Tanya Grotter and the Golden Leech. Дмитрий Емец

Rzhevskii waved his hands and, after jumping, leaving dirty tracks, passed through the wall. “What do you mean why? You insult me, my dear! You want to ask someone, anyone will tell you. Where Baby Grotter is, instantly all kinds of nonsense will begin! Only don’t ask why it is so. I adore it when everything is interesting, when everything boils, goes from the feet to the head… Understand? Terribly boring to live hundreds of years continuously, when all around nothing interesting happens.”

      “Uh-huh,” nodded Tanya. “Only don’t think that I’ll get mixed up in anything again.”

      “You’ll get mixed up, and not by half!” Lieutenant assured her. “By the way, if you’re interested, we could set off for the garret and see if the box is in place. Only not today – Eyeless Horror is hanging around somewhere there today. How about going in three days, at full moon? Horror will leave for the basement to thunder with shackles, and we’ll rush by.”

      “I’m not going with you,” stated Tanya, but, likely, the spectre did not particularly believe her.

      Unexpectedly, uneasiness appeared on his face. He listened anxiously, growled something about nasty spies who would not stay away from him, the good-looking, began to make noise with the knives, and quickly began to thread into the ceiling. He definitely began a new attack of paranoia. “One head is better, but two make a pair! So, in three days! Ciao, baby!” he whispered mysteriously and disappeared.

      Chapter 4

      The Latest Magic News and the Wax Figure

      Have you already forgotten Genka Bulonov, who made Tanya Grotter’s existence a misery when she was living at Uncle Herman’s and going to the same school with Pipa? In the body of the taciturn and sullen Bulonov, outwardly resembling more a barrel with legs or a safe with pedals, dwelled a vulnerable and dreamy soul. Fairly often, hiding in a corner, Bulonov sat down on a stool, hugged his knees, and began to dream. Dreams appeared like a pink sweet haze before his small, often blinking eyes. Sometimes Bulonov imagined that he would become a space pirate, sometimes the dictator of an entire planet, and sometimes clearly scaled down his little plan and dreamed of nothing but robbing a bank and fleeing in a car from pursuit.

      Bulonov began in earnest to prepare for the robbery of a bank and readied himself through the entire fourth grade, but this brilliant project was abolished because of the absence of a pistol and a cap with slits for the eyes. And stilts too. Without stilts, the bank guard would assume the rather short Bulonov to be a belligerent dwarf or a raging gnome.

      The life of our frustrated mini-Napoleon would flow so in its usual and dull riverbed, if once, by chance, he had not seen how Tanya swooped swiftly on her double bass. Then – in the very beginning – Tanya did not yet know that magicians must keep their flights in secret from the moronoids, and did not hide herself much.

      The wonder-struck Bulonov began to follow on Tanya’s heels, attempting to guess her secret, and hung around till that very day when she suddenly disappeared and Pipa stated in school that “stupid Grotter had fallen down somewhere, most likely left to gad about the stations. And wonderful that she did, less people – more oxygen.” But even then Bulonov could not calm down and continued regularly to putter near Tanya’s former entrance, hiding behind either the slide or the dumpster.