The commander of the cavalry detachment left a horse in the village, wounded in the leg with a fragment of a German shell. The horse was sheltered by the miller Pankrat, whose mill had not been working for a long time. The miller, considered a sorcerer in the village, cured the horse, but could not feed him, and he walked around the yards, searched for food, and struggled.

They said in the village that the horse was nobody's, or rather, the public horse, and everyone considered it his duty to feed him. In addition, the horse - wounded, suffered from the enemy.

In the same village there lived with his grandmother a silent and incredulous boy Filka, nicknamed "Well You." To any suggestion or comment by Filka frowningly answered: “Oh, come on!”.

Winter that year stood out warm. Pankrat managed to fix the mill and was about to grind flour, which ended with the village mistresses.

Once a horse wandered into Filka’s yard. The boy at that moment was chewing a piece of well-salted bread. The horse reached for the bread, but Filka hit him on the lips, threw a chunk far into the snow and shouted rudely at the animal.

And after this malevolent cry, what happened was ... ... those amazing things that people are talking about now, shaking their heads, because they themselves don’t know if it was or wasn’t anything.

Tears rolled down from the horse’s eyes, he neighing plaintively and lingeringly, waved his tail, and a blizzard came upon the village.Locked in a hut, the frightened Filka heard “a thin and short whistle - this is how the ponytail whistles when an angry horse hits him on its sides.”

The blizzard subsided only in the evening, and then Filkina's grandmother returned home, who was stuck with a neighbor. At night, a severe frost came to the village - everyone heard "the creak of his boots on hard snow." Frost gripped the thick logs of the hut so hard that they cracked and burst.

The grandmother burst into tears and told Filka that “an inevitable death” awaits everyone - the wells are frozen, there is no water, all the flour has ended, and the mill will not work, because the river has frozen to the bottom.

From the grandmother, the boy learned that the same severe frost fell on their district a hundred years ago.

Ten years after that, neither trees nor grass bloomed. Seeds in the earth have faded and disappeared. Naked stood our land. Every beast ran around her - he was afraid of the desert.

But it happened "from the wickedness of men." Then an old soldier passed through the village, a cripple with a piece of wood instead of a leg. He asked for bread in one of the huts, and the owner, a man angry and shouting, insulted the cripple - threw a moldy crust on the ground in front of him. Then the soldier whistled, and "a storm circled the village." And that wicked man died "from cooling his heart." It can be seen, and now an evil offender has wound up in the village, and will not let go of the frost until this man corrects his villainy. How to fix it, knows the cunning and learned Pankrat.

At night, Filka quietly walked out of the hut, with difficulty reached the mill and told Pankrat how he had offended his horse. The miller advised the boy to “invent salvation from the cold” in order to remove his guilt before people and a wounded horse.

This conversation was heard by the magpie, who lived by the miller in the hallway. She jumped out and flew south. Meanwhile, Filka decided in the morning to collect all the village children and cut ice at the mill tray. Then water will flow, the mill wheel will spin, and in the village there will be fresh, warm bread. The miller, Filkin, approved the idea and decided to call the village old people to help the children.

The next morning everyone gathered, laid fires and worked until noon. And then the sky became cloudy, a warm south wind blew and the earth began to thaw. By the evening the magpie returned home, and the first wormwood appeared at the mill. Magpie shook her tail and burst - boasted to the ravens that she had flown to the warm sea, had been awakened by the summer wind that was sleeping in the mountains, and asked him to help people.

Everyone knows that the magpie is the most talkative bird in the world, and therefore the crows did not believe her - they cawed only among themselves: that, they say, the old one again lied.

Pankrat ground flour, and in the evening ovens were heated all over the village, and bread was baked.

In the morning, Filka dragged a loaf of warm bread to the mill and treated them to a horse. He was frightened at first of the boy, but then ate bread, "put Filka’s head on his shoulder, sighed and closed his eyes from satiety and pleasure."

Everyone was happy with this reconciliation, only the old magpie rattled angrily - apparently, she boasted that it was she who reconciled Filka and the horse. But no one listened to her.