The Story of the Home-Bred Boy

The Story of the Home-Bred Boy

Once, in Tibet, there lived a widow and her only son. She loved the boy more than anything and was so afraid that something might happen to him that she hardly ever let him leave home.

When other children ran along paths to neighbouring villages, he stayed in the yard. When boys his age learned to trade at the market, care for horses, cross mountain streams, and speak with strangers, his mother would say, “Why do you need that? It is safer here.”

So the years passed.

Then one day, when her son turned fifteen, his mother looked at him and understood that if he never went beyond the gate, he would never learn to live on his own.

She prepared warm clothes for him, gave him a horse, a faithful dog, and a little food for the road.

“Go and see the world,” she said. “Remember, there is no shame in not knowing something. The shame is in refusing to learn.”

The boy was delighted. He climbed onto his horse as solemnly as if he were setting out to rule a whole country.

But on his very first day, the world began to teach him.

On a slope he saw a fox.

“Now I will show what a skilled traveller I am,” the boy decided, and chased after her.

The fox darted between the rocks. The dog raced after her. The horse, whom the boy had carelessly left unattended, galloped after the dog. His cloak caught on the saddle and vanished into the distance too.

Within minutes the boy stood alone in the road. No horse. No dog. No cloak.

He even managed to lose his hat in a thorn bush.

“A wonderful beginning,” he muttered.

By evening he was walking on foot. At night he settled beneath a tall poplar tree. It was cold, and he could not sleep for a long while.

At dawn, two ravens perched on the branch above him.

“Do you see that boy?” said one.

“I do,” answered the other. “At home they protected him from the whole world, and now he does not know what to do after even one small failure.”

The boy held very still. Perhaps he was dreaming, or perhaps the ravens truly were talking, but he heard the words clearly.

“And what should he do?” asked the first raven.

“He should go farther east,” replied the second. “If he does not turn back after his first embarrassment, he may yet have good fortune.”

The boy got to his feet.

“Well then,” he said to himself. “Even the ravens think I need to learn. I will go east.”

Soon he met an old wandering beggar. The boy honestly told him how he had lost his horse, dog, cloak, and hat all in one day.

The old man laughed.

“I have never seen such a traveller!” he said. “You would probably lose your own boots if they stepped two paces away from you.”

The boy felt hurt, but he said nothing and walked on.

By evening he reached a house where a wedding was being celebrated. He asked for a little food and a place by the fire, but the busy young host waved him away sharply.

“We have enough to do without you. Go on.”

The boy went back to the road.

Darkness had already covered the valley when he saw another house. There, he was allowed to spend the night in a barn on dry hay.

In the morning, a commotion rose in the yard. The lady of the house had lost a precious turquoise. The stone meant a great deal to her, and everyone searched beneath benches, by the door, in the storehouse, and on the path.

By chance, the boy saw a small blue gleam on the ground. The turquoise lay beside an old rag. At that very moment, a servant girl was sweeping the yard. She gathered the rag with the dust and, without noticing the stone, pushed everything into a crack by the stone wall, intending to clear it out later.

The boy remembered all this.

During the day, many experts and fortune-tellers came to the house. Each whispered, counted, and peered into bowls of water, but no one found the turquoise.

Then a mischievous idea came to the boy.

He cut a small forked twig from a willow branch and announced solemnly, “I can try too. My twig knows how to show what has been hidden.”

The mistress of the house looked in surprise at the barefoot young man without a hat or horse.

“Try,” she said. “It cannot make matters worse.”

The next morning, everyone gathered in the yard.

The boy raised the twig, narrowed his eyes, and moved it very seriously through the air.

Among the people, he noticed the very young man from the wedding who had sent him away, and the old beggar who had laughed at him on the road.

The boy decided to tease them a little.

“The twig says there is too much noise here,” he announced. “Let that angry young gentleman and that cheerful old grandfather step several paces away. Otherwise the magic forces become confused.”

Both men looked embarrassed and moved aside.

Then the boy pointed the twig toward the wall.

“Here,” he said.

The servant girl pulled the rag from the crack, opened it, and the lost turquoise fell to the ground.

Everyone gasped.

The mistress was so happy that she gave the boy good clothes, money, food, and a warm cloak.

“What a thing,” he thought. “This morning I was the boy who lost everything, and by evening I have become a magician with a willow twig.”

But in his heart, he knew there had been no magic. He had simply watched more carefully than the others had.

A few days later, the boy found himself beneath the same poplar tree again. He lay down there at night, and at dawn the familiar ravens arrived.

“Is our home-bred traveller still alive?” croaked one.

“And a little wiser already,” answered the other. “But one more task lies ahead of him.”

“What task?”

“In the next valley, a woman is very ill. No one understands why. The cause is very small: a mother spider has crawled into her ear and hidden there with her tiny spiderlings. If green cloth is spread out, sprinkled lightly with water, and a drum is played, the spiders will think spring has arrived with rain and thunder, and they will crawl out by themselves.”

The boy sat up so suddenly that the ravens flapped their wings in surprise.

“He is listening again!” complained one.

“Let him listen if he makes something good of it,” said the other.

The boy set off for the next valley at once.

In the house of the ill woman, everyone was sad. She could hardly sleep because of the pain, and her family no longer knew how to help.

“Allow me to try a strange method,” asked the boy. “It will not cause harm.”

They spread a green cloth on the floor. The boy sprinkled it with water. Then he asked someone to beat a drum softly.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

It sounded like distant spring thunder.

A few minutes later, a little mother spider really did crawl out of the woman’s ear, followed by several tiny spiderlings.

Everyone stood still.

The boy covered them with a cup, carefully slid a piece of bark beneath it, and carried the spiders far out into the garden.

Almost at once, the woman felt better.

Her family thanked the young man generously, and word of the strange young expert spread still farther.

“So that is how it is,” the boy thought. “Yesterday I did not know where to go myself, and today people think I know everything.”

On the road, he met the old beggar again.

“They say you are a great magician,” said the old man. “Let us see.”

The beggar hid something in his palm and closed his fist.

“Guess what is here.”

The boy had no idea. He sighed and thought he would be found out now.

“What could I know?” he said. “Before a true expert, I am as small as a fly in the palm of a hand.”

The old man opened his hand.

A fly sat on it.

The beggar’s eyes grew round.

“You truly guessed it!”

The boy nearly laughed, but he held it in.

The old man suddenly became serious.

“I was wrong to laugh at you on the road. And by the way, I have seen your horse and your dog. They are wandering in the valley beyond the pass. Come, I will show you.”

So the boy recovered his horse, his dog, and some of the things he had lost.

He could have ridden home then. But now he wanted to see a little more of the world.

Time passed. Rumours of his magical abilities grew faster than his knowledge. One person said that he could find everything lost. Another said that he could heal any illness. A third insisted that the young man could guess a thought before anyone had even thought it.

When a dangerous dispute arose between two neighbouring lands and armies began to gather, a ruler heard about the famous young man and summoned him.

“If you are as wise as people say,” said the ruler, “look at the other camp and tell us how we can avoid defeat.”

The boy wanted to answer, “Your Majesty, half my fame is chance, and the other half is ravens.” But he gathered his courage.

“I can go and look,” he said. “But it is better not to begin a battle while there is still a chance to speak.”

They gave him a swift horse and a comfortable saddle. The boy asked that the straps be checked carefully, for he still did not consider himself an expert rider.

He rode up a hill above the valley where the other army’s camp stood.

At that moment, a military trumpet sounded somewhere behind him.

The horse was frightened.

“Stop! Stop! We agreed to behave sensibly!” cried the boy.

But the horse was already racing down the slope straight toward the camp.

The boy caught hold of a dry tree branch, hoping to slow himself down. The branch snapped and stayed in his hand.

So he galloped into the camp: on a racing horse, with an enormous dry branch swinging in every direction.

The soldiers jumped aside. The branch knocked over a few empty poles, tipped a flag, and caught a tent rope. No one was hurt, but it looked as though some unknown mountain spirit had burst into the camp.

“It is that very magician!” someone shouted.

“He is attacking a whole army by himself!”

“I am not attacking!” yelled the boy. “I simply cannot stop the horse!”

But in the noise, hardly anyone heard him.

At last, several riders carefully caught up with the horse and took its bridle. The boy breathed out with such relief that he almost fell from the saddle.

The commander from the other side came to him.

“If you have arrived to speak of peace, we are ready to listen,” he said. “And if this was an attack, it is the strangest attack I have ever seen.”

“Let it be peace,” said the boy, wiping his forehead. “For I certainly would not survive a second such attack from embarrassment.”

The commander laughed.

Soon representatives from both sides sat down to negotiate. They argued for a long time, but in the end they agreed not to begin a battle and to settle the dispute peacefully.

When the boy returned, the ruler welcomed him as a hero.

“You stopped a war without a fight,” he said. “Ask for a reward.”

The boy thought of his first day on the road: the fox, the lost horse, the cold night beneath the poplar, the turquoise in the rag, the mother spider, the ravens’ advice, and the fly in the palm.

“Give me not gold, but the chance to learn from people who know more than I do,” he asked. “And give me a little land, so that my mother will not worry about tomorrow.”

The ruler granted his request and added a generous gift besides.

At last the boy returned home.

His mother ran out to meet him.

“Well, did you see the world?” she asked.

“A little,” her son smiled.

“And did you learn everything?”

The boy shook his head.

“On the contrary. I learned how much I still do not know.”

He told his mother about his adventures. He did not hide even the most foolish moments.

“I once thought an experienced person always knows what to do,” he said. “Now I know that sometimes experience is looking down at your feet in time. Sometimes it is listening more carefully. Sometimes it is admitting that you do not know the answer. And sometimes it is simply not panicking when a horse is carrying you straight into someone else’s camp.”

His mother laughed.

“Now, it seems, you truly have grown up a little.”

From then on, the boy was no longer afraid to go out into the world. But he did not think the world owed him simplicity either.

He learned a great deal, helped people when he could, and never forgot the two ravens in the poplar tree.

And whenever someone called him a great magician, the boy only smiled.

For he knew that the greatest wonder in his adventures was not magic.

It was that a person who only yesterday lost everything on the first path had learned to watch, listen, think, and not turn back after the first failure.

May this story leave a little light in your heart ✨