Три желания/ The Three Wishes
Once upon a time... a woodcutter lived happily with his wife in a pretty little log cabin in the middle of a thick forest. Each morning he set off singing to work, and when he came home in the evening, a plate of hot steaming soup was always waiting for him. One day, however, he had a strange surprise. He came upon a big fir tree with strange open holes on the trunk. It looked somehow different from the other trees, and as he was about to chop it down, the alarmed face of an elf popped out of a hole. 'What's all this banging?' asked the elf. 'You're not thinking of cutting down the tree, are you? It's my home. I live here!' The woodcutter dropped his axe in astonishment. 'Well, I...' he stammered. 'With all the other trees there are in this forest, you have to pick this one. Lucky I was in, or I would have found myself homeless.' Taken aback at these words, the woodcutter quickly recovered, for after all the elf was quite tiny, while he himself was a big hefty chap, and he boldly replied, 'I'll cut down any tree I like, so ...*
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