Children were jumping and laughing, and then ate sweets.
Before Khutline entered her house after the initiation, she saw Kurtan iki at her doorstep. On the rights of a superior, being the foreman of the village, he entered her home, and took an old icon of the Virgin from the family hearth without hostess permission. Like all the inhabitants of the village, he knew that the family shrine was hidden in a chest along with the Khanty spirits since the red authorities destroyed the Russian church in Kushevat. Now the icon, transmitted from generation to generation through males in the family of the young shaman, was in the hands of Kurtan iki. Khutline knelt before him, reaching out for the defender of the family, but Kurtan iki kicked her out of his way with his foot. As he kicked her, the woman remained lying on the ground, howling sobbingly, but covering her mouth with her hands so that no one would hear. If anyone finds out that she hid an Orthodox icon in her house and worshiped it along with the goddess Kaltashch, everything would be over for her and her children.
Khutline didn't remember how long she lay at the threshold of her house, what she was thinking about, left without a husband and without a defender, but the next day, without a shadow of fatigue and despair, she went fishing with her eldest son.
«No one should feed my family,» the woman decided, «I am not a helpless child.»
She had a boat and oars left after her husband, and family gods sitting in the sacred chest. Wouldn't they give her strength and mind to rise to her feet? She had strong arms and 3 children.
«I am their mother. Their father entrusted me with the most precious thing – their children. Why should I torture my little birds and wait until they bring us fish home? I can't be full of someone else's piece,» she decided.
No one came from the village council to inquire about the icon.
«Kurtan iki did not take the icon to the authorities, which means that he stole the shrine from his cousin. What a sin,» Khutline was dumbfounded.
«How could this atrocity happen? In a different time, the elders of the thief's family would have chopped off the whole hand at the sacred fire. Now they are allowed to do anything,» the young woman was horrified.
Exactly one year later, on a bright summer night, when the sun crouched at sunset to have some rest and move along the sky again, and everyone in the village fell asleep, someone quietly opened the canopy of the house where Khashkurne and her husband Kushta iki lived. The guest coughed quietly, like all people did according to the Khanty tradition if they entered the housing with good intentions. Khashkurne slipped out of the canopy like a small ermine and gasped:
«Ashieh! Dad!»
It was Lylan Luhpi shepan iki sitting at the entrance, inaudibly, quieter than the arctic fox, bending one leg. His weathered face was dark, like the inner side of a spring birch on which women loved to scrap out bizarre ornaments.
The malica of the great shaman was not even torn, but completely tattered.
«Hush, daughter, don't scream!»
Khashkurne clasped her mouth in her hands and rushed to her father.
«Everything's fine, daughter. I'll sleep with you a little and get home tomorrow.»
Sleepy Khashkurne's husband went out as he heard the quiet whisper from behind the canopy. Seeing his father-in-law, silently, without any surprise, he approached Lylan Luhpi shepan iki, and greeted him as if he knew for sure that his wife's father would return home. The great shaman rose and, taking the head of his young son-in-law, kissed him on the cheeks three times.