Tale of the Girl that Jumps from Bon-fire

This is another tale from Pavel Bazhov's collection of Urals miners legends "The Casket of Malachite".
It tells about the small girl that suddenly jumps out of bonfire and dances. He name was Ognevushka-Poskakushka ("ogon'" means fire and "skakat'" means to jump in Russian). She shows to gold seekers the place where they have to search for gold. But it is very difficult to keep this place in mind.
One evening a group of gold seekers was sitting around the bonfire telling different stories and legends. Among them were the boy of 8 years old named Fyodor, his father and his uncle Ephim. Suddenly the small merry red hair girl with dressed in blue clothes and not bigger than a doll appeared in charcoals. She started to dance around gold seekers becoming bigger and bigger until she reached Fyodor's statue. Near one of the trees she stopped dancing but at this moment an owl shouted and the girl disappeared. Uncle Ephim explained that it was the sign where to look for gold and they have to find this tree. But everyone showed at different trees. The dug all around but did not find anything. Few times more boy and his uncle saw the girl and every time she disappeared after owls shouting and again they could not find anything. Their family became the object of different jokes in the village and sometime these jokes were very evil. One winter day when Fyodor's stepmother was not in the good mood he decided to visit his sick father in the hospital. Going to the town he had to cross the forest and suddenly under one of the birch-trees he saw Ognevushka dancing on the snow. She looked at Fyodor by her merry eyes and melted the snow near the old birch-tree. "When the springtime will come look under this birch-tree," - she said. "We had tried but did not find anything," - answered the boy. "Take this. It will help you," - said she, gave him an old gold seekers spade and disappeared. At springtime Fyodor with relatives found a lot of gold there and never need after that.


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