een renews the experiment, presses with one
hand, presses with both, and with all her might. Nikita catches her
up, and then flings her down on the floor. The room shakes beneath the
blow, the bride "arises, lies down quietly, and goes to sleep," and
Nikita is replaced by the king. By the end of the third night the
queen gives up all hope of squeezing her husband to death, and makes
up her mind to conjugal submission.[326]

But before long, she, like Brynhild, finds out that she has been
tricked, and resolves on revenge. Throwing Nikita into a slumber which
lasts for twenty-four hours, she has his feet cut off, and sets him
adrift in a boat; then she degrades her husband, turning him into a
swineherd, and she puts out the eyes of Nikita's brother Timofei. In
the course of time the brothers obtain from a Baba Yaga the healing
and vivifying waters, and so recover the eyes and feet they had lost.
The Witch-Queen is put to death, and Nikita lives happily as the
King's Prime Minister. The specific actions of the two waters are
described with great precision in this story. When the lame man
sprinkles his legs with the Healing Water, they become whole at once;
"his legs are quite sound, only they don't move." Then he applies the
Vivifying Water, and the use of his legs returns to him. Similarly
when the blind man applies the Healing Water to his empty orbits, he
obtains new eyes--"perfectly faultless eyes, only he cannot see with
them;" he applies the Vivifying Water, "and begins to see even better
than before."

In a Ryazan variant of the story,[327] Ivan Dearly-Bought, after his
legs have been cut off at the knees, and he has been left in a forest,
is found by a giant who has no arms, but who is so fleet that "no post
could catch him up." The two maimed heroes form an alliance. After a
time, they carry off a princess who is suffering from some mysterious
disease, and take her to their forest home. She tells them that her
illness is due to a Snake, which comes to her every night, entering by
the chimney, and sucks away her strength. The heroes seizes the Snake,
which takes them to the healing lake, and they are cured. Then they
restore the princess, also cured, to her father. Ivan returns to the
palace of the Enchantress Queen who had maimed him, and beats her with
red-hot iron bars until he has driven out of her all her magic
strength, "leaving her only one woman's strength, and that a very poor
one."

In a Tula variant[