That evening the girl again put the flower on her windowsill. Instantly the falcon came flying in and turned into a prince, and a second night went past as though it was only a moment. But this time the sisters were listening at the attic door and they heard the murmuring of voices. They rushed to their father and told him, but he scolded them for tale-bearing and sent then away. This did not stop them from spying, however, and night after night they crouched at the keyhole and heard their sister talking lovingly to someone within. But in the morning when she unlocked the door they could see there was no one there.
At last they devised a plan. They prepared a drink of sweet wine into which they had dropped a sleeping potion and persuaded their sister to drink it. She fell asleep at once, and they laid her on her bed and fastened open knives and sharp needles on the window-sill and bolted the window. When darkness came, Finist the Falcon came flying to his love. The needles pierced his breast and the knives cut his brilliant wings, and though he beat against the window it remained closed. “You have ceased to love me!” he called. “So be it, you shall never see me again, unless first you journey through three times nine lands to the thirtieth tsardom, wear out three pairs of iron shoes in your search, break three iron staves, and gnaw away three church-loaves of stone!”
Through her drugged sleep the girl heard these bitter words, but she could not open her eyes. In the morning when she woke she saw how the window had been barred with knives and needles and she saw the blood. It was then that she realized what had happened, and she wept. And though she waved her feather and cried, “Come, my own Finist” no falcon came; the charm was broken.
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