Chapter 1
A Baby in a Case

On a bright autumnal morning when everything in the world appeared harshly vivid and disgracefully happy and the foliage on the trees shone as if it was doused with golden tinsel, from the entrance of a multi-storey house on Rublev Road came a stooping tall person in a grey coat.
His name was Herman Durnev, the director of the firm Second-Hand Socks and the father of a year-old daughter Pipa (short for Penelope).
Stopping under the eaves of the entrance, Durnev looked around disapprovingly. The sun, whose roundish face was as flat as a pancake, indulged itself on the neighbouring roof as if being lazy and considering whether it would be worthwhile for it to rise further or to come down as is. On a pile of leaves not far from the entrance a woman in an orange overall was half lying and looking into the open hatch. Her profile was regular, Greek outlines, and the copper-red hair puffed out so that they made one involuntarily think of snakes. In the hatch someone was rumbling and messing around boisterously. The haughty sparrows were pecking something on the asphalt, briskly, like rubber balls, jumping away from passers-by.
From the windows and cellars, from squares and empty parks, from the crowns of trees and the sky with wisps of clouds hanging, from cats’ eyes and ladies’ handbags, from the exhaust pipes of automobiles, from price lists at the stores, and the still sunburnt noses of summer residents — from everywhere, rubbing carrot yellow palms, the quite young, recently born October looked out.
But all this beauty was of no concern whatever to Herman Durnev. Weather, and in general nature, only interested him enough for determining whether or not to take an umbrella with him or whether it was time to put snow tires with spikes on the car.
He looked at his watch and reached for a small box with homeopathic medicine.
“What a cad this sun is! One, two... And indeed you cannot spit on it... At least it generally dies out... Really, on such a day who can be in the mood for work? Five, six... Sooner or later I’ll really have an ulcer... Or already have... Seven...” he muttered, counting off little beads and placing them under his tongue.
When the little beads had dissolved, Durnev started to think better and said to himself:
“Well now, now I’ll indeed live until dinner if I don’t get blood poisoning from the new corn plaster.”
Certainly Durnev also did not suspect that he was being observed. A large disgusting-looking bird: gloomy, dishevelled, with a long scruffy neck on which there were almost no feathers, was observing him from the eaves of the entrance. The bird held in its beak a photograph cut out from a magazine and was looking at it... yes, it was the same — Herman Durnev, taken together with his wife Ninel and daughter Pipa at the International Suspenders Exhibition in the All-Russia Exhibition Centre.
Occasionally the bird lowered the photograph onto a metal sheet and started to meticulously compare the present Durnev with the photograph. At the same time disgusting greenish lumps of mucus dripped from the beak onto the photograph.
It is possible to imagine how surprised Durnev would be if he were to casually raise his head and take a look at who was sitting on the eaves of the entrance. However, Herman Nikitich was not among those who pay attention to birds, if, it goes without saying, it was not a cooked chicken lying before him on a plate. Moreover, at the given moment the dodgy mind of the head of the firm Second-Hand Socks was occupied with the solution of a question, how to get custom clearance for two railroad cars of used handkerchiefs under the guise of goods for children.
Durnev walked down from the porch and, stepping on the charmingly bright yellow leaves several times with obvious pleasure, turned on his heel. Having done this, already completely indifferently he passed many other leaves and sat down in the new black car. The car started to purr and was off. The bird with the naked neck gravely broke away from the eaves and flew after the car, clearly not intending to lose sight of it.

* * *

The woman sitting on the lawn, whom Durnev in passing thought of as a repair person, followed the bird with a penetrating glance and muttered to herself under her breath:
“I would like to know what Lifeless Griffin is doing here. The last time I met him was when they got the Titanic down into the water. Don’t remember what happened with the steamship there but for sure there was some trouble.”
She threw up her hand, on her middle finger was a sparkling ring, and she whispered quietly:
“Sparkis frontis!”
At the same moment a green spark escaped from the ring and singed one of the bird’s wings. Losing feathers, Lifeless Griffin collapsed onto the asphalt like a rock, crowed something hoarsely and, taking off again, threw himself behind the nearest house.
The mysterious person blew on the glowing ring.
“I hate these living corpses. They cannot be killed a second time. Indeed better to deal simply with evil spirits,” she muttered.
Meanwhile, in the hatch, something came down with a terrible crash. Water splashed.
“A-a-choo!” It was heard from the hatch so deafeningly that the cover even jumped up.
Having forgotten about the bird, the repair person — if, of course, this was a repair person — leaned anxiously over the hatch:
“Professor, you will catch cold! I beg you, at least put on a scarf!”
“Medusa, don’t be ridiculous! A scarf will not help divers!” A voice immediately responded.
But this did not calm the woman a bit.
“I swear by the Hair of The Ancient One, it’s really too much! Only imagine, the very academician of White magic, the head of the Tibidox School of Magic, Sardanapal Chernomorov is forced to remove the simplest spells of the evil spirits! Where, please permit me to ask, are our junior magicians, where are the assistants?” She asked, pressing her lips tightly.
The rumbling in the hatch stopped. To the surface rose a small rosy chubby person dressed in an orange overall, from which water was trickling down... No, please excuse me, not an overall but a robe. It could seem like an overall only to a not very keen observer and even then only at first glance. Precisely the same orange robe was also on his companion.
“A-a-choo! Medusa! All this, right, this nonsense, it’s not worthwhile to trouble anyone! A-a-choo! Without practice, in two years I would become a helpless office magician. Are there any among us lazy people who can even turn into a pig without the ring? To say nothing of the highest disciplines, such as theoretical magic, levitation, protection from hexes, or the production of talismans.”
Having cited this deadly, in his opinion, reason, the academician Sardanapal stood on tiptoes and cheerfully looked around. His right moustache was green and the left yellow. But the strangest thing was that the moustaches were never in a state of rest for a second. They either coiled like two live ropes, or were interlaced, or aimed to entwine the temples of the eyeglasses and pull them off from the chubby person’s nose. True, it was not so simple to do this, since the glasses were kept on clearly not so much by the temples, having come loose a long time ago, as by a special spell.
As far as the beard of the academician was concerned, its colour was generally not determined, since it first appeared then disappeared. For sure it was possible to say only one thing — the beard was phenomenally long, so long that it was necessary to repeatedly wind it around the body and to hide the ends in a pocket.
Noticing finally that his robe was soaked, the head of the school of magic muttered:
“Firstus drumus!”
Steam came off the clothing and a few minutes later it was completely dry again.
“Ah, what a wonderful fall day!” Sardanapal exclaimed, turning to his companion. “It’s like that day they chopped off my head for the first time! Don’t you agree, Medusa?”
The instructor of studies of evil spirits, the associate professor Medusa Gorgonova, grimaced and ran her fingers along her neck.
“Ugh! It’s possible to wait only for dirty tricks from moronoids... They also chopped off my head. Unrestrained type in winged sandals, staring into his own shield. Then I was a badly brought up witch with nightmarish habits, and only you, Professor, would re-educate me,” she said.
The moustaches of Sardanapal trembled with pleasure.
“Do stop, how many times can one be thanked! A real trifle it was to stick in your head! For that it was not even necessary to resort to serious magic, a simple and plain spinning spell was quite sufficient. Well, and that you renounced your previous habits, — honour and praise to you! My credit was... ahem... of the minimum... ahem...”
“How can you say so?!” Medusa exclaimed. “I changed travellers into sculptures! Anyone who looked at me instantly became stone!”
“Nonsense, don’t think of that! You were a very young girl, having complexes because of pimples, and here you bewitched those poor devils who saw you by chance. Frankly speaking, I understand you very well: these ancient Greeks poked their noses into everywhere. You even took yourself out of their sight further to the island, and they nevertheless gadded about close by, swinging their swords. All that was demanded of me was to cure you of pimples. And what a beauty you have become! Even Koshchei the Deathless constantly blushes when he comes flying into Tibidox on the skeleton of his faithful horse...”
“Bad old man! Forty kilograms of silver-plated bones, gold crock, amber teeth — and all this in armour from Paco Grabanne!” Medusa frowned.
“But you’ll not argue that he has fallen in love with you!”
Associate professor Gorgonova blushed embarrassingly. The red spots flaring up suddenly in different places on her cheeks resembled something like cherries.
“Sardanapal! I beg you!” She exclaimed reproachfully.
The moustaches of the academician of white magic trembled guiltily.
“Cursed malice! After I accidentally drank an infusion with harpy venom, in no way can I get rid of it. I’ve tried the liver of dragon, and half a glass of green spirit with a drop of basilisk bile in the morning and before bed — nothing helps!” He complained.
“Don’t apologize, I’m not offended. I simply don’t like it when they utter that name around me...” Medusa softened. “Better tell me this: did you really drag me here from Tibidox itself only to remove the spell of this utterly useless hatch, which pulls in keys and coins of passers-by? Only don’t be sly. We’ve already known each other for three thousand years...”
Sardanapal reproachfully looked at his companion and blew his nose into a gigantic star-covered hanky, which had mysteriously appeared suddenly in his hand. The stars on the hanky winked and formed themselves into whimsical constellations, moreover the constellation Ara attempted with meteorites to get rid of the constellation Sagittarius.
“Medusa, you’re arguing like a sorceress. Put yourself in the place of a normal person. Keys — they’re not trash. A person deprived of keys has a real chance of spending the night on a bench and catching a head cold...  Like me, for example.”
“Your head cold is from your not putting on a scarf when we flew over the ocean... And the needs of moronoids disturb me very little. In their world there are fully enchanted hatches, turnstiles gone hog wild, and cellars slamming shut by itself. Evil spirits don’t sit on their hands. We’ll hardly leave and they’ll again put a spell on this hatch. And we’ll not be able to do anything about it.”
Seeing that his companion was starting to get angry, Academician Sardanapal lightly blew on the hanky, and it melted in his palm, having changed into a dark-blue washcloth beforehand.
“Excuse me, Medusa. Recently I suspect that someone also put a spell on my sense of humour. Not excluding that the Tadzhik genies put an evil eye on it, I forbade them to arrange dust storms... M-m... Did you see the man, who recently went out of the entrance?”
“I saw. But how did you manage to? I must say that you were underground!”
Sardanapal smiled mysteriously:
“Oh, if I want to see something, a few metres of asphalt cannot hinder me. And what do you think of him?”
“Extremely unpleasant character... Br-r... Even among moronoids you usually expect better.”
“Now, now, Medusa, don’t you be so harsh. At least out of respect for the memory of Leopold Grotter.”
“LEOPOLD GROTTER? He knew him?” Medusa exclaimed dumbfounded.
Sardanapal nodded.
“More than that. He’s his relative. And even sufficiently close — in all the nephew of his grandmother’s second cousin. Of course, for moronoids of this type — related only through Adam, but you and I know the formula of magic-kinship of Astrocactus the Paranoid!”
“He is a relative of Grotter! So this is why we...”
“Shh!” The academician suddenly brought a finger to his lips, ordering Medusa to keep quiet. Both his moustaches at once sprang up and pointed at the sewage hatch.
Nodding, Medusa noiselessly stole up to the hatch and, squatting down, abruptly pushed her hand through it. At the same second a nasty screech was heard from the well.
“There it is! I got it! Hey, stop!”The instructor of studies of evil spirits shouted.
When the hand of Medusa again showed itself on the surface, her fingers firmly clutched the ear of a little lady with a bumpy violet nose and green hair. The feet of the hissing lady were very curious — flat and rather resembling flippers. The prisoner hissed, spat, clicked her triangular teeth, and attempted to kick Gorgonova first with the right flipper, then with the left, and then with both alternately.
“Killga for revenga! And tellgi someone to let gogi! Setgi upon bitingi! Fiegi on yougi! And fiegi on yougi!” She screamed furiously.
“How do you like that — a kikimora! Curious little example, sufficiently large...” Chernomorov commented, examining with interest the game caught by Medusa.
“Again it’s an evil spirit!” Medusa winced with disgust. “Now and then I begin to doubt that She-Who-Is-No-More actually disappeared. That someone sent Lifeless Griffin, and now here is this fright... Hey, don’t you twitch!”
“A-a-a! She scarega! Scumgi let gogi! Gogi my own businessgi! You needgi ripgi megi pantgi! Fiegi on yougi!” The kikimora squealed, not giving up the attempts to kick Medusa with her flippers. It was necessary for Medusa to hold her at a distance with an outstretched arm, which was not simple since the kikimora was sufficiently well-fed.
“Stop wailing! Who sent you? Speak!” Medusa demanded severely.
“No saygi nothingi! Stupidga witchga! Now peckgu you throughgu! Playgu in your coffingu!” The kikimora squealed angrily, trying to accompany her words with aimed spittle.
Gorgonova gave the kikimora a quick glance with her penetrating eyes.
“Try!” She said threateningly.
“You veryga need mega!” The sly kikimora instantly changed her mind and mournfully started to whisper that she was an unlucky orphan and that everyone could insult her, an orphan.
“Aha, you’ll insult yourself, orphan!” Sardanapal hummed and hawed. The academician pretended that he wanted to bring a finger to the mouth of the kikimora, and right away her sharp triangular teeth clicked, exactly like a trap. If Sardanapal did not jerk back his hand, he would have one finger less.
“She’ll not tell anything. I know this kind. And that she did not roam here of her own affair, it’s so clear. Maybe we’ll preserve her in alcohol for the museum so that no one would make a slip of the tongue?” The instructor of studies of evil spirits proposed, energetically shaking the kikimora by the ear.
“A-a-a-a-a! Don’t wantga be in alcoholga! Will keepga quietga! Will be the quietest hushga!” The kikimora began to bawl shrilly.
“Not worth it, Medusa. It’s completely not necessary to put her in a jar. I’ll make it so that she’ll forget everything.” With a dexterity which was difficult to expect from a clumsy phlegmatic person with a round belly, Sardanapal seized the kikimora by a flipper and, blowing into her ear, uttered in an undertone:
“Scleroticus marasmoticus! Fillissimo moronissimo!”
After this, he cold-bloodedly unclenched his fingers, dropping the spy onto the grass. For a while the green lady crazily shook her head, clearly in great confusion. She looked at Sardanapal and Medusa dully and without curiosity. Making several staggering steps on the lawn, the kikimora gathered her senses slightly, snorted contemptuously and, having reached the hatch in a waddle, jumped in there like a soldier. From the hatch a small fountain of water splashed out, several bad words were heard — and everything quieted down.
“She swam away,” said Sardanapal, indicating the direction with his green moustache.
“All these evil spirits are terribly boring. It’s about time to put a spell on them so that they would not butt in on the moronoids. One day they’ll upset the balance of power and then it’ll be bad for us all.” Medusa anxiously clicked her tongue.
Sardanapal dismissed it lightly:
“Nonsense, Medusa. You exaggerate, as always. The evil spirits — they are a confused force, sprung from chaos and partially preserved from the times of paganism. Yes, many evil spirits, dozens of times more than us magicians — white and black, but they were never in a state of agreement among themselves. How often I remember, the evil spirits always broke bans, played dirty tricks on the moronoids, and impaired the balance. But as long as the Hair of The Ancient One is whole and the Gates are standing, our world is in danger from nothing. Even from the direction of the black magicians, whom we’ll in no way smoke out of Tibidox.”
“And what about She-Who-Is-No-More?”
“I agree, she was unique, who knew how to organize the evil spirits and to set them on us. Moreover, she almost managed to force us magicians to hand over our positions to her. If not for Leopold Grotter and his newborn daughter...”
“Not only Grotter. You never feared her, Professor! Even when she was in power!”
Sardanapal bashfully turned pink:
“Oh, certainly! I’m always ready to utter in everybody’s hearing her true name — Plague-del-Cake! You see? Plague-del-Cake! And nothing terrible!”
The loud voice of the academician did not have time to stand still in the shifting labyrinth of high-rises as the glass of the terrace on the third floor spurted out splinters and from there, whipping with the cord, a gleaming iron flew out. With a whistle cutting the air, it rushed along precisely to Sardanapal’s head. Picking up the hems of his robe, the academician quickly jumped aside and muttered something. In that same moment the iron turned into vapour.
“Did you see that? She-Who-Is-No-More wanted to kill you!” Medusa exclaimed fearfully.
“Nonsense. There is already no Auntie Plague... Simply one of the old spells snapping into action. She scattered thousands of them everywhere.” Sardanapal smiled and stepped on an escaped plug trying to coil around his leg with its cord.
Medusa flinched from loathing. In her thin hand in an unknown manner appeared a lorgnette, with which she examine parts of the destroyed iron.
“What an abomination! The next nasty invention of the moronoids... We’re leaving! There’s nothing more for us to do here.”
Chernomorov shook his head:
“And here’s where you’re mistaken. The time has come to carry out the most unpleasant and difficult part of our mission. I started to talk about this but we were interrupted. We must... however painful this is for us... leave Tanya to the man whom you just saw.”
Medusa Gorgonova recoiled. Her copper-red hair, even without being tousled, rose suddenly on end and started to hiss. A casual person not knowing what Medusa was connected with long ago in her past could swear that he just saw a ball of entwined snakes.
“WHAT?! Did I hear right? You want to give the daughter of Leopold Grotter to this pitiful moronoid? The girl who, in an unknown manner, survived a struggle with She-Who-Is-No-More? The girl with whom after a meeting She-Who-Is-No-More vanished?”
Detecting the angry notes in Medusa’s voice, the academician hurriedly turned away in order to not accidentally look her in the eyes. To remove ancient magic is possible, but it has side effects.
“Medusa, we don’t have another way out,” he said softly. “We simply cannot act otherwise. I swear by the Hair of The Ancient One, I would sooner let my moustaches be shaved off and my beard be cut than to give the daughter of Grotter to this moronoid, but... we must, we are simply obligated to do this for the good of the entire Tibidox.”
“But why?” Medusa exclaimed. “Why?”
The greatest of the magicians sunk down to the heap of leaves and stretched out his legs, which were in faded old-fashioned stockings. The last time he was in the human world was during the time of Catherine II and now, trying to dress fashionably, he missed the minor details.
“I’ll describe to you how everything was that night. You remember three days ago when everything happened, a terrible thunderstorm broke out...”
“... clearly of magical origin. We don’t even know exactly who sent it,” added Medusa.
“Precisely. On that night through the window of the main tower of Tibidox, where, as you know, my alchemic laboratory is located, a wet trembling little cupid in red suspenders flew right to me...” reported Sardanapal.
His moustaches immediately formed into two hearts. They liked to slightly spite their host. Hiding a smile, the associate professor Gorgonova licked her lips.
“A cupid? To you? But indeed a cupid — is amour, and amour...”
The moustaches rose up in offence. The right one even attempted to smack Medusa on the nose but could not reach her.
“I should explain who these cupids are,” Sardanapal pronounced dryly. “I’ll confuse them with neither harpies nor house spirits nor members of the dragonball team of Tibidox. And it’ll be known to you, the purpose of his visit was far from romantic. In our dull century they more often declare their love by telephone. The arrows of amour already break through to no one anymore — the skin has become painfully thick, here it’s necessary for the wretched cupids to be occupied with mail delivery. And should they somehow earn nectar and ambrosia for themselves? So here, the little cupid squeezed his wet suspenders off and handed me a letter from Leopold Grotter.”
“The last letter of Grotter!” Medusa exclaimed. Her irony instantly evaporated. “But you never told anyone...”
The moustaches of Sardanapal swept with the speed of windshield wipers, showing that this was top secret.
“Certainly no one. And you’ll soon understand why. Only those I absolutely trust should know the truth. I sent the little cupid to warm up in a Russian bath — I confess, I’m even glad that the cyclopes built it in our basement (although sometimes the steam undoubtedly starts with a jerk), — and I immediately began to read the letter. It was very laconic: Grotter informed that after many failures he had succeeded in finally obtaining the Talisman of Four Elements.”
Medusa’s pupils narrowed. She looked uneasily around the hatch, checking whether a curious bumpy face climbed from it.
“Most likely I’ve lost my mind,” she muttered dizzily. “The Talisman of Four Elements, comprising the forces of fire, air, earth, and water! A Talisman giving enormous power to whoever wears it... Perhaps, the one who wields the Talisman could defy the very... She-Who...”
“Yes, Plague-del-Cake,” Sardanapal courageously defined more precisely, involuntarily glancing upward: whether an iron would yet whistle. “Grotter wrote: in order to get the Talisman, he used one hundred forty-seven different components, among which, as I assume, carnelian and mouse tears absolutely had to be present... Well, but the secret of all the rest he took with himself to the grave...”
“And his Talisman? You have it?” Medusa asked excitedly.
“The Talisman had vanished. It disappeared in the most improbable way. But you have not listened to the end... Hardly waiting for the end of the thunderstorm, I sat on the jet sofa and flew to Leopold Grotter.”
“You flew on the jet sofa?”
Chernomorov was embarrassed. Nevertheless, one can hardly say very.
“Yes, I understand what you want to say: someone among the students, especially from the “black,” could see and make a laughing stock of me. I’ll say: academician, laureate of the award of Magic Suspenders, head of the legendary Tibidox flying on a tattered sofa with plucked chicken wings... A sofa, from which copper springs stick out... It was already late, and no one saw me... And how? Really someone would look out the window, having heard nothing but a little rumble... M-m... I even almost ran into the stained-glass panel of the Hall of Two Elements, but if the glass also crumbled, then through the course of time... Nevertheless it was seven hundred years old...”
“A nightmare! And I thought that the stained-glass panel was fractured by lightning!” Medusa thought.
“At first I wanted to use a flying carpet, but to set out on a carpet in this dampness would be a waste: moth would damage it. And then, the jet sofa is almost one-and-a-half times faster... Well, and I don’t speak of boot-runners at all. Since, as they were hexed, their accuracy of landing is almost twenty versts... Oh, of course, I could take a mop with propeller or a flying vacuum, but you know full well that they are uncomfortable. One’s back becomes numb during long flights on them, and the absence of baggage carrier interferes with taking even the least load with you.”
The instructor of studies of evil spirits sighed very quietly. For a long time, those in Tibidox were already used to Academician Sardanapal’s eccentricities. He could very well, mixing up the epochs, appear at work in a Roman toga or set someone’s ear wax on fire by mistake, after confusing it with a grey chemical. And what about that case with the guest from Bald Mountain, when the academician sent him on a three-month sleep, having accidentally read to him the hibernation spell for gophers instead of the salutatory speech? But whatever you may say, nevertheless he was the greatest magician since The Ancient One.
“Are you listening to me, Medusa? In my opinion you were distracted!” The academician reproachfully glanced at his companion, and she, worrying, understood too late that she forgot to protect her thoughts with a guard spell.
When you deal with a powerful magician, never overlook any small detail.
“So, I flew to Leopold,” continued Sardanapal. “The wind was favourable, so that I was on the road for no more than three hours. Before reaching the place, I detected a great number of evil spirits swarming around his house. They were behaving very strangely — muttering something, panting, walking in circles, and were generally somewhat dejected. Noticing me, the evil spirits dispersed in countable minutes. You know these essences: first many of them, then suddenly, at one go, none...”
“And no one even attempted an attack?” Medusa was astonished.
“Absolutely not. I did not believe my own eyes. Only Plague-del-Cake could assemble so many evil spirits in one place, and she would indeed not miss a chance to settle a score with me. Here’s the riddle — still very recently the evil spirits were ready to tear us into shreds, but now it’s as if we don’t exist for them... Busy with their own little squabbles.”
“And then you surmised that She-Who-Is-No-More vanished?”
“Well, I haven’t quite surmised yet, but I’m already pondering. I approached the house of Leopold, knocked — no sound in answer. Then I pushed the door, and it opened. It didn’t even open but simply fell from a single touch. In the house everything was turned upside down. Internal walls had collapsed, handrails were charred, only chips left from the furniture. Likely someone endowed with immense magical power uttered a spell of total annihilation. I rushed into the laboratory. It suffered most of all. Even the granite boulder that served Leopold as a table for experiments crumbled into powder, I hardly touched it...” the voice of Sardanapal trembled. “Grotter and his wife Sophia... there was already no help for them. Even I could not help, although, as you know, Medusa, I slightly understand magic. But here is a miracle — in the middle of the laboratory, on the floor dented by the spell, among the crumbled plaster lay a case for a double bass, and in it — a tiny little girl, their daughter... We knew the Grotters well, Medusa, they were people of skill, magicians of superior material. Magic and music — what they lived for. They did not even have a baby carriage for the child, managed entirely with a case for the double bass. Afraid that the girl was also dead, I leaned over the case, and — oh, a miracle! — she was sleeping serenely, and gripped in her palm was a silver scorpion of Plague-del-Cake...”
Medusa straightened abruptly. Her copper-red hair again hissed like snakes.
“How? That same scorpion-killer which She-Who-Is-No-More sent to sting her victims when she wanted to take pleasure in their tortures?”
“Yes. But it could not injure the girl, although on the tip of her nose I noticed two red spots. Likely the scorpion stung her directly on the birthmark. Even a light bite was usually sufficient to kill an adult magician... But she, this baby, simply crushed it. A year-old girl, not even awake, dealt with the silver scorpion.”
“However, it’s incredible that she survived. But if the scorpion got rid of its venom? Or was it used earlier?” Gorgonova asked with distrust.
“No, there was enough venom. And Plague-del-Cake did not keep old scorpions. But even if we forget about the scorpion, another thing remains: the spell of complete annihilation — this terrible white flash which burns out everything all around, — also could not harm Tanya. And indeed this form of magic is not among those directed selectively. It destroys everyone and everything that happened to be close by, with the exception of the one who cast it.”
Tears rolled down the cheek of Medusa and fell onto the heap of maple leaves. The leaves began to smoke. The first unknown folk narrator calling female tears fuel was likely acquainted with a sorceress.
“The unlucky Grotters! But what about the Talisman of Four Elements?” Medusa sobbed.
“I was never able to find it,” said Sardanapal. “It was neither by Leopold nor his wife Sophia nor by the child... It was nowhere in the house. Most likely it was destroyed by the spell together with all the rest of Grotter’s inventions. True, at first I suspected that Plague-del-Cake took it, but, if this were so, we would already have known about it. No, it actually disappeared, and the strange behaviour of the evil spirits — a better confirmation of that. I don’t know what happened in the house of the Grotters, but this tiny little girl did what no single magician could... She stopped She-Who-Is-No-More...”
Only now detecting the burning leaves under her feet, Medusa uttered a short spell accompanied by a sign, which her magic ring traced directly in the air. The fire went out. For a little while the sign traced by Medusa hung in the air, weakly wavering. Gorgonova angrily wiped it off with her palm.
“But why do you want to give the girl up to Durnev? Why send her into the world to moronoids? Why can’t we bring her up in Tibidox?” She asked with vexation.
“Medusa, have you forgotten what place Tibidox is? Indeed you should know, but there’s absolutely nothing for a child to do there. Only imagine to yourself, Tibidox — and suddenly a child?
“And if Eyeless Horror comes to the surface? Or, let us say, Dumpling Maker let go of his Coffin Lid, and it, like last time, lying in wait for students lingering on the dark stairs? And the cyclopes, getting violent each full moon? And Ripper, whom, by the way, you wrongfully dragged out of the scorching cave in the Earth’s core, where he was incarcerated.”
“He promised that he would drop all his habits and would be our porter. You yourself know that it is complicated to rely on the cyclopes. These dimwits have heads like sieves,” Medusa said, justifying herself. “And later... well, you yourself know what happened later...”
“Precisely... The invisible Ripper walks along the corridors of Tibidox, howls, croaks, and does what suits him, and even we cannot catch him because he can be reflected only in the Mirror of Fate, but he doesn’t show his nose there!” Sardanapal shouted angrily. “And you want me to let the daughter of Grotter into Tibidox?”
“But I can cast guard spells! The most powerful guard spells, which neither Ripper nor Death nor Wooden Hag nor Eyeless Horror will trespass. And the empty Wheelchair and the flying Coffin Lid — they are indeed a trifle altogether. They are only capable of causing harm to a novice not knowing the rebuff spell...” Medusa said with contempt.
“And a newborn girl, in your opinion, is capable of uttering it?”
“No, she is not capable. But, Sardanapal, we can in the end bathe her in the Deflecting Bath, and then...”
The academician of white magic interrupted her:
“Yes, I agree. We can. Coffin Lid — it’s nothing. Wheelchair — also nothing. Freezing Traps and Statue-Crushers also, perhaps, nonsense. But Nameless Cellar? And is the Vanishing Floor also a trifle? We, up to now, still don’t know what became of those two bums who managed to make their way there. And in conclusion, what will you say about the Sinister Gates?”
Medusa shuddered.
“You’re right, Sardanapal,” she said, crushed. “I forgot about Nameless Cellar and Sinister Gates... But she’s the daughter of Grotter! A girl who managed to survive a meeting with She-Who-Is-No-More and to endure...”
The academician interrupted her:
“We don’t know how she managed it, but we know what this cost Leopold and Sophia. And to subject the girl to danger again... Besides this...” here Sardanapal made a long pause, “there is still one more reason... Extremely important, for which Tanya in no way can be found in Tibidox. In any case, she must not appear there for as long as possible...”
“What reason?!” Medusa exclaimed hotly. Sardanapal looked at her reproachfully.
“For the time being I cannot tell you, although I trust you more than anybody. But it’s that same reason why Grotter did not remain to live in Tibidox, but took Sophia and the child away into such wilderness, where, besides marshy brownies, werewolves, and evil spirits, you will meet no one else. And it’s Grotter — with his capital education, excellent manners, and habit of making music daily. Understand, Medusa?”
The associate professor Gorgonova nodded despondently, realizing that the reason that drove Grotter into the wilderness and forced him to forsake Tibidox in the bloom of his career had to be very weighty.
“So, it’s decided... Tonight we’ll return here with the child and abandon her to Herman Durnev and his wife. It cannot be that the sight of a poor orphan would not touch their hearts... Let them bring her up together with their own daughter. Girls of the same age will be merrier together. We’re going, Medusa. Time for us! A-a-a-a-choo!” The academician suddenly sneezed so deafeningly that all the constellations were blown off his hanky at once, and the phone booth standing by the house tumbled with a crash to one side.
“I said you’d catch a cold!” Medusa said reproachfully.
“Nonsense!” Sardanapal was angry. “Stop keeping an eye on my health! He who had his head chopped off three times cannot be afraid of a common head cold... Choo!”
The academician of white magic wrapped himself tighter in his orange robe and, decisively treading on his beard, made his way past the houses to the small square. His restless moustaches were making a signal in time to the steps: one-two, one-two. Medusa picked her way after him.
Many passers-by filling the street in that hour and hurrying on their own affairs paid them very little attention. And what should even draw their curiosity when they only saw a shaggy mongrel and barely at a distance a thin elegant borzoi with a long snout? For the experienced magicians it constituted no difficulty to cook up a couple of deflecting spells.
Having taken about thirty steps, the academician Sardanapal awkwardly jumped up, clicked his knees in the air and, growling out a spell, dissolved in the air. Medusa in contrast to her teacher did not possess the ability of instantaneous disappearances from the human world. She reached the square and extracted from the bushes a kid’s rocking horse painted with Khokhloma designs. Having checked that all twelve talismans, without which the rocking horse simply would not take off, were in place, she clambered up onto it with difficulty and, soaring up steeply, disappeared among the clouds.
It was curious that even on the ridiculous kiddie rocker the associate professor Gorgonova contrived to appear majestic and to look ahead like a hawk. Somewhere along the way she ran into Lifeless Griffin; the wretch would have to pay. However, it was already dead, so there was nothing for it to lose.
The sun started to yawn lazily and climbed up from the roof. The unusual day continued.

* * *

Herman Durnev had one hundred and seventeen bad moods. If it is possible to describe the first mood as slightly bad, then the last, the hundred-and-seventeenth, amounted to a good force-eight storm. The head of the firm Second-Hand Socks returned home that day precisely in this hundred-and-seventeenth bad mood. On the road it constantly seemed to him that other cars were moving too slowly, and he began to hit the horn continually with his palm.
At the same time it twice seemed to him that the sound of the horn was too quiet, and then, sticking his head out the window of the car, he roared:
“Hey, what are you dragging? Move it, move! You want me to come out and beat you up? You want to give a sick person a stroke?”
Durnev, it goes without saying, considered himself the sick person.
The basic reason Herman Nikitich’s mood was so abruptly spoilt was the sensation that some strange and mysterious forces were pursuing him and making fun of him. Everything began from that same morning when he just set off for work. Even along the way something started to rumble violently in the baggage carrier of the car, rumbling so that the car even jumped, but when he went out to look, it turned out there was nothing in there. When Durnev got back behind the wheel, he discovered that his own portrait from a magazine was stuck to the windshield of the automobile. Moreover, it appeared as if the wind dropped onto the glass a page soaked in a puddle...
The director was so anxious that when he ripped off his picture, his fingers were shaking and he accidentally tore part of his head, together with the ear, from the photograph. Seeing in this a bad omen for himself, Herman Nikitich immediately swallowed thirty Relief tablets and washed them down with a bottle of valerian tincture.
When he nevertheless got to the office, he discovered that the wastebasket in his office was turned upside down, and all the garbage from it was unceremoniously shaken out onto the carpet. And not simply shaken out but also steeped in something stinky. The furious Durnev immediately fired the cleaning woman, though she swore that she did not even drop into his office.
Having opened the safe in order to take the press, he beheld there a pale fungus on a thin leg, which, when Herman Nikitich stretched out his hand to it, spread on the papers a sticky slime that could not be wiped off. After this incident Durnev collapsed into the armchair and for a long time sat in it, sweating and counting off small fractions with his teeth.
“Twenty five... twenty six... I’m not nervous at all... Why are you staring at me? Get back to work! Really, did I not ask you to get for me the price on old toothbrushes?” He began to yell at an employee timidly looking in.
The unlucky employee slid into his own tiny little office, which smelled of moth-eaten sweaters and worn jeans, and, collapsing onto the chair, nearly died of fright.
No need to explain that toward the evening Durnev had had quite a drop too much.
“Pour me anything to drink... Now you’ll see, soon something bad will happen!” He groaned as soon as he found himself at home.
In contrast to the office literally choked up from floor to ceiling with cut-price junk and worn out things, everything was completely new in Durnev’s home.
The wife of Herman Nikitich — Ninel — was as fat as her husband was thin. When she slept, her wrinkled cheeks spread all over the pillow, and her body, covered with a blanket, resembled a snowy mountain from which it was possible to ski down.
“Ah, Hermanchik, you invent everything! Don’t be so upset! You’re completely green like the fir on New Year! Let me kiss you on the cheek!” Ninel cooed with a juicy bass, reassuringly patting her husband on the frail back with a hand adorned with rings.
“Phew! Drop this tenderness!” Herman Nikitich growled. However, his bad mood dispersed a little, jumping from hundred-and-seventeenth to sixty-sixth, and later even to fiftieth.
After supper Durnev cheered up so much that he had the desire to spend time with his year-old daughter Penelope, or Pipa as she was tenderly called by her parents, who inherited from mama the moving eyebrows and figure of a porter, and from papa eyes bunched together, protruding ears, and sparse whitish hair. Of course the Durnevs doted on her and considered their Pipa the first beauty in the world.
The heiress of the Durnev family was sitting in the playpen and concentrating on breaking a doll. Three beheaded dolls were already scattered about on the floor, and their heads were mounted on parts of rattles decorating the playpen.
“What a smart little girl! She will be a director like her papa!” Durnev was touched.
He leaned over the playpen and made an attempt to kiss Pipa on the top of her head. The daughter grasped papa by the hair with her right hand, and with the plastic shovel

Chapter 2
The Gold Sword

Tanya Grotter awoke at dawn from the cold. On her thin blanket there was ice, and the same icy crust, only slightly thinner, stiffened on the pillow. For a while Tanya was still lying, hoping to hide under the damp blanket, but it was useless — it became even colder and more disgusting. Then Tanya threw off the blanket and hurriedly leaped up, dreaming of diving quickly into the apartment, into warmth.
She pulled the door once, twice, a third time, but it did not yield. Getting up on tiptoes, Tanya discovered that the lower latch was pushed shut. Pipa was up to her old tricks again. The last time she locked Tanya on the sunroom-balcony in the beginning of spring, Tanya caught a cold and spent a month and a half in the hospital with pneumonia. However, the time in the hospital was indeed not so bad, though they gave her a needle daily and even put her on an IV. There, in any case, she was in the warmth and no one nagged her thirty times a day. And now here again...
Tanya started to knock on the glass, but the Durnevs were sleeping soundly in the next room. Only a barrel of gunpowder exploding in the kitchen could wake them. As far as Pipa was concerned, although her bed was right next to it, she only giggled and made disgusting faces at Tanya. However, no faces, even the most disgusting, were as repulsive as her own horse face (inheritance from papa Herman) with round fish eyes (gift from mama Ninel) blinking on it.
“Hey you, fright, open now!” Tanya shouted to Pipa.
“Dream on! Sit there and freeze. All the same some day they’ll put you in prison, just like your daddy... And it’s disgusting to me: I don’t want you wandering around the apartment. You will steal anything,” snorted Pipa.
She reached from the drawer of the table a photograph in a frame and, flopping back down onto the bed, began to study it. Tanya did not know who was in this photograph because Pipa always locked it and never even casually turned the frame around. For sure Tanya knew only that Pipa was in love to distraction with whoever was in this photograph, moreover she was so in love that she stared at him no less than an hour a day.
“Come on, come! Show him your pimples!” Tanya shouted to her.
Pipa started to breathe heavily and furiously.
“Come on, come on! Only make sure you don’t stop breathing!” Shivering from cold, Tanya again shouted.
Having given this advice, she fumbled around the balcony with her eyes, estimating whether there was anything to hurl at Pipa. And if there was nothing to throw, then perhaps at least a suitable rope in order, after making a loop, to lower it from the window and hook the latch.
The Durnevs never told Tanya the truth about her parents. It gave them pleasure to incite the girl with stories about her papa being put in prison, and her mama dead, begging at a station. Uncle Herman and Aunt Ninel allegedly took in the same Tanya from pity. “And it’s clear that we made a mistake! You turned out to be as big a rascal as your daddy was!” Uncle Herman added obligingly.
And it was a blatant lie — Tanya was not a rascal, although she knew how to stand up for herself. Small, quick, smart, with small curls, she managed to be everywhere at once. Her sharp tongue cut like a razor.
“You have to be on your guard with this one!” Ninel sometimes declared, she being a person who could easily bite off a hand to the elbow and still without ceremony will tell anyone at all that it is not tasty. In reality Tanya was completely harmless, simply with the Durnevs humiliating her every second, there was no other way to survive.
From the middle of spring to the middle of fall the Durnevs forced Tanya to sleep on the glazed sunroom-balcony, and only when it became quite cold would she be allowed to lie down in the furthest and darkest room of the Durnev apartment. In that room were normally the vacuum, a stepladder, and a malicious dachshund by the name of One-And-A-Half Kilometres. This old bowlegged sausage hated the girl as much as the Durnevs themselves, and, fawning before the masters, was eternally hanging at her heels.
Ten years had gone by from that day when Herman and his spouse discovered the double bass case on their landing. It was again fall, but no longer bright and cheerful as then, but gloomy and rainy. There was night frost, and in the mornings icicles hung on the glazed balcony. Exactly the same ice was formed on both the girl’s thin mattress and her blanket. Possibly, the Durnevs would allow Tanya again to lie down in the room if it was not being redecorated recently.
“Just imagining this slovenly creature lying on the new bed and touching our new wallpaper with her fingers simply fills me with annoyance,” Aunt Ninel declared.
“Yes, pity that we threw out the old sofa... But, she will probably be able to sleep on the floor, on her mattress,” Uncle Herman said generously when he happened to be in a good mood. However, this occurred extremely rarely, because he had only one good mood and, as is known, one hundred and seventeen bad ones... That Uncle Herman became deputy several years ago and even headed the committee “Loving Aid to Children and Invalids” changed him very little. He, perhaps, became even more disgusting. And moreover, here were new elections at hand! Uncle Herman was walking around all the time gloomy and anxious and, only when going out onto the street, would he with loathing stretch on himself a smile like pulling on old and not very clean socks. From constant preoccupation he was more dried up. Even stray dogs tucked in their tails and wailed mournfully when Uncle Herman passed by.
And having failed to find anything on the balcony that would allow her to reach up to the latch, Tanya became slightly melancholy. She did not intend to beg Pipa to open it for her in order to not give her additional pleasure.
“Well, no matter, chuchundra! You’ll still discover five redundant mistakes in your next homework assignments!” She thought vindictively.
Tanya wrapped herself in the blanket, pressed her forehead against the glass, and began to look at the courtyard. Below, cars, small like beetles, were parked. The roofs of the garage-cockleshell glistened like silver. The sleepy yard-keeper, to spite everyone still sleeping, was rattling the cover of the waste bin.
“Now if I would be able to fly! I would open the window, spread my arms, and fly far, far away from here, hundreds, thousands of kilometres, to where my papa is! And if I would have wings, well, like that sheet, for example...” Tanya thought sadly.
Under her eyes the big red sheet, trembling on a broken branch of the maple, unexpectedly tore away, soared up the entire three floors, and was pasted to the glass directly opposite her face. While the girl was pondering how it could happen that the sheet flew up instead of down, the latch loudly clanged like the lock of a rifle.
Turning around, Tanya saw Aunt Ninel in a night gown. Wiping her eyes, Aunt looked at her with disgust. In the past ten years she had grown three times as stout and could now travel only in the service elevator. In order that she could squeeze into the kitchen, it was necessary to enlarge the door.
“Why are you hanging around here?” Aunt Ninel asked with suspicion.
“And why not? Your Pipa locked me in,” Tanya was bewildered. With the Durnevs she eternally felt guilty. Probably, they were aiming at this, day after day, year after year, poisoning her existence.
“Don’t you dare lie, thankless trash!” Aunt Ninel snapped, as if she did not just open the latch. “What’s this with ‘your Pipa’? And this after the cousin gave you her beloved pencil case as a birthday present?”
Tanya wanted to say that the pencil case was old, and all the pens either smeared or did not write at all, but she decided that it would be better to keep quiet. Especially as the next day Pipa purposely cut the pencil case up with a blade.
“Why do you keep quiet? You think it’s pleasant for me to talk with you? March into the kitchen to sort out the buckwheat! You love to eat — love also to prepare!” Aunt was angry.
Slipping past her, Tanya went to the Durnev’s kitchen with gleaming tiles glazed sky-blue and, having poured buckwheat out onto the table, began to sift the dark grains. To tell the truth, the buckwheat was sufficiently clean, but Uncle Herman and Aunt Ninel were crazy about ecologically clean food, extra-pure water, and other similar whims. Of filters alone they had a whole seven pieces in the kitchen.
True, the Durnevs nevertheless forced Tanya to drink from under the faucet in order to not pay for filter cartridges for her. However, Tanya also returned the favour, periodically pouring water from the toilet tank into the teapot for them.
Unwillingly sorting the buckwheat, the girl occasionally raised her head and looked sideways at her reflection in the large nickel-plated extension above the stove. The extension was new like the kitchen, and everything was reflected in it as in a mirror, only not flat but convex.
Either the extension flattered or Tanya actually looked considerably better than Pipa. Well-built, mischievous, sharp-eyed... Here only the small birthmark on the tip of the nose gave her either a mysterious or devil-may-care look.
How many long minutes, especially in first and second grade when they teased her terribly and hurt her feelings because of this birthmark, the girl examined it in the mirror! And the longer she examined it, the more often it came to her head that she never saw similar birthmarks on anyone. Her birthmark sometimes changed colour, becoming either pink and imperceptible or almost black. It could decrease and increase in size. Every time that Tanya got sick or not long before some big trouble the birthmark began to pulsate and would even be very hot as if it were being seared with a hot nail. And finally, right beside the birthmark it was possible to make out a scar consisting of two tiny dots. And are these not bites perhaps, and if so, from what? Maybe even the birthmark itself sprung from a bite?
Aunt Ninel looked into the kitchen. Her unwieldy hulk hung above the girl like a reinforced concrete plate.
“Why are you dawdling? Have you sorted out the buckwheat? Cook for us from this pile, and you can prepare for yourself something from these little black dots. And don’t be embarrassed. If bread is needed, take the leftover from guests. The mould on it can be cut off without efforts.”
For breakfast, besides kasha, the Durnevs ate red caviar and sandwiches with sturgeon. Tanya despondently sat on a stool next to the dog dish and chewed dry bread almost like rock. Moreover, when she started to move, the dachshund One-And-A-Half Kilometres growled and hung onto her sneakers with its teeth.
“Don’t you dare tease the dog!” Aunt Ninel screamed, and a contented Pipa unnoticeably stirred with her feet under the table, trying to anger the dachshund still more.
Unexpectedly from the frail chest of Uncle Herman, stirring the tea with a spoon, a heart-rending sigh was forced out.
“Please, don’t shout! My head aches terribly. I had an awful dream,” he asked pleadingly.
He had hardly uttered this when Aunt Ninel and Pipa instantly became quiet, and even One-And-A-Half Kilometres, this evil rheumatic pug stopped growling. The fact is that Uncle Herman NEVER IN HIS LIFE dreamt. In any case, in the past he did not talk about them.
“What did you see, pampushka?” Aunt Ninel sometimes called her husband pampushka, though it would be more correct to call him “skeletoshka.”
There and then, having altered “pampushka” into “skeletoshka” for herself, Tanya began to smile quietly and immediately looked around in fear. No, no one noticed, everyone was staring at the dreamer Uncle Herman in amazement.
Durnev looked fearfully sideways at the window.
“I dreamt of an old woman,” he said in a half whisper. “A terrible old woman who was sent to us in a cardboard box. An old woman with red eyes and disgusting slobbery jaw. She stretched out her arms... her arms were SEPARATE, not attached to the body... she gripped me by the neck with her bony fingers and demanded...”
“Mommy! What?” Pipa gave a squeak, dropping from her mouth the piece of sturgeon falling precisely onto the dachshund’s nose.
“She said: ‘Return to me what she’s hiding!’”
“Return what?”
“Where am I to know that from? I even don’t know who this ‘she’ is!” Uncle Herman snapped. He wanted to add something else, but suddenly Pipa screamed deafeningly:
“Eek! This fool nearly toppled the table! I’m scalded by tea!!!”
Both the older Durnevs at once turned and stared at Tanya. Pipa continued to squeal detestably, wailing that she must urgently be in the hospital and that she could not feel her legs. Tanya sat as in a fog, not understanding what happened and why everyone was looking at her. And then she suddenly perceived that she was squeezing the table-top with her hands. So this is why Pipa was squealing — she, Tanya, for some reason gripped the table and, abruptly pulling it, scalded her with tea!
Aunt Ninel turned around furiously. The stool under her — one of the new, recently purchased stools — cracked deafeningly.
“Don’t you infuriate me, I would but break it! Now march to get dressed and get to school!!” She yelled at Tanya.
The girl got up and, not understanding why her head was spinning, went into the room. She just now understood that everything happened at that moment when Uncle Herman mentioned the yellow old woman and her words: “Return to me what she’s hiding!”

* * *

Tanya was sent off to school alone. Pipa was making use of the situation in order to dump everything on the burn and remained at home to watch TV.
“Mama! Papa! Because of this painful attack I cannot go to the test! Now I’ll have precisely a three for this term! It’s thanks to her, this idiot! I get bad marks because of her!” She howled, although Tanya knew perfectly well that Pipa viewed tests as death in white slippers. Moreover the tea was indeed not quite so hot, and if the puffed up daughter of Uncle Herman and Aunt Ninel got burned, then only in her imagination.
But the most annoying thing was that both Uncle Herman and Aunt Ninel believed every word of their girlie.
“Oh, Pipa, well what can I do with this criminal? You know meanwhile we cannot send her to the orphanage, and they do not take anyone into the colony until they are fourteen!” Aunt Ninel lamented, when Tanya, dressed in an absurd crimson-grey jacket, on which instead of buttons there was some ugliness — either rosettes or bulbs, stood in the corridor.
“Nonsense,” Tanya could not contain herself. “If she will have a three, then only because she has more twos than pimples in her diary. Have you ever seen a person who wrote ‘vegetable’ not only with a soft sign but also in two words?”
“Don’t you dare speak out! And how, in your opinion, is it written, without a soft sign perhaps? That’s it, I have no more strength! Either some dirty shirker made an appointment with me, pretending to be invalids only on the grounds that they have no arms and legs, or this little monster... I can’t take anymore, I’m leaving...” Uncle Herman groaned and, pressing his temples with his hands, set off for the office.
Aunt Ninel moved up to Tanya, leaned toward her and, with hatred burning in her small eyes sunk into thick cheeks, started to hiss like a snake:
“You’ll pay for this! You’ll pay! Now I’ll definitely chuck your idiotic double bass case from the house!”
It seemed to Tanya that they precisely jabbed her with a red-hot knitting needle. Aunt Ninel knew how to find her weakest point. Indeed it would be better she called her a dimwit or a degenerate a hundred times — she was already used to this, — but to throw out the case...
“Just try to touch it!” Tanya shouted. The old double bass case, lying in a cabinet on the glazed balcony, was the only thing in the house of the Durnevs that utterly and completely belonged to her. It is complicated to say why Uncle Herman and Aunt Ninel did not chuck it before now. And another strange thing — why they never told Tanya about how this case turned up in their apartment and who, crying from hunger, lay in it.
“This indeed I will decide, my dear! Have no doubt: today your case will be in the gutter! And now march to school!” Aunt Ninel snorted with satisfaction.
Pipa, looming behind mama’s back, triumphantly stuck out her long tongue the colour of undercooked liver sausage. Multicoloured spots began to jump before Tanya’s eyes. In order not to fall, she leaned against the lintel. The face of Aunt Ninel seemed to her sculpted from fat.
“If... if you throw it out, I’ll leave home! I’ll live where it’s convenient, at the station, in the woods! You hear? You hear?” She yelled.
Aunt Ninel was lost for an instant. She did not suspect that Tanya could fly into such a rage. Usually the girl suffered everything silently. Moreover, it came to the mind of Uncle Herman’s wife that if the girl would live at the station, the reporters would sniff this out and it would prevent further advancement of her spouse as deputy of the committee “Loving Aid to Children and Invalids.” And if one considers the elections in two months, a scandal is especially not needed.
“I’m very frightened... And you live in the gutter if nothing else! Nevertheless I’ll chuck the case, if not today, then tomorrow. There’s no need for such a fright to be in our apartment,” Aunt Ninel barked already not so furiously, more simply to not immediately surrender her position, and, turning heavily on her thick heels, made her way to the kitchen.
Tanya picked up her bag with textbooks — a nightmarishly tight bag on which was depicted a goggle-eyed doll and which more suited first grade, and went out onto the landing.
Waiting for the elevator, she heard how Pipa was squealing hysterically and Aunt Ninel, making excuses, prattled to her:
“Well what can I do? Now we totally must not have a scandal. You know papa soon has elections! He’s so worried, so nervous, and here these petitioners still constantly drag themselves along to him on appointment! Indeed isn’t it enough for them that papa sacrifices two tons of expired canned food yearly in favour of the poor, not counting old clothing? Well no matter, very soon we’ll discard all the dirty rubbish of this beggar, you’ll see!”
On the way and even afterwards, in the school itself, Tanya was constantly wondering whether she would see her case again or not. Aunt Ninel found an excellent way to spoil her entire day. And even a set of other days too.

* * *

Arriving at school, Tanya soon realized that Pipa was absent from the test for nothing. For nothing because they cancelled the test, and instead of it arranged an excursion to the Armoury, which should have been on the following Thursday.
After the first class a terrible bustle broke out. A red bus with the sign “EXCURSION” drove into the schoolyard and began to signal. The class teacher Irina Vladimirovna was frantically swinging her arms — if these were not arms but wings, she would certainly take off — and shouted:
“Children, are you listening to me? The test has been cancelled! Everyone who has paid get into the bus! The rest go to help the cleaning woman wash stairs from the first to the fifth floor!”
Tanya sighed, sensing that this applied to her. The Durnevs paid only for Pipa. They never paid anything for Tanya — neither gifts for New Year, nor theatres, nothing. Even for school breakfasts or tickets Uncle Herman always handed out the money with the greatest reluctance, and that was only because if he refused to give it, it would immediately attract someone’s attention. As far as pocket money was concerned, it was not even worth mentioning. The only money that Tanya held in her hands in her entire life was a five-rouble coin she somehow found in winter, frozen in a puddle. She was so bewildered that she did not know how to spend it. The coin lay in her pocket for a long time, but later Aunt Ninel found it and stated that Tanya stole it from Pipa. By the way, for each five they paid Pipa fifty roubles, and forty for a four. However, more often Pipa got by with thirty roubles.
While her classmates got into the bus, Tanya continued to stand beside in embarrassment, estimating, whether she would be made to carry a rag along the steps or it would be possible to at least ask to bring water. She had already turned around in order to leave, but Irina Vladimirovna overtook her and, anxiously bobbing on the spot — she generally behaved exactly like a hen, — clucked:
“Grotter! Tatiana! Why are you not on the bus? You need a special invitation?”
“I don’t particularly want to... I cannot stand these museums,” Tanya said, trying not to look at her.
Irina Vladimirovna again bounced.
“Untrue, Grotter! You simply know that they did not pay for you! But they paid for Penelope. All the same money will be wasted. March into the bus and don’t make me nervous!”
Not believing in such luck, Tanya quickly got into the bus. Of course, in three years the Durnevs will reproach her that the unfortunate Pipa, scalded by boiling water, was lying almost in a coma and not taken to the Armoury because of her, and so they will find something to sting her. But for the time being it is possible to sit in the bus, look out the window at the houses floating past, and be glad. And later there will still be the excursion and the same long road back to the school. A whole day of happiness! And everything that will happen later, and all matters, is possible to simply discard from the head.
Tanya found for herself a pretty good place by the window, where next to her sat sullen and silent Genka Bulonov, from whom it was not worthwhile to wait for any dirty tricks, and nestled her forehead close to the glass. Swaying with difficulty, the bus left the schoolyard.
Grey damp houses gleamed. The signboards of stores began to sparkle. Trees dazzling with vividness spread like multicoloured card packs. Traffic lights winked. Dirty puddles scattered merry drops in the air. Passers-by looked around at the bus, and it seemed to Tanya that each was looking precisely at her and thinking: “It’s carrying her, here she’ll go to the Armoury, but I have all kinds of boring business!”
When they passed along their district, several times large advertising panels flashed. From the placards Uncle Herman looked pink and merry. The best deputy — your deputy! The inscription under his photograph said.
On the placards Uncle Herman really looked quite good even.
Only Tanya alone, perhaps Pipa and Aunt Ninel as well, knew how many hours the photographer wasted with Uncle Herman and how much cotton wool he told him to put under his cheeks so that Uncle Herman would look a little less like a vampire.
But now even the physiognomy of “the best deputy” seen everywhere could not poison Tanya’s happiness. She was going to the museum! For the first time in her life something pleasant has come her way! It was indeed as if they muddled up something in the sky and the horn of abundance, always spilling on Pipa, spilled on her by mistake.
“You... this...” someone’s hoarse voice was heard beside her. Tanya turned around in wonder. Likely Bulonov uttered it, and she had completely forgotten about his existence. As well as the fact that he generally knows how to talk.
“What’s with you, Bouillon?”
“Nothing...” Bulonov growled out and again was immersed in silence. He had such a contented look as if he already knew the future of ten days ahead.
“Well nothing, so hold your tongue! Got carried away here!” Tanya snorted and, instantly forgetting her neighbour, was again occupied with what was happening beyond the window.
And there something interesting was actually taking place. Suddenly a large Russian borzoi was linked to the bus and for a long time was running next to it. Still it startled the girl why this expensive dog went for a walk without its owner. It was also strange that this borzoi was tearing along not in the manner of a normal dog, with confused barking attempting to grab hold of a wheel with its teeth. It was speeding along intelligently, all this time without turning its watchful eyes away from Tanya. It was even possible to think that the borzoi was perturbed by something and was attempting to communicate something to her.
Suddenly Genka Bulonov yawned with such a dreadful click of his jaws that half the bus turned to him. Tanya was also distracted for an instant, and when she again looked out the window, the Russian borzoi had already disappeared. There, where the bus had recently pulled up to the traffic light, stood a skinny red-haired woman with the dishevelled red hair moving so threateningly, as if... no, certainly these were not snakes. The skinny woman, it seemed, without special interest looked sideways at the bus and, turning, walked away. Her strange long raincoat was bespattered by mud in the same places as the fur of the borzoi rushing along the puddles. Tanya even leaped up, but the bus was already moving. An instant — and in the glass again flickered only grey houses, telephone booths, and transparent bus stops.
Several minutes passed before Tanya finally discarded this story from her head.
Yes, today was definitely a special day, resembling very little the previous three thousand two hundred and eighty-five days past since that evening when a worn double bass case appeared on the landing of a multi-storey house on Rublev Road...
Before the entrance into the Armoury the children were arranged in pairs. Doing a recount of everyone, Irina Vladimirovna almost fainted from the responsibility. The potbellied gym teacher Prikhodkin, sent on the excursion as a second escort, behaved in a more even-tempered way: counted no one and only blinked despondently. Likely he would with great pleasure doze in the bus.
“We’re visiting the museum in pairs! All exhibits we touch only with our eyes! With eyes, I said! Remember, everything is under surveillance! Just try to break a display case or stick chewing gum onto the tsar’s throne!” Irina Vladimirovna squeaked threateningly.
Genka Bulonov immediately came to life. It was evident that the idea of using chewing gum attracted him by its novelty.
When her turn arrived to hand over her jacket to the cloakroom, Tanya, as always, sensed awkwardness. Under the jacket she had a dreadful jean shirt with a frayed collar, which was befitting perhaps to be thievishly tossed into the garbage bin at three in the morning. Although the Durnevs were rich, they always dressed the girl very badly — in the most worn and dirty junk, which Uncle Herman’s firm dealt in. And Aunt Ninel always picked such footwear, either too small for Tanya or big to such an extent that she had to shuffle with the soles on the floor so that her feet would not slip.
Not surprising then that, seeing Tanya in these rags, even Aunt Ninel, as dry and tactless as an African rhino, now and then experienced some kind of pang of conscience and began to tell all the teachers indiscriminately: “Yes, I agree, we don’t dress her very well. However, she’ll tear everything all the same! But what do you want from the daughter of a thief and an alcoholic? My husband and I accomplished unpardonable stupidity taking her in, and now we bear the cross.”
The classmates, dressed much better, contemptuously looked askance at Grotter.
“Here’s an eyesore... She dressed herself up so that now they’ll give her a kopeck... Disgraces everyone!” They grimaced.
Tanya had not one friend among them, and if one even appeared temporarily, Pipa and all her toadies began to ridicule her right away. Therefore not one friend remained next to Tanya for a long time. A week would not pass when she would side with Tanya’s persecutors and gloatingly ridiculed her birthmark from the opposite corner of the class. And Tanya understood her perfectly: it was necessary to curry favours with Pipa, making amends for her friendship...
Accompanied by the small round-shouldered guide, who looked so decrepit as if he was much older than all local exhibits, they passed several halls. At first Tanya listened with interest, but gradually her interest disappeared because the guide was speaking approximately one and the same words: “Eh-eh-eh... Before you a signet r-ing, presented by Catherine II to Count Orlov... Selling this ring, it was possible to purchase 10,000 pea-sa-nts... And this is the diadem, presented to the tsarina by Prince Potemkin... It would be possible to ac-qu-ire 15,000 pea-sa-nts with it.”
The guide uttered all these numbers so indulgently and ordinarily as if off-duty he was only occupied with trading peasants, on the sly bartering them with exhibits from his museum.
They were already in the sixth or seventh hall when suddenly something compelled Tanya to stop. At the same time it was as if something light and weightless stirred in her chest.
Under the convex armoured glass a gold sword lay on a high pedestal illuminated by several high-power lights. Its wide blade serrated a little along the edges was covered with intricate characters. All around there were so many pleasing priceless weapons, but for some reason they did not stick in her mind, yet here was this sword... It was possible to think that once she already held it... Some delirium... Uncle Herman never even bought her a plastic sabre, but here a gold sword... And he would sooner eat his necktie than imagine such a thing to himself. And nevertheless it stubbornly continued to seem to Tanya that this sword was known to her.
A little more and Tanya would find the answer, in her consciousness a tiny little gold spark already began to appear, but here someone carelessly removed it from the display case.
Beside it loomed the guide, automatically repeating like an old record text cut into the memory.
“Before us a sword found in the tomb of a Scythian leader. You will focus attention on the signs covering its blade. They are interesting in that they have no analogy to any written languages known to us... They defy deciphering, so that most likely it’s simply a design with which the master decorated the sword during its casting.”
“And how many peasants can be bought with it?” Pavlik Yazvochkin, the chief wit of the class, interrupted.
The guide looked sideways first at the sword, and then at the wit. It seemed he was evaluating them with his eyes, precisely an old man and a loan shark.
“How many pea-sa-nts, I do not know. But a couple thousand of such as you, it is indeed possible...” he said sadly. “Now let us move on to the next exhibit... You see the two-pood ring from the golden gates, which, according to the legend, fell down on the crown of Julius Caesar the minute he triumphantly entered Rome as the head of his legions...”
The entire class following the guide spilled over to the adjacent display case. Only Tanya remained near the sword. Involuntarily, not realizing what she was doing, the girl stretched out her hand in order to touch the sword. Of course her fingers hit on the armoured glass. Immediately a bell began to jingle, and in only a second the huge supervisor, resembling a gorilla rented from the zoo and on which were stretched haphazardly a skirt and a tight wig, clutched Tanya by the sleeve.
“Didn’t they tell you: don’t touch anything! Here I’ll call security now... Where’s the teacher?” She yelled louder than the siren.
“Please don’t pay any attention! She’s with us, a character, a fool! Her papa is a convict,” Lena Mumrikova barged in, emaciated, a girl cast in unhealthy green, the chief among Pipa’s toadies.
“Shut up, green toad!” Tanya exclaimed, not recognizing her own voice.
She terribly wanted to attach Mumrikova’s nose to the glass so that the surveillance would snap to action once more, but it was not possible to do this because the supervisor continued to hold her tight.
Fortunately, instead of Irina Vladimirovna, who for sure would tell tales to the Durnevs, gym teacher Prikhodkin, falling over, approached them.
“You’re what? Her teacher?” The supervisor asked mistrustfully.
“Aha! It’s my teacher! Beloved, from the very first class,” Tanya immediately confirmed.
“And you keep quiet!” The supervisor bellowed. “I’m asking the man: you’re the teacher?”
“Yes...” confirmed Prikhodkin.
“Eh-eh, if so...” the supervisor stupidly fixed her eyes on the stomach of the gym teacher. It was enormous, as if Prikhodkin swallowed a ball, and involuntarily inspired respect. “Then here’s what we’ll do: please hold this, your teenybopper, and don’t let go! Don’t dare let her touch anything!” She decided.
“I’m already taking her away.”
The huge fingers of Prikhodkin closed like a steel handcuff on the wrist of the girl. For awhile he dragged her like a kid after himself along the halls, but then for some reason he needed his hand. He unclenched his fingers and released Tanya. She hurriedly ran off several steps and turned, checking whether he would remember about her. But the gym teacher only absent-mindedly fumbled with his fingers somewhere below as if vaguely recollecting that he was holding something, and began to stomp after the class.
Then he paused for a moment and — possibly, it only seemed to Tanya — in a friendly way winked at her. Tanya was grateful to this scattered-brained stout person. Furthermore, she recalled that in his classes Prikhodkin always treated her rather well and called her “Baby Grotter” as a joke: “If you would all run the hundred-metre like Baby Grotter!” Or: “Today we have the long jump. Baby Grotter will show us how it should be done...”
They passed more halls and, according to the internal placement of the museum having traced a semicircle, they again found themselves not far from the exit. Here the guide whispered something to the teacher, looked sourly at the children, and left.
“Attention! Everyone look at me! Now you can wander along the halls independently. We’re meeting here in ten minutes! And remember what I said: don’t touch anything, don’t grab, and don’t mark! Mumrikova, don’t you dare throw candy wrappers into the Chinese vase! It was not made for that five hundred years ago!” Irina Vladimirovna shouted.
The classmates wandered off in the Armoury, but the majority dashed into the cloakroom to buy souvenirs and postcards. Tanya, willingly separating from the class, again set off for the hall where the sword was. She wanted to look at it after all, if the supervisor would not drive her away.
Unexpectedly, the birthmark on Tanya’s nose started to hurt, as if someone was scorching it with a match. Such a thing had never happened before. Grimacing, Tanya rushed to the nearest mirror in a heavy ancient frame. At this moment the birthmark seemed to her especially ugly, like a lump of buckwheat porridge sticking to the tip of her nose. How she hated it at this moment!
“Get off from my nose! I tell you — there!” She shouted to the birthmark.
Suddenly a terrible howl was heard, eardrums could burst from it. It seemed all sirens in the Armoury simultaneously snapped into action. Lights began to blink. Running into the hall, Tanya saw that an enormous hole gaped in the glass of the display case, the sword disappeared, and the supervisor so like a gorilla was lying in a formless heap on the floor. At that moment when Tanya entered, the narrow little pane on the lattice window of the museum slammed shut. However, the hall, even without that, was full of noise.
Tanya froze fearfully. In the corridors the stamping of many feet was already heard. Remembering that they would find her here, the girl wanted to run out fast but she was too late. Into the hall ran the guards, the guide, workers of the museum, Prikhodkin and Irina Vladimirovna, and a good half of the class.
Rushing to the broken display case, they froze wonder-struck. Others attempted to switch off the siren and bring the supervisor round.
“Stolen! What was in this case?” Someone shouted.
“The gold sword!” The round-shouldered guide said with infinite despondency in his voice. “And what do you think: for forty years already I have been tormented by the pr-remonition that this would happen one day. About seventeen years ago I even shared my considerations with the now deceased director.”
“It’s that same sword that Grotter touched! She was the very first here!” Lena Mumrikova began to bawl suddenly.
“It wasn’t me!” Tanya shouted, but almost no one was listening to her. And even if they did, they did not believe her.
A ring of people surrounded Tanya, staring at her. No one walked up close to her as if she was a leper. At this moment the supervisor opened her eyes slightly. On seeing Tanya, she groaned: “Again this girl!” And again she fainted.
Tanya sensed that she was blushing, moreover she was not simply blushing but had become crimson, exactly a tomato. She attempted to justify herself, but no one was listening to her.
“Classy! I don’t believe my eyes! Grotter swiped the gold sword!” Genka Bulonov exclaimed, almost choking from such enthusiasm and sticking chewing gum on the throne.
“It wasn’t me!” Tanya shouted.
“Shut up! There was no one else in the hall! Search her!” Lena Mumrikova shouted.
Tanya, sweaty and bewildered, moved back, flying with her back against Irina Vladimirovna.
“Grotter! Tatiana! What horror! What disgrace! How could you?” She clucked.
“Really, will no one stand up for me?” Tanya thought with horror, but then as if through a fog she heard the voice of the gym teacher Prikhodkin:
“I’ll not allow her to be searched! She was with me all the time! And how could she knock down this hippo?” He said in a bass voice, nodding at the supervisor lying on the floor, who again began to raise her head.
“A-a-a... The hippo himself... I’m dying...” she groaned and carefully, in order not to hurt the back of her head, fainted anew.
Squeezing through the crowd, a mean confident person approached Tanya.
“Lieutenant Colonel Chuchundrikov. Security service,” he introduced himself. “Come with me!”
Tanya dejectedly trudged right behind, sensing how behind her the amazed and simultaneously enraptured classmates were dragging themselves along like a split herd. How do you like that — a demure Grotter and suddenly she arranged such a thing!
They turned to the right, once again to the right, and descended the short stairs downward. The mean person brought Tanya to the high plastic arch.
“Go through the detector!” He ordered.
Tanya, shrugging her shoulders, took a step through the arch. She knew that she had nothing. An instant — and the detector literally began to shake from ringing. The eyebrows of the mean little fellow predatorily went up.
“Take out keys and all metallic objects,” he ordered.
Tanya fearfully took out keys and again took a step into the arch. The detector again began to shake.
“Well, that’s it, Grotter, the end for you! The sky in a cell, friends in stripes! You will run errands for someone for apple cores and toothpaste tubes!” Mumrikova shouted.
“Quiet!” Prikhodkin ordered her. “This machine is most likely defective... Here I’ll go through now... There, it’s quiet! What a skunk! Really she could... no, I don’t believe it!”
“So... now we’ll find out... Come here! Not to me! To this screen!” The mean person dragged Tanya to the low screen, and he went up to the monitor. The girl heard as he muttered:
“Hm... as if there is no sword... There is nothing... But why then does it ring? Some stupidity... Well and she did not swallow this sword...”
“May I leave?” Tanya asked.
“Yes,” Lieutenant Colonel Chuchundrikov allowed. Picking up the handset of the internal telephone, he shouted into it:
“Did they rewind the film? Well who’s there? The girl?” They answered him something.
“You’re sure? Absolutely?”
Continuing to hold the handset in his hand, the mean person looked darkly at Tanya, then at the teacher.
It seemed to Tanya that her heart fell from a high, very high altitude. And it broke into smithereens. Her back got soaked, her palm were covered with sweat. Lieutenant Colonel stubbornly kept quiet. The girl blinked and, already standing with tightly closed eyes, heard the words:
“It means this. Your student here has nothing to do with it. You can take her away. At the moment of the theft the tracking camera did not lock in on her.”
Lena Mumrikova squealed from disappointment.
“Well, here you see! But what was on the film?” Prikhodkin exclaimed. The nose of the tiny Lieutenant Colonel hardly reached the button on his stomach.
“None of your business,” the Lieutenant Colonel answered.
“How is it not my business? She’s my student!” Prikhodkin was angry.
“I don’t have the right to reveal anything. The investigation is not finished. I’ll ask you to clear the museum!”
However, when they left the hall a minute later, it seemed to Tanya, slightly delayed because her legs felt like cotton wool, that he said to his assistant in an undertone:
“Either you’ll explain to me what it was on the film or I won’t envy you. And I won’t envy myself.”

Chapter 4
Forgeli Botchli?

“Twang!” Tanya pressed the third string from the edge closer against the middle of the neck and it hummed. The sound hardly dissipated as a round thick-necked head in a copper helmet appeared on the balcony. It was the size of a considerable cauldron and it rotated its pupils menacingly. The look on the head was openly predatory. The bent nose was once dented by someone’s fist, and a long scar stood out on the cheek...
“Forgeli botchli?” It growled, when its pupils, having stopped revolving, settled on the girl.
“Not forgeli not botchli... A mistake...” attempting to hide behind the double bass, Tanya muttered.
The head smirked, baring ground-off yellow teeth, each of which was the size of a good fist. Furthermore, it became noticeable that something terribly similar to the sole of boots got stuck between the two front teeth.
“What is ‘not forgeli,’ specifically?” The head asked hoarsely. “Where’s the magic response? What, did they not warn you that I can tear apart whoever uses magic objects illegally? Beatings in alleyways, and all such.”
“No, they did not warn me,” Tanya quickly blurted out, considering that this was her only justification.
“And I’ll not believe it for life! And if they did not warn you, it means you’re not a witch but one of the moronoids!”
“Yes, I’m a witch... That is, I... Please wait, I’ll explain everything...”
Tanya moved back in fright and, hoping that the head would disappear, in a hurry passed the bow along the adjacent string.
“T-wang!” The string hummed intensely. No, the head did not disappear, instead beside it immediately appeared another, even more murderous than the first, decorated with a downy sergeant-major moustaches.
“Where are the evil spirits? Blabbli gabbli intertwineli?” It asked with a voice which grated on the hearing like sandpaper.
Tanya went “Oh,” experiencing a burning desire to show up a hundred kilometres away from here or, at the worst, to simply fall under the floor.
“Blabbli gabbli intertwineli?” The head repeated impatiently.
“Hello, Usynya!” The head that appeared on the balcony earlier barked. “I think the time has come to gobble up someone. Someone who summons us without knowing the simplest magic response...”
“Exactly, Dubynya... Time to punish these little green witches! They’ll know when to get mixed up with spells!”
“And mostly likely she’s not even a little witch but one of the moronoids... I hate it when these nothings imagine themselves magicians. I would rip off the hands that give them magic tools...”
Tanya in fear gripped the bow. She wanted to wave it at them, knowing that now and then they disappear with this, but by chance brushed against yet another string. “Gad, again! And what now!” She thought, experiencing bad presentiment. And the presentiment did not deceive her.
“T-w-angg!” The string clanged spitefully, and instantly the third head, bald like a billiard ball, rolled out next to the first two. Its face was flat as a pancake, with the same set of small porous grooves as in a pancake, eyes exactly narrow slits, but then the enormous mouth stretched from ear to ear. It was clearly felt that even if this head was not entirely slow-witted, then a bit crazy.
“Mountainsani raisurus?” The head asked darkly.
Tanya kept quiet dejectedly.
“I cannot stand it when they move the head from me. It’s, it turns out, my body now hanging about alone there? Whoever wants can approach it and give it a kick? And if I, for example, were in battle, then what, strike at random?”
“Uh-huh, Gorynya! You said it exactly. Someone did not protect the character, I’m not guilty...” said Dubynya. “I want to say that, character. Five minutes before this I, out of boredom, got tied up with two cyclopes: I said, why are you pushing, one-eyed, long time no one bust you up, and all that... One only started to swing, and my head — well, I never! — and here! How he probably just blinks... Either he blew off my head or something. Incomprehensible, shorter, like shaking with the brainless.”
“No, definitely must devour her!” Usynya decided for everyone. “Say the response! Well? You don’t know? Well you got yourself in a mess!”
“Forgeli? Entwinum? Gor’yani? Boozeli Joyjuiceli?” Tanya fired at random.
“Aha, likely that... Right smack!” Gorynya said knowingly. His voice sounded sufficiently affectionate; however, the girl did not quite like how it smacked its lips. It licked its chops nastily.
The heads exchanged glances significantly. A moustache clicked like a whip and, wound around Tanya’s ankle, began to pull her towards itself. The girl darted and began to squeal, but it was as thick as a ship’s rope.
“Pity, a hand remained there... Can’t be helped... Well, no matter, we get her this way...” aiming, Usynya muttered.
Dubynya began to worry:
“Listen, dude, you... Don’t forget us. You’ll leave us some to nibble?” He asked hoarsely. “We treated you...”
“When is it you treated me?” Usynya was indignant.
“Why? The German knights...”
“Phew... Such canned foods! As soon as you open them, you even start to sweat!”
“And you would with a can-opener. Afterwards it’s very handy to pick the teeth with their spears.”
Defending herself, Tanya waved the bow, but it frightened Usynya no more than trying to poke it with a match. The mouth with the huge dull teeth was already very near. Some of Usynya’s teeth were missing, and the rest did not appear to be in better shape.
“Ah-ah-ah! Don’t touch me! You need a stomatologist!” Tanya shouted, desperately pushing the monstrous forehead with her hand so that it would not be easy to swallow her.
“And what’s that? What does he eat with?” Usynya was interested.
“With a dental drill and with drills... Goes well with mayo, particularly if together with the gloves and all the tweezers!” Dubynya prompted. Of all three heads, likely he was the most knowledgeable. And in addition with more practical experience.
Having managed, Tanya tried to poke the giant with an elbow in the nose. That one blinked with wonder.
“For a moronoid you’re pretty brave. Usually they immediately flop down in a faint,” he said encouragingly.
“I’m not of the moronoids, I’m telling you! And the double bass is not someone else’s! My papa is Leopold Grotter!”
Suddenly the moustache wound around her ankle slackened. “WHAT? You’re the daughter of GROTTER? You’re TANYA Grotter?” All three heads stared at her distrustfully.
“Something you’ll be able to prove? Really can it be that a Grotter doesn’t know the simplest spell? And the Grot-ters, oho-ho, they were all so large-headed! Indeed real terrific scholars!” Usynya doubted.
“And it’s her, she... And the birthmark on the nose, and the curls... Her entire personality, not lying...” Gorynya started to whisper.
“Oh, my giant mama! Oh, my titan papa! Oh, my cyclops grandma! In order for me to gobble crosswise and grow lengthwise! My eyes would not see!” Dubynya began to keen. “It’s indeed Grotter’s daughter, having seen She-Who-Is-No-More and remaining among the living! The only one that saw her!”
“Unbelievable, we nearly gobbled her up! That would be a nightmare!” Turning crimson, Usynya buzzed.
“Well, and we’ll get it if she tells Sardanapal!”
“Or Yagge! Or Slander! But she will not tell... Will not tell tales on three good souls, who joked with her like a scare-scare-scarecrow?” Dubynya began to suck up.
“Gee whiz, you joked! For such jokes you know what happens to the teeth? However, it no longer threatens you,” muttered Tanya, surprised at herself for such impudence.
“We wildly apologize. Turned out a blunder!” Usynya said.
“A little hitch...” Gorynya darted with the nose.
“A discrepancy... You should have said gadaboutun, then everything would be in order,” Dubynya blurted out guiltily. “And now time for us to bid you farewell! It’s harmful for us to remain too long in the world of the moronoids.”
“Aha, and still the body is lost somewhere and committing follies. Catch then this headless fool. Oh, what miracle, to tell, whom we saw, they’ll so not believe!” Usynya finished.
Hurrying to slip away, the three heads began to whirl swiftly on the spot. The ears flashed crimson from remorse.
“Wait... Please stop!” Tanya shouted, but the balcony was already deserted. The girl was so thunder-struck and did not know how to pose to them the question which was twirling on her tongue.
Who is this Sardanapal? And Yagge? And She-Who-Is-No-More? Tanya only needed to utter the third name to herself when her head again began to spin... For some reason in the girl’s memory sprung up emaciated green hands, affected by decay... Loathsome chopped off hands, stretching out to her throat...
“Return what you’re hiding! I’m dead, you’re alive... You’re guilty in that I died... Ten long years after your birth and ten centuries to it I awaited this hour,” the voice rustled in a silent whisper. An icy dead hand touched her face and, jerking back, melted away...
“It’s indeed Grotter’s daughter, having seen She-Who-Is-No-More and remaining among the living! The only one that saw her!” Tanya recalled the words of the talking head. Likely the enormous head also feared this She and therefore treated the girl with a mixture of fear and admiration.
“Whom did I see? Whom? What is it with my parents? Are they alive or did they perish? If I would at least learn to use this magic thingamajig! Maybe, then something would be clarified!” Tanya thought despondently.
Beginning to worry that the three enormous heads could catch the eyes of the Durnevs and alarm them, Tanya hurriedly looked into the room. No, everything was quiet in Pipa’s, and even Pipa herself, it seemed, had disappeared to one of her girlfriend-toadies’. Uncle Herman, after swallowing all the necessary vitamins, left for the Duma in order to catch sight of a maximum quantity of influential figures and to extend before each his mouth in the affable grin of a self re-educated vampire.
As far as Aunt Ninel was concerned, from her room came a terrible crash as if someone on equal intervals struck the floor with a sledgehammer. It was likely that Madame Durnev again decided to be busy with aerobics, and in such moments she would not even notice anything taking place in front of her nose.

* * *

The week that passed from the day of the discovery of the double bass turned out to be uncommonly good for Tanya. No one touched her, or harassed her, and even her presence in the apartment they recalled if and only if she appeared in the kitchen. Now and then it seemed to the girl that she had become absolutely invisible. At least to the Durnevs.
Everything was explained extremely simply in fact. The entire family did not have time to poison her life: everyone was concerned with what happened to Uncle Herman. The dreadful pogrom was assigned to the sudden temporary insanity of Durnev, beginning from the excessively stressful pre-election campaign. Bouncing around in the apartment all evening, he tore off wallpaper everywhere and nibbled on sneakers, but afterwards he calmed down and fell asleep in the hallway on the floor, hiding his head under the rug. Aunt Ninel and Pipa nearly fainted with a crash. Tanya was completely not surprised, considering that Lisper the Rabbit simply climbed into his hole.
The following morning Uncle Herman awoke already in full possession of his faculties and was terribly astonished, to put it mildly, to discover himself in the unusual place. He hurled the rug to a far corner of the hallway, tenderly kissed the dachshund starting to bark at him and again became as before — green, biting, and ill-humoured. All Tanya could do was to sigh: she liked Uncle Herman much more as a rabbit. He even had a certain charm.
“Some people were clearly born by mistake. That’s probably why they are so disgusting,” she reflected.
Uncle Herman himself remembered nothing about his insanity or about all of yesterday’s events. True, now and then he became strangely pensive and, gathering his hands like paws, he began to bounce slightly in one place. Usually this took place at moments when he caught sight of a carrot or cabbage. Precisely for this reason Aunt Ninel decisively threw out all carrots and cabbages from the apartment, completely excluding them from the menu. Pipa and Tanya were strictly forbidden to even accidentally mention these words together with the words “forest,” “bunnies,” “jump-gallop” and in general everything that could direct Uncle Herman’s thoughts to forbidden grounds.
Tanya used each free minute to hasten to the magic double bass. As before with the case, she now timidly studied the instrument on all sides, feeling each of its smallest tiny cracks, any insignificant roughness. Soon she already could, with closed eyes and barely touching the instrument with her fingers, guess without mistake, what place of the neck or what part of the string she was now touching.
“Ah, pity I don’t know how to play the double bass... On the other hand, perhaps they also don’t play it. In the magic instruction there is not a word about playing but only about enchantment and magic,” Tanya thought.
Now and then she took the bow in her hand and decided to guide it along the strings.
The sounds which the instrument issued were always unexpected and with unpredictable consequences. The first time a flock of wasps appeared on the balcony. The second time — terribly stinky rotten stuff appeared and from somewhere on top of her head a monstrous size leg bone fell down. The third time Tanya managed to summon from emptiness a jar with jam imparting the taste of frog roe. Still it was possible somehow to resign herself to this if there were no eyes opening periodically in the jar. Tanya pushed it further into the cabinet, hiding it among old books.
But after the stupid incident with the three heads, nearly costing her her life, the girl decided that it was necessary to dampen her ardour. In any case, to be more careful from now on.
One question still existed, extremely occupying Tanya. Judging from the instructions on the birch bark, besides magic the double bass could be used for flights, but only by what means? So many times the girl tried to jump together with it, to sit carefully on top, and even to wave the bow precisely like a sabre, but it did not rise even five centimetres above the floor.
Once in the evening, when Pipa, after giving herself thirteen kilograms of candies and things with her sweating palms, was already sleeping soundly in her room and for sure saw the mysterious G.P. in her dream, Tanya carefully spent time with the double bass. She already intended to take it out of the case, but at this moment noticed that one of the strings was sagging quite a bit. Deciding to stretch it, the girl began to carefully turn the lower pin. She had hardly made half a rotation when the double bass suddenly began to tremble and from the narrow figured slits the low voice of an announcer burst through:
“Until now, the secret of the theft of the gold sword has not been revealed. Who among the moronoids needed to steal it? This is already not the first day the best sleuths of Tibidox ask this question. As you certainly know, here the gold sword has already caused serious differences between the “light” and “dark” magicians for one-and-a-half thousand years. Each of the sides attempted to use it in their magic rituals, supplementing it already with available arsenal of magic objects. Let us recall that with ten white and ten black magicians having all such objects, a definite balance of power is created. Adding the twenty-first object could give an advantage to one of the sides. Because of this about a thousand years ago a strict ban was imposed on the use of the gold sword, and the sword itself, in order to not stir up temptation in anyone, was transferred into the world of the moronoids. Now this taboo is disrupted. The strongest magic object, perhaps equal to the Hair of The Ancient One or the rarest instruments of Theophilus Grotter, is in the hands of an unknown thief. Who is this thief? What camp is he connected to? And the main, the most important question — is he somehow connected with She-Who-Is-No-More? As yet there is no answer to this question, since the magic of the sword, until now, has not been freed...”
Tanya’s hand trembled slightly. The pin turned. The voice of the announcer disappeared, and instead of this in the narrow slots of the double bass a strange jingling melody burst out. It was like someone was banging a large spoon on a cracked cauldron, and somewhere in the distance a sandstorm was howling...

“Aurelis fifas geras shibarshitus parallelis
Gruntis Brunti Truntis Frat Guaerobus Rodopat
Filostesis Grupus Byakis Mikronimos Zapulyatos
Sheburshun and Sheropat Zakolyanus Arapat,”

someone pronounced distinctly.
Shrugging her shoulders, Tanya again turned the pin and heard a brisk female voice:
“To us daily at radio station Witchcraft Granny hundreds of cupids with full bags of letters fly in and thousands of heartgrams from very young witches creep in with one and the same question: ‘How to find a husband?’ There is nothing simpler, my dear. Write the prescription, known even in the times of the legendary Tsar Gorokh and told to him personally by the famous Tsarina Savochkina, bewitching her twelfth husband this way. Take ninety grams of ground dinosaur bones, added a little mermaid scale, three nails of a kikimora, seven feathers of a white crow, and dissolve all this in dragon blood. Thoroughly mix the obtained solution with a sliver of a coffin and drink it on a night with a new moon. Done that? And now rejoice! Till the following moon you are completely enticing and irresistible. Make full use of this time to find yourself a husband. True, this method has one side effect. After only one moon you will begin to grow thick whiskers, and your weight will increase by forty kilograms. However, if one considers that in the magic world marriages are not annulled, you can take the full risk. With you was the well-known healer Nagiana Pripyatskaya...”
“Oho-ho,” thought Tanya. “The magicians have the same problem as Aunt Ninel... How do I find out if someone in her time sold her such a potion when she was chasing after Uncle Herman? Very likely so!”
She stretched the string a little more. A squeak was heard, a noise, the hissing of radio waves, and then the double bass suddenly squeaked with a child’s voice:
“You will drink bitter pesticide — you will get hit by a brick in the nose! Conjure, wood-goblin, concoct, grandpa, — there are no spare machine guns! Oh, mama, they marked me... Where are my invisible running shoes and the flying cap with ears?”
Tanya did not have time to switch over when the double bass unexpectedly began to shake in her hands, bounced, started to vibrate from an unusual force and confidently addressed in a ringing voice:
“Everybody-everybody-everybody! You’re listening to reporting from a dragonball match between the vampire team and the composite team of Bald Mountain witches... With you I’m the resilient and loved by all Bab-Yagun... The match today is proceeding with difficulty — a gusty wind from the direction of the ocean is interfering, regularly hurling players off their vacuums. Likely someone from the ill-wishers of our form of sport directed a magic formula, which they are trying unsuccessfully to remove here for the third hour already.
“I’m standing on the guest stand of the central stadium. To the right rises the central Tower of Tibidox. Next to it the Tower of Ghosts is smoking — not long ago the dragon of the vampire team ran into it and grazed it with its tongue of flames. At the present moment the water crew is putting out the Tower of Ghosts, but this match, it goes without saying, cannot be called off...
“If you saw what’s been created on the stands! The vampires have completely broken loose from all restraints! I’m sure you hear in the microphone their raving cries and the howls that freeze the soul. Under the direction of Professor Sardanapal and the Magic Federation of Tibidox on dragonball all vampires were extremely cautiously ordered to put on muzzles. Otherwise undoubtedly blood would spill. Taking into account that the nature of the Bald Mountain witches is also far from perfect, this could provoke a terrible brawl, similar to the one at the match between the Tadzhik genies and the ‘dark’ magicians, when, as a result of collisions, twelve spectators were exposed to the irreversible curse, and eight more vanished to who knows where...
“I don’t much like today’s match: both the witches and the vampires are playing poorly. A few sharp moments, the forwards, it seems, are afraid to fly close to the hostile dragons and are throwing the balls from a distance, where they in no way can drop into the goal... Oh, it seems I spoke too soon! The Bald Mountain witches defence is malfunctioning. The vampire forward Mourner is breaking open ahead with an immobilize ball, the most dangerous of all balls in a match! If he throws it into the mouth of the dragon, the Bald Mountain witches will not be able to lay claim to a victory...
“He is going around one defender, another... If you could have seen that courageous gesture with which he shifted from one hand to the other the pipe of the diving vacuum! His engine roars with strain, spewing from the nozzle small debris and kikimora scales. Oh-oh-oh!!!!!!!!
“Here Mourner swings... You hear the roar at the stands... No goal! Oh no, what’s this? Over the stands rolls a moan — the characteristic, bloodcurdling moan of the vampires. They say moronoids immediately faint from this moan... The Bald Mountain dragon slams shut its mouth, thus making the goal inaccessible... The ball hits it directly in the eye and explodes! The dragon is in a fury! It’s flapping its wings, lashing with its flexible tail, and breaking away from the place. Longing to get even, it rushes after the forward of the vampire team... What will it be? Clutching at the pipe and almost sprawling vertically in the air, Mourner deftly turns and tries to hide in his model Turnon-2003 jet vacuum.
“The wind whistles... Unbelievable speed... Must acknowledge, I did not expect this from the Turnon... It seemed to me, having sufficient manoeuvrability, this model is not capable of sudden acceleration. Most likely the grandmasters of the vampire team strengthened Mourner’s Turnon with a dozen speed-up spells. In general this violates the rules, but, taking into account that the witches also cheated somewhere for sure, they can get away with something...
“No, this dragon is zealously evil! It seriously intended to overtake Mourner. They don’t feed the dragons a year and a half before the match so that they would be livelier, but this one, in my opinion, has not been fed for no less than three years. Or, I also don’t exclude that when the witches gave the dragon red-hot mercury to drink, they added into it several drops of bile of an old skinflint. Similar doping is in no way diagnosed, but then it makes dragons one and a half times more evil.
“The dragon, pursuing, fires a flame at Mourner, and that one, avoiding, is forced to sharply gain altitude... It contradicts the laws of gravity, it contradicts everything that I know!
“I swear by the Hair of The Ancient One, here it is — the gripping moment of the match! Its climax! Its turning point!
“Two other vampires on brightly dyed vacuums try to distract the dragon from its prey. They almost succeeded, but that it... Oh no! One of the tongues of flames casually catches Mourner’s vacuum... The pipe has melted, the motor conks out. A miracle that the vacuum is still hanging in the air. Must be the protecting talismans helping. The dragon is getting nearer... Here it already opens its terrible mouth... Mourner shouts and dives like a swallow from the vacuum, hoping to use the nose scarf-parachute. Too late — the dragon catches him right in its mouth... Swallows... Nightmare! The vampire team is left without its best player...
“A dangerous moment! GO-O-AL! One more! I don’t believe my eyes! Making use of the situation, the Bald Mountain witches break open to the vampire dragon and throw into its mouth a flame-extinguisher, and after it also a pepper ball...
“The vampire team dragon, receiving, as we know, a wing injury after the collision with the tower, has not managed to slam shut its mouth... The balls explode at once, freeing bewitching charges... The flame goes out... The dragon begins to sneeze, and from its throat three previously swallowed forwards and a referee of the match, Nightingale O. Robber, fly out by somersault. They don’t look well: three hours in the mouth of a dragon — grave experience! Wait, and who’s this still flying out from the dragon’s mouth? Really spectators? Yes, so it is! Must be, these are those poor wretches who risked getting into the match without protector tickets... Well, once again it remains to be startled by the tremendous scent of dragons...
“The umpire blows the magic whistle! Really? Yes, so it is — a complete victory for the Bald Mountain team! Collars are put on the dragons and, gradually calmed, they are led away into the fireproof hangars, where the genies will be busy with them... Interesting, will we see Mourner again or will befall him the fate of the magician Abbakum Violet, swallowed three years ago and simply forgotten in the dragon’s mouth? For the vampires it would be extremely lamentable to be deprived of this outstanding forward... On this note, my dear listeners, I conclude my reporting. With you was the dear to all and irritating to many Bab-Yagun...
“Wait... What is that noise in the third hangar? From there, cowardly covering their heads, a half dozen genie umpires jump out... And behind them, against the sky... What idiot forgot to put a spell on additional hangar gates? I swear by my grandma, it is Goyaryn itself, the terrible fighting dragon, heads hardly filling its mouth! We all thought that it is in hibernation, but, obviously the noise of the stadium woke it up. A terrible, terrible roar... The magic wall separating the playing field from the spectators is cracked... Goyaryn is breathing out puffs of sulphur — must be it is still insufficiently heated for flame throwing... What is this? It is trying to take off! Run for your lives! It’s flying over here! Why is it without an anti-swallow muzzle? Ah-ah-ah!”
A terrible sound was heard, similar to “Hrum-hrum.”
From the wild howl the double bass jumped a metre, its strings began to hum, and everything fell silent. Tanya rushed to the double bass, pressed it against her ear, but it no longer issued a single sound, no matter how much she turned the pin. The mysterious broadcast was broken.
“Dragonball!” Tanya exclaimed. “Unbelievable, magicians flying in the air and throwing balls into a dragon’s mouth! The one without luck, then hrum-hrum... No so bad entertainment! Nanaian jokes in the spirit of Pipa!”
At the same time she could not but acknowledge that although the rules of the game were not quite clear to her for the time being, she would not refuse to be present at this match. Where else can raging live goal swallow dozens of spectators, not counting the players themselves? It is not for you the dull human soccer match, which Uncle Herman watches on television, where there is only a pair of motionlessly fixed goal.
Reflecting on her luck in revealing to herself one of the wonderful special features of the double bass — namely its ability to receive magic radio waves, — Tanya was already going to settle down on her damp squeaky folding bed when suddenly from outside, where there was nothing besides the close and unfriendly cold autumnal sky and several squeaking trees, a deafening “pchxi!” was heard.
The girl jumped and pressed her nose against the glass. At first she saw absolutely nothing, but here again “pchxi!” was repeated, and such that even the glass began to rattle. Tanya shifted her gaze slightly more to the right and below and... it seemed to her that she was delirious... In any case, if something similar appeared in Pipa’s dream, she would immediately begin to roll on the floor, howling: “I’m off my rocker! I’m unable to think straight! Treat me, twenty doctors!”
In the grey evening sky directly opposite the window a bed with a spring mattress was hovering. On the bed a huge mummy lay full-length, wrapped up to the eyes in either bandages or tarred burial cloth. The left plastered foot of the mummy was suspended on an extension... As for the right... No, with the right foot everything was as if in order... Here it only had on a sufficiently strange shoe — an enormous army boot with a gold spur.

Chapter 6
The Dead Eye

The week stretched out — happy, full of anticipations, and at the same time the most endless week in Tanya’s life. Only that she was a little confused, — how will the Durnevs take her disappearance? Is it worthwhile to warn them or better even to say goodbye?
And then the following evening when Aunt Ninel, in a good mood, was reading a magazine, and Pipa beside her was writing a letter to her mysterious G.P, Tanya could not hold back and asked:
“If I were to disappear suddenly, how would you take it?”
Aunt Ninel stopped reading and with curiosity looked sideways at her over the magazine.
“Disappear to where? And who needs you?” She snorted contemptuously.
“Most likely she’s talking about the colony. But then it would not be unexpected, but completely expected,” added Pipa and, judging by the venomous expression of her face, she immediately began to bring this detail into the letter to her mysterious G.P.
At the same time Tanya noticed that Pipa and Aunt Ninel exchanged quick glances as if they were keeping a shared secret from her. A very nasty little secret, as far as it was possible to judge by their faces.
“Very lovely! Others may not, but the Durnevs will only be glad if once I’m found missing!” Tanya decided, immediately calmed.
Returning from school, she no longer spent time on lessons but immediately armed with the magic book and, snapping her finger at it, uttered: “Chilloutum!” In that moment the very thick book A Thousand Tips for a Young Hostess, containing the secrets of darning by small cross, transformed into the priceless The Reference Book of White Magician. Here indeed it was actually possible to learn about everything in the world! Not without reason the library genie so unwillingly handed out this book, knowing that it, though not for long, would be in the world of the moronoids.
But the magicians from Tibidox knew excellently how to protect their secrets in whatever world — human or magic — they were found. And Tanya was soon convinced of this.
On Wednesday returning from school later than usual — she was forced to be on duty in the biology lab, — Tanya heard two voices from Pipa’s room. The first, capricious, screechy, clearly belonged to Pipa herself, and the other, unpleasant and harsh, to her best girlfriend Lenka Mumrikova.
“And it’s here she lives, at yours? Fie, what ugliness!” Lenka said.
Tanya quickly pressed her ear against the door slot in order to not miss a sound.
“Aha. On the balcony. I don’t let her in my room. I don’t want to sleep together with this fool,” She heard the grumbling of Pipa.
“And in winter?”
“In winter she sleeps in the dark room. Well, I always persuade my parents to get rid of her somewhere... To the orphanage there or somewhere else.”
“And will they?”
“Mama is for, but father says: not now, must wait until after the elections, — then it’s possible to send her packing. He said that he knows of an outstanding boot camp for children with criminal inclinations, where all the beds stand in a line, you get up at five in the morning, and have a compulsory hardening by icy water before bedtime. Those who seriously disrupt the discipline, for example unevenly placing boots in front of the bed or not saying: ‘Yes!’ when the diary is called for, are forced to polish with a toothbrush the floor in the sports hall.”
Tanya shuddered. Here is what kind of “surprise,” it appears, Aunt Ninel and Pipa have prepared for her. Well no matter, in several days she would not be here already. If only everything would turn out with the spells of passage and flight! Tanya already mastered how to pronounce a few words simply, but she still had to tune her thoughts by definite means and force the magic ring, which had been behaving extremely wilfully so far, to obey.
“That she needs, this Grotter! Will have to phone that boot camp so that they will handle her stricter there,” said Mumrikova.
Knowing that if she entered the room now, Pipa and Lenka would guess that she was eavesdropping, Tanya remained in the hallway. Meanwhile the voices moved to the window. A door slammed and Tanya surmised that the classmates were already on the balcony.
“This is her cot?” Lenka asked with disgust.
“Aha,” confirmed Pipa. “You want to look at her case, which she trembles over so? I recently had a look at what she had in there, only imagine, a huge double bass! I have no idea where she took it from.”
“Found in the dumpster,” said Mumrikova, and both girls laughed disgustingly like horses.
“Let’s do something with her double bass! I must get even with her for scalding me,” proposed Pipa.
“What, badly?”
“I felt nothing at all. The tea was almost cold and I was even in pants. Only must get even all the same,” said Pipa, and the idiotic neighing laugh was heard again.
The cabinet began to creak and Tanya understood that they were trying to open the door. But it was precisely impossible. After the incident with the disgusting dwarf chewing up her diary, Tanya cunningly adjusted one of the nails so that it began to serve as a bolt, and, not knowing the secret, it was impossible to open the cabinet.
“Doesn’t work! She locked it! Here’s a scoundrel, treats the balcony as in her own home! Well no matter, in the boot camp she will have only one night table!” Pipa puffed with irritation.
A sound was heard as if someone was kicking the cot with all their strength. Something heavy fell on the floor. While Tanya attempted to think what it could be, Mumrikova exclaimed:
“Look, a book! Interesting, what’s she reading? Oh, A Thousand Tips for a Young Hostess! Most likely it describes how to polish floor with a brush, spool spaghetti, or nail a torn slipper.”
“A book? Where? Aha!” Pipa triumphed. “Let’s ruin it! If someone lent it to her, he’ll know about getting mixed up with this slob. How would we do it? Rip it — too boring, cross out the pages with a pen — too long. Aha! Better smear it with glue!”
“Better let me,” Mumrikova proposed ingratiatingly. “Grotter nevertheless won’t know that I was here, and you’ll seemingly have nothing to do with it. You didn’t do it!”
“Exactly! So let’s do it!” Pipa agreed. “Take the glue from my table! Outstanding glue — Super-cement, grips immediately and forever... Quick! Got it? And now drip right here and...”
Tanya came to, suddenly understood that they found her Reference Book of White Magician, which she, instead of hiding in the cabinet, left under the pillow. Here is a fool! Left without the book, she would not know how to prepare for the passage, and then... On top of that the genie would go nuts — she remembered perfectly what Bab-Yagun told her about the damaged pages.
Afraid she was too late, she rushed into the room, but, not yet reaching the doorknob, heard a wild, almost superhuman howl. More precisely, two wild superhuman howls merging into one.
The tube with the Super-cement glue flew swiftly over Pipa’s head, generously spilling on her hair. The book, exactly like the jaw of a bulldog, closed on Lenka Mumrikova’s hand. Mumrikova howled and swung her hand, but the grasp of The Reference Book did not slacken. Pipa, on whose head the glue was flowing, had time already to grow hoarse and only squeaked faintly when it dripped onto her nose.
Pushing each other, the friends rushed about in the room and on the balcony: Mumrikova tried to free herself from the book, and Pipa was dodging from the tube of glue, which, like a dive bomber, already went on the third round and clearly did not intend to stop.
“Chilloutum!” Tanya whispered softly.
Having grown heated the book did not hear or pretended that it did not hear. Only when Tanya repeated the spell a third time then the reference book unwillingly relaxed the pages and jumped by itself into her hand, far-sightedly remaining for the time Tips for a Young Hostess. At the same time the tube of glue dripped the last drop onto Pipa’s head and fell onto Pipa’s table, innocently lowering itself in its previous place next to the container filled with felt-tip pens.
Pipa, deep-purple from horror, slowly settled on the carpet next to the enormous pink dinosaur, a gift from the famous TV personality Prushkin, who needed something from Uncle Herman. With hatred staring at Tanya, she obviously wanted to say something, but could not decide because she saw that book in her hands. Finally, remembering about the glue flooding her entire head, Pipa on all fours quickly crawled away into the hallway. In the bathroom the tap began to drone.
Meanwhile Mumrikova decided to look at her freed hand. It would have been better if she did not do this, because immediately a new howl, not a bit quieter but even louder than before, resounded along the balcony and the entire apartment of the Durnevs. Along the back and the outside of Lenka’s hand, with the only exception of the cushions of her fingers and the nails, thick reddish fur curled.
“I-it-is all you! You!” Mumrikova showed Tanya the overgrown fingers, the fur growing longer with each second, and, again squealing, threw herself into the hallway after Pipa.

* * *

“And now it’s possible to do some work. I think they’ll not bother us anymore,” said Tanya, turning to the book. It accordingly flew over to the windowsill and was opened on the chapter Flight spells and spells of passage.
For flights on accessory flying instruments please obey the following rules. Sit down on top of the instrument and firmly clasp it with your legs. Take in your hands the controlling object (the handle of a vacuum, a bow, etc.). Should hold it firmly and lightly at the same time, closer to the middle. Avoid abrupt movements, but simultaneously block constraints. Remember, the instrument is capable of throwing you off if you behave apprehensively or in a cowardly manner.
Check the correctness of the binding of the talismans. Remember that an untied talisman can lead to a drop. Thoroughly calculate the spells from the weight and speed of transportation.
The fastest spell “Speedus envenomus” is suitable for swift displacement of magicians and light-weight objects to great distances. This super-high-speed spell demands considerable skills of control of the flying objects; therefore novices are prohibited to use it to avoid a more than probable fatal outcome!
The medium in speed and safety spell “Hastenus plodus” is suitable for adult magicians and objects of average weight. If you need to, for example, transfer an elephant, you are afraid of heights, or your flight means is badly fitted out for high-speed accelerations, you should use the spell “Pilotus kamikazis.”
To avoid sudden drop in the case of bucking of the instrument or going against a strong wind do not forget to utter the safety net spell “Oyoyoys smackis thumpis.” A safety net spell will not be able to prevent a drop, but it will soften its consequences. All spells should be accompanied by green flashes of the magic ring on one to a spell. Avoid both redundant number of green flashes and occurrence of red flashes. Red flashes — a ritual of black magic — can distort spells and lead to unpredictable consequences.
Before proceeding to practice, it is obligatory to become acquainted with the chapter “Safe landing or braking spells.”
“A nightmare, how much studying is necessary! Of course, later I’ll learn by heart, but better write a crib sheet for the time being!” Tanya thought, just impatient to proceed faster to practice.
Grabbing a pen, Tanya was about to start writing the spells on her palm, but suddenly sensed the smell of burnt plastic. And in a second she went “Aw!” and dropped the pen. Not having yet flown as far as the floor, the pen became a dark smoking piece of plastic. To the smoke snaking from it rising into the air was added the words:
Magic secret! Strictly forbidden to copy spells!
Bending maliciously, the exclamation mark glided to the side and stole up Tanya’s nostril, after forcing her to sneeze. The inscription melted away.
“Also what regular things for me to find... It can’t be helped, I have to learn by heart,” Tanya muttered, puckering from the unpleasant smell of cinder.
Cramming the spells, Tanya took the double bass from the case, sat down on it and took the bow in hand. Moreover she did not take it on the edge as she did before but in the middle. It made not the slightest impression on grandpa Grotter’s instrument.
Tanya took a deep breath of air and, estimating which of the three spells would be most suitable, decided to choose the medium Hastenus plodus. Just she herself, of course, was light, but on the other hand the instrument was heavy. And later, if the double bass jerked too abruptly out of place, would she be able to hold onto it?
Almost ready to blurt out the spell, Tanya recalled that she forgot to check whether all the talismans were in place and to pronounce the safety net spell.
“Here’s a blockhead!” She scolded herself, got down from the double bass and started to inspect it attentively. But, in spite of all searches, it was impossible for her to discover a single talisman like those on the bed of Bab-Yagun. Again re-reading the chapter in the magic book, Tanya discovered a postscript at the end: Talismans can be absent in some of the most perfect models of flying objects, see list on page 1092.
The girl was ready to swear that earlier there was also no mention of this postscript. The book was clearly playing tricks, being lazy to immediately highlight the entire text. Opening to page 1092, Tanya discovered her instrument — double bass mast. Th. Grotter, 1654 — in the list of flying instruments without talismans. There it was placed in the eighth place after the manned dish of D.Ogg, the dental armchair of S.T.Utter, and the Trojan horse of Ch.E.At.
Clarifying that talismans were not needed by her, Tanya again occupied the place on the double bass and, carefully waving the bow, pronounced: “Oyoyoys smackis thumpis.” After waiting several seconds to find out whether something took place confirming that her spell included insurance and ended with nothing, she decided and shouted:
“Hastenus plodus!”
Immediately after pronouncing the spell, Tanya closed her eyes tight for a moment but opened them right away, realizing that the double bass did not even tremble, remaining in its earlier position. If it rose at least a centimetre, it would already be a success. But no — it clearly did not intend to set off anywhere.
Tanya felt that her hands were shaking and even her chin was trembling. This second failure discouraged much more than the first. “They don’t work for many, but there’s nothing to be done here. It either is or isn’t!” She recalled the words of Bab-Yagun. But what if... what if she doesn’t have it? What if she did not inherit the gift from the Grotters?
“Perhaps I’m completely not of the magicians? Perhaps I’m quite ordinary, without any abilities?” Tanya thought with horror. Now for some reason she was definitely certain that the double bass would not fly anywhere, but if so, then she would remain in the human world forever and would soon be polishing with a toothbrush the floor of a sports hall.
“Interesting, there at least they hand out toothbrushes or must I stock them myself while I’m still here?” A panic thought flickered in her. Feeling that her forehead was damp, Tanya raised her hand in order to wipe it, and — she suddenly noticed that she did not have the magic ring on her hand. So here is the problem! How could she expect to fly without a magic green flash! Clearly, without the ring the spell did not have the equal amount of power.
Dashing to the cabinet, she moved aside the secret nail and extracted from the pocket of her oldest jeans, which even Pipa would be squeamish to take in her hands, the wooden box with the letters “LeoGr” hidden in there. Having put on the ring, Tanya immediately bent her finger, afraid that it would jump off, and, getting ready to pronounce: “Hastenus plodus,” energetically waved her hand.
Green sparks flew out from the ring. Not one as required, but at least a hundred. Two or three of them burnt Tanya’s nose, several dozen singed the double bass, and the rest with a loud crackle scattered in the air.
“Hey! What’s with you, gone completely nuts — to shake me so? What am I to you, a rattle?” Suddenly someone’s squeaky voice muttered. But even Tanya understood after a moment that it came from the ring.
“You... eh... it... can talk?” She could not believe it.
“And it’ll be known to you I’m the ring of Theophilus Grotter. He presented to me his voice, his character, and the ability to speak for five minutes a day. Precisely five minutes and not a second more,” the ring answered with the tunefulness of a lock that had not been greased for a long time and, not answering a single question anymore, with the squeaky voice struck up an ancient song in an incomprehensible language.
“Well, and grandpa Theophilus had a voice! Indeed a character!” Tanya said to herself with relief, when five minutes finally elapsed and the ring became silent, after growling finally in Russian: “And so without anymore nonsense! And that you will crash and then find out what’s the price of white slippers nowadays!”
“Well, that’s it! Now or never!” Tanya said, mad at herself.
Firmly taking the bow, she was already prepared to blurt out: “Hastenus plodus,” but here a strange thing happened. The medium safety spell “Hastenus plodus” by strange means suddenly tumbled out from her memory.
“Do you intend to fly or plod?” As if she heard someone’s mocking whisper. “It’ll be faster on crutches! Want to fly, so fly!”
Tanya yielded, and immediately from her tongue completely unexpectedly another got away, the extremely dangerous and unpredictable spell — “Speedus envenomus.”

* * *

Almost instantly the magic ring spat out a green spark, and in the next moment Tanya perceived that the double bass broke loose from its place and rushed outside through the window opened wide. Immediately the wind by short furious gusts-slaps attempted to throw her off, but she held on firmly.
Branches, windows, roofs, heaps of leaves on the lawn, wet cars, birds, and antennas, flashed by. Orange and dark-blue strips launched from heaven knows where were in a swirl. The sky and the earth suddenly changed places, and where, according to Tanya’s assumption, asphalt should be, cloud suddenly floated out. Ah, it is simply her turned upside down in the air!
With great difficulty Tanya managed again to return to the normal position. Although was it possible to consider normal what was taking place? With amazing speed, each minute risking running into a highrise or getting entangled in an electrical wire, she rushed over the city. The double bass, sensing on itself an inexperienced rider, as if wanting to throw her off, either fell into an air pocket or rocketed upwards so steeply that Tanya’s back was literally hanging above the ground and she again began to see houses turned upside down.
Attempting to cling to the double bass and at least somehow to hold on to it, she nearly dropped the bow, but right away remembered that she must not do this. Without the bow she would instantly lose control of the double bass, and then it would be even worse... Although is it possible to say that she was mastering it? It was flying more to wherever it wanted...
Feeling herself on top of a missile — to where Baron von Münchhausen was on his slow shot! — Tanya suddenly recalled that she did not say “Oyoyoys smackis thumpis” and because of her own stupidity she remained without insurance. She tried to utter “Oyoyoys smackis thumpis” right there, but gusts of wind beat into her face, into her mouth, and blew the words away. Moreover she was clutching the double bass by the hand with the magic ring, holding the bow in the other. If she now unclenched her hand to shoot out a green spark, it would simply be carried away.
Tanya was in a flap. Here indeed was exactly the very time to find out the price of white slippers. Galloping headlong, the double bass was clearly not under control, so far miraculously avoiding collisions, nevertheless sooner or later it would run into something. Or she herself, getting tired, would unclench her hand.
“Perhaps it’s not so bad in the boot camp for children with criminal inclinations!” The thought flickered in her. “But only I doubt Uncle Herman will begin to jump onto the roof now with a net in order to catch me and send me to the boot camp.”
Unexpectedly the double bass abruptly nodded off downward and then quickly sideways. Trying to hold onto it, Tanya suddenly grasped that she recently made exactly the same movement with the end of the bow downward and to the side. Desiring to verify her own guess, she again carefully guided the bow a little upward, and... the double bass, immediately ceasing to lose altitude, started to climb.
So it is! The double bass obeyed the bow, repeated all its movements! Especially if it was accompanied by the leaning of the entire body to the same side. So, it means all the absurd figures traced by the double bass in the air, all these “barrels” and failures were explained by her trying not to fall, confusedly swinging the hand with the bow. And she... she even wanted to drop the bow. With the thought of what would happen if she had done that, Tanya shuddered. The unguided double bass would begin to somersault exactly as the falling bow, and then... Then in exactly the same manner it would ram into the ground.
But for some reason fear had already retreated. Looking beneath her, an enormous widespread city and white clouds flowing around pierced by long, whimsical broken-through rays of a sun suddenly peeping out, Tanya at once experienced the delight of swift flight. It was a new, unknown feeling — the intoxicating rapture of speed, complete merging with the clouds, the sky, the powerful airstreams which either shot up from the ground or, on the contrary, started out softly but firmly forcing to the ground. It seemed to Tanya that once she had already experienced this feeling and she only forgot as a result of strange coincidences.
Easily and confidently tracing out figures with the edge of the bow as if she had always done this, Tanya bathed in the air-flow. The double bass, becoming suddenly amazingly obedient and had seemingly grown quiet, obligingly fulfilled her smallest desire. It either traced a loop in the air, or came down with a whistle, or, like a flying carpet, began to softly gain altitude. It seemed to Tanya that she and the double bass became one. It was as if a part of her, like the body of a stallion for the centaur or the fish tail for the mermaid.
“Really can anything compare with the beauty and power of flight of the double bass?” Tanya thought. With a narrow, slightly hooked nose like that of a hawk, gradually widening behind, it literally pierced the air. Its wide base reliably and tightly caught the air-flows and slid on them, like a light boat it was sliding along the waves. A smooth narrow spot in the center was seemingly created for sitting on top. In many respects it was not inferior to a saddle. Only there was no stirrup here, well, and stirrups on the double bass would look foolish, on top of that for sure it would thunder at high speed.
Tanya thought with sympathy about those old-fashioned sorcerers, that they fly on brooms. What, in essence, is such a broom? A stick with a bunch of twigs attached to it, which for sure begins to shake and dangle, this bunch will hardly catch an air pocket or meet a lateral gust.
Even the icy wind, earlier blowing right through her and penetrating to the last vein so that it seemed she would suddenly become a piece of ice frozen to the double bass, now already for some reason bothered her little.
When she, venturing a risky experiment, rushed past with the speed of a rocket above the ground, she nearly flew into Genka Bulonov, who had just walked out of the entrance. Only miraculously, directing the double bass sharply to the side, was it possible for Tanya to avoid a collision. Bulonov was knocked down by the gust of air. Opening and closing his mouth like a fish thrown onto sand, he sat on the asphalt and looked thunderstruck at the small point disappearing in the sky. But what was Bulonov to Tanya!
She already did not feel sorry that she chose the fastest spell. To drag along on Pilotus kamikazis... Well indeed not! If Bab-Yagun used it, then, most likely because the iron bed nevertheless could not develop a decent speed, and even the commentator of dragonball matches had not yet restored his form after the encounter with angry witches and vampires dissatisfied with him.
She was not an elephant and not Aunt Ninel heavily flying into the supermarket... Imagining in the air Aunt Ninel, who with a face twisted from horror, crushing the dachshund to herself with one hand, and holding her skirt with the other, Tanya laughed and began to trace a beautiful eight. She already almost saw how she would do it. A takeoff, then a loop with a short turn of the head downward, again a loop, already down with the head, and then exit to the usual position at the same place.
Suddenly, when Tanya had already straightened out the double bass, a dark shadow flickered over her head, and in the next moment something forcefully hit her face and the hand griping the bow. Something sharp ripped her jean jacket on the chest and slid along her cheek. Instinctively shrinking back to protect her eyes, Tanya in an instant saw a non-blinking yellow, maliciously looking eye. A disgusting, sickening smell struck her nostrils. Pain pierced her hand and she almost dropped the bow.
Acting intuitively faster, Tanya bent down to the double bass and attempted to speed it up in order to break away from the dark shadow. But the double bass had not yet come out of the eight. Its reserve of speed was clearly not enough.
Again the dark shadow flickered... Tanya, like the last time, did not understand how she would have time to swing around and how she would manage to develop this speed.
This time the sharp blow was inflicted from below and fell on her leg in passing. The blow was so powerful that the strings of the double bass began to hum. The double bass tilted from this blow, and immediately again the immobile yellow eye emerged from somewhere. The hand with the bow suddenly became terribly heavy and somewhat disobedient.
Before Tanya was able to become aware or at least be frightened, the double bass somersaulted twice in the air and rushed to the ground. The yellow eye lit up with triumph and disappeared. With a loud howl falling downward, Tanya already saw the dark asphalt square between two houses rushing up to her at breakneck speed.
But, when there remained not more than ten metres to the ground, the double bass suddenly slowed down the drop. Still one stunning loop, so abrupt that her brain nearly overturned in her head — in any case, it was precisely such a feeling, — the magic instrument of Theophilus Grotter, ceasing to lose altitude, soared up into the sky. Strings buzzed in an overstrained way, furiously... It seemed they would now break from indignation. Obviously it was necessary for the instrument to invest all its magic power to get out from the dive.
Tanya decided that by some miracle, even, probably, by chance, she pointed the end of the bow upward and did this sufficiently smoothly and confidently that the double bass would obey it.
“Well, why did I begin to fall... Ah yes, the shadow,” Tanya muttered.
And only now, when it became clear what she had escaped from, an icy wave of horror swept over her. Tanya began to turn her head, peering into the sky with fright. The clouds were like cotton wool whimsically painted with violet, pink, and blue watercolours. Solar rays made their way through confusedly. No, the dark shadow was nowhere — it sprung up from who knows where and disappeared so mysteriously and without a trace.
Her hand became more benumbed. It obeyed so badly that it was possible to decide that it did not exist at all, and in its place was attached something foreign and hindering. Tanya lowered her eyes and saw blood oozing out of three deep cuts on her wrist. There was even a scratch on her face: over the cheek spread a strange coolness, seemingly stretching out into a thread. Something sticky persistently dripped onto her collar.
Looking intently at the scratches on her hand, Tanya understood suddenly what they had meant to do. They wanted to knock the bow off her, and so, to kill her cold-bloodedly and prudently. Moreover, someone who knew the secrets of magic flights clearly attempted to destroy her. The plan almost succeeded. If Tanya had not swerved abruptly and had not tugged at the bow completely by accident, then, most likely she would have already been a stain on the asphalt.
The one who decided to kill her had thought over the smallest details. By some means he even knew how to temporarily penetrate her consciousness and compel her to say “Speedus envenomus” when she was going to utter the safer “Hastenus plodus.”
“You study your spells, but don’t take it into your head to fly by yourself! You hear? Don’t do it at any price! Somebody will be pleased if you smash yourself up,” She distinctly recalled the words of Bab-Yagun. He warned her, so why did she not listen?!
After what happened, Tanya did not have any desire to continue the flight. Discovering that she had managed to remain among the living, the dark shadow could again return any minute and finish what it started. Estimating in what direction the house of Uncle Herman and Aunt Ninel stood, she swung the double bass around and, attentively peering at the clouds to see if a terrible dark spot would appear among them, she flew in the return direction. Her hand throbbed with continuous pain, changing in time to total numbness.
Already before the landing itself, Tanya expected still one more surprise. She suddenly remembered that she never learnt the braking spells. That is, to take-off she did, but here how to come down now — unknown. It seems that the spell “Speedus envenomus” was too swift for the double bass to stop itself. More likely she would simply be flattened against the asphalt or greet the wall of the house at a mad speed.
Aiming as if she was contriving to land more successfully, she twice flew around the block. The asphalt courtyards were badly suited for landing, just as the small park enmeshed with electrical wires. The prospect of hanging from a high-voltage line attracted her even less than the possibility of breaking into smithereens.
“Likely today I’m nevertheless fated to become a flat cake or at the worst be charred! And Pipa will have an excellent excuse to miss school, setting off for my burial. She will bring along Lenka Mumrikova. They’ll both gobble up potato chips and throw candy wrappers into my grave,” Tanya thought gloomily.
Not wanting to give such pleasure to Pipa, she decided to fight for her life with all her might and suddenly recalled the safety net spell which she had not used so far.
Picking the moment when it was safe to unclench her hand with the ring, Tanya let out a green spark and exclaimed:
“Oyoyoys smackis thumpis!”
The double bass confusedly started to swerve in the air, and in a second an unknown force decisively pulled her off it. The wind began to whistle. Windows of the multi-storey house, lit up by the fragmented sunset, flashed by. The asphalt of Rublev Road relentlessly moved up to the girl.
“A-a-a!” Tanya yelled, dropping the already useless bow and covering her face with her hands. Before her internal eyes already loomed the caustic face of Pipa, who, unnoticeably sticking out a tongue the colour of liver sausage, was placing two carnations on her coffin.
But suddenly, already close by the ground itself, Tanya’s drop slowed down, and she, almost not experiencing pain, pounced with her side upon something soft, having come down deeply in it. Next to her, the double bass had fallen, discontentedly humming with the strings, and the bow floated like a flickering thin line. Irresolutely looking around, Tanya saw that she was sitting in the body of a truck standing by a traffic light. It was filled to the edge with black bags of fallen leaves, which they were transporting for the city...
She was being transported. Although was it possible to call this luck?
“A safety net spell will not be able to prevent a drop, but it will soften its consequences,” she recalled the line from the magic book.

* * *

The incident with the dark shadow attempting to kill her spoilt Tanya’s mood for a long time. There was no doubt — she had an enemy in the magic world and the enemy was powerful. She immediately recollected the dream of Uncle Herman, the theft of the gold sword, and the evasive words of the academician warning her about danger. Everything took place so swiftly in the air that Tanya was never able to understand to whom the furious yellow eye belonged. To a bird? Well, was it a bird?
Tanya no longer dared to fly, although the air beckoned her. Now and then she wanted terribly to sit down again on the double bass and cry: “Speedus envenomus!” — but the recollection was still too fresh. It is not worthwhile to tempt fate a second time. The most that Tanya would allow herself was, in the middle of the night to take off above the balcony and fly several times around the house at a low altitude, using the slowest and safest spell “Pilotus kamikazis.” The magic double bass barely dragged along on this spell. In general it was not necessary to speak of any acrobatic manoeuvres: the strings of the double bass immediately began to hum indignantly. Tanya so felt an urge to accelerate, but... she did not permit herself. Instead she repeatedly practiced the braking spell “Bangus parachutis.” Right after her utterance it was necessary to point with the bow to where she wanted to land. The instrument first hovered motionlessly above this place, and then slowly and reliably it began to descend until the feet touched the ground. True, there was an even speedier braking spell “Bangus parachutis forte,” but it was extremely inconvenient, since the double bass immediately broke through into an air pocket, fell down like a rock, and just as abruptly froze a several centimetres from the ground. At the same time, Tanya had the sensation every time that her interior remained somewhere in the air and now would tumble directly onto her head.
The Durnevs no longer caused Tanya any trouble — they now had their own problems piling up. After that incident with the Reference Book of White Magician Pipa’s hair was glued together so hard that there was no possibility whatever to comb it out. The head was as if frozen in a glass helmet, which, when they tapped on it with a pencil, emitted a “tum-tum” sound. There was nothing to be done, it was necessary to take Pipa to the hairdresser and, in spite of all protests, to give her head a close shave. With the shaved head, with the multicoloured pimples of different sizes, shining like lamps on the New Year tree, the daughter of Uncle Herman looked so nightmarishly that Tanya now and then even began to pity her.
However, Lenka Mumrikova had considerably less luck. For two days she did not go to school at all, and then she appeared in a glove and did not take it off during all her classes. Tanya could conclude from this that Mumrikova could do nothing with the fur on the hand.
For whatever reason not entirely clear to Tanya neither Pipa nor Lenka told anyone about the mysterious reference book. Both looked askance at Tanya from a distance with hatred; however, they were afraid to approach her. At night Pipa sneaked to the balcony and, trembling from fear, shut all the latches, and placed a hammer near her bed.
As far as Genka Bulonov was concerned, now the only thing he did was to be under foot near Tanya. Good though that he kept silent at the same time, only winked mysteriously as if hinting at a common secret. Moreover, sometimes for a bigger mystery he winked both eyes quickly. But really what was Bulonov to Tanya now?
And here finally came the morning of that day itself, when Bab-Yagun was to come flying. The long-awaited morning of the long-awaited day.
For breakfast Aunt Ninel was so not herself that she did not even begin to feed Tanya the day-before-yesterday semolina kasha, which the dachshund refused, but gave the same omelette as Pipa’s. Already at the end of breakfast a greenish-yellow Uncle Herman appeared in the kitchen, silently drank tea and, not looking at anyone, went out. When he left the kitchen, Tanya accidentally noticed that his right pocket was bulging slightly and there stuck out the top of a carrot, which Uncle Herman embarrassingly tried to cover with a hand.
“And why is Uncle Herman not in the Duma today? He has elections soon!” Tanya wondered.
Aunt Ninel grew red and set on her with fury.
“WHAT? What did you say?” She growled.
“I simply asked why he’s not at work. But you don’t have to answer if you don’t know,” Tanya was confused.
But Aunt Ninel obviously already considered that nevertheless the truth would not be hidden. She took herself in hand and even smiled timidly, apologizing with the smile of a lion that had recently bitten off the head of its trainer.
“Eh-eh... why not? Yesterday at the council session Uncle Herman... eh-eh... accidentally broke the microphone. They sent him... eh-eh... to the hospital.”
“They sent him to the hospital because he broke a microphone?” Tanya was astonished. Aunt Ninel was clearly holding something back.
“What, don’t you understand Russian? Well, march to do your lessons! And you only try to talk about this in school!” Finally losing patience, Aunt Ninel began to yell.
“To talk about what? That he’s in the hospital? Or that he broke the microphone?” Tanya did not understand.
“O-U-T!” Aunt Ninel shouted.
Tanya flew out like a cork into the room and bumped into Pipa there. Pipa quickly darted away from horror behind the armchair.
“What’s with Uncle Herman there? Crack, or I’ll cast a spell!” Tanya asked severely and, using Pipa’s fright, took aim at her with a finger. Pipa squealed, not taking her eyes off the finger. Now it was possible to frighten her with any nonsense. And yet Tanya so far knew not a single spell except those connected with flight.
“A-a! Don’t, I’ll talk...” the daughter of Uncle Herman squeaked. “Really you don’t know that papa, during the pre-election appearance, gnawed through the cord of the microphone, and then snacked on a folder for papers. And all this was within sight of hundreds of people... And later... he ran up to and jumped over the old man to whom he intended to present an almost new sweater. And it’s all because some idiot in the hall accidentally took a carrot from his pocket... Such people should be shot. And now mama fears that he will lose the election.”
“Here’s to you and Lisper the Rabbit!” Tanya thought with admiration.
Yes, she definitely began to like Uncle Herman. Pity even flew out from this to Uncle Herman. Now an outstanding method was known to Tanya, how to twist his brain and win his confidence. It sufficed only to treat him with carrots.

Chapter 8
Tower of Ghosts

Left alone, Tanya carefully looked around. She was standing on a narrow landing between two stairways: one of them, covered with a red strip of carpet, rose upward, the other, along which Bab-Yagun ran, went downward. Behind her back from the direction of the deaf wall through which they found themselves here, something clanked unpleasantly. Abruptly turning around, Tanya saw a rusty two-handed sword riveted to the wall by a chain from which it was now swinging, and next to it a round shield polished to lustre. Glancing into it, Tanya almost yelled. In the shield she spotted her reflection, only without the head, which, clearly in a chopped off form, was lying at her feet. The shield began to ring scornfully, and the sword rushed at her neck, but, hanging by the chain and not being ale to reach her, was maliciously swinging and rusting from vexation before her eyes.
“Well, stay!” Tanya said in a trembling voice and began to climb up the stairs.
The red strip of carpet runner slightly shook intermittently under her feet. Moans, an idiotic neigh, slapping of cards, a cat meow reached her from below. However, this was still bearable, but on the other hand quite insufferable was the trick of two black headstones adorning the next landing, on the approach of the girl both at once reflected Tanya Grotter in a shaky Gothic type.
Tanya felt dryness in her mouth. For the second time already they heralded death to her.
“Well okay! Two headstones are too many for one person,” she said and, energetically shaking her hand, shot an entire shaft of green sparks at the headstones. The letters started to ripple from annoyance and began to jump, shifting places.
Hey, what’s with you? The first headstone reflected.
We’re always so firmly attached! The second explained.
“For such jokes there are open spaces in the stones!” Tanya muttered. “Better tell me please, where’s the office of Sardanapal?”
Ahead, was written on the first headstone.
If you don’t die along the way, added the second.
Tanya twirled a finger at her temple.
The headstones lay on the landing of the middle storey of the tower. A long corridor, straight like an arrow, supported by high arches, stretched into the depth of the fortress. Through semicircular stained-glass windows the sunlight broke through, splitting up into bright spots. Tanya took several undecided steps.
Unexpectedly a strange champing sound was heard under her feet. On the floor appeared first a head, then a chest, and then from there emerged a dark-complexioned young person with a dove-coloured nose and in an unbuttoned infantry tunic. Cold and dampness blew from the ghost. The opposite wall vaguely showed through his chest. Tanya jumped aside. If she did not do this, the phantom would pass right through her. He intended to do this, but, becoming interested, stopped and began to examine the girl.
“Oh, a charmer! A newbie in Tibidox!” He exclaimed in a crackling voice. “And for what, interestingly, did they put you here? Let me guess. Probably magnetized a purse with a glance like those gypsy sisters? Or you’re that person who froze her math teacher? So she must — and so block by block. Let her stay for a bit as Snow Maiden! Again no? Then accidentally burnt with a look the class diary for company and the teacher? Turned grandpa into a zombie for not buying you a bike? Changed candy wrappers into money? Pushed alcoholic papa into the vodka bottle? No?”
Unexpectedly the dull gaze of the spectre stopped at the tip of Tanya’s nose. His face stretched and rippled.
“Hullo! What do I see? Really you’re that same one?” He exclaimed.
“What ‘that same one’? I — It’s me. Tanya Grotter. Daughter of Leopold Grotter.”
The ghost grunted with laughter. He quickly stretched out his hand and before the girl had time to move away, flicked her nose with a finger. It seemed to Tanya that a jet of musty icy air was directed toward her birthmark.
“Mille pardon, poor lamb. I simply confirmed whether your birthmark is real. Yes, you’re really Grotter... I don’t believe my eyes! It was extremely foolish on the part of Sardanapal to bring you here precisely now... If he only — ha-ha! — did not want to enlarge his collection of poltergeists...”
“What are you talking about?” Tanya did not understand.
But the spectre did not begin to explain. He suddenly burst out laughing, and so that his face floated somewhere.
“I’ll go tell everyone that I saw the very Tanya Grotter. I’ll make my friends happy,” he stated, deftly catching the nose slipping away. “By the way, I have a little request, mille pardon. Will you scratch my back?”
The ghost turned his back. Tanya covered her mouth with a hand in order to not scream. Not less than twelve knives stuck out from his back.
“So, you’ll not scratch? And you’ll not adjust a dagger?” The phantom asked, turning his head at an angle unthinkable for a living person.
Not waiting for an answer, he began to neigh foolishly and quickly floated away into one of the offshoots of the hallway, loudly calling:
“Hey everybody! Want a joke? You know whom Sardanapal dragged in? Here’s Tanya Grotter!”
Deciding that she had had enough contact with ghosts for the time being, Tanya threw herself into a run. Marble statues began to jump into niches, the carpet started to go under her feet. In the central corridor there turned out a set of side stairs, paths, tight holes, and iron lattices, beyond which were clearly secret passages or, at the worst, deserted dungeons. A hard frost blew from one passage, from another damp fall leaves were flung into her face, from the third breathed intense desert heat. From somewhere vague shadows floated out — first a sad lady in an impossible violet hat, then an unpleasant old man with a wrinkled and flabby face, similar to a blown off sphere.
Already convinced that she had long strayed from the path, Tanya rushed along the corridor, dreaming only about one thing — to find a quiet place. She was about to poke into some passage, but in the darkness tires rustled, and a Wheelchair was rolling out towards her. Over the Wheelchair was thrown a dark-blue plaid rug, which stirred in a way as if someone was hiding under it.
Having jumped again into the main corridor, Tanya rushed to run past the cacti sadly blinking human eyes and an enormous crystal coffin quietly swinging on silver chains stretched between two attractive overhangs. Inside the coffin was empty, and only directly along the centre laid a long broom with a label attached: “Broom G.P. full size.” Tanya had neither the time nor the possibility to examine the broom. The Wheelchair with the hooting invisible being was maliciously dogging her steps. It already literally ran into Tanya’s heels and for sure would run her down if the hallway did not begin to suddenly turn steeply, following the whimsical architecture of Tibidox. Here the Wheelchair started to swerve and fell slightly behind.
Having jumping behind the turn, Tanya found herself by an enormous double door, on which were traced two gold sphinxes sleeping. The girl’s thought did not have time to flicker whether this was the door which she was searching for, when above the entrance immediately started to shimmer dazzling fiery letters:
Oh yes! You’re not mistaken! Before you the small modest office of the laureate of the Magic Suspenders Award, life-posthumous head of the school of Tibidox, academician of white magic Sardanapal Chernomorov.
Fearfully listening to the hooting of the phantom and the rustle of the Wheelchair, Tanya began to drum on the door. Both sphinxes at once awoke and started to prepare for a leap. But here the door was thrown open, and the life-posthumous head of Tibidox appeared like a plump duck to meet her. The fragrant beard, first appearing then disappearing, majestically lay on his chest. Both whisker-insurgents were firmly tucked behind the ears and tied in a knot at the back of the head.
“It’s chasing me! Wheelchair!” Tanya shouted.
Academician smiled soothingly and, getting up to the middle of the hallway, began to wait for the approach of Wheelchair. Several seconds later it darted out from behind the turn and was going to rush forward, but, noticing in its way the stern academician, in a cowardly manner it shied to the side. The invisible being grunted fearfully and, like a bag it collapsed onto the floor, covered by the rug. Meanwhile Wheelchair hurried to filter through the wall. A second later, shyly bent, the rug crawled there.
Sardanapal embraced Tanya around the shoulders like a friend and led her into the office.
“When you next see Wheelchair, Coffin Lid, or Eyeless Horror, don’t take it into your head to run away from them. They’re energy-vampires, only gorge on fear. Enough to simply look at them and say: Briskus-quickus!” He advised.
Hearing the spell, the invisible being, still not quite hidden, squeaked in horror, and a moment later with loud chomping he was pulled into the granite slabs of the floor.
“Now he won’t leap out soon,” Sardanapal smiled into the beard.
“Pity I didn’t know about Briskus-quickus earlier. There was such a disgusting... with knives in the back...” Tanya felt sorry, answering his questioning look.
“With knives? So, it was Lieutenant Rzhevskii. Not many like his little jokes,” smiled the academician.
The inscription did not deceive. The office of academician Sardanapal was in truth modest. In any case, it was not exactly a sports hall. Along the walls in mahogany tubs decorated with small diamonds grew strange palm trees. In transparent glass columns swam bright tropical fishes. Near Sardanapal’s table, representing a strongly reduced copy of a soccer field, was a cage full of magic books, which, indignantly fluttering the pages, continually started to knock against the bars, trying to escape. One book, thick, with yellow parchment sheets, at the same time was striving to become a lizard, but the bars, clamping down, did not let it through.
“Books on black magic. Sometimes needed for removing spells. Could also return them to the library, but, I fear, they won’t get on with the genie Abdullah. Either he will incinerate them or they’ll re-educate him. The genies, they’re nervous, unstable people,” explained Sardanapal. “By the way, how’s the Reference Book of White Magician? Came in handy?”
“Yes, I learned the flight spells and spells of passage. True, once Pipa found this book and even there one...” Tanya blurted out and, not being able to maintain, told Sardanapal about Pipa and Lenka Mumrikova.
“Will it be possible somehow to get rid of the fur on her hand?” She asked.
Sardanapal despondently began to click his tongue.
“I’m afraid we’ll not be able to help. A guard spell cannot be annulled. Any moronoid attacking a magic book grows fur. The hand is still okay. Imagine what it would be if she touched the book, say, with her nose?”
Unexpectedly it seemed to Tanya that two icy drills bored right through her. Turning around, she saw in a deep armchair a short balding little fellow with closely planted eyes, maliciously sparkling from under patchy grey eyebrows. He was looking at her intently, with almost unconcealed hatred.
“Let me introduce. This is Slander Slanderych. Dean of studies at Tibidox. And this...” Sardanapal started.
“I surmise who this is,” Slander Slanderych broke in. “Let her tell how she got here?”
“Eh-eh, as usual... By foot, along the hallway,” Tanya was at a loss.
“I know perfectly well not on a vacuum! All flight spells are blocked here... I ask, how did you get into Tibidox? Through the gates?” The piercing look of the dean stuck Tanya on the bridge of her nose.
She hesitated, but, considering that otherwise she would let Bab-Yagun down, answered “yes.” Hearing her “yes,” Slander Slanderych soared up.
“Not true, you did not pass through the gates! The cyclops would have announced it to me!” He squealed hysterically. “Either you’ll immediately tell me the truth, or...”
Considering that it was necessary to extricate herself urgently somehow, Tanya looked sorrowfully at Sardanapal and, forcing her gaze to be moistened, she sobbed. She knew well how to solicit pity: life taught her. Chernomorov, feeding the books on black magic with pieces of damp meat, sympathetically roused himself and immediately came to her aid.
“Slander, stop shouting at our guest! Perhaps she truly passed through the gates to here?” He said.
“You know very well, Professor, that it’s impossible!” The dean was seething. “Besides cyclops, there is the notify spell! We would find out about this!”
“What, a spell cannot fail?”
“Once in a million years!” Slander Slanderych shouted.
“Here you see, failure nevertheless could happen! In other words, the next million years we’ll be able to sleep peacefully... However, pull yourself together now, but then see how the booklets have become nervous,” Sardanapal uttered softly, nodding to the cage. The books on black magic threw open the pages and, pressed against the bars, they greedily caught each angry howl of Slander Slanderych, clearly gorging on the negative energy from him.
Seeing that Sardanapal was not on his side, the dean of Tibidox threw another icy gaze at Tanya.
“As if I don’t know: it’s all Bab-Yagun and the hole of his cranky granny! I’ll get to them!” He hissed and turned away.
Sardanapal affectionately tousled Tanya’s hair. At the same time the beard, until now quietly lying on his chest, made use of the situation and quietly flicked on her nose.
“Well now, my girl, you’re in Tibidox. How’s the first impression? Nice here, true? You’re attached to this place once and for life.” The voice of the academician trembled.
Tanya carefully glanced at his face, checking whether he was joking. To her Tibidox indeed did not quite seem such a strange place.
“Is it true that this is a school for difficult-to-raise magicians?” She asked.
The academician hesitated slightly.
“Yes... But only you don’t think that this is a colony or penitentiary. Nothing like it. Our task is to help...” he began.
“To help what?”
Noticing that one of his strings was untied, the academician tied it with a look and whistled for himself an armchair, which ran up to him on short curved legs.
“To find oneself, to develop correctly. You see, capabilities for magic shows differently in different people, but most often unexpectedly. Any boy or girl can live ten or twelve years in the world, born of the most normal parents, and not suspecting this. And then with the coincidence of specific circumstances magic bursts through outward, and they accomplish some such things that a normal moronoid would never do. Well, for example, they transform a pestering neighbour into a parrot or make off with roller-skates through a showcase, moreover the showcase itself, surprisingly, remains whole. They do not even want to steal, but simply the roller-skates — somehow! — jump into their hands from the power of desire... At the same time it is in no way necessary that those boys or girls who accomplish this be from decent families. More often it’s the opposite. Magic abilities come apparently to whomever you want — tramps, a young pickpocket, the worst student in a class. Here we work with such children in Tibidox so that subsequently they would not use their skills for harm...”
“Only they do nevertheless! For this very reason we have a department of black magic here! There we send those who will in no way be kept by the white department,” Slander added gloomily.
“And the children like to learn?” Tanya asked with curiosity.
“In various ways! Here everyone has his own talent. Someone can move excellently in space, another passes through walls, a third reads minds or possesses talent for levitation. There are some that for three years cannot master the simplest spells, then without any training put such a curse that we then struggle for two weeks to remove it. We have finally one little glutton who came to us after devouring produce in a supermarket.”
“It happens,” Tanya said sympathetically, recalling the day-before-yesterday vermicelli of Aunt Ninel.
“You don’t understand,” Sardanapal became more specific. “He gobbled up ALL the produce in ALL the supermarkets. Furthermore, he devoured the batons of the two guards who tried to stop him. Of course the poor wretch can be excused that until then he was extremely famished — mother and father generally barely fed him, only beat and forced him to beg, but he should still control himself. Now he’s here, you’ll yet to be introduced... Furthermore, we have studying here orphans who find this their native home. We try to seek out a small key to each heart. Indeed magic is extremely dangerous if we use it without control.”
Slander Slanderych snorted mockingly.
“A small key to each heart, quack-quack!” He mimicked. “There’s no need to fuss with them, with these little old foxes! Roller-skates, you see, jump into their hands. Wings grow on purses! At first it’s nothing, and then — somehow! — from nothing turns out She-Who-Is-No-More! I would handle them differently. Once and for all! I see right through them!” The cold drill-like eyes of the dean were fixedly set on Tanya, and it seemed to her that in each of his pupils a small skeleton was reflected.
Sardanapal grew red. Hissing, whizzing was heard — and, suddenly taking off, the short-legged armchair together with the academician hovered in the air directly above her head. Tanya understood that the head of Tibidox was letting out steam this way.
“Nonsense, Slander!” He shouted. “Three hundred times I argued with you and three hundred more times I’ll argue! You think I don’t know what you’re driving at? It’s not possible to subject children to being complete zombies, what they would not be up to! While I’m chief here, I’ll not allow zombies with tin buttons as eyes strolling sedately along the hallways! Or have you forgotten how you came here in childhood and what you were busy with when I found you?”
“No need, Sardanapal! We came to an agreement!” Turning pale, the dean shouted, fearfully looking sideways at Tanya. Obviously he was terribly afraid that his secret — interesting, what? — would come out.
The academician did not have time to answer when their conversation was interrupted by a terrible roar. The walls began to tremble slightly from the blows which reached from under the ground. Tanya from surprise shot up on the spot, noticing at the same time that neither Sardanapal nor Slander Slanderych even raised an eyebrow.
“It’s the titans. Cottus, Briareus, and Gyes. Each has a hundred hands, fifty heads, and a huge amount of nonsense. Soon you’ll become accustomed to them. They’re imprisoned deeply underground in a dark, tight, and stuffy cave,” Slander Slanderych said with a nasty smile.
“And why not let them out?” Tanya asked. Slander Slanderych biliously glanced at her as if she blurted out the sheerest stupidity.
“Let out the titans? You heard, Sardanapal, what thoughts she has? It’s impossible. They were imprisoned from the moment of the universe by even more ancient gods. If they’re released, they’ll destroy everything here. Even black magicians understand this and don’t risk poking their noses in there. Number one monsters — these are not dragons or evil spirits for you.”
“But from where did the titans come here?” Just in case Tanya went away from the shuddering wall.
Sardanapal in some confusion scratched his nose.
“You see, Tibidox — it’s not only a school for difficult-to-raise magicians, but also a place of exile of all possible ancient... eh-eh... relics, differently disposed to man, and even to the magicians also. Since these monsters are immortal, then it’s not possible to do anything to them — only possible to imprison them... But don’t you be disturbed. All coins... eh-eh... all these essences are found on the lower levels of Tibidox. They are absolutely not dangerous, but just in case they’re guarded by cyclops and the hero-brothers. Furthermore, we have outstanding magic defence. I developed it myself. It provides for all situations.” Slander Slanderych coughed with malice. “Almost all situations,” Sardanapal corrected himself, noticing that the dean was prepared to object again. “Many years ago, true, there was an episode when they broke through the defence, but they caught all who escaped then. At least, we think everyone, since, it goes without saying, we could not count precisely how many of them escaped... It’s known to us for certain that until now only one essence is found on the loose, one that presents big... we’ll say frankly, enormous danger... to us all. This essence... I’ll not hide this... it’s Plague-del-Cake-She-Who-Is-No-More.”
Unexpectedly a low whistle was heard. The button on the dean’s collar began to twirl swiftly and started to blink red.
“Slander, your notifier snapped into action again! You turn it off!” Sardanapal winced.
“I’ll not turn it off! Someone from the evil spirits is again hanging about in the Hidden Basement! And, Grotter, I’ll still settle with you! We’ll return to this conversation!” The dean promised darkly, looking around at Tanya.
He jumped up and rushed out, slamming the door with such force that one of the half-asleep gold sphinxes fell from it and was forced to clamber back up.
Academician Chernomorov was helplessly at a loss.
“Serious character... But an outstanding man! And what a specialist!” He said, as if apologizing. “So, Tanya, from now on you’ll study in Tibidox. It’s already unimportant what class you were in among the moronoids. Here it is necessary for you to start everything from the beginning. We have five basic classes, or steps. Strict exams at the end of each year. Then those desiring can enter either Medusa’s department of evil spirits studies, the removal of evil eye, practical magic with Professor Stinktopp, or come to me in the department of the beyond. Even possible to be trained in veterinary magic, that is, to treat unicorns, firebirds, dragons, harpies, Cerberus, mermaids. Here one boy, Vanka Valyalkin, they say, is doing well. He even managed to take a splinter out of the nose of my sphinx, something I myself, must admit, would not dare to do...”
Sardanapal was still saying something for a long time, but Tanya for some reason did not remember his words. Lulled by the monotonic babble of his voice, she felt how her eyelids, growing heavy, closed. The sleepless night, carried astride on the double bass in the icy airflow, had an effect on her.
“Yes, you go and sleep!” Sardanapal recollected suddenly. “Wait, I’ll now find out where we’ll put you. Today you have work in the second half of the day, but you’ll still have time to have a good sleep.”
Taking a zoomer from the table, he wiped it with his sleeve, and immediately on the bottom of the sheet metal basin flared up the face of Medusa Gorgonova, the associate professor of the department of evil spirits studies. Medusa overslept, and all the snakes on her head, not having time yet to turn into hair, were firmly gathered in a bun at the back of the head. Noticing the academician, Medusa hurriedly threw a kerchief over her head.
“Excuse me, Medusa... I only wanted to ask where we’ll place Tanya Grotter?”
Medusa answered something, but Tanya could not hear. She could only hear the head of Tibidox. Probably, the sound of his zoomer was tuned to the telepathic channel.
“And there’s no other place? You’re sure? There were still two reserve bedrooms... How were they flooded? Again your experiments on the domestication of mermaids? Everywhere will again smell of fish... Good, I’ll tell her. Bye!”
Sardanapal wiped off the image of Medusa from the zoomer and turned to Tanya. He was slightly embarrassed.
“Medusa said that all the bedrooms are occupied. You... eh-eh... it is necessary for you to share a room with Black Curtains. If Curtains begin to behave strangely, suffice to say: Briskus-quickus! You’ll manage?”
“I’ll try,” promised Tanya, estimating how she would say Briskus-quickus, if Curtains should attack her in her sleep.
“Wait, I’m not yet finished. Possibly, you don’t know, but Tibidox consists of two completely equal parts. We — white magicians occupy one part, and the other... the other, alas, is occupied by black magicians. Usually we don’t interfere in the affairs of each other. We have, to express more clearly, neutrality... So here, to room with Black Curtains is unique in the entire Tibidox, which belongs simultaneously to both the black magicians and us. Therefore your roommate will be a girl from the black. Her name is Coffinia Cryptova. She’s... m-m... a little strange, however, black magicians are all like that... You agree? Then I’m sending sphinx to direct you...”
“Well, if there’s nothing else...” Tanya shrugged her shoulders. She wanted one thing: sleep.
“After Pipa I’ll be surprised by nothing,” yawning, Tanya thought, and this time she was mistaken.
Soon she would be surprised. And not only surprised.

Chapter 10
Veterinary Magic

On the next day the first lesson was evil spirits studies. Medusa Gorgonova entered the classroom and, having nodded dryly to everyone, directed her steps to her table. Two beefy guards from re-educated shamans wheeled in a cage, in which raged a small disgusting creature, overgrown with rigid fur, yellow horns, and an unpleasant tail like a rat’s.
Tanya shuddered. She was convinced that she had met him before, saw these horns — one long and the other small and curved. Exactly, this was Agukh!
“Before you is one of the typical representatives of the evil spirits — a swamp bogey,” Medusa said in a teacher’s voice, extracting a pointer from the air. “An unpleasant, evil creature, fed by the energy of those whom it made to suffer. It possesses primitive speech skills and weak telepathic abilities. Individual unscrupulous magicians use the bogeys as messengers or accomplices in crimes... This example I caught today in my office. It was poking its nose into my papers, not grasping that I lock up boxes not merely by a key.”
Explaining, Medusa carelessly pushed the pointer through the bars of the cage. Agukh instantly clicked its teeth and gnawed through the pointer in the middle.
“I hate! I hate you, Gorgonova, and Tanka Grotter! Blood will soon be spilled! Much blood! I’ll gut!” The bogey began to yell.
Medusa with disgust extracted from the cage a fragment of the pointer and threw it into the wastebasket.
“You see what type this is,” as if nothing happened, she continued. “Fortunately, swamp bogeys are very afraid of specific spells. Here this directs special dread at them: slopis-galoshis-idiotis.”
Agukh, accurately doused by cold water, stopped screaming out threats and hid in a corner of the cage.
“Ah, no need to say this filth to me!” It began to squeak in panic. “I’ll be good! I’ll saw off no one’s head! I’ll plant flowers and shuffle my feet!”
“Wonderful,” said Medusa. “You may begin.”
She opened the cage and allowed Agukh to get outside. The children exchanged surprised glances. Really Medusa believed it? Meanwhile the swamp bogey unhappily looked around, but already in a second its small eyes lit up with hatred.
“I’ll kill! I’ll gut! For everyone to tremble!” It began to yell and rushed at Medusa.
“Sparkis frontis!” Associate Professor Gorgonova pronounced Softly but distinctly.
The green spark bursting from her ring struck the swamp bogey in the chest and flung it away back into the cage. The door slammed shut. Medusa blew on the ring.
“One more lesson. Sparkis frontis, as you know, is the main shielding spell of white magic. We call it the spell of battle spark. I sincerely recommend ‘dark’ magicians to not use it. This weapon can turn against them. Any questions? Then take it away!”
The two guards grabbed the cage and carried it out of the class.
“Please remember well what you just saw. I strongly advise you of this,” Medusa said, especially emphasizing the word “strongly.” At the same time she looked significantly at Tanya, as if what she said and showed mainly concerned her.

* * *

After evil spirits studies everyone set off for dinner, which was usually in the Hall of Two Elements — the sole quarters of Tibidox capable of accommodating simultaneously several hundred people. The black department of Tibidox was assembled on its half while the white was on its. The instructors, both white and black magicians, came down from above along the staircase of Atlases, and downstairs each already joined his own department. With the white students sat the academician Chernomorov, Medusa, and Yagge, and with the black — Dentistikha, Professor Stinktopp, and the trainer of magic piloting Nightingale O. Robber. The dean Slander Slanderych, as a magician-specialist using both white and black spells, walked hither and thither, not fearing the flame.
The ancient oak tables, preserving on themselves random scratches and inscriptions of various centuries, now and then very amusing, were still completely empty. While Tanya was estimating how they would have time to simultaneously lay all the tables quickly, Sardanapal walked out to the middle of the hall and threw open a small wooden chest which was in his hands.
“Two from the chest, identical in person, come quickly to feed us!” Sardanapal shouted.
In that same moment the cover of the chest was thrown open, and from it flew out two swift whirlwinds. Squinting, Tanya made out that it was two rosy broad-shouldered fine fellows in red shirts, moving with incredible speed. In all of several seconds magic tablecloths unrolled along all the tables, and on them appeared round loaves, small white loaves, pretzels, meat dumplings, cheese dumplings, fruit-filled dumplings, pies, danishes, nut cakes, rolls, raisin cakes, and crepes with salmon or caviar. All this was in such quantity that it could quench any appetite. Seeing that Bab-Yagun and Vanka Valyalkin attacked the food as if nothing was the matter, Tanya followed their example. It seemed to her that after Aunt Ninel’s sticky vermicelli and stewed radish she would be in a state to lay waste the entire table by herself. But it was impossible, since the more they took, the more appeared. Twenty minutes had not even gone by but it already seemed to Tanya that one more little piece and she would simply burst. Bab-Yagun, also had time to eat his fill, had a drowsy blank look, only Vanka Valyalkin alone, likely was still ready to snatch a mouthful, but he was a special case...
Sardanapal clapped his hands:
“Thank you, two from the chest! Perhaps, that’s enough!”
The fine fellows in red shirts bowed to the waist and dived back into the small chest. Before the cover slammed shut, Gunya Glomov and his friend Yura Idiotsyudov quickly threw several bones in there. They thought that this trick would go unnoticed and they would laugh over Sardanapal, but in the same second the fine fellows with the speed of lightning again fluttered from the chest. One plugged up the noses of Glomov and his friend, and the other in the same moment tipped into the opened mouths half a jar of horseradish sauce.
With loud howls, with tears streaming from their eyes, almost breathing out flame, Glomov and Idiotsyudov jumped up and hurled themselves to the exit, while the fine fellows, extremely pleased with themselves, again dived into the chest.
Sardanapal smiled delicately, pretending that he noticed nothing.
“Finished? Now again to work!” He gave the order.
“Uh-huh! And now my favourite subject — veterinary magic!” Vanka Valyalkin said happily, pulling off from the benches the friends grown heavy from satiety.
“Oh yes! Treat teeth in harpies —always dreamed about such work. With the thumb, with the little finger — why waste time on trifles?” The passing Coffinia Cryptova snorted.
“She somehow cannot forget the last project,” explained Vanka. “And the matter is really simple, must get the beast to trust you, suggest to it that you will not harm but want to help it. Here Tararakh, our instructor, turns out first-rate...”
This Tararakh actually turned out to be marvellous, so marvellous that Tanya totally shared the enthusiasm of Vanka Valyalkin. True, the first minute she did not greatly like Tararakh — she was even frightened, when into the large hall with barred windows, where it smelled strongly of dragon dung, at first was rolled in a large barrel, and then someone, nudging this barrel from behind, started to yell straight from the threshold: “Look out or you’ll get run over!”
Having rolled the barrel to the middle of the class, the possessor of the loud voice with Herculean panting guided it into a vertical position and came out from behind it. Tanya stared at him thunder-struck. Tararakh was short, bowlegged, but so broad-shouldered that it seemed he was wider than tall. His hair was long, never combed, eyes black like two olives, and the lower jaw seemed simply enormous.
“Hello, newbie!” Tararakh said cheerfully, waving a hand in welcome at her. “Today we’re treating mermaids. Carp louse nibbles them to death, the poor wretch; therefore they’re all terribly mean. So, it means, when I open the barrel, don’t poke your nose close. They’re reasonable, but only not quite. Must be careful! And don’t let a mermaid tickle you, or then it will tickle you to death! Clear?”
“Clear!” Vanka answered for everyone.
“Excellent! Let’s go!”
Tararakh decisively pulled the cover off the barrel, and instantly a pale girl with loose green hair showed herself.
“Phew, how she reeks of fish! It’ll now turn me inside out!” Coffinia said with disgust, pinching her nose.
The mermaid started to laugh unpleasantly and, splashing with her tail, neatly splashed Coffinia with water from the barrel. Moreover, it also reached Rite On-The-Sly, one of Coffinia’s friends looming close-by.
“Ah-ah! What has she done!” Coffinia began to yell, jumping aside to a far corner of the hall.
“No matter, you’ll dry! Shouldn’t you be pleasant to her? We have such a beauty in her, and you say: she smells of fish!” Tararakh said.
It was worthwhile for the mermaid to hear a compliment, as she instantly stopped hitting on the water with her tail and began to spruce herself up, giggling in embarrassment and repairing her hair.
Tararakh demonstrated how to prepare a solution for killing carp louse from fir cones, dandelion roots, and poisonous buttercup flowers, and deftly cleansed the mermaid’s tail with it.
“You saw?” He asked. “And now your turn. Whom have I not summoned for a long time? Dollova!”
Unwillingly dragging herself to the board, Dusya tried to do the same as Tararakh, but the mermaid suddenly gripped her hand and started to tickle her, and in such a way that Dusya’s eyes stuck out of her forehead.
“Well-well, calm down!” Tararakh ordered, sending Dusya to her place. “It’s because you took her by the fin! Don’t touch mermaids by the fins, they don’t like it! But here by the scales as much as you like! Who’s next?”
The lesson flew unnoticeably. In any case, for Tanya. Although many blacks and even some of the whites, she felt, were not too pleased.
“Well that’s it for now! I hope you understand everything about mermaids,” Tararakh said, after glancing at the clock. “For next class I ask everyone to appear in helmets. We’ll change Pegasus’ shoes, and it, the old fox, kicks wonderfully with its rear left...”
The children began to disperse. Tanya together with Vanka approached Tararakh, who was nudging the mermaid into the barrel.
“Ugh, help, children! Will have to release her into the pond!” He puffed, trying to close the cover on the cackling mermaid. This he finally succeeded, and, having deftly jumped up, sat on the barrel.
“Tararakh, this is Tanya Grotter!” Vanka Valyalkin said.
“Uh-huh, thought so! Won’t confuse you with anyone else,” he nodded.
Understanding that he had her birthmark in mind, Tanya wanted to feel offended, but for some reason she could not. It was not possible for Tararakh to conceal malice — he was so cheerful.
“Probably you want to find out why I’m so strange?” The instructor of veterinary magic continued. “The jaw is heavy and all that? Indeed I’m not a magician at all — neither white nor black. I’m a pithecanthropus.”
“A pithecanthropus? But they lived awfully long ago!”
Tararakh smiled. His teeth were very large and powerful, although uneven.
“You see, what kind of story turned out... Well, we likely brought down somebody, and it turned out to be a white dragon — very rare. Even among the dragons such is one in a million. Well I found this out later, probably after several thousand years. But at the time we simply wanted to gorge... And the rest who ate the dragon with me were shorter, less lucky. First they swelled up like balloons, and then — bang! Good that the pithecanthropus is not nervous in general or somebody would definitely faint... Later I was indeed told that white dragons could not exist in any case. Only eat one piece near the tail and you get immortality. So I toiled until finally Sardanapal picked me and I learn to care for magic creatures. I like this work very much.”
Unexpectedly Tararakh, as if recalling something, grew gloomy.
“Here’s another thing, children. Don’t poke your nose into the basements and tell others not to either.”
“You’re talking about the Walled-up Basement, where the Hair is?” Vanka asked.
Tararakh shook his head:
“No... there you’ll not go either: all the passages are blocked there. I’m talking about the lower basements, where the Sinister Gates are... Something has begun to shake lately: as if someone is forcing his way through from that side. I told Sardanapal and he says: indeed, don’t be alarmed. But I know that you don’t joke with the Sinister Gates! Well I’m going...” Tararakh energetically tipped the barrel and rolled it to the exit. The mermaid inside was laughing loudly: she probably liked to tumble.
Returning from lessons, Vanka and Tanya discussed what they recently heard.
“And what are these Sinister Gates?” Tanya asked.
“Enormous copper gates. Beyond them the jails begin exactly... Well, where they imprison spirits of Chaos and ancient gods. If they escaped, what nightmare would start. Everything would turn upside down, and how much blood would be spilled — rivers. But only don’t be alarmed: the Sinister Gates will never be opened. The cyclopes guard them, and generally Sardanapal also keeps an eye on them.”
“And if someone nevertheless contrives to open them?” Tanya asked.
“But they tell you it’s impossible!” Vanka repeated. “Still the Hair exists! In reality everything is supported by it, and the Gates only ensure. But if something happens to the Hair, then only the Gates will save everything from Chaos. Shh, you hear? Someone’s coming!”
Behind the turn of the corridor someone’s footsteps were shuffling.
“I’ll show you how to shoot at the ceremonial portrait of The Ancient One! I’ll have you know, piglet!” A raspy voice was heard. Along the corridor, dragging the ear of a leaning little cupid, stomped Slander Slanderych.
Having almost flown into Tanya and Vanka Valyalkin, the dean very sternly looked at them and released the little cupid, breaking his bow beforehand. Picking up the fragments from the floor, the little one began to roar and took off, fluttering his little white wings and rubbing that ear crushed like a dumpling.
“I’ll show you! You’ll know how to break bows!” He threatened Slander and, straightening the red suspenders, darted away into the window.
“Interesting, what was Slander doing here? Did he come to admire the portrait of The Ancient One?” Tanya wondered when the dean disappeared.
“Of course not. He was probably on the Vanishing Floor and on his way back there,” assumed Vanka.
“The Vanishing Floor?” Tanya again asked. Vanka hesitated mysteriously.
“It’s one of the riddles of Tibidox. The whole day it’s a floor like any floor, and then suddenly it disappears heaven knows where. Snap — it’s gone. The stairs abruptly come to an end, and further is white fog and void. Imagine? Then after some time the Floor again appears, and everything is likely in place: statues, pictures, but if someone was there or even some of the magicians, then that’s it. Those who disappeared together with the floor never returned.”
“But Sardanapal? He also cannot retrieve them?” Tanya was astonished. For some reason it seemed to her that Sardanapal was all-powerful. Not without reason everybody said that he was the greatest magician since The Ancient One.
Vanka shook his head:
“Neither Sardanapal nor Medusa, no one... They say here’s some special form of magic. Even not magic, but generally something incomprehensible. The only thing they did, — they blocked up the Floor with this spell that not a single student could penetrate there... But nevertheless there was the case when two idlers from third year found their way there... True, this was already ten years ago.”
“And then what?”
“And then nothing. No one has seen them since although there are various rumours, especially among the ghosts...”
Tanya shivered.
“And Slander is not afraid to go there?”
“Don’t know. Maybe he knows the precise time when the Floor disappears next, and perhaps hides something there... With this Slander you understand nothing at all. Like he’s black but sometimes uses white magic. All of Tibidox knows like their own five fingers that he wanders along the basements at night. Slippery character... And what kind of gaze he has — exactly like a drill,” Vanka said, shuddering.
Recalling Slander’s icy glance literally freezing her at their first meeting, Tanya could not but agree with him.

* * *

In the evening when the clock hanging in the drawing room was persistently pointing to the pillow and emitting unpleasant squeaky sounds, thus shaking from the disturbance, Shurasik suddenly went out to the middle of the room and in a trembling voice asked everyone not to break up.
“Oho-ho! Now it’ll be something!” Coffinia snorted. “I bet they’re reading us a three-hour lecture About the benefit of washing feet before bed. Or Theory and practice of cleaning teeth in light of recent discoveries of magic medicine.”
“Or arranging a dressing-down for me on the story with the boots,” added Vanka.
On the pale cheeks of Shurasik appeared red spots.
“Please be quiet, please all be quiet... Don’t!” He exclaimed imploringly. “I want to do nothing of the kind! I want to ask forgiveness. To ask forgiveness of all of you — white and black.
“For what? What are you up to now?” Bab-Yagun tensed up. “I hope it’s nothing to do with my vacuum?”
But Shurasik did not even hear him.
“I want to ask forgiveness for myself, for the fact that I am what I am... I... it hurts me that everything turns out so. I’ll without fail try to turn over a new leaf and no longer be such... a boring, haughty know-it-all,” making an effort with himself, he pronounced.
Bab-Yagun’s jaw even dropped: not too bad, to say such a thing about oneself!
“And nevertheless Shurasik’s a fine fellow! I really wouldn’t be able to do this, and indeed I’m also not without reason!” He whispered to Tanya.
Meanwhile Shurasik extracted from somewhere a large box filled with clear red cardboard little hearts.
“Here...” Shurasik said in embarrassment. “I made these as gifts. If someone considers that they can be friends with me and take me as I am, please take these little hearts and wear them on your chest... If not, then don’t. Simply I’ll know that you don’t like me and... and... you don’t want to have anything to do with me.”
With downcast eyes, he muttered some spell, and immediately the little hearts, jumping out of the box, began to fly over to everyone, one to each who was in the drawing room. Tanya attentively examined her little heart. On it with the smallest pebbles, selected with a rare skill, was traced “WF.” It was terrible even to imagine how long it took Shurasik to prepare a whole box of them!
“And what’s this ‘WF’? Wacky freak? Witless fool?” Coffinia was interested, the only one, it seems, on whom Shurasik’s speech did not produce an impression. However, it seemed Coffinia in general could not be touched. Unless to say to her how stunning she was.
“WF — ‘We be friends!’” Shurasik exclaimed almost with tears. “It means that the one, who wears this little heart of friendship, doesn’t hurt my feelings and doesn’t laugh at me! What, I’m guilty that I am what I am? Why I always have little homework?”
“It goes without saying that you’re not guilty,” Vanka encouraged him and was the first to pin the little badge to his soccer shirt.
After this Bab-Yagun, Rita On-The-Sly, Dusya Dollova, and also all the others did the same. Tanya sighed and followed the general example. True, to wear on one’s chest a red little heart with the inscription “WF” is indeed awfully absurd. On the other hand, if you do not pin it on — you will inflict terrible insult on Shurasik. Just think: the wretch did not sleep for several nights: cut out and glued these little badges!
“I’ll wear it for about two days, and then I’ll lose it the first chance,” she thought.
Of all who were in the drawing room, only Coffinia and Gunya Glomov did not pin on the little hearts; however, they also did not intend to return them to Shurasik.
“I, perhaps, will pin mine on Black Curtains! They’ll be extremely pleased to receive this small present!” Coffinia stated.
On hearing this, Shurasik flared up from the insult. He was about to rush to Coffinia in order to take away her badge, but suddenly his eyes started to roll, and he collapsed in a faint. Coffinia twirled a finger by her temple and, shoving the little heart into her pocket, left. Gunya Glomov reached out for her. Soon the rest dispersed, including Shurasik, coming to, madly batting his eyelashes, repeating: “Where am I?”
“You know,” Vanka said pensively, accompanying Tanya to her room, “I’ll not tease Shurasik anymore. I didn’t suspect that he suffers so deeply.”

Chapter 12
Gyes, Cottus, and Briareus

The next morning at practical magic Professor Stinktopp appeared extremely contented. He rocked himself in the hammock, dangling the slightly bent thin legs, and happily explained how to prepare a blend for invisibility from fern flowers and shark oil. When the work came to practice, nothing turned out even for Shurasik, and for Vanka Valyalkin only the head became invisible. Lieutenant Rzhevskii, seeping through the wall into the class, seeing the headless body stirring the cauldron with a spoon, howled from horror and rolled out on the empty Wheelchair, wailing that a new ghost had appeared in Tibidox.
“Now! And now I vant to make note of somezing else!” Professor Stinktopp said, as always with an accent, with a flick of the finger returning Vanka’s head to being visible. “I’m certain zat all of you are disturbed by yesterday’s incident and you ask yourselff vhy someone needed to snip-snip ze magic Hair? Vhat in general is zis Hair of Ze Ancient One and how does it differ from a feazer of ze vhite crow, hoofs of a centaur, scales of a dragon, and ozer magic object? Ze Hair of Ze Ancient One is not a magic object — it is ze boundaries! Vhen Ze Ancient One founded Tibidox, he had need for borders betveen light and darkness, betveen good and evil, betveen order and chaos. You understand ze depz of his zought? I myself did not grasp its depz! He took his own hair and installed zis hair as boundaries. Vhile ze Hair vas whole, nozing zreatens! You see ze border in ze big hall vhere ze fire separates ze light and ze dark? Exactly under zat hall in ze great depz of ze Valled-up Basement ze Hair was stored! Only one gold sword could cut it, and zerefore they hid it in ze vorld of ze moronoids. Someone stole ze sword almost before Grotter’s eyes, and she flop-flop! — did nozing!” Here Professor Stinktopp poked a finger at Tanya and, gathering his wrinkled face in his fist, demonstrated how precisely she did “flop-flop.”
Coffinia burst out laughing, and together with her almost all the blacks burst out laughing. Tanya did not doubt that the whole day today they would tease with her “flop-flop.”
“Now! And now, vhen zere is no more Hair, Tibidox does not haff on hand reliable magic protection and anyzing zat you like can happen. Now guarding us only ze Sinister Gates, zus far no one had opened zem!” Professor Stinktopp concluded his story, shooting a glance at the clock. The eye already lit up on it, reminding that the lesson of Dentistikha was to start soon. “Class ofer! You may go!” Professor Stinktopp decided. His hammock was pulled to the ceiling, where on the floor above Professor Stinktopp had his office, which he preferred to pass through a hatch in the floor to get to.
“‘Anyzing zat you like can happen!’” Bab-Yagun mimicked. “Old felt boot! Pity that he did not reach the titans then! Granny said that he was already in the basement attacking with his fists a cyclops who accidentally came across him. The cyclops first decided that it was someone from the evil spirits and almost beat him up, but then recognized him, caught him, wrapped him up in a hanky, and brought him to magic station where my granny quickly cured him of surplus of courage.”
Tanya snorted, imagining how absurdly a combative Professor Stinktopp would look, moving about in the not very clean hanky of the cyclops. Continuing to discuss the news, the friends left for removal of evil eye.
To their surprise, Medusa Gorgonova instead of Dentistikha appeared in class. She looked gloomy and concerned.
“Don’t be surprised! I’m taking her place today,” she dryly said. “Dentistikha is helping Slander Slanderych install additional bolts on the Sinister Gates. After what happened yesterday, it seems entirely essential. The cyclopes assert that all lower levels of Tibidox are literally filled with evil spirits. True, for the time being we’ve managed to hold them in check... I’m sure now you’ll treat my subject much more seriously.”
“Ah! But if the Sinister Gates are opened!” Verka Parrotova exclaimed in panic.
“It’s impossible,” Medusa coldly broke her off. “And now all get out your notebooks!”
With an elbow Tanya unnoticeably nudged Vanka Valyalkin sitting next to her:
“Listen, but indeed Slander and Dentistikha are ‘dark’? Really possible to entrust them to cast spells and place bolts? What if they play on the side of Plague-Del-Cake?” She whispered.
Vanka pressed his head into his shoulders and fearfully glanced up. Long ago Tanya had noticed that all magicians avoided uttering the name “Plague-Del-Cake” but said “She-Who-Is-No-More.” It is also understandable: who wants something bad to happen to you in the next minute?
“Black magicians fear Her not a bit less than we do,” whispered Vanka. “She-Who-Is-No-More is for Chaos. You know what she wanted? To free all ancient dark gods imprisoned in Tibidox, to release the spirits of destruction and to absorb their strength into herself. Indeed even she herself was once under Tibidox, but contrived to escape, long ago already, when the shielding magic failed. And where Chaos is, there is already no place for good and evil, there is already nothing, no boundaries. And why Sardanapal allows the ‘dark’ to cast the spells, it’s understandable why: it turns out better with them. The strong spells, they are almost all black magic...”
“Silence! You’ll have the recess to talk!” Medusa said sternly.
She dryly clicked her fingers, and her assistants brought into the class a wooden box in which something was stirring indignantly. A dark-blue cover was thrown on the box.
“Attention, class! The theme of our lesson today: kikimora and shishiga, First about the shishiga. They are known to moronoids from the earliest times and a lot of blood was harmed by them... Glomov, I would not advise you to pluck at the cover, not having learned the necessary protection spells! Have you forgotten what happened to you last year? If you again grow a second nose on your forehead, I’ll not spend anymore time on it! Let’s continue...”
After the bell when all began to disperse, Medusa called Tanya to herself.
“There is an unpleasant piece of news,” she said.
“Only one? In my opinion there are lots of them,” Tanya carefully objected.
Medusa smiled slightly.
“I did not begin to talk about this to the rest in order not to cause panic, but I’ll tell you since I’m sure that you know how to guard secrets... This morning I discovered that the swamp bogey had escaped from my office. It could not run out by itself, someone opened its cage and let it go. All this can mean only one thing — somewhere here in Tibidox, She-Who-Is-No-More has an ally. Someone who wants very much that she would again assume power. It’s he who cut the Hair and let out the swamp bogey... You be careful!”
Tanya nodded. She already set off toward the door when she again heard the voice of Medusa:

“Chaos an ancient promise will realize,
And She-Who-Is-No-More from the coffin will arise...”

Tanya turned around sharply. Now she was convinced that it was known to Medusa that she read the prophecy. But how? Did the genie really tell?
“Take care of yourself!” Softly, entirely not in the manner that she conducted classes, Medusa said. “I knew your father well and was convinced that in his last minutes he did everything in order to protect you, and to protect for a long time. For this very reason She-Who-Is-No-More retreated for ten whole years. Even now I know her strength is far from being as strong as before. Only don’t lose what Leopold gave you.” Medusa pronounced the last words especially distinctly.
Tanya tensed up, understanding that with these words Medusa wanted to communicate to her something important. Was she talking about the disgusting old woman who whispered to Uncle Herman in his dream being the one who attempted to take Agukh away from her place?
“But what did he give me? What?” She asked.
“And you don’t know?” Medusa uttered with some special expression.
“No. But you? You know?”
Medusa squinted.
“I surmise what it can be, but I don’t know what it can look like,” she said and, not adding any more, left the classroom, into which Bab-Yagun just looked, giving Tanya mysterious signs.

* * *

Jumping out into the corridor, Tanya discovered that Bab-Yagun and Vanka Valyalkin were very disturbed by something.
“You know what Shurasik just told us? He was in Professor Stinktopp’s office — he wanted to ask whether he could do seven exercises instead of one. And you know what he saw in Stinktopp’s office? An enormous carrion vulture with a naked neck! Stinktopp called it Lifeless Griffin! When Shurasik saw it, he almost fainted. You know his blackouts. After these little hearts he was so deeply moved that he fainted three times in one day...”
They had hardly mentioned the bird when Tanya immediately recalled the fright, which, having suddenly attacked her in the air, attempted to throw her off the double bass. And what if it was also Lifeless Griffin? If it is living in Stinktopp’s, it means, it also received that order from him. In this case there is no doubt: Stinktopp is the accomplice of Plague-del-Cake.
“Strange joke!” Vanka continued to discuss. “Stinktopp! We totally forgot about him! Indeed in that conversation I overheard, Medusa and Dentistikha mentioned only Slander and... Sardanapal. But you know, Stinktopp can also be the accomplice of She-Who-Is-No-More!”
“Listen, was he at the match?” Tanya asked.
“Ne-a, he wasn’t. I know exactly. His place was empty, later Glomov even made his way to it so that he could see better,” stated Vanka Valyalkin.
Bab-Yagun and Tanya exchanged glances significantly.
“And indeed the office of Stinktopp is very near the office of Medusa. Along the same corridor,” Bab-Yagun dropped seemingly by chance.
He said nothing more, but it was also very clear what he had in mind. It would be no trouble at all for Stinktopp to penetrate into the office of Medusa when she was busy and released his own henchman Agukh.
“Yes, Stinktopp is very suspicious. And moreover he’s from the ‘dark.’ With what pleasure today he said that Tibidox does not have reliable magic protection anymore. I think if we make our way into his office at night, then we would learn a lot,” said Vanka.
“So what’s the hitch? We’ll visit Stinktopp, or we can’t do it? But consider, if they catch us, there will be trouble for sure. They can chase us out of the white magicians and kick us like a soccer ball to the blacks, or deprive us of magic abilities and banish us from Tibidox altogether. Well, yellow soccer shirt?” Bab-Yagun asked, looking provocatively at Vanka.
“Good! We’ll meet at one in the morning in the living room and go to Stinktopp. But until this time don’t let me see you, granny’s grandson,” said Vanka and, turning, left — slender and decisive, in his patched and re-patched soccer shirt, which he nevertheless persistently preferred to all local robes. Interesting, why?
Returning to her room, Tanya met Tararakh half way there. The pithecanthropus who taught veterinary magic was walking with a small cage in which sat a homely moulting squirrel holding a golden nut in its paws.
“Woe...” Tararakh said. “Broke its tooth. Gnaws on anything. And indeed a poet even wrote about it...... so merry, how like his moor...”
“Pushkin,” prompted Tanya.
“Hear-hear... He’s the same,” Tararakh was pleased. “Didn’t know him personally? By the way, he also came to Tibidox as our guest. No, not as a student, but simply... Sardanapal flew on the carpet for him. Usually they don’t invite moronoids here, but likely made an exception for him... Afterwards, it seems, he composed something about Buyan there...” From time to time Tararakh looked at Tanya’s face and energetically rubbed his forehead with his hand. “Hey, why such a sour look? Spill!”
Tanya, not able to control herself, described to him the bird with the naked neck in the office of Stinktopp and that it attacked her, attempting to throw her off the double bass.
“No, Stinktopp cannot be the traitor! You rid this from your head immediately! I’ve known him indeed awfully long. And Sardanapal treats him normally...” Tararakh stated categorically. “Well, and that Lifeless Griffin at his place, this has yet to be proven.”
The squirrel began to rush about in the cage. Tararakh pushed a thick finger between the bars and stroke it encouragingly.
“And what’s with it? Always so calm. It seems the tooth hurts... Well, I’m going...”
And the pithecanthropus left, cuddling the cage to himself.
“He doesn’t believe that Lifeless Griffin is in Stinktopp’s... Well fine, but what bird did Shurasik see then? No, nevertheless must have a look in Stinktopp’s,” decided Tanya.
Entering her own room, she discovered that Coffinia, according to her habit, was lying on the bed. Her mouth was open, and there directly from the window, gliding in the air, chocolates were bouncing, Coffinia clearly stole them from someone by means of telekinesis. For the same business she, by the way, also fell into the “dark” department of Tibidox. True, in the world of the moronoids they called Coffinia by a different name, and she pinched not candies but watches and wallets in the metro, though with the help of the same trick.
When Tanya entered, one of the chocolates suddenly changed direction and tried to cut into her forehead, but, trained by dragonball, Tanya deftly caught it and shoved it into her mouth.
“Thanks, Coffinia! Maybe you’ll slip one more?” Tanya mockingly asked.
Cryptova did not change position but was clearly agitated.
Having made her way to her bed, Tanya discovered that although the double bass case was standing where it was before, it had been moved to the right approximately the distance of a matchbox. Tanya had a practised eye: not for nothing had she lived for a long time beside Pipa. Tanya opened the case, and her guess was confirmed: someone had been searching her things. It was obvious, although the one who did it tried to hide this as best he could. But some things nevertheless casually changed places.
“Answer me! Did you rummage in my things?” Tanya asked sternly, leaning over Coffinia.
“Ne-a, there’s nothing for me. I don’t gather rubbish,” Cryptova declared, wiping her chocolate covered lips with the pillow.
“If not you, then who? You yourself know that no one besides us could get into the room. Here is the boundary spell!” Tanya did not believe her.
Coffinia burst out laughing:
“And what they only teach you in your white department! Boundary spell — it’s all in a teapot! It suffices to say Fogus sneakus and go in the door back first. The spell will decide that you’re a ghost and will let you pass. Decent spells don’t get mixed up with ghosts. There’s only one trick: when you leave afterwards, on no account touch the handle.”
“So it’s definitely not you?”
“Bug off!” Cryptova snapped.
Tanya sighed. Even if Coffinia had done this, it would be impossible to prove anything now. Interesting that they so persistently searched her things? Is it that object which Medusa talked about with such mystery?
Meanwhile Coffinia opened her own wardrobe and took out a transparent box. Inside the box a multicoloured fog was gliding, and a large pink ear was revolving above the box on a short pin.
“What’s that?” Tanya asked suspiciously. Her roommate stared at her as at a fool.
“It’s a listener,” She indulgently explained. “It eavesdrops on what’s happening in the world of the moronoids and informs me, my dear... In essence this gadget, of course, catches signals.”
Coffinia flicked on the large ear with a finger, and the ear began to revolve twice as fast. Simultaneously from the box began to pour out a voice which Tanya recognized to be the voice of a popular announcer:
“Now heading the Scandals of the Week. Well-known businessman and politician Herman Durnev completed a very extravagant act. After foregoing the fight on the last stage of the elections, he established the Society of Fans of Rabbit Breeding and took in ninety-two rabbits in his own apartment on Rublev Road. On the screen you see how the rabbits, which Herman Nikitich on principle does not keep in cages, run around the apartment and even drive the whimpering dachshund under the sofa... And here is one more shot: Herman Nikitich drinking water out of one basin with the rabbits while his daughter Penelope puts her feet onto the table in order that the rabbits won’t chew on her slippers...”
Tanya even ran up to the spot, she so wanted to see this, but, alas, she could only hear sound. The listener did not catch images.
“I’m awfully happy. Earlier I was evil and loved no one, but now I’m good: all the wabbits are my fwiends! Each day we go for a walk in the glade! I click my tongue like this: ‘juk-juk,’ and they quickly wun after me! I’m their big boss wabbit!” Tanya heard Uncle Herman’s voice sprinkled with happiness and contentment interrupted by the characteristic crunch: obviously Uncle Herman was gnawing on a head of cabbage. The crunch, in turn, was drowned out by something similar to a lion’s roar — it was Aunt Ninel sobbing.
“I would pound these rabbits in the mixer! They tore off all my wallpaper! They don’t like Pipa and me, but walk with their tails behind them like they’re cranky! And look into the bathtub: there they have a bath!” She began to wail, apparently snatching away the correspondent’s microphone. “My husband went crazy after the disappearance of our foster daughter Tanya Grotter! I was attached to her like a mother... We blew dust off her, and this thankless trash ran off! The political competitors of my husband instigated her!”
“And my G.P. doesn’t help!” Pipa sobbed. “And I asked him to smash all the rabbits with his broom! Ah, don’t slobber on my foot, ugly big-ears!”
Interrupting the broadcast at the most interesting place, Coffinia stopped the revolving ear and shoved the listener into the wardrobe.
“And you, it turns out, are thankless trash! Did they blow the dust off you? Geez, take note of yourself!” Coffinia said with a sneer.
But Tanya almost did not hear her. She was thinking about something else: it seems, Uncle Herman is finally happy. How important it is nevertheless — to find one’s true destiny! And if he needs money, he will easily be able to be installed in the circus: the rabbits will do anything for him and without any training. And the number can be called, for example, The Big Boss Wabbit.

* * *

Close to midnight Coffinia finally deigned to fall asleep. Waiting till she had fallen asleep, Tanya carefully got up. Black Curtains were about to reach out for her, but, whispering the shielding spell, the girl released a green spark ato them and left the room. Soon Bab-Yagun and Vanka Valyalkin appeared in the drawing room. The grandson of Yagge pulled on himself an odd overall of the most villainous cut with such a hood that it was possible to hide in it not only his head with full round cheeks and hair sticking up like a hedgehog, but if necessary even a knightly helmet with a plume. As far as Vanka was concerned, he did not change clothes at all, remaining all the time in the same customary soccer shirt. On the way Valyalkin finished chewing a cutlet — the only thing, not counting the pickles, that his maimed magic tablecloth knew how to prepare.
Having gone down the stairs, they slipped past the strip of fire in the Hall of Two Elements. Now, when the Hair had been cut, light and dark were not divided as clearly as before: in many places the fire seemingly faded and weakened. Where this happened, obscure dark shadows tried to force their way from the dark side. Bats bumped against the invisible barrier with a sharp squeak, and along the corners ominous yellow eyes twinkled, fading in one place but immediately flaring up in another. The beaming firebirds on the bright side flapped their wings and fluffed up their tails in agitation, splashing rainbow sparks in different directions.
Sensitively listening to each rustle, the friends reached the teacher’s floor, where their way was barred by the ghost, suddenly floating out of the wall, of a moaning lady in a hat with roses.
“Excellent evening, my dears. How’s your health?” Wringing her hands, she asked hysterically.
Tanya wanted to answer, but Bab-Yagun pulled her by the hand:
“Shh! Don’t take it into your head to talk to her! It’s the Unhealed Lady! If you say a word to her, she will pester you the whole night!”
“Why do you keep quiet? I asked: how’s your health? Really it’s so hard to answer?” Lady asked again reproachfully. Her pale, half-transparent face expressed noble bewilderment.
Tanya became uncomfortable, and, despite the warning of Bab-Yagun, growled: “Normal.” In the same moment the face of Lady changed. It swelled up to the dimensions of a good watermelon, the mouth became as wide as the slot of a mailbox, and words fell from her as from a machine gun:
“Normal? And you’re not ashamed! Oh, and here you know... my health is terrible... The entire day today my blood pressure jumps, and after dinner the legs began to go numb. So I think, it’s not good. Someone must necessarily die in the near future. You’ll see! When my legs become numb, without fail someone dies. And for the time being do you want to look at my throat? I’m sure you’ll be deeply affected, how red it...”
“Run!” Vanka began to yell, and they broke off along the corridor. The Unhealed Lady, not lagging behind, flew right behind and mournfully complained about her ailments, entreating them first to feel her pulse, then to take a look at how limp her tongue was.
Finally, already almost at the very office of Professor Stinktopp, Unhealed Lady detached herself and was drawn into the wall, on farewell calling them hard-hearted fools.
“Why did you start talking to her?” Bab-Yagun attacked Tanya. “I told you in Russian: don’t answer her!”
“I thought she would be offended!” Tanya was embarrassed. Bab-Yagun again began to puff up, clearly intending to have his say, but Vanka Valyalkin decisively broke him off:
“Okay, Yagun, stopped wailing! Must quickly look into Stinktopp’s and get away from here while Unhealed Lady hasn’t brought in anyone. And even in general: Lady is still not the worst choice. She doesn’t completely remember faces, and moreover she has kasha in the head... If we bumped into the Lieutenant, it would be five times worse.”
To get into Stinktopp’s office turned out to be not quite simple. Although the door was not closed, the handle with staggering adroitness slipped away from the hands, and the door itself, as if from laughter, was shaking with small trembling.
“What a beastly trick! And here’s the shielding spell, on top of that how powerful! Not for us to slip in there!” Bab-Yagun hissed in disappointment.
“Wait, let me!” Tanya pushed him aside and, whispering Fogus sneakus, she pushed the door with her back.
A spark flew out from her ring, and in the next moment she understood that she was already inside.
“A nightmare! The spark was red! I implemented a spell of black magic! That’s it! I’m going to faint!” The ring exclaimed in horror.
“You want to faint, so faint! Only keep quiet!” Tanya snapped.
“Don’t you hurry me! See what kind of hasty person has turned up! When I want, then I’ll faint!” The ring declared resentfully and in truth either fainted or looked to be so.
Professor Stinktopp’s office was dark and gloomy without a single window. It resembled much more an ordinary pantry. In the stale air spread a musty smell. To the right was a cabinet with magazines of progress of the “dark” department, in which Stinktopp fulfilled the functions of a dean. Despite the fact that the cabinet was locked by several strong spells, the magazines in it were jumping, and, the ink spots, oozing between pages, floated outside, forming words in the air.
Behaviour for the quarter:
Rita On-The-Sly. A lot of harm, not enough malice!
Damien Goryanov. Excellent vile nature!
Roma Kislyakov. Insufficient vindictiveness!
Seven-Stump-Holes. Pugnacious, but lies do not gush out! Additional exercises on foul acts.
Coffinia Cryptova. Remarkable grimness, wonderful falsity! Smart girl!
Tanya attentively looked over all the corners in search of the griffin, but the bird with a naked neck was nowhere. True, behind the cabinet she revealed a perch, under which were scattered several dark feathers smeared with sickeningly reeking droppings.
Not daring to approach the table around which powerful black magic spells crackled with small little sparks, Tanya wanted to slip carefully from the office, but here an enormous mirror curtained by a greenish cover caught her eye.
The girl approached and wanted to raise it, but she did not have time. The cover slid down by itself. Simultaneously on the right and left flared up long yellow candles. Tanya glanced into the mirror, expecting to see her own reflection there, but the lustreless surface of the mirror reflected nothing. It remained empty like the smoothness of a lake at night. And only occasionally a vague white fog swirled in the depth. Tanya already wanted to go away, but here from the inside of the mirror several flames flared up simultaneously. Someone approached from the gloom, cracked grey walls emerged. Not those that were in the office of Stinktopp, but entirely different ones — tight, damp, obviously located somewhere very deep underground, even not in the basements of Tibidox. Resonant steps resounded a long way off along empty corridors. Tanya saw a long procession of evil spirits. Small hairy creatures were carrying a massive rock coffin in which lay a disgusting old woman with a bony face. Under the weight of the coffin the evil spirits could make only several dozen steps, then fell without strength and died as semi-dark formless lumps, but immediately new porters came in their stead and persistently dragged it further.
Tanya’s heart was squeezed. The birthmark on the tip of her nose — the trace of an old bite — started to throb with a fiery pain. It seemed to the girl that it first shrunk to the dimensions of a grain, then became large and swollen like a bean.
Unexpectedly the procession stopped. The evil spirits launched the coffin at Tanya. The disgusting old woman sat in the coffin, and her gaze, burning with hatred, was rested directly on the girl’s face. Tanya sensed that she could not even turn away. Without blinking, she watched as the old woman took from the coffin a large hourglass, within which black sand was running down in a thin stream. Already quite a little bit of sand was left, less than half.
“Indeed soon!” The old woman said, smiling with dead lips. “Wait for me, Baby Grotter! Soon I’ll obtain that which belongs to me!”
The procession slowly and grandly passed the mirror solemnly and was hidden in a distant corridor. The candles in the hands of the evil spirits faded out, and, there where the coffin was, letters woven from bluish fire flared up: Return what you’re hiding!
When the letters melted away, Tanya sensed that she could move again. Without throwing the cover on the mirror, she darted to the door and, forgetting about Coffinia’s warning, grabbed the handle. The door opened, but a deafening ringing immediately spread along the entire teachers’ floor. In the air hung hundreds of red exclamation marks, which, bending down, formed into the words: Alert! Disturbance of magic protection in Professor Stinktopp’s office! There was no doubt that this ringing was heard in the farthest ends of Tibidox and that soon all the instructors would gather here.
Tanya jumped out into the corridor. Bab-Yagun somehow strangely and even suspiciously stared at her.
“You know what spark came out of your ring when you went in: red! You used a black magic spell!” He shouted. His voice was lost in the howling of sirens.
“What matters what she used? Run!” Gripping Tanya by the sleeve, Vanka Valyalkin pulled her to the stairs leading into the Hall of Two Elements.
But they were too late. From that direction was already heard the footfall of feet and the voice, full of zeal, of Slander Slanderych: “Quick, call the cyclopes! Whoever it was, they’re not leaving! I’ll fix them! I’ll put on them such a subordination spell that they’ll even wipe their nose on command to the end of their life!”
The way was cut off. Now they, even with the best wishes in the world, could not return to their bedrooms. The only possible way of retreat left was the far stairs leading to the basements of Tibidox. The friends stopped in confusion. They did not know which was better or, more precisely, worse: to fall into the hands of the enraged Slander, for long dreaming in opposition to Sardanapal to catch red-handed someone from the white, or to risk and poke their noses into the basements, the entrance into which was strictly forbidden.
But the incensed Slander, sneezing from malice, was already very near, and his proximity forced them to take the desperate step.
“Well, what’s with you?” Tanya shouted and was the first to rush to the steps of the basement stairs.
They had hardly gone down ten flights when gloom closed in from all sides. The voice of Slander Slanderych, calling onto their heads misfortunes of every kind, melted far away. Finally they heard how he, running as far as the stairs, shouted downward:
“Hey, whoever you might be, you can no longer get back up! I’ll put on the stairs a triple identify spell that Sardanapal himself will not be able to remove! If you poke your nose out — you’ll immediately be sorry! Let the evil spirits devour you or the cyclopes will catch you!”
In the desperate darkness they continued to go downward, until finally the stairs ended. Tanya had never penetrated so deeply under Tibidox. Diverging in different directions were dozens of straight corridors illuminated only by torches flaring up on their approach and immediately growing dim.
“You heard what Slander said? This way has been cut off. We must find another staircase, which leads to the Big Tower. I indeed know it must be somewhere... It seems, over there,” Bab-Yagun said.
He decisively directed his steps along one of the corridors, but on their path suddenly grew a crackling obstacle from which sizzling red sparks fell in all directions. Vanka Valyalkin as an experiment thrust a torch through it, one which he removed from the wall, but in that same moment something sparkled, and the part of the torch that had gotten into contact with the obstacle turned into ashes.
“May Slander crack with his own spells! We cannot pass here!” Bab-Yagun was distressed. “It’s necessary to dodge along the labyrinths, to search whether it is possible to bypass somewhere.”
The way along the labyrinth could not end with anything good. This was clear from the very beginning, but nevertheless Tanya held her tongue, in any case, until they finally understood that they were lost. All the corridors were absolutely similar, and in the offshoots, which could lead to the necessary stairs, magic obstacles compulsorily appeared in their path. Likely, Slander and Dentistikha did a first-rate job.
In the end, finally realizing that they were lost, Tanya and behind her also Vanka and Bab-Yagun stopped and began to hold council.
“Certainly, we can utter the calling spell and then they’ll find us, but I just don’t want to tell him anything... I hate to have to wipe my nose on command, and Slander will precisely subject us to subordination, if he reaches us first,” said Vanka Valyalkin. “And on the whole, the basements here are strange: suspiciously quiet.”
“Uh-huh,” agreed Tanya. “We were told that the place is full of evil spirits, but for some reason I don’t see any at all.”
“Shh! They see us,” Bab-Yagun said in a strained manner, suddenly gripping Tanya by the hand and indicating to her something behind her back. Tanya turned around. From the nearest dark corridor eyes burning with hatred were looking at them.
“Lightis!” Vanka Valyalkin shouted and, releasing a spark from his ring, illuminated the corridor.
Tanya made out the rigid fur and familiar yellow horns. Agukh! In his hands the swamp bogey was holding a short tube into which he hurriedly put a needle with a dark drop at the end.
“You di-e! You di-e! In hor-ri-ble tor-ment!” He hissed.
“Careful!” Tanya shouted, abruptly darting to the side.
In the next moment the needle struck the stone where her face had been, and it broke. And Agukh, muttering curses, was already hurriedly charging the tube with a new needle.
“Slopis-galoshis-idiotis!” Tanya exclaimed in a hurry. Here is when the lessons of Medusa and the exhausting cramming prove useful! Not without reason Medusa said that a real magician must not simply know a spell but to perfect it till automatic.
Dropping the tube, the swamp bogey collapsed full-length, and then jumped up and quickly dashed off somewhere into the interlacing dark corridors.
“Quick! He’ll lead us out! Stop!” Bab-Yagun shouted and rushed after Agukh.
The frightened creature, leaping on the run and clicking with his curved legs, deftly dodged along the labyrinth, choosing at times the most improbable holes. So, running as far as the magic barrier, he did not rush up to it, which threatened instantaneous death, but abruptly darted straight to the wall and, passing through it, disappeared. This was more striking as swamp bogeys did not possess the ability to pass through solid objects. The speeding Bab-Yagun, understanding that he would not manage to stop, extended his hands in front, hoping at least to somehow soften the impact, but there was none whatsoever. A moment — and he found himself on that side of the wall in a short corridor, which ended in a large hall from where wafted someone’s laughter and the slapping of cards.
Agukh disappeared somewhere, only Bab-Yagun did not need him any more. Bab-Yagun carefully turned and saw, where he recently passed through, a semicircular small arch seemingly covered by a golden curtain. Immediately behind the arch stood Vanka Valyalkin and Tanya who, definitely not seeing him, were looking around.
Bab-Yagun smiled. He already grasped that the golden arch was a concealed passage, which they would never have discovered if not for the bolting bogey, knowing very well all the trapdoors here. Not denying himself the pleasure, Bab-Yagun pushed a hand through the arch and suddenly gripped Vanka by the shoulder. Vanka tensely wheezed from horror when someone’s hand passing through the continuous wall seized him by the collar, and he stopped struggling to break loose only when from the wall leaned out yet the head of his friend.
“Quiet!” Bab-Yagun whispered. “Make your way to me!”
“Through the wall? I’m not a ghost, you know!” Tanya was indignant, suspiciously examining the fat-cheeked head of her friend and his snub nose with holes as nostrils all sticking out from stones.
“And what am I, a ghost? It’s some magic!” Bab-Yagun was angry.
First Tanya, and then Vanka passed through the wall and, stealing along the corridor, they carefully put their heads out. They were standing at an entrance to a large hall with a sooty arched ceiling. The entire distant wall was occupied by enormous copper gates with handles in the form of lion heads holding a ring in their teeth.
Not far from the gates in front of a burning bonfire sat the hero-bouncers Usynya, Gorynya, and Dubynya and they were playing self-shuffling cards. Usynya just lost, and the cards, bobbing up and down, beat him on the nose under the laughter of his contented brothers. Meanwhile an entire bull threaded on a spit was roasting over the bonfire. Occasionally from the wide side gallery cyclopes showed up marching with poleaxes and bludgeons and, hungry saliva flowing out, threw greedy glances at the bull. Then one of the hero-bouncers would get up and threaten the cyclopes with a huge fist the size of a good hammer. After this international gesture even the somewhat dull cyclopes started to understand that the heroes were not inclined to share dinner with them.
It was known to Tanya, like to the cyclopes, that it was better not to get mixed up with Usynya, Gorynya, and Dubynya without any great need, and she hid her head in a hurry. Bab-Yagun and Vanka did the same.
“Did you see?” Vanka whispered. “They have little hearts on their chests! Shurasik with his ‘friends’ badges reached here! Here’s a sharp lad! Interesting, how did he manage to do so without them flattening him? Probably he learned all their absurd passwords and replies.”
“And what are they doing here in the basement?” Tanya asked.
“Really incomprehensible?” Bab-Yagun was astonished. “You saw what they sit near. Guarding the Sinister Gates!”
He had hardly uttered “Sinister Gates” when a chill ran down Tanya’s back, and she with already new eyes stared at the lions with the rings in their teeth and at the heavy copper panels. About as high as three men the gate was locked with a huge bolt the size of the trunk of an oak. At this moment the gates suddenly began to shake so that even the walls of the basement began to tremble. Then without any preheating the copper became red-hot, the Gates were pressed in by a powerful force, and from the reverse side distinctly printed in molten copper was a terrible face — no nose, eyeless, with only an open mouth. Simultaneously with this thousands of furious voices from that side began to howl, to moan. Chaos, cloistered in the underground jail, once again tried to break out.
“Well-well! Quiet there! Don’t indulge!” Without turning around, Usynya bellowed. Evidently, the brother-heroes long ago got used to the uproar of heathen gods and the tricks of the spirits of Chaos howling and beating against the magic barrier.
“There, the second stairs into the Big Tower! Only how will we rush over there? These blockheads will immediately notice us!” Bab-Yagun poked his finger at the crumbled ancient steps. They began there on the floor where Dubynya was yawning, handing out cards.
Vanka smiled. What a good smile this young fellow has! Tanya literally felt how everything warmed up inside her.
“There’s a trick! I do this trick with Idiotsyudov in order to break his habit of rushing with his fists every five minutes,” he said quietly. “When I finish counting to three, close your eyes tight and don’t open them until I let you! One... two...”
“Oh, my granny mama!” Bab-Yagun exclaimed, covering his eyes with his hands.
Tanya closed her eyes. She heard with closed eyes how Vanka said “three” then something cracked loudly and it flared up brightly — it was even noticeable through closed eyelids.
“I see nothing!” Suddenly Usynya began to bawl.
“And now run! We only have all of a minute,” Vanka whispered.
Opening her eyes, Tanya saw Usynya, Dubynya, and Gorynya, leaping up, rubbing their eyes with their fists, and above the bonfire, waning, pinkish smoke rising up. Not waiting until the hero-bouncers could see again, the children swiftly ran between them and rushed upstairs. Soon were heard from below cries and dull sounds of blows. It was likely that the cyclopes tried to drag away the brothers’ dinner, and the hero-bouncers, regaining vision, comprehensibly made it clear why it should not be done.
“How did you manage it?” Tanya was enraptured, understanding that until Usynya, Gorynya, and Dubynya came to an understanding with the cyclopes, there would be no pursuit after them.
“Simple. Root of sundew, a piece of amber, and several sphinx wool strands! Works without a hitch if we throw this into a bonfire,” explained Vanka Valyalkin.
“Again showing off? From where do you get sphinx fur? It allows no one to approach it!” Bab-Yagun asked; he could not stand it when Vanka surpassed him in something.
“It’s you it would not allow to approach because it doesn’t like a hotshot. Who removed its splinter?” Valyalkin answered.
Bab-Yagun’s ears turned crimson from anger.
The stairs with the crumbled steps along which they went up was cut in the thick granite. It looked so old that it was completely obvious that the stairs was here even when there was no Tibidox or when it only began to be constructed. While Tanya was calculating how many millennia for it, the magic ring unexpectedly hopped off her finger and began to jump downward.
“Stop please! I dropped my ring!” Tanya shouted, dashing after it.
Slipping about ten steps, the ring froze and, suddenly hanging in the air, it released a spark. Tanya leaned over in haste, hurrying to lift it, but here a heavy plate suddenly turned under her feet. Belatedly she noticed a greenish glow above the plate! Again magic! Unsuccessfully grabbing at the air with her hands, Tanya tumbled downward and, gaining speed, dashed into the void, feverishly trying in flight to put on the ring, which she was squeezing in her fist and to shout Oyoyoys smackis thumpis. For several long seconds she flew in a narrow tunnel, until suddenly she realized that the drop already ended. Someone caught her in the air, and in the following moment Tanya understood that she was lying on an enormous calloused palm, and above her hung a monstrous size bearded head.
“Mama! I got to the titans! Must urgently faint!” Tanya said to herself, but for some reason she did not faint. How annoying!
Looking around, she understood that she was in a tight cave cut out of solid rock, in which stood three titans shoulder to shoulder — Cottus, Briareus, and Gyes. One hundred arms, fifty heads with matted hair growing for many millennia, the titans were so enormous that the hero-bouncers, if they turned up beside the titans now, would look like one-year-old children in comparison. It seemed that the narrow cave was holding such power with difficulty. The eyes of the titans, sharp-sighted, accustomed to the darkness, examined Tanya narrowly.
And then the titan holding her, the oldest of the three, suddenly stretched out to her a finger, thick as a telephone pole. Tanya shielded herself with her arms, ready to be crushed by them. The titan merrily laughed and, having unskilfully stroked her hair, removed the finger.
“Wh-o a-re y-ou? I am Briareus, th-is is Cot-tus and Gy-es,” with enormous labour delivering human sounds, he said.
“Tanya... Tanya Grotter... I accidentally fell down here, don’t kill me!”
“Tan-ya GRO...” all fifty throats of Briareus shouted loudly and deafeningly.
Tanya staggered, hardly remaining on her feet from the terrible rumble.
“Leo... Gro... So... Gro... yo-ur par..? Th-ey mad-... this en-tra,” answered Cottus and Gyes. In their roar was heard tenderness, although they articulated the words with much more difficulty than Briareus.
“Sophia and Leopold Grotter? It’s my mom and dad. So it’s them who dug through this entrance?” Tanya was amazed, experiencing quite out-of-place comparable relief. If her parents were friends with the titans, it means, nothing would threaten her.
Attempting to distinguish words, the titans turned the overgrown ears to her and began to nod. Now it became clear to Tanya why the ring tore away from her finger and released a spark. It responded to its own magic, which it produced many years ago when it was on the finger of her father — Leopold.
“Wh-o wi-th y-ou? Wh-y th-ey n-ot co-me?” Briareus enunciated indistinctly.
“They are dead... Plague-del-Cake killed them,” Tanya said with difficulty.
“Pla-e-Ca... Pla-e-Ca!” Gyes and Cottus repeated, and hatred distorted their faces.
With terrible force they began to beat the walls with their fists. Granite bits fell. It seemed the entire Tibidox above was trembling. Tanya fell and plugged up her ears with her hands. Noticing this, the titans, recollecting, stopped. Tanya saw that many heads were crying, and large tears became tangled in their tousled beards.
“Yo-ur par-ents wer-e go-od peo-ple!” Sobbing, the main head of Briareus droned. “Th-ey pi-ied us and wan-ed to hel-p us. Ther-fore a-so ma-de this en-trance. You wer-e a-so qui-te lit-le. Leo-ld tri-ed to gi-ve you sa-fe de-fence in or-der you fear not-hing, and he suc-cee-ded this. You rob-bed Pla-gue all her po-er. But you be car-ful: Plague can re-over it. We all ha-te her. We fe-el: no mor-e cha-os, but Pla-gue some-ere be-side...”
Suddenly some thought came to an outer head of Briareus, it whispered it to the head beside it, that one whispered to the next, and finally the wave reached the main talking head of the titan. Following this several dozen hands began in a hurry to dig in the pockets, until in Tanya’s hands lay an average size clay jug sealed up by sealing wax. The huge palm held it with great care, afraid to crush it.
“Her-e bre-ath of Ear-th, whi-ch gives po-er. Use it wh-en you ha-ve the ne-ed. We wan-ed to gi-ve su-ch phi-al to Leo-pold, but he re-fu-sed. And now go! Far-ell and don’t for-get us!”
Tanya mechanically pressed the jug to herself. Briareus raised his hand and with effort pushed the hand into the narrow slot through which Tanya came here. Grabbing the plate, the girl with difficulty got outside, and immediately the step with a quiet click got back in the previous place. When Tanya straightened up and Bab-Yagun and Vanka Valyalkin saw her, they were staring at her in such a way as if she had risen from the world of corpses.
“Where were you? We saw how you slipped down, and then suddenly at once! — disappeared somewhere, and then somewhere below began to roar!” Vanka exclaimed, rushing to her.
“I fell through... fell through there, under the stairs,” Tanya breathed out, experiencing relief that she escaped from the tight cave.
“You fell through? There? But please, there... Only don’t lie, that you were at the titans’!” Bab-Yagun demanded, but, looking intently at Tanya’s face, literally slipped down onto the floor. “Oh, no! It’s unbelievable! No one was ever there!” He groaned.
Tanya understood the disappointment of her friend. Earlier in the whole of Tibidox Bab-Yagun was the only one managing to get caught in an unthinkable quantity of stories. Now she outdid him, on top of that how! Naturally, the proud grandson of Yagge was depressed. Then Vanka, it seemed, was sincerely proud of her success. On his dirty face a happy smile spread widely.
“What are you doing here? Were you at the Sinister Gates? And Sardanapal knows about this?” Next to them was heard an unpleasant laughter, and Lieutenant Rzhevskii looked out from the wall.
Tanya turned to him and almost screamed. The knives from the back of Lieutenant had disappeared somewhere, and instead of the head he was flaunting a large cast iron cannon ball.
“A small injury. Flew very close by here! Practically a millimetre!” A very contented Rzhevskiy explained and, neighing at his own joke, flew to demonstrate the shot to Usynya, Gorynya, and Dubynya.
“You think he’ll tell Sardanapal where he saw us?” Vanka asked.
“Don’t know. Maybe he’ll forget. You see how contented he is that he changed his head somewhere to a shot,” Vanka shrugged his shoulders. He again looked at Tanya and added merrily: “You, by the way, lost your pin. I imagine how distressed Shurasik will be, if tomorrow he doesn’t see his little friendship heart on you.”
“Yes, a pity... But not to crawl to the titans after it?” Tanya said and suddenly burst out laughing.
“Why are you trilling? Must be me, perhaps?” Bab-Yagun asked suspiciously, straightening his villainous overalls. The grandson of Yagge already felt sorry that he wore it. It, of course, was good for disguise, but indeed awfully absurd.
“What’s with you here? I was imagining the titans with Shurasik’s friendship pin on their chests...” Tanya barely said and now everybody already started laughing, including Bab-Yagun.
Getting up along the stairs leading from the basement, they again came to rest against the solid wall.
“Really Slander blocked up this passage?” Vanka muttered distrustfully, feeling the massive boulders laid together. “It cannot be that he would not at least leave an invisible arch.”
After a ten minute search the invisible arch was found nevertheless, and they went out directly between two marble Atlases, standing at the entrance to the Big Tower. Both marble Atlases were snoring quietly, continuing to hold the arch on their powerful shoulders.
“And I was thinking: why are they hanging around here, likely to keep themselves busy? Turns out, here’s the hidden arch!” Bab-Yagun whispered and, rushing on tiptoes past them, dived into the Hall of Two Elements. Tanya and Vanka followed him. Soon they satisfactorily got to the residential floor, contriving not to catch the eye of the enraged Slander, who was persistently lying in wait for them by the other stairs. Coffinia was sound asleep on her own bed, her head covered by Black Curtains, which managed after all to slip down from the cornice. The harmful Curtains giggled disgustingly. Must be, they peeked into Coffinia’s dreams in order to, flying around the school the whole day tomorrow, show them to the entire Tibidox.
Tanya wanted to drive them away with the spell Briskus-quickus, but discovered that she was mortally tired. She placed the clay pitcher under the bed, hiding it in the double bass case, collapsed on top of the blanket and fell asleep...

Chapter 14
The Sinister Gates

Running down the stairs, Tanya hardly recognized the Hall of Two Elements. The strip of fire dividing it before... no, not died out or disappeared, but what happened to it was improbable. Indeed Tanya had never seen frozen fire. The bluish tongue of flames froze whimsically, motionless, gripped by dense ice. Certainly this fire could no longer serve as a barrier. The creation of light and the creation of dark were mixed. Firebirds, blazing, fought off the bats, and the Humpbacked Horse, jumping up high, trampled tarantulas with its hoofs.
With dozens of cobras, hissing, turning to them, the children bounced in a hurry, but the cobras were stretched out at the foot of the stairs, barring the way and not letting them into the hall. However, the snakes were not the only obstacle. The marble Atlases, seen in the distant corner where there was the invisible arch, which leads to the basement stairs, were also not sleeping. They deliberately moved close to one another, getting up so that their powerful rock bodies effectively blocked the arch.
“Well now! Here the snakes, and there the Atlases! And how will we, interestingly, get into the basement?” Tanya asked.
Vanka looked around in a business-like manner.
“Wait,” he said. “With the snakes, perhaps, it’ll work out, but here with the Atlases... Okay, for the time being I’ll get busy with the snakes, and you think how to convince them to move. Have in mind that these are extremely obstinate objects.”
“Interesting, how will he manage the snakes?” Tanya thought. Meanwhile Vanka reached from his pocket the scrap of magic tablecloth and started to energetically shake it. Cutlets and pickles fell thick and fast from the tablecloth.
“What, you want to pelt the snakes with cutlets? A first-rate plan!” Tanya snorted mockingly, but Valyalkin did not even glance in her direction.
“Well, stub! How often I had a hard time with you! At least once produce something worthwhile! Well at least a carrot or a piece of sugar!” He begged.
Finally the tablecloth heeded his entreaties and on the steps rolled down a carrot. Vanka, bending down in a hurry, caught it and started to whistle to lure the Humpbacked Horse. First it only looked askance unwillingly and moved its long ears, but then, drawn by the appetizing sight of the carrot, in two leaps flew half the hall, swept over the heads of the cobras — and here it was already beside them, eating from Vanka’s palm.
“Climb onto its back!” Vanka ordered.
“And we’ll not crush it?”
“And I tell you: no. Quick!”
Tanya climbed onto the horse, holding onto its ears with her hands, and Vanka jumped from behind, onto the rump, arms around Tanya. The Humpbacked Horse, almost completely hidden under its riders, pushed off from the stairs with its hoofs and, trampling the snakes and the tarantulas, flew across the Hall of Two Elements. Here it, playing a naughty trick, abruptly tucked in its front legs. The friends flew over its head, rolling directly to the feet of the Atlases.
“Why have you come? We’ll let no one pass! Such is the order!” The Atlases said hoarsely.
Tanya shrugged her shoulders:
“But I also don’t want to go anywhere! As if I need this basement with the dead rats very much. Hey, weaklings! You’ll not catch me! Stone dimwits! Anti-tank hedgehogs! Blockheads!”
The Atlases began to grit their teeth so that marble crumbs fell from them.
“Don’t think that we’re such fools... We’ll chase after you, and you’ll rush through the arch. No indeed...” the right Atlas said with a grinding sound.
“What’s your arch to us?” Tanya said indifferently, thinking to herself that the Atlases were not quite such simple nuts. “I saw it in a coffin in white slippers... Vanka, you need it?”
“The arch? Why, I haven’t seen invisible arches? Such a poor arch. Not without reason such weaklings were placed here to guard it. The rest of the Atlases, more powerful, stand on the stairs, prop up the arch, and these, the puniest, spend time here yakking,” Vanka played up to her.
Here the first and only time in history the marble Atlases grew red. Vanka revealed their most vulnerable place.
“You lie!” The Atlases simmered. “Come closer so that I could crush you like pitiful insects! We’re the strongest of all — my brother and I! Those on the stairs hold only the arch, but we hold the stairs, and other Atlases, and the arch... The entire Tibidox stands on us!
Tanya with affected indifference sat on the floor.
“Well, so you two hold it together, not alone! One probably will be too weak. The nose will slip down to the heels, and the ears will entangle... Here you, Right-hander,” here she poked the right Atlas with a finger, “probably indeed punier than Left-hander. How strong he is over there!”
The right Atlas got so mad that even the ceiling began to shake, then the left swelled up from pride. Noticing this, Right-hander got even more infuriated.
“Ah well, go away!” He began to roar at his brother. “I’ll show them who’s a weakling! Let go of the ceiling, I’ll support everything alone! The entire castle!”
Left-hander shrugged his shoulders, let go of the arches of Tibidox and clumsily took a step from the pedestal. Now the entire monstrous weight of Tibidox turned out to be on the shoulders of his brother. That one sagged, strained, but maintained. The rock spheres of his muscles swelled.
“Well now, I showed you? Showed you?” Right-hander wheezed.
“Smart fellow! Now I see that you have earned your kasha!” Tanya shouted and, slapping the Atlas on the leg, rushed after Vanka into the invisible arch.
The deceived Atlases began to roar, but it was too late. The children began to go down. In the gloom of the basement red pupils flared up here and there.
“Oho! How many evil spirits here! And from where did they crawl out one after another?” Vanka whispered.
“Go quietly, do not make abrupt movements and confidently look along the sides! Then the evil spirits will not attack!” Tanya recalled one of the lessons of Medusa. She took a deep breath and took the first step towards the red pupils.
After the first step it was the second, the third... “Only don’t be frightened! I’m not afraid... I’m... I’m not...” Tanya repeated to herself, trying to look above the red pupils. That Vanka was beside her gave her courage. When they were a step or two from the evil spirits, those suddenly rushed with a peep to the sides and yielded the way.
“It worked!” Not being able to control herself, Tanya exclaimed.
“Don’t be too happy,” Vanka said softly. “Look around!”
Tanya looked around. Behind them along the corridor crawled hundreds, thousands of red flames. It seemed the evil spirits were driving them on, and, if they plan on turning back now, the vile creatures would not allow them.
“Yes, Plague-Del-Cake made an excellent effort... At first they did not admit us into the basement, and now they’ll not let us out from the basement,” Tanya said apprehensively, pulling the magic ring on her finger — the only thing that could at least somehow protect them from the evil spirits.
They turned the corner, made their way to the second invisible arch discovered by Bab-Yagun earlier. Suddenly someone moved in the gloom, and a scorching fiery tongue was directed towards them.
“Duck!” Tanya dropped to the floor, pulling Vanka with her. Their hair almost got singed, a jet of fire swept over them.
The friends raised themselves on their knees. An enormous dragon barred the corridor. Golden scales were gleaming dimly.
“Mercury!” Tanya recognized. “It’s Mercury!”
Hearing its name, the dragon raised half-closed eyelids, and a new jet of fire forced them against the floor. The evil spirits around the corner squealed in alarm, not daring to appear.
“How did it turn up here?” Tanya whispered, estimating that they in no way would manage to go around Mercury. The dragon stopped up the passage exactly like a plug.
“Someone let it out of the hangar... Or even burrowed a way through from there... Look, a spear is sticking out of its nose. Someone aspired very much to anger it...”
Tanya stared. So it was: in the nose, next to the nostril, in one of the most vulnerable places of a dragon, the shaft of a spear was sticking out. The dragon was breathing hoarse, occasionally breathing out jets of flame.
“It’s in pain! Here’s a wretch!” Vanka continued. “Must pull the spear out of it. Then it, possibly, will agree to let us pass... I’ll go for it!”
“Don’t even think about it! It’ll incinerate you!” Tanya was frightened.
“I hope not. How lucky that Tararakh recently taught me how to calm dragons,” said Vanka.
However, there was no confidence in his voice. No one knew how Mercury would behave, dragons are not predictable. Especially injured and frightened, and stuck in a tight basement.
“Well, let’s... Wish me luck... If something happens to me, you can keep my soccer shirt,” Vanka said quietly and got up.
Mercury followed him intently with its non-blinking yellow eyes, ready to breathe out flame as soon as Vanka would take a step. The spear trembled in its nose.
“Valerianus psychopathus!” Vanka uttered. “Valerianus psychopathus!”
The heavy eyelids of the dragon were lowered. Instead of flame it was breathing out puffs of smoke. Vanka sighed and in a hurry screened himself with his hand. Tanya saw that his hand was covered with burns.
“Calm... calm... I will not harm you... I know, you scorched me by accident...” Vanka said with a faltering voice. “Valerianus psychopathus!”
He approached Mercury and, looking firmly into its eyes, seized the shaft. The dragon guardedly waited.
“Now it’ll be painful, but not for very long. You’ll endure it? Only don’t take it into your head to breathe fire... I’m not smeared with vampire bile, I’ll quickly perish... Clear to you?”
Dragon raised its scaly head, opened the mouth slightly. Its double tongue touched the shaft slightly and immediately hid.
“Now good! I count to three and pull... One... Two...”
Tanya closed her eyes tightly. She heard how Vanka shouted “three” and how the dragon began to roar. And then a long, scorching jet of flame swept over her head. Mercury could not stand the pain.
Opening her eyes, she saw that Vanka was lying on the ground, covering his face with his hands, next to him the spear rolled around, and the dragon, soiling its leathery wings, crawled away in the passage opened by the evil spirits leading into the hangar. Not waiting till its tail had disappeared, Tanya rushed to Vanka. He was alive, although his whole face was covered with blisters, and the charred robe was hanging by shreds.
“I’m lucky that I fell when I pulled the spear. It only barely saved me,” bending over from the pain, Vanka whispered. “What a fool, I should have said Painus suppressus, then Mercury would feel nothing. Why did I forget?”
Tanya helped him sit up. Vanka groaned when she touched his hands.
“Wait, I’ll take you to magic station...”
“No need. I myself... Go, the way is free. Don’t let She-Who-Is-No-More open the gate,” Vanka whispered, pressing his back against the wall and releasing a green spark onto the evil spirits showing themselves from the corner. They hid themselves with an unpleasant chirp.
“Sparkis frontis!” Vanka whispered, throwing several sparks after them.
Tanya tarried. It was necessary to choose. If Plague opens the Sinister Gates, then there will be nothing already. Neither Tibidox nor Vanka nor Bab-Yagun. Then the magic station also would not help.
“Fine. Wait for me. I’ll be soon!” She decided and, looking around at Vanka, quickly went forward.
Soon she was already by the second invisible arch discovered by Bab-Yagun. Squeezing her fist tightly so that the magic ring would not jump off, Tanya took a step through the spectral stone. A familiar short corridor led her into the smoky hall.
Usynya, Dubynya, and Gorynya were lying side by side next to the bonfire, and the enormous gouty soles of one of the cyclopes protruded from a distant corridor. Likely the guards fell where Wooden Fiend overpowered them. The flame of the bonfire appeared frozen same as in the Hall of Two Elements. It seemed this fate befell all the fires in Tibidox, only not spreading to the dragons.
“Probably Sardanapal was also here with his potion!” Tanya thought.
She irresolutely entered the hall and looked around. The Sinister Gates were still closed, although the terrible gnash and roar from the other side shook them incessantly. An open rock coffin stood near the gates themselves. Tanya’s heart became clogged with uneasiness. How she wanted now to turn and run away! But it was not possible to do so. Too many fates depended now on what would be her next step.
Putting forward her hand with the ring, Tanya began to steal carefully up to the coffin. She expected to see there the disgusting old woman and to quickly throw a fight spark at her.
“Sparkis frontis!” Not being able to control herself, she shouted, several steps away from the coffin.
The green spark, into which Tanya put all her pain, all the love for her parents, all her hatred for Plague, broke away from the ring and struck the coffin. The rock coffin turned over and split. It was revealed that it was empty. Inside there was nothing except a black cover.
A disgusting gurgling laughter was heard, nothing more loathsome could be imagined. On the first step leading to the Sinister Gates, a tall old woman in a long violet robe appeared. Her dry chopped off arms were thrown across her shoulders like ropes. One of the hands gripped the gold sword. Red light streamed from the eye sockets of the dried face more like a skull.
“Plague-del-Cake!” Tanya exclaimed.
She-Who-Is-No-More stopped laughing.
“Oh, you’re not afraid to say my name!” She hissed in amazement. Her voice was similar to the grinding of sandpaper. “Your parents were also not afraid. And look what became of them...”
The bony face of Plague was distorted, smeared, and for a second other features passed through in it. Tanya saw the face of a man with a small beard and the dark-complexioned face of a young woman, something like her own.
“No, don’t touch the child! You’ll not laugh! She’s so small!”
“TANYA! No! Not the serpent!” Again their voices sounded.
“Nonentities! You hear how they degraded themselves, only to preserve your life! They thought to arouse my pity with their moans!” Plague said, assuming her previous appearance.
“I hate you! Sparkis frontis!” Tanya shouted with her entire strength, tossing up her hand.
The departed spark slid along the sword and, flying away from it, again dashed to the one who released it. Only now the spark was red...
The girl felt a strong blow, which knocked her down. In the next moment the ring broke loose from her finger and, after flickering in the air, stuck to the blade of the gold sword. Plague-del-Cake removed it and tossed it on her palm.
“A nightmare!” The ring squeaked. “I’m in a trap! I’m going to faint! Boom-s! I already fainted, if anyone is interested...”
Plague-del-Cake shook it slightly and the voice immediately became quiet.
“I’ve waited that so you’ll do this, little one...” she minced words. “Leopold Grotter’s ring! Unfortunately, it isn’t suitable for real magic supporting death, and I don’t use other’s... Well no matter, it’ll fill my collection... Perhaps you did not know that the one who wields the gold sword doesn’t fear fight spells? But even when I did not have the sword, I did not greatly fear them. You think your father and mother did not shower me with sparks? A whole torrent, but I only sneered at them. No, not sparks that drove me into the rock coffin, not sparks that took away my power...”
The face of She-Who-Is-No-More flinched. It literally breathed hatred. Tanya saw how her dry skin swelled up like bubbles and subsided. Under it something formed a lump, seethed... Red fire poured from the empty eye sockets.
“Ten years in the coffin, ten long years — in complete consciousness but without power!” Plague-del-Cake croaked. “I was always asking myself the question, what destroyed me then, trampled, crushed... Your parents did not do it, no... And finally I understood what it was. The Talisman! The Talisman of Four Elements, which your father contrived somehow to transfer onto you! That Talisman, which, at the time, I also went to you for! You have it, I know! Return it to me!”
Plague-del-Cake took a step to Tanya. Her bones rattled dryly under the robe. The girl crawled away in a hurry, but her back was resting against the cold copper of the Sinister Gates. The gates shuddered, began to drone. Behind them something powerful, terrible was hitting against them and could not break loose...
“You see the small hollow under the lion head on the right? If you want to live, return the Talisman to me: I’ll put it there!” She-Who-Is-No-More said hoarsely.
“You’re simply a silly old woman with earthworms in the head!” Tanya flew into a rage. “Return to the coffin! You’ll never open the Gates because I don’t have any talisman.”
Plague-del-Cake began to hiss and threw up her dry hands.
“You lie, there is! Look around: there, beyond the gates, Chaos! Chaos — it’s monstrous power! I’ll inhale it into myself, I’ll command them as I rule over the evil spirits now! Limitless authority! If you would know what it is, girl! Once I was already there, behind these Gates, and I waited, until the magic of The Ancient One and his student Sardanapal fails... And this happened a long thousand years ago. Sardanapal and Slander did not immediately miss my disappearance — pitiful blunderers! Barely meeting with resistance, with the power accumulated over the centuries I began to destroy magicians one after another — white and black, made no difference. I only needed one thing — to force them to open the gates! All magicians feared me terribly, feared even to pronounce my name, inventing this amusing nickname She-Who-Is-No-More... And here, when I was almost on target, I understood that I need the Talisman! Without it the Gates will forever remain closed, even if I cut into two the Hair of this decrepit charlatan The Ancient One, who arranged good and evil on shelves like flasks in a pantry! I needed that very Talisman which your father struggled with over long years... He, a fool, made it in order to protect you from me, not knowing that it’s even the key to the Sinister Gates! Here are these Gates!”
Plague-del-Cake at a run pushed the gates with her shoulder. They began to drone. As if knowing who was knocking, Chaos answered in a thousand voices — squealing, squeaking, howling. Tanya was thrown to the side, but Plague made an imperceptible movement, and the girl felt that her body barely obeyed her. The arms and legs were filled with lead weights. With the greatest difficulty she took one half-step and fell at first to her knees, and then tumbled down sideways. The clay pitcher rolled from her hands and stood still beside her on the floor. Plague glanced at it without interest, obviously deciding that inside was some protection potion.
“Probably the Talisman she searches for doesn’t look like this. Here she also doesn’t need a jug,” Tanya thought.
“Listen. I want you to know everything before I kill you!” She-Who-Is-No-More continued to speak hoarsely. “I followed your father... All the evil spirits were spying for me. Leopold Grotter could not take cover from me even in the densest forest. And here once they reported to me that one of his experiments was crowned by success. He obtained the Talisman of Four Elements. Immediately, while your father did not guess what was precisely in his hands, I flew there... The house was already surrounded by my servants — the evil spirits. They mobbed, they tried to attack, but he fired back with sparks, sufficiently successfully. This cowardly carrion did not dare to approach and only hooted from a distance... I tore away the door and entered... In the room there were three: Leopold, his wife your mother, and you, a pitiful girl in a double bass case. Leopold and your mother were frightened when they saw me, but you only smiled and stretched your arms out to me... To me, to Plague-del-Cake, to the killer of magicians! It seemed amusing to me. I began to demand the Talisman from your parents, threatening to kill you, but these brave fools scorched me with sparks! Then I killed them, like this!”
Plague closed her fist and turned it. Immediately Tanya felt as if her heart had stopped. Before her eyes red circles began to disperse, precisely like a stone dropped into water. The world began to grow dim and fade. But this lasted only an instant. Plague unclenched her fist.
“Exactly how they died,” she said with a chuckle, similar to the grinding of sandpaper. “Don’t be afraid! You’ll die differently, and still not time yet...”
“What was it then?” Tanya said.
Sweat was running thick and fast along her face. How to battle with Plague there: she did not even feel any strength in her to simply get up on her feet.
“I released a scorpion on you. I like to watch how it stings magicians and they die in front of my eyes in terrible pain. The scorpion crept along your clothing, then along the face, and bit you on the nose. I expected to see your agony, but you only went ‘oh’ and crushed my scorpion! I thought that it was rid of its poison, though it was impossible... Then I decided to kill you myself and get busy with the search for the Talisman. I breathed death on you and...” Plague winced, “my breath for some reason returned to me, on top of that became a flame... It charred me, tore off my arms, and I fell on the same place where I was standing. I saw everything, heard everything, but could not even move... I was alive and dead at the same time, worse than dead... All my power flowed out of me like yolk from a cracked egg... In a short while the evil spirits arrived. They decided that I had perished, carried me away to some of their distant passages and placed me in a rock coffin.”
Plague-del-Cake fixed on Tanya her red eyes without pupils.
“Ten whole years, as prophesied by this old fogy The Ancient One who had lost his mind, I spent in the coffin at your mercy!” She hissed. “Ten whole years! Only when these ten years had elapsed, my power again began to appear. At first it was enough only for several minutes a day, then I again had to return...” Plague with hatred kicked the cracked coffin. “Finally after some time I was able to trace you to the world of the moronoids. Lifeless Griffin helped me. The bird followed to where Medusa and Sardanapal took you. And then I arrived just in time on the day when you would be in the museum and stole the sword from the moronoids. I could do this even earlier, but I wanted to laugh over you. You were a mouse, and I the cat... I lingered before delivering the decisive attack. I wanted to prolong your torment. And then it was necessary to clarify whether you have the Talisman. Anything could happen in ten years. You could lose it, or the moronoids took it away from you, deciding that it’s a trinket.”
“Uncle Herman and Aunt Ninel took nothing away from me because I had nothing. Don’t you understand this? You killed my parents for nothing!” Tanya shouted with hatred. Tears flowed from her eyes. She did not want to howl in order to not give Plague the pleasure, but nevertheless she did...
“Really for nothing? Meaning, they nevertheless had to be killed for something?” Plague was surprised. “And I confirm that you have the Talisman... Why do you think I set Lifeless Griffin on you? I only wanted to verify what would be... You again survived! Your father, this pitiful clever fellow, must admit he was a good alchemist! He gave you outstanding protection. Yes, you have the Talisman... But where is it? Where are you hiding it? What does it look like?”
“So here’s where Griffin’s from... But he was in the office of Stinktopp! We even suspected Stinktopp...” Tanya muttered. What fools they were! How deftly they were being led by the nose!
Plague-del-Cake sneered. Her dead jaws with the bluish teeth cracked disgustingly.
“It’s I who ordered Griffin to search Stinktopp’s sanctuary! I knew that this old blockhead adores any poultry, moreover the more deformed it is, the more he trembles over it. Once he even studied veterinary magic with Tararakh. It was necessary to ask him...”
“But why was Griffin hiding in Stinktopp’s?”
“What do you mean why? I surmised that you would steal into his office. I wanted to verify whether you had lost your talisman of power. Will it be able to deal with black magic? And it did, and dealt with so easily that you even felt nothing. True, the magic was stronger by the table, but you did not poke your nose there: the Talisman warned you, made magic visible... No, Stinktopp did not cut the Hair in two. I had another assistant in Tibidox.”
“Who? Who?” Tanya shouted. It was extremely important for her to know this, even if Plague would kill her in several minutes. The thought that she could suspect someone in vain was agonizing for her.
“I’ll not tell. Guess it yourself!”
“I know! Sardanapal!”
The evil spirits, crowding in the corners, began to cough from enthusiasm. She-Who-Is-No-More glanced at Tanya with interest.
“Oh, but you’re an amusing girl! Really you thought that the head of Tibidox, the favourite student of The Ancient One, could be a traitor? The one who did so much for you! He protected you in the world of moronoids and then, disregarding the prophecy, brought you to Tibidox! When the time comes to kill Sardanapal, I’ll make him happy with this news.”
Tanya became ashamed.
“So, it means, it’s not his potion that lulled everyone to sleep? But I thought...”
Plague impatiently interrupted her.
“No, I summoned the Fiend with the help of the one who serves me... But the potion which Sardanapal gave you was the restorative pitch from hydra poison... This pitch weakens the action of killing magic. I must say that the academician succeeded in time. If he were late, tonight everyone would become the deceased. Now they only sleep... Think further, I’m beginning to lose patience. Soon it’ll be necessary for me to kill you.”
“Really Slander? Yes, exactly him! He hid someone in the vase,” Tanya groaned, berating herself for slow wits.
She recalled in the smallest detail that evening when she met Eyeless Horror with Lieutenant Rzhevskii, and then almost immediately Slander prowling to the vase from a dark corridor.
“You think he hid me in a vase?” The disgusting old woman burst out laughing in such a way that she nearly lost her head. “No, Slander is not my ally, though he’s also an out-and-out old fox... Possibly, he’ll still come over to my side, but as yet no... You again did not guess right...”
Tanya did not believe her:
“But who was in the vase?”
Plague-del-Cake looked around, throwing an interrogative look to the evil spirits crowding in the corner. The evil spirits prompted something squeakily.
“Ah-ha, understood,” She-Who-Is-No-More drawled. “There was a mermaid in the vase. The same one that you treated in veterinary magic. Likely Slander stole her from the pond.”
“But why did he steal an evil spirits from the pond? Slander cannot stand the evil spirits!”
Plague flinched with disgust.
“The moronoids call this feeling ‘love at first sight.’ In reality these are all tricks of the cupids — vile tots with bows! For sure he annoyed them with something, and they as an answer lay in wait for him somewhere and released a love arrow. But into the mermaid — a repugnant arrow in order that she did not want to even look at him. They always amuse themselves so.”
Tanya recalled the little cupid, whom the dean dragged by the ear and everything became clear. So that is why Slander Slanderych rubbed himself with something stinky! He wanted to please the mermaid, knowing that she, an evil spirit, must be drawn by sharp odours! For sure that day when Tararakh rolled the keg with the mermaid, the offended little cupid in red suspenders was hiding somewhere beside him, searching for someone for the menacing dean to fall in love with. The whimsical mermaid, recently cured of carp louse, seemed to him as the most suitable candidate.
“I don’t believe that it’s not Slander! But who then is the traitor? There’s simply no one else! Medusa? Dentistikha? Who?” Tanya shouted with conviction.
The lead weakness pressing her into the flagstones gradually let off. Tanya felt that, if required, she would be able to jump up quickly and run. But only to where? The evil spirits were crowding in all the passages. Now, when she did not have her magic ring, she would not even be able to frighten them with a fight spark. So for the time being the girl remained on the floor, pretending that she could hardly stir as before.
Unexpectedly, the evil spirits made room, freeing a path, and Tanya saw Shurasik running into the hall. The all A student looked around unhappily. Likely that here, in the basement, he was unsure of himself. “He also did not fall asleep like Vanka and me! The magic did not act on him. He got up and set off to search for me! What a fine fellow!” Tanya thought, deeply touched. Fearing for Shurasik, she jumped and darted to him:
“Shurasik! Careful, Plague is here! Drive away the evil spirits with a fight spark! Call Sardanapal, Medusa!”
But Shurasik evidently did not understand what was shouted to him. He stood on the spot and stupidly blinked his watery eyes, continuously looking at Tanya and as if surprised at something. Deciding that he was lost, Tanya gripped him by the hand and wanted to pull him after herself, but here Shurasik suddenly deftly tripped her. It was so unexpected that the girl went sprawling, her forehead bleeding.
Tanya sat down on the floor. There was a ringing in her head.
“What are you doing? What, have you lost your mind?” She yelled.
“It’s you who’s lost your mind. I’m not going anywhere from the Gates, which my lady will now open!” Shurasik announced dully, not tearing off his devoted gaze from Plague-del-Cake. He was like a dog waiting for a treat to be thrown to him.
A terrible suspicion, already not even a suspicion but a certainty crept over Tanya.
“It’s true? Shurasik, the truth? Really it’s you who was Plague’s assistant?”
Shurasik leaned towards her and grabbed her by the hair. His pale face with transparent skin became even paler. The colourless eyes blinked with hatred.
“No one liked me...” he sobbed furiously. “No one! Neither here, nor there in the world of the moronoids! I crammed lessons day and night, and everyone only called me a bore, a nerd, a know-it-all! No one wanted to understand what I feel, that I cry at night in my pillow, because I want to be the best of all! They kicked me, bewitched my boots... And the moronoids, when I was still studying among them, spat on me and beat me when once I told the teacher that they copied the test! And then somehow I got a two! Not for anything, although I knew everything best of all! Suddenly something boiled up in my chest and the mark book caught fire. The diary flared up after it, and fungi grew on the teacher’s head. I sensed a power in me and decided to take vengeance on all of them, but did not have time. They took me away to Tibidox! Here Sardanapal felt sorry for me and put me among the white magicians, although I wanted terribly to be among the black. But I kept quiet, although I harboured spite. Here at first it was even pleasant for me, but after that the same began. Again they didn’t like me, and then I planned this: to pay everyone back at once — both the moronoids and the magicians! To pay back the entire world that has been so unfair to me! I read close to hundreds of books, thinking how to do this, until I read in one that underground in a coffin lies Plague-del-Cake — She-Who-Is-No-More. ‘Here,’ I thought, ‘is the one I’ll serve! She’ll give me power! She’ll help me take vengeance!’ And I began to bring victims to her — insects, birds, mice, uttering special spells at the same time. And I returned power to her,” Shurasik spasmodically breathed in.
“Yes, so it was all the time... He regenerated me and returned power to me! He who everyone considered the best in the white department! And not a single black magician is even fit to hold a candle to him!” Plague said encouragingly.
Her right hand slid down from the shoulder and flew up to Shurasik. He fell onto his knees and put his lips to this dead hand with dry yellow skin. Tanya was staggered by loathing, but Shurasik, it seemed, noticed nothing. He was indeed mad.
“I began to hear in dreams the voice of my mistress! She ordered me on what to do...” continued Shurasik. “I hid the gold sword in a hiding-place in my room, and then, when everybody was watching this idiotic dragonball, sneaked into the Walled-up Basement along the path dug by the evil spirits and cut the Hair in two. Then I handed the sword to Agukh, and returned to the stadium myself. Agukh said that soon after me Sardanapal ran into the Basement and braced his head. Indeed, besides me, only Sardanapal knew that only a white magician could have cut the Hair.”
“So here’s why all the following days Sardanapal was so depressed! It was hard for him to believe that among us whites can turn out this scoundrel!” Tanya thought. At the same time she understood why the academician just as unconditionally trusted the black magicians. None of the blacks could cut the Hair in two, so, among them there could not even be a traitor.
“And how marvellously I contrived with the little hearts!” Shurasik continued. “All of you pinned them on your chests...”
“In order to support you! You understand — support!”
“No, it’s a lie!” Shurasik began to squeal. “You only pretended, and in reality mocked me! You think I didn’t see how you secretly exchanged glances and twirled your fingers by the temple?” Here something came to Shurasik’s mind, and he chuckled.
But no one, none surmised what the letters ‘WF’ mean and why they’re outlined with stones! This is the invite spell for the Wooden Fiend! It’s I who lulled everyone to sleep this night! I summoned Fiend and handed over to it those who had the little heart! I only had to lull to sleep Coffinia and Glomov! I moulded figures of them from wax and addressed them! But I was mistaken about Vanka Valyalkin! I did not know that he had taken off the soccer shirt and indeed the little heart was on it!”
“So this is why you yourself did not wear your little heart!” Tanya shouted.
Shurasik bounced on the spot.
“Yes, yes, precisely why! But indeed you also did not wear it! You lost it somewhere! Or discarded it! Especially! But I spent most of the time on your little heart! Picked the stones almost the whole night! YOU even did not notice that yours were completely not like the rest! Wooden Fiend had to fly to you last and destroy, incinerate you so that from you would remain the Talisman!”
“Mr. know-it-all, Shurasik! Terribly touching! I always knew that you’re a good boy! And indeed not indifferent to me, so it’s really...” Tanya paused, pulling herself together. Indeed if she was to die, then at least tease him a little after all.
The evil spirits along the corner started to snigger disgustingly and this finally enraged Shurasik.
“Shut up! Sparkis frontis maximus!” He yelled and, tossing up the hand with the ring, he threw into Tanya’s face a fight spark. This was not simply a fight spark, but a substantial one — a dense cluster of hatred the size of a ball of lightning. Such a spark could easily kill or blind.
Tanya threw herself to the side, but the spark flew so swiftly that she did not manage to avoid it. The spark struck her in the cheek, and then... then suddenly took place what Shurasik in no way could expect. Tanya felt that a resilient heat rolled along beginning from the tip of her nose through her entire body, and in the next moment the spark, flying away, was already rushing to Shurasik himself.
“Puffel-duffel!” A stupefied Shurasik began to yell, attempting to extinguish it.
But the abolish spell did not work. Increasing in size, the ball of lightning continued to approach him steadily. Shurasik turned and broke into a run. The spark overtook him and struck him in the back so that the robe on Shurasik was instantly charred. He himself, somersaulting twice in the air, fell into the very centre of the swarming evil spirits, pressing under himself at one stroke a swamp bogey and two kikimoras.
“Hurtga! Your stupid backga landga on my whole headga! Here I sendgu you from heregu!” One of the kikimora started to hiss, opened wide the mouth full of triangular teeth.
“Fightga! I killga himga!” The swamp bogey shouted.
“Ah-ah!” Shurasik howled, appearing at the very bottom of the pyramid of evil spirits attacking him.
“Well, enough! Stop!” Plague-del-Cake roared in a terrible voice, with the swiftness of a bat turning on the spot. From her violet robe short white lightning spurted in all directions. It smelled of cinder. The stones on which the lightning fell split with a dry crack.
The scorched evil spirits began to squeal and darted in all directions. Shurasik rose on all fours, crazily shaking his head. The hand of Plague flew up to Tanya, who was taking cover behind the coffin, and, seizing her, dragged her to its mistress.
“Away with jokes! Did you see it, stupid daughter of Grotter? You deflected the spark of my servant! Deflected it exactly like my fatal breath once... Just as Professor Stinktopp’s spell. You did not simply deflect them: you even returned them to those who sent them! And after this you’ll still assert that the Talisman is not helping you? But now I know where it is! I saw how it flickered, deflecting the spark! And I know how to take it away! This can be done, not even using magic!”
Tanya did not have time to understand anything as the dry hand of Plague abruptly struck her on the cheek. Tanya’s head began to ring. She fell, hearing at the same time something rolling on the floor. The sound resembled a barely distinguishable silvery ring.
“It came out! I see it!” Suddenly Shurasik began to yell. He jumped and, crawling on his stomach, started to grope for something on the floor. When he got up, it became evident that Shurasik was holding something between the thumb and the forefinger. Something small and dark, no larger than a grain of rice.
Tanya traced with her hand along her nose. The birthmark which she cursed so many times, because of which she was teased so many times, the birthmark answering with pain with each touch was no more! It disappeared, and now Shurasik was precisely holding it in his damp hand.
“So it is!” Plague-del-Cake creaked. “The Talisman of Four Elements — it’s the microscopic grit to which Leopold with a spell of camouflage magic gave the form of a birthmark... So here’s why I couldn’t find it! Sly fox! He made it so that all these years you wore the key to the Sinister Gates on your nose! In plain sight of everyone! Hey, why did I not immediately poke your nose into the keyhole? Bring it here!”
Plague took a step to the Sinister Gates, simultaneously stretching out her hand in order to take the Talisman. But here Tanya with a shrill screech jumped onto Shurasik and hung onto his shoulders. He began to twirl, trying to shake her off, but it was not simple. Tanya even contrived to hold onto the double bass, and it was a little more complicated than on the back of a lanky lout. Managing, she struck Shurasik on the hand.
“I dropped it! Mistress, it flew off somewhere! I did not see where!” Shurasik squealed in panic.
“YOU ASKED FOR IT! I wanted Chaos to kill you, but I’ll do this myself!” Plague-del-Cake roared, turned threateningly. Her bony hands rushed to Tanya and, pulling her off the back of Shurasik, flung her onto the floor. Then the hands dashed for the gold sword and snatched it out of the mistress’s belt.
“Kill her! Send her to her papa! Now, without the Talisman, she’s not dangerous!” Plague shouted.
Understanding that this was the end, Tanya began to crawl away quickly, hearing how the gold sword, cutting the air, rushed to her. Suddenly her hands stumbled upon something on the floor. Some clay vessel... Not even recalling that it was the jug of the titans, Tanya shielded herself from the sword with it... But really could clay stop the sword, which already flew up to her head?
Was this really the end?
The last thing that Tanya heard was the triumphant howl of Shurasik. A faint plop was heard and darkness swallowed everything... For a moment it seemed to Tanya that she, swiftly revolving, was falling down a well, on the very bottom of which stars were twinkling...

* * *

Squeak... A ring clanked... The Sinister Gates were thrown open. And from there rushed out something terrible, formless, faceless...
No... It was simply the door of the magic station opening. Tanya with difficulty unglued her eyelids. Leaning over her was the sympathetic face of Medusa. Academician Sardanapal’s moustaches stirred good-naturedly beside her. Yagge, knitting her brows anxiously, whispered something over a large cup. Slander Slanderych, sternly folding his arms on his chest, like a pendulum rushed about up and down the window.
“Quick... There’s Plague... In the basement...” Tanya whispered. The voice sounded weak. The dried up lips clotted.
Hearing her whisper, all four magicians turned to her. Tanya noticed explicit relief on their faces.
“Don’t worry! Everything is fine. Plague-del-Cake no longer exists... Now she really is She-Who-Is-No-More,” Sardanapal announced soothingly.
Tanya did not believe him. The disgusting face of Plague was still in her memory.
“Why not? She has the Talisman of Four Elements... She took it away from me, and then...” The girl attempted to get up, but without strength she fell back onto the pillow.
The moustaches of Sardanapal drooped guiltily, but they almost immediately soared upward.
“There is no more Talisman of Four Elements... Remember, it was your birthmark. Unfortunately, talismans, even the best of them, are very brittle. Plague did not reach it, nor did we. Who knows, perhaps it’s even for the best?”
Yagge approached the rolling over Tanya and, having sternly looked at Sardanapal, forced her to drink something minty and tasty from the cup.
“How do you like that trick! All day the girl lay unconscious, and you just pounced on her! Now everyone step out of the chamber here!”
While Yagge wiped her lips, Tanya continued to look interrogatively at the academician. He, as if surrendering, gave up and turned to associate professor Gorgonova.
“I think, Medusa, we must explain to her... She’ll exhaust herself with worry...”
Medusa smiled with her eyes.
“When Plague split the jug with the sword, she let out the force of the Earth, and the force of the Earth, in turn, liberated the titans from imprisonment. I think the titans gave you this pot counting on something similar. They needed someone to open it, but not in their jail, only outside... Then Cottus, Gyes, and Briareus broke into the basement and avenged themselves on She-Who-Is-No-More... They crushed her like a small insect... Plague could do nothing: no one is more terrible than the immortal titans... But, battling with Plague, these hundred-armed warriors smashed a good half of Tibidox. Only the Sinister Gates and the Big Tower, where, fortunately, all the students were, did not suffer. Then the titans transferred you from the ruins to the surviving half, and they themselves left... After they dealt with Plague, we, it goes without saying, already could not return them to imprisonment. This would not be right. Moreover, even without that we have our work cut out for us. It was necessary to still remove the sleep magic from everyone... And here these ghosts also get tangled under foot. Lieutenant Rzhevskii howls that he’ll not live in the basement and will leave for the world of the moronoids.”
“And he’ll be going nowhere, the garden scarecrow! He needs them there very much with his jokes...” Yagge could not maintain.
Sardanapal and Medusa smiled. Likely they were in complete agreement with her.
“So this is what the last part of the prophecy meant, that I’d obliterate Tibidox. I in truth obliterated it, letting out the titans,” Tanya said guiltily.
Sardanapal nodded:
“No one blames you. But then, you had no way out. Otherwise Plague-Del-Cake was not to be dealt with. We still got off lightly. Even Slander Slanderych acknowledges this! True?” He asked persistently.
The dean of Tibidox stopped walking here and there, he winced as if all his teeth ached at once.
“And I blame no one... And after all, I, perhaps, will go. I want to take a walk along the banks of the pond... I have there a... m-m... job,” Slander Slanderych growled and quickly withdrew.
Tanya smiled, understanding that the prankish tot-cupid did not think to pull out his love arrow from the heart of Slander. Well, it is useful for this dried-up man to love someone. Let it even be a mermaid.
“And the Wooden Fiend, which Shurasik let loose? Caught it?” Tanya asked.
Yagge laughed into her fist. Now Tanya understood whom Bab-Yagun took after to be so easily amused.
“Fiend? It so foolishly butted into the titans. Decided that you were there because there was your little heart...” she explained. “The titans rolled it up like dough, and tied it into a knot, and even pinned the little badge on top. For decoration.”
“And where’s Shurasik?”
“In the next chamber, in the stinging nettle bath... It re-educates... After he saw the titans, he’s somewhat not himself. Only hides under the bed...” said Yagge.
Tanya looked at Medusa in alarm.
“And you don’t think: he became so by himself,” Medusa calmed her. “Plague turned him into a zombie, took away his will. That’s why he was always fainting. No matter, Yagge will cure him. True, now we indeed will not leave him in the white department... Hey, who’s there?” Medusa turned around sternly.
By the door, panting under the weight of an enormous, almost gigantic tray with chocolate cakes, salads, mineral water, pastries of a hundred and thirty varieties, Vanka Valyalkin and Bab-Yagun had already squeezed through. The latter, furthermore, haughtily displayed to Tanya her ring, which he clearly intended to return.
“Stop! And well, where to! It’s been said — bed rest!” Yagge was about to rush to turn them out, but, looking at her grandson, she gave up: “Okay, only not long! And for the time being, a little liqueur for us, eh, Professor?”
“Well, perhaps a thimble!” Sardanapal sneezed thoughtfully. The tip of his nose twinkled timidly.
And Bab-Yagun had already put down his gigantic tray on Tanya’s blanket. Tanya thought that an excellent evening was waiting for her. And hundreds and thousands more excellent days...

Me and myself
Эта не единственная. У меня еще парочка есть. Если хочешь, могу выложить?