The Malachite Box nuggets. The story of the brothers is continued in "The Snake Trail" (alternative translation: "The Serpent's Trail"), published in 1939. In this "skaz", a young the factory worker Stepan meets the legendary Mistress of the Copper Mountain. He passes her tests and is rewarded by a malachite casket filled with jewellery for his betrothed, Nastyona. Stepan dies, leaving the Malachite Casket to his widow Nastyona. Their daughter Tanyushka likes to play with it. With black hair and green eyes, Tanyushka does not look like her mother at all, as if she was born to different parents. When she grows up,
The Malachite Casket (fairy tale) me the Tsarina, and you've done it so as to show me to her. [...] I don't want to see any more of ye". Adding that he is no match for her anyway, Tanyushka leans against the malachite wall and melts away. She is never seen again, but the Mistress of the Copper Mountain gets a twin—people see two maids in malachite robes. Most scholars agree that Tanyushka—literally or metaphorically—is the daughter of the Mistress of the Copper Mountain. It was suggested that the Casket symbolizes the mystery that connected Stepan and the Mistress, or the secret marriage between the