A witch from the Russian Far North
The Mansi people, an indigenous ethnic group in Siberia, have a legend mentioned in one Soviet book that I’ve read long ago when I was in sixth grade (actually, they gave me it at school as the summer reading. The book had long been lost, but I’ve just found it online):
Once upon a time, there was a young woman. She was very good at many handicrafts, but most skillfully she weaved threads from tendons. She never felt tired, and worked until late at night.
‘Please, dear, don’t weave tendons at night!’ the older women told her.
‘But why?’ she wondered.
‘No, you can't do that. There’s Tanvarpekva. She’s an evil old woman. If you stay up late, she’ll come to you, and she’ll tickle you to death.’
But the girl didn’t listen to them, and kept twisting the tendons during the day, and rolling them at night.
One night, when everyone was already asleep, a dog squealed as if someone stung it. Then the door creaked open, and in the flow of icy air Tanvarpekva walked into the room. She was holding a silver bowl in her hands. There were tendons in the bowl, and they were canine tendons. She just tore them off from the husky’s neck, so that’s why the dogs were squealing.
She sat down next to the young craftswoman, and said:
‘Hello, girl, hello! How agile you are! Wanna bet on whose bowl gets filled up with tendons first? If yours, then you’ll take the bowl made of solid silver. If mine gets filled up first, I’ll tickle you. And I’m gonna tickle you so hard that your liver will pop out.’
‘Sit down, please! I’ll bring you something to eat,’ the girl said. She went to the barn and brought some tasty dried fish. ‘Help yourself to some fish, please, it’s delicious!’ Then the girl ran out of the house again. In the corner of the barn, she found an empty birch-bark basket, and rushed towards the forest. And there, outside the village, next to the tallest cedar tree, was the Tanvarpekva’s yurt. The girl lit the basket, threw it under the tree, and dashed back to her home, calling out to Tanvarpekva: ‘A fire broke out in your yurt! Your yurt is on fire!’
So Tanvarpekva ran like a deer. The girl threw the dog’s tendons away, washed the silver bowl and put it on the table. She then quickly put out the rushlight, smeared her face with fish oil and lay down on the bunk among the sleeping people.
Very soon Tanvarpekwa came again, and started to look for the girl, feeling all the sleeping people’s faces. When she came to the girl, she felt her face and tickled her. The girl nearly screamed with tickling, but she used her last strength to hold back. The old woman touched her face again, it was slippery, and didn’t seem like that girl’s face. She went to other people, and kept searching among them. The people were moaning, and sighing in their sleep, sobbing. And once again, the old witch came to the girl, feeling and tickling her one more time. But the young woman was silent, and didn’t utter a sound.
‘Perhaps it was a forest spirit who has protected you,’ Tanvarpekva sighed, ‘You’ve proved to be dodgier and more cunning than me. Just you wait, girl, if you keep weaving tendons at night, I’ll still tickle you to death.’
For the rest of the night, the young craftswoman slept badly, having nightmares and tossing around. The next morning, she got up before everyone else, and lit a fire in the fire pit. She took the silver bowl from the table and showed it to the people.
‘Look!’ she said, ’Here is a bowl. It’s Tanvarpekva’s silver bowl. She came over last night, and she has tickled me for I stayed up late.’