Kaško, Majka, and Maxík were sitting in their room at home, listening to Kaško's story about prehistoric times. They were just talking about how they hunted mammoths.
Maxík was listening with his mouth open.
"The country of Haravara is beautiful, fragrant, melty, and delicious not just now, it has been like this for a very long time," Kaško finished his story.
"I'd like to see a mammoth someday," Maxík sighed.
"Then look at the book," Majka advised him.
"Not in a book, but alive," sighed Maxík, putting his head in his hands, "but they're all extinct or frozen to death."
"Did they freeze to death?" mused Kaško, who didn't like it when his friends were sad. "Wait, Maxík, I know a place in Harawar where we might find a frozen mammoth."
"Really?" Maxík's eyes lit up like a traffic light.
Kaško nodded, pulled a fluffy winter cap from his pocket and put it on his head.
"Let's go for it!" Majka and Maxík shouted when they saw that Kaško was serious.
They got on the bus and drove to Dobšinská Ľadová Jasky§a ice cave. From the bus they had to walk up a steep hill and then into the cave full of ice.
"It looks like the fairy tale Salt More Than Gold or Anna and Elsa," Majka gushed.
"If only it were a tale of a living mammoth," Maxík said, looking for a frozen mammoth, or at least a frozen mammoth tail or tusk.
Kaško looked around and reminisced a bit:
"This cave is different every time. Those chunks of ice and blobs change according to the temperature. That's great. When it wasn't a tourist cave, we used to come here to ice skate and compete in butt sliding."
"In what?" Majka wondered.
"In sliding on your ass. You sit down on a smooth mat and slide your butt down the ice."
"That must have been awesome!"
"It was! My cousin Hilda screamed so loudly that two two-foot inches came off and made two little pools in the floor. And do you know what we were skating on?"
"On what?" the children asked.
" On the mammoth's tusk."
"The memories are beautiful, but I don't think we'll find a mammoth here, will we?" Maxík sneered.
"Probably not," said Kaško truthfully, "it seems they all managed to escape before the ice or ended up in ice cream."
"What?!" the children gasped, "in the ice cream? You mean..."
"No, nooo!" Kaško stopped them, smiling and indicating that it was just a joke.
"And it could have been such a great day. Seeing something that others can't see," Maxík sighed.
"Wait, wait, but that's easy to arrange. It won't be mammoth, but there's an absolutely magical site not far from here."
"Magical?"
"The most magical one in Haravara," Kaško repeated mysteriously, pulling out of his pocket the oldest cap he could find there. It looked a bit like the caps the ghosts sometimes wear in fairy tales.
"Now you look like a ghost, or a fairy ghost," Majka flattered him with a smile.
"That's what I think, after all, we're going to a fairy tale too. I mean to the village where fairy tales were born. To Slavošovce."
Before the children knew it, they were there, because Kaško had used one of his spells again. In Slavošovce he led them to a very ordinary small house and began to whisper mysteriously:
"Have you ever heard of Emanuel?"
"No, who is he?" the children wondered in whispers.
"Well, we mates called him Emanuel, that was his middle name. You probably know him as Pavel Dobšinský."
"Of course, the storyteller! We learned about him at school and our parents read us his fairy tales!" shouted the children excitedly.
"Well, he wasn't just a storyteller. The tales he collected were not originally fairy tales. He first called them tall tales, and children only listened to those tales when adults told them aloud."
"Fairy tales were for adults?" Maxík asked in amazement.
"You bet they were. And do you know how Emanuel, that is Paľko, got to them?"
"Collecting them among the people, even a little kid can do that."
"Indeed, but in order to know where to collect, where to go, he had to know..." Kaško paused for a moment and pointed to the small house in front of them.
"Here in this house Paľko was born, and it is here that the Samko family of ghosts has lived for about 120 thousand years."
"In this house?" the children wondered.
"And do they live here today?" Majka asked a little apprehensively.
"That's why I brought you here. They will show you beings that no one has ever seen before. Except them, me, my family, and Em... Paľko."
Kaško took out a small ring from one of his pockets, which was specially closed with three zippers. He put it on his finger and knocked on the door in a strange rhythm. Suddenly they were all carried somewhere up to the roof and the window to the attic. There a whole family of ghosts awaited them. When they saw that it was their old friend Kaško, they rolled around, started kissing, hugging, and exchanging hats. That's what ghosts do when they celebrate something.
"Kaško, we haven't seen you in about a hundred years! What are you doing here? And who ARE they?"
Kaško introduced Maxík and Majka, told them about their friendship and then leaned over to the grandfather ghost and whispered something to him. Grandfather Ghost frowned at first and then just smiled.
"Do you know how long it's been since I've been there? But I'd love to go there with you." Suddenly Grandpa clapped his hands, and they were all standing in front of a large tunnel.
"Come on!" Grandfather Ghost called to them, "we have to go through this tunnel."
As they were passing through it, Grandpa was mumbling something - then the tunnel started to change colours and move strangely. Suddenly they were standing in another world. – vtom tunel začal meniť farby a akosi divne sa hýbať. Odrazu stáli v inom svete.
"Well then, this is what we showed little Emanuel!"
"They know him as Paľko" Kaško corrected Grandfather.
"So, Paľko Dobšinský, when he was little, one night he couldn't stop crying. His parents were very busy, and nobody was at home. They thought he was sleeping. And he cried and cried so terribly. So, we took him here."
While Grandfather was talking, miraculous things began to be happening – three barefoot women flew over their heads, a hill and a cemetery appeared in the distance, swords could be heard clashing against each other, it must have been some knights fighting.
Out of nowhere, Majka ran towards the forest.
"Fairies!" she cried with joy.
And indeed. Three fairies were dancing in the meadow. A minute later there were four of them, including Majka.
A huge wolf came out from behind Maxík and before Maxík could get scared, the wolf spoke: "Don't worry, boy, I've already eaten." and walked calmly away.
"So now you know why Paľko started collecting fairy tales. He knew they were around us. He also knew that all those mysterious things that we often don't see help us to cope with all the hard things that await us in this world. That's why he wrote down fairy tales. To help us survive."
Grandpa's Ghost thought and lay down on the grass next to the talking and dancing butterfly.
Maxík and Majka had a great time in this magical place – how else – until late evening, chasing and playing with fairies and dwarfs, Lomidrevo made them a small cave in the rock, and they flew on broomsticks.
"Where's Harry Potter and his Nimbus!" Maxík shouted excitedly.
But the old ghosts must also sleep, and when the Grandfather Ghost yawned loudly and whispered something in a strange language, they all stood again in front of Paľko's house.
The ghosts said goodbye and promised to see each other in less than a hundred years.
When the children came home in the evening, they couldn't fall asleep. They looked at the stars and made up their own fairy tales. Maybe one day they will write a book of fairy tales for children like them.
