Дмитрий Емец – Tanya Grotter and the Golden Leech (страница 12)
Finally, Usynya, Gorynya, and Dubynya, who were pelted by a hail of branches and slipping from the slime on the stones, got rather tired of being whipping boys. Their Herculean patience melted more swiftly than ice-cream on the tongue of eight graders dreaming of getting tonsillitis. “They’re beating…” shouted Usynya. “…us!” Gorynya finished. Dubynya wanted to add something more intellectual, but was not able to and, maliciously spitting out a lump that had flown into his mouth, shook his fists in silence. The raging hero-bouncers caught the water-sprites and began to pile them into the lake one by one. Having disposed of all the water-sprites, they started after the wood-goblins and soon finally pushed them back into the forest.
The reasonable mermaids, seeing that the battle was nearly over, threw away the scissors and began thoughtfully to clean the algae and snails off Academician Sardanapal. The decrepit duckweed, sympathetically clicking its tongue, with great care extracted Professor Stinktopp from the burrow.
A wood-goblin late to the battle came out of a wind-fallen tree, enormous and stooping. Standing for a while, leaning against a pine, it began to creak and again disappeared into the woods.
“That’s it, back to class! No more to do here. The most interesting has ended,” said Yagun.
Tanya was busy with lessons till the evening. It was necessary to learn dozens of spells for Dentistikha’s removal of evil eye the next day and on top of that, to prepare for the first class with Slander Slanderych, who would begin to teach the second grade protection from spirits – a subject that was not in the year before. There were the most unbelievable rumours in the school about protection from spirits. They asserted that Slander, as a former black magician, seemingly did not protect from spirits as much as set them on his students.
Bab-Yagun, repeatedly making Slander hopping mad with his tricks, feared in advance tomorrow’s class. Afraid to be caught unawares, he got hold of a pile of talismans and now hung them unnoticeably under his clothing and concealed them in his sleeves. “As soon as Slander let loose the spirits on me – right away! – I’ll reach for a foolproof piece. He’ll get it hot! Oh, my granny mama, I’m uneasy about something…” muttered Yagun.
Having finished with the lessons, Tanya grabbed the case with the double bass and rushed to the dragonball field. She feared that the instrument would roam. Were the house-spirits, overhauling the instrument, able not to ruin the initial design of Theophilus Grotter?
Having climbed onto the double bass, Tanya uttered
After two or three circles over the field Tanya was certain that the flight characteristics of the instrument had not deteriorated, though it manoeuvred a little not quite like before. Earlier it obeyed any, even the most insignificant movement, now it slowed somewhat.
“Tighten the pins a little so that the strings stretch. Of course, the clever fellows were too clever by half with the polishing, well, no matter, it doesn’t affect the speed,” the ring grumbled jealously.
Tanya calmed down. It meant that great-grandfather found nothing to worry about.
“And the Rope of the Seventeen Hanged Men did not break?” Tanya hurried to ask; however, grandfather Theophilus did not give this question a definite answer. The ring mysteriously hesitated, irrelevantly shot a couple of sparks, and became silent.
Having tightened the pins, Tanya got up high above the island, where constant airstreams began. One of them set off to the east, and another – into cold Antarctica, populated by mysterious spirits, which almost nothing was known about and which it was not possible to call either friends or enemies of magicians. Trying not to fall into these air streams in order not to be carried away, Tanya, keeping on the edge, flew over the shore.
Long sandy stretches alternated with eroded cliffs. On one of the sandy stretches, the bearded sea king Neptune was bashfully soaping and cleaning some of his linen. Beside him in the shallow water lay his trident. For a second Tanya wanted to rush over his head and tease him a little, but she reconsidered. Being mixed up with Neptune was dangerous. He could unceremoniously summon a storm. Moreover, according to rumours, he was a good friend of Professor Stinktopp.
A cold wind gusted from the ocean, sprays reached her, and Tanya turned the double bass around and directed it south of Tibidox – to the woods, which occupied a substantial part of the island. For some not entirely intelligible reason the students were forbidden to walk into this forest. True, the ban was extended only to strolling by foot. Along the majority of the paths were special guard spells – Slander and Dentistikha, rare masters of magical trickeries, had already worked on this for a while. If one of them was set off, Slander would immediately teleport himself to this place, and the consequences were sufficiently unpleasant for the offenders. The least it was possible to get away with was grinding earthworms in the meat grinder, preparing stuffing for the griffins, and enduring the mockery of the omnipresent ghosts all through the vacations.
“A strange thing. Why are they so attached to these woods? It’s possible even to think that the Teaches fear something. One can’t get lost there – can always send a signal spark… No, there’s clearly something else here,” thought Tanya.
Now, rushing over the forest on the double bass, Tanya attentively looked down. The further it was, the more impassable the wind-fallen trees. Moss-covered trunks piled up side by side along the paths. “Sardanapal could send cyclopes here to rake up everything, but for some reason he’s not doing it…” Tanya decided.
Keeping above the tops of the trees, she crossed the forest in a slant and again found herself along the shore – true, from the other side of the island, where the powerful roots of pines courageously fought with the friable cliffs. It began to get dusky. Tanya had already intended to turn around when unexpectedly it seemed to her that she saw a rippling white haze.
The girl guessed that, confusing directions in the darkness, she was again approaching Tibidox, but only from the other side. As for the white haze, it was rising… from the ruins. From those most uninhabited ruins of The Ancient One’s gatehouse, which were now directly underneath. Tanya replaced the high-speed spell with the slow –
Smoke was pouring from the chimney, which was like a reproachful brick thumb jutting from the collapsed roof. The first two windows were half-flooded with water. Water beetles flickered flippantly among the emerald duckweed. The high stone porch-gallery, like in the ancient buildings of Suzdal, went directly out to the lake and there suddenly broke off. “One of two things: either The Ancient One had an oddity and he adored bathing in slime, or the lake flooded the house considerably later,” Tanya said to herself.
The meadow still bore the tracks of the recent battle. Here and there were grooves from the boots of the heroes. Mermaid scales gleamed. From a deep ditch poked out an arc of Sardanapal’s crushed glasses. On the side, next to a scrap of material from Medusa’s raincoat, was scattered Stinktopp’s absurd shoe with a bow like those of an old woman. Tanya picked it up and discovered inside the shoe the hidden lift, which made the short professor taller by five centimetres. “Well, Stinktoppik! A sheer cheat! I’ll not be surprised if he turns out to have a hat with springs and high-heel slippers!” she decided.
The neglected gatehouse appeared not a bit better from the other side. Tanya thought that next to these ruins the Hut on Chicken Feet would simply seem like the tsar’s mansion. A large stove was visible through a crack in the wall. Tanya went past, but was suddenly stunned. In the stove, managing without firewood, a bluish magic fire was buzzing smoothly. The thought flickered in Tanya that the wood-goblins or the water-sprites had started it, but then she understood that both groups abhorred fire and even in general, according to Yagun, had little interest in the structures of magicians.
After weighing all the pros and cons, young Grotter felt inside that she was not in the least drawn. On the contrary – she was even pulled to get further away from here. Moreover, she accidentally discovered that one of the bushes was somehow twinkling strangely and seemingly spreading a bit. Furthermore, its leaves were not shaking from the wind. On close examination, Tanya understood that a dark magic guard spell was stretched on the bush. “Aha, Slander tried! Here’s indeed a workaholic pest!” Tanya thought, wisely keeping further away from the bush.