Banská Bystrica is situated in the basin surrounded by thick forests. Trees there has a smell like no other, yet hide mysterious secrets. Some would swear that at night when not a soul leaves home, the peculiar lights appear twinkling and shimmering in the woods. The sun went down and darkness fell. People started blowing out the candles and getting ready for bed, dogs ran to their kennels to hide. If somebody wandered off into the forest at this ungodly hour, they would see things more beautiful than those from a fairy tale. A bright glow filtered through the trees. Dwarves and fairies crawled out of their hidden homes, but wolves were the strangest creatures of all. Their fur was pure copper and glittered in the moonlight. These were the lights shepherds would see in the distance. Every night a strange world came to life in the forest. One day, a shepherd’s sheep got lost in the woods. “I am dead-tired and there is no sign of the sheep. It could have been torn apart,” he said to himself. Suddenly, he spotted something in the bushes. He saw a radiant glow – the very glow that old shepherds used to talk about when he was a naughty little boy. He moved closer, but the glow had disappeared. He decided to look for it. The sheep was already out of his mind. Every evening he would return to the place where he had first spotted the glow. But when he got close enough to touch it, it faded away as though it had never existed. “I’ve got enough!” he yelled after the glow had disappeared again. He began to think that he must have eaten something poisonous or inhaled some forest fumes into which people did not go. So, he gave up. At that very moment, the glow flared like a bonfire as a little wolf cub with copper fur came out of the bushes. The shepherd stood there dazed, stone-still. He did not know what to do. At first, he wanted to catch the wolf cub to sell it for good money. Then he realized: “Where there is a wolf cub, there must be the whole pack. I will not manage to hunt it on my own.” Full of new strength and hope, he ran headlong towards the shepherds’ hut calling for help. “Listen to me, men! You will not believe what I have just seen!” he shouted when he finally arrived. He told the shepherds the whole story about going to the forest secretly and presented his perfect plan to catch the wolves. On the following night, the men armed themselves with their guns, they stuck knives into their belts and headed into the forest. If they got lucky, they could sell the fur for at least three pouches of golden coins, and perhaps even more than that. They had been wandering in the woods for two days and it felt like they were going in circles. They were lost. “Men, I think we have a company,” said one with a quivering voice as they were going to sleep after a long day. They all turned around and saw a beautiful young woman with long curly hair, hovering above the ground wearing a thin dress. “Honorable men, I am a fairy and I have always been watching over this forest and all the creatures living in it. I know why you came here. I would like to help you. I will give you a task and if you accomplish it, I will give you all the wolves myself. Do you agree?” The men looked at each other and put their heads together to discuss the offer. “Hey, I don‘t feel well about this. She claims to be a protector of the creatures and wants to give us all of her wolves?” stated the f irst one. “Don’t be stupid. Such an offer cannot be refused. We will accomplish such an easy task and the wolves are ours. We could finally leave this place,” argued the other one. “Good point, ahh, how I miss my bed and hot soup!” others agreed. “Fairy, we accept your offer.” She smiled and vanished. The next morning, the men found a piece of paper: This is your task. You gave me your word and now you must perform the following task. If you do not do it, you will be punished. It was too late to complain. If they were to avoid punishment, they had to accomplish the task. “Read it! What is written there?!” all joined in the chorus and challenged the shepherd who had begun to regret his plan. “It says: Many inhabitants of this forest suffer from being thirsty since there is no lake or well nearby. You have to build a water trough, which will never run out of the water, by the end of the day.” “There must be such water somewhere. Our grandmothers talked about it, but it would take ages to get there. There is no way we could make it by the end of the day.” They decided to deceive the fairy. They cut the nearest tree, made a trough, and carved some folk ornaments onto it, just to keep up the appearances. It took them longer than expected, and there was no time left to go get water from the town. Therefore, they drew some from the puddles around and hoped that the fairy would not notice a difference. When night fell, the fairy appeared. “Dear fairy, this is the wood, that cannot be destroyed by water or lightning. Even if we tried hard to cut it into pieces,” the men lied. But it was not the end. “And this water,” all dirty and muddy, “can never run out. It heals every illness and has the power to bring the dead back to life.” However, the fairy’s patience had reached its limits. She punished the men according to the agreement, and even more severely than they deserved. She turned them into copper sculptures and placed each of them into one of the caves in Banská Bystrica. The wolves licked them as roe deer lick salt and their copper fur glowed even more beautifully. After some time, the sculptures fell apart and the caves changed into copper mines. This is why you will never spot a copper wolf on a walk nowadays.
Story from the book What Is Whispered About the Copper City, Primary School Moskovská 2, Banská Bystrica. Author of the story: Paula Lucia Patrášová, Primary School Moskovská 2, Banská Bystrica.
