Shurale

Not far from Kazan there is a village called Kyrlay, and behind Kyrlay there is a forest so old that the oaks remember the names of everyone's great-grandfathers. In daylight it is a fine forest. Bees argue in the lime trees, strawberries hide under every leaf, and the paths are soft as a feather bed. But at night the forest belongs to someone else.

That someone is the Shurale. He is tall and thin and covered in fur the colour of old moss. A single horn curls out of his forehead. His fingers are long, longer than a carpenter's ruler, and there are a great many of them, and he is very proud of every one. His favourite thing in the world is laughter, and he is not fussy about whose it is. When a traveller wanders into his forest after dark, the Shurale comes skipping out of the trees with a grin full of teeth, and he tickles. He tickles while the traveller laughs, and he keeps tickling after the traveller has stopped laughing, and in the morning the woodpeckers find one more pair of boots lying empty in the grass.

Everybody in Kyrlay knows this. Mothers tell it to children. Children tell it to cats. And still, one moonlit night, a young woodcutter harnessed his horse, threw his axe into the cart and drove into that forest, because the winter was coming, the woodpile was empty, and a man with an empty woodpile is braver than he ought to be.

He found a good fallen oak, swung his axe and set to work. Chop, chop, the chips flew, the horse dozed, and the moon looked down with interest. Then, from somewhere behind him, came a little cough.

There stood the Shurale, wringing his long fingers, grinning from one hairy ear to the other.

"Good evening, good evening! What a lovely night for a game, woodcutter. Do you know my game? It is called tickling. You lie down, I tickle, you laugh. It is very simple. Everybody plays it once."

The woodcutter felt his knees turn to porridge. But he kept his face as calm as a pond and said, "A fine game. I'd play it gladly. Only, I'm not very good at laughing yet, I need practice. Help me with one small job first, and then we'll play as long as you like."

"A job? Hee! I like jobs. What job?"

"This log is stubborn," said the woodcutter, and he drove his iron wedge deep into the oak, so that a long crack opened along its middle. "You have strong fingers, the finest I've ever seen. Put them in this crack, all of them, and pull it apart for me."

The Shurale was flattered right down to his horn. He pushed every one of his long, proud fingers deep into the crack. And the woodcutter knocked the wedge out with one blow of his axe.

Snap went the oak. The crack closed like a jaw. And the Shurale was caught.

Oh, how he screamed. He hopped and twisted and wailed until the owls covered their ears. "Let me go! Let me go, you rascal! At least tell me your name, so I know whom to curse!"

The woodcutter climbed back onto his cart, picked up the reins, and said over his shoulder, "My name? My name is Byltyr." Which, in that part of the world, means Last Year. And off he drove.

All night long the Shurale howled. At last the other forest spirits came creeping out of their hollows and burrows to see what the noise was.

"What's the matter with you? Who did this?"

"Byltyr did it! Byltyr pinched my fingers!"

The spirits looked at one another. "Last Year pinched you? Then why are you screaming about it this year?" And they laughed so hard that they rolled about in the moss, and went home holding their bellies, and left him exactly where he was.

Now, here the tale is usually finished. But the old women of Kyrlay, who know more than they tell, always add one more part.

They say that the woodcutter could not sleep that night. He kept hearing the howling across the fields. So, before dawn, he went back into the forest with a loaf of bread, a pot of honey and his iron wedge. He drove the wedge into the oak, opened the crack, and set the Shurale free. Then he sat down on the log, broke the bread in two, and offered half.

The Shurale stared at the bread for a very long time. Then he ate it, and the honey too, and licked every one of his long fingers clean. And from that morning on, the woodcutter had a friend.

His cart never lost a wheel in that forest. Wolves crossed the road a long way ahead of him. The best fallen oaks were somehow always lying right beside his path, already split, with not a scratch on them. When his little daughter got lost among the trees one autumn, she came home at sunset riding on the shoulders of something tall and mossy, giggling, because she had been tickled exactly enough and not a bit more.

As for how to make friends with him: the old women say it is easy. Bring bread. Bring honey. And never, ever tell him your name is Last Year.

❦