Tanya Grotter and the Golden Leech. Дмитрий Емец

when on the way they came upon two black headstones.

      After noticing the friends, the headstones roused themselves. “Tanya Grotter. At long last! Uncle Herman,” was written on the headstone on the right. “Bab-Yagun and Vanka Valyalkin. To brothers from mourning Glomov,” Gothic letters mockingly began to jump on the adjacent one.

      Not able to control herself, Tanya launched a Briskus into the headstones and immediately felt sorry about this. “Tanya Valyalkina. From grandsons and great-grandsons,” the right headstone angrily highlighted. “Tanya Yagunova, stupid orphan. From the moronoid house management,” the left one began to argue.

      “Here’s a dirty trick! I was wrong to get mixed up with them. Good that neither Vanka nor Yagun noticed anything,” Tanya thought and whisked upstairs in a hurry. Soon they were already standing on the little narrow viewing balcony, the jutting out canopy that hung exactly above the ditch. Tanya thought that earlier she was never in that part of the Island Buyan and completely did not know it. The windows of her room in the Big Tower looked out onto the internal courtyard and the play lawns. The Dragonball field was on the other side.

      “And there are the ruins… Where are you looking? More to the right… The-re, to where Usynya and Gorynya are running!” Bab-Yagun gesticulated. Having stared at it, Tanya saw that the ditch proceeded to the swampy bed of a brook, overgrown to a disgrace with prickly stubbles of reed, and that, in turn, ended at the lake. On the shore, half splashing in the water, half rotting on dry land, the ruins stretched, sullenly goggling at Tibidox with blind collapsed windows.

      Now a genuine battle was in full swing at the ruins. Transparent, elastic water-sprites, something similar to wineskins well-packed with slime, attacked squeaking, clumsy wood-goblins. On the side of the water-sprites appeared also a shock brigade of mermaids, of whom the famous chosen one of Slander was kicking up a bigger row than all. She howled, knocked down wood-goblins with powerful hits of her tail, and threw rotten fish, which some decrepit green duckweed helpfully brought to her, at them.

      “In no way will they share the ruins. One half is in the water – meaning, the kingdom of the water-sprites. But what offends the wood-goblins is that the second half joins the forest. A year hasn’t pass that they haven’t fought because of these ruins. Later they’ll reconcile, for a while they’ll live in peace, and again swing at each other’s noses. In a word, evil spirits, what will you do with them…” explained Yagun.

      The instructors of Tibidox were trying to separate the fighters, but so far, the result had turned out to be the most lamentable. Medusa, forced to step back, fired sparks from the side of the wood-goblins. Professor Stinktopp already hung his head down from the nearest tree and in a thin voice squeaked the threat, “You don’t know viz whom you’re dealing! I’ll turn you into small okroshka! Ah, I fear height!” The academician Sardanapal, knocked off his feet, was already being tickled by two mermaids, and a third dragged over a pair of tremendous garden scissors with the explicit intention of cutting his beard. Dentistikha, attempting to pacify the water-sprites, was set down by them in a puddle and was now angrily jumping up and down, trying to concoct an evil eye in return. Tararakh was capitally hit on the ear by a club, and in the next second, he was literally swept away by a hailstorm of dry Caspian roach from the catapults of the water-sprites.

      “But it’s merry there! We have some funky Teaches!” Vanka said approvingly.

      “You said it!” Bab-Yagun said proudly. “You should have seen how they battled with the wood-goblins the year before last! And the water-sprites almost carried Stinktopp off to the bottom! His pants were completely stuffed with duck-weed.”

      “Listen, Yagun, what was in these ruins earlier?” Tanya asked. Bab-Yagun frowned. “Well… Ruins – they’re ruins. On the whole, incomprehensible what to fight for here. All the same neither the wood-goblins nor the water-sprites live here. Never even visit, so my granny says.”

      “What, never visit?”

      “Never visit. They also disdain Tibidox, in general everything built by magicians, and here bang, how angry! One word – Buyan Island!”

      “But do they somehow explain this? Their hostility?” Tanya was interested. Yagun hesitated. “Ugh, fat chance! There’s never such a thing as evil spirits explaining anything to magicians. They’re by themselves, we’re by ourselves,” Yagun categorically stated. He rubbed his snub nose with a finger and pensively continued, “True, there are all kinds of rumours about these ruins. Seemingly, here was the gatehouse of The Ancient One, which he built even before Tibidox. But indeed why he abandoned this gatehouse later – I haven’t the faintest idea. Yes, supposedly, there were reasons… Look, look how incensed these evil spirits got!”

      The battle for the ruins was in full swing. Several times the water-sprites forced the wood-goblins back into the thick of the woods, but reinforcement came to them – and by then they forced the water-sprites into their lake. Professor Stinktopp was no longer hanging on a tree. His excitedly kicking legs protruded from some burrow.

      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 Speedus envenomus! The double bass trembled, lifted slightly above the field, as if gathering its spirit, and then swiftly jerked forward. Tanya, after weeks spent in magic station, out of practice with this speed, barely knew how to keep her place on it.

      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