wanted to put on her feathers again, but could not find them anywhere.
Iván Tsarévich had burnt them. He seized hold of Márya Tsarévna, but she turned first into a frog, then into a lizard, and into all sorts of insects, and last of all into a spindle. Iván Tsarévich took the spindle and broke it in halves, threw the dull end behind him and the sharp one in front; and his beautiful young wife stood in front of him, and they went home.
Then the daughter of the witch cried out: "The destroyer and the wicked woman have come."
But Iván Tsarévich assembled all the Princes and the boyárs, and he asked them: "With which wife shall I live?"
They said: "With the first."
But he answered, "My lords, whichever wife leaps quickest to the door shall remain with me."
So the witch's daughter climbed up at once, but Márya Tsarévna clung on. Then Iván Tsarévich took his gun and shot the substitute wife, and lived happy ever after with Márya Tsarévna.
