
the Tofalar. "We are immortal people," said
the tiny men. "We wash ourselves in living
water, and we never die. And who are you?"
"I am a hunter." The little men
clapped their hands with joy. "Oh, good!
Oh, good!" they cried in chorus. And one
of them, the eldest, with white hair and a long white
beard, came forward and said: "A terrible,
huge beast has come into our land. We don't know
where it came from. The other day it caught one of
our people and killed him. We are immortal, we never
die ourselves, but this beast killed one of us. You
are a hunter---can you help us in this trouble? Can
you hunt down the beast?"
"Why not?" answered
the Tofalar, but to himself he wondered: "Will I
be able to kill such a frightful beast?"
However, he went out to track the beast. He looked
and he looked, but could find nothing except rabbits'
footprints. Suddenly, among the rabbit prints he
noticed the track of a sable. "Oh, that's
too fine a quarry to miss," he said. "First
I will get the sable, and then I'll go on looking for
the terrible, huge beast." He found the
sable and killed it. Then he skinned it and went on
with his search. He walked the length and breadth of
the little people's land, but could not find any
trace of the beast.
So he came back to the little
people and said to them: "I could not find your
terrible, huge beast. All I have found was this
sable." And he showed them the little sable
skin. "That's it, that's it!" they
cried. "Oo-h, what a huge skin, what thick paws,
what terrible, sharp claws!" And the eldest of
the little men said to the Tofalar: "You
have saved us and our people! And we shall pay for
your kindness with kindness. Wait for us. We'll come
to visit you and bring you living water. You'll wash
in it and will become immortal too."
The Tofalar jumped back across
the bog and went back to his valley and told his
people about the little men. And the Tofalars
began to wait for their guests, the immortal little
men.
They waited one day, two days,
three days, many, many days. But the guests did not
come, and the Tofalars forgot about them and their
promise. Winter came. Everything around was
frozen. And the bog was covered with a coat of ice.
One day the village women went
to the woods to gather firewood. Suddenly they saw a
little herd of rabbits galloping their way. They
looked again, and saw that every rabbit was saddled,
and in every saddle sat a tiny man with a little
pitcher in his hands. The women burst out laughing at
the sight.
"Look, look!" they
cried to one another. "They are riding on
rabbits!" "And look at the little
men, how funny!"
"Oh, what a
joke!" "Oh, I'll die
laughing!" Now, the immortal people were a
proud race. They took offense at this reception. The
one in front, with white hair and a long beard,
shouted something to the others, and all of them
spilled out the contents of their pitchers onto the
ground. Then the rabbits turned and hopped away so
fast that you could only see their white tails
flicker. And so the Tofalars never got the
living water. It went instead to the pine, the cedar,
and the fir. And this is why they are fresh and green
all through the year. Their needles never die.
