It took Saosh Yant a long time to choose a new beat and tune in. He twirled round hither – it wasn’t any good. Then he twirled round thither – it wasn’t any better! He changed the vibration frequency – it didn’t help! How much time had passed – he didn’t know. Only the pillar of smoke from the fire had become more regular and steady.
“The sun must’ve gone down,” thought Saosh Yant, “it’s become cooler, and the insatiable cold guarding the hole at the top of the tent is now more frantically and greedily attracting the heat from the hearth. It must already be night outside.”
Saosh Yant was thinking like that, falling into a deeper trance to the vibrant and resounding beat of the drum.
But then something seemed to start whirling around it – the spirit of the drum, the deer Tyn Bura, whose skin had been used to make the drum, came out of it and stood before it, beautiful, its magnificent antlers spread wide and its head proudly raised. It cast a silent look of its intent, penetrating eyes into the young man’s, as if asking him to follow. Saosh took a few hesitant steps and understood at once that he was flying after his deer which was carrying him along to the shadowy world. As light and free as the smoke from the fire, he flew out of the hole at the top of the chaadyr. He saw the distant cloudless starry sky that spread like a blanket of velvet in the boundless space. The Milky Way that stretched freely as far as the eye could see. The myriads of stars that stared down at the earth from the sky with their penetrating eyes, became one endless, eternal glow.
“Wow! How beautiful!” Saosh Yant shuddered with delight. “I wish I could go there!”
In the same flash of time he was beside a beautiful, majestic, handsome woman.
“Who is she?” a question flitted through his mind.
And at the same time he KNEW that the Altai Princess herself was standing before him.
“Can it be true?!” a thought flew through his mind like the wind. “It’s HER!”
Saosh looked into her unfathomable eyes and felt that he was literally drowning in her piercing, unwinking stare.
“What a beauty!” he thought with awe. The next instant a daring idea struck him:
“I would love to have a girlfriend like her!”
He blushed with shame at once.
“Stop it! What a shame!” he rebuked himself. “Have you forgotten WHO is standing before you? Aren’t you afraid to think that? Eh?!”
The Princess was looking at him in silence and she must have seen though him. No, she surely did see him through. Only these thoughts didn’t bother her at all. She seemed to be hovering, majestic and great, above all this worldly vanity and passions. Her gaze was bewitching and sobering up at the same time.
Saosh drew a deep breath, then breathed out and sort of shrank back. That helped him. The next moment his eyes started wandering over the Princess’s costume. Her head was adorned with a very high and long headdress. Behind the head was a crescent, placed horizontally and decorated with turquoise pendants. It was a symbol of the eternal feminine and beauty, of the inexhaustible feminine lunar energy. Her two tight braids were twirled in spirals on the sides of her head.
“She must have been married,” Saosh thought. “It’s our custom: girls wear one braid on the back of the head. And once a woman gets married, after the wedding night she starts wearing two braids. Who was her husband, I wonder?”
The next instant the young man gave himself a scolding:
“Quit it! Shame on you! What’s difference who was her husband and who wasn’t? What do you care? It wasn’t you – so chuck it!”
Saosh stood in perplexity for a short while. And then that part of his mind was up to its old games again.
“But I wonder still, if she is WHAT she is, then WHAT was her husband like? He was likely to be as handsome, strong and powerful as her… I wish I could be at her side instead of him just for a day!”
The next instant the other part of him cut in:
“Oh, shut up, will you? Look at yourself! What a sight you are! You think you’re a match for her?! That’s ridiculous!”
So inside him were struggling the two completely opposite parts of his personality. If Saosh had been saying all that aloud, he would have appeared a madman. And he was going mad indeed. The beauty, might and grandeur that radiated from this wonderful woman drew him crazy. His eyes began to wander involuntarily down her attire, studying every smallest detail of it.
She was wearing a long gray kaftan embroidered in a fanciful national pattern along the hem, sleeves and collar. The long floor-length gray skirt was decorated similarly. From under the kaftan showed the long dazzling white sleeves that symbolized the purity and chastity of the Princess’s thoughts. Her wrists adorned with bracelets, her fingers with gold rings – everything was a perfect match. All that created a beautiful, majestic and feminine look.
“How old is she?” Saosh thought again. “She looks very young. Not more than nineteen. But she is very strong in spirit for her age. She can well be thirty. And the gaze! My God!”
Just as he thought so, she cast a careful, penetrating and magical look at him, and he felt as if he’d received an electric shock. Hypnotized, he was standing and watching her, unable to move or utter a word. She held out her hand and in it suddenly appeared a string of turquoise prayer beads. They emanated such dazzling light that our hero screwed up his eyes.
“No, no, it’s not right!” a thought flitted through his mind. “Come on, do what she wants you to do!”
Bowing respectfully before the Princess, Saosh Yant took the gift with tow hands.
“That’s better,” the Princess said condescendingly.
“And what should I do with these?” he asked dubiously.
