Tanya Grotter and the Golden Leech. Дмитрий Емец

the backs and shoulders of everybody. Three more cyclopes suffered injuries.

      “GOAL! On receiffing a pass from young Grotter, Coffinia Cryptoff zrows ze vinning ball! O, vhat a courageous champion Coffinia is! Vhat a brilliant technician! To zrow ze ball, vhen on her foot, like a bulldog, hangs the pushy Tatian! You all saw zat in zis match the star Tatian Grotter vaned and a new star blazed up – Coffinia Cryptoff!” Professor Stinktopp, taking on himself the responsibilities of commentator after Yagun’s disappearance into the dragon’s stomach, commented.

      Coffinia, still fleeing from a dragon already asleep, finally thought to turn around. She understood that she succeeded in throwing the winning goal. “It’s me! Me! You saw that! And well, let go of my foot, Grotter! Quick away from my glory, upstart!”

      Bowing and bathing in the rays of undeserved glory, Cryptova missed the moment when the Swine-Sportage finally died and plunged down. Tanya fell first on the sand and an instant later, Cryptova on her vacuum crashed down on her. Tanya heard something crunch and, would remembered later, had time still to wonder what this could be. And then suddenly a monstrous pain swept over her and forced her to bury her face in the sand. On the other hand, Coffinia, who landed directly on her, did not suffer a bit. Soon she was already on her feet, accepting congratulations, and blowing air kisses in different directions.

      “We won! What a miracle this Coffinia is! I’ve always adored her, even when she turned me into a rat! May I hug her? No, me first!” the admirers squealed. Bursting through the magic barrier, a whole crowd of fans rushed to Coffinia and began to toss her up, simultaneously almost trampling Tanya.

      In about five minutes, must give him credit, a fan, not managing to reach the body of the star Mademoiselle Cryptova, focused his attention also on Tanya. “And young Grotter! Where is she? What an outstanding pass she made!” this over-enthusiastic fan of dragonball screamed. Dusya Dollova, Verka Parroteva, and ten more such impressionable fools rushed to Tanya. Feeling the savage pain in her broken leg bent at a completely unthinkable angle, with the foot turned to the side like the neck of a broiler chicken, Tanya attempted to crawl away.

      “Oh, will you look at the poor thing! She’s all covered with blood! And the boot jumped off her foot! Let’s put it back on!” Dusya Dollova started to coo. “No, I’ll do it! Get away from here, fat face bitch!” Verka Parroteva demanded. “Go away yourself! Give the boot over here!” Dollova became furious. Both fans ran up to Tanya and, gripping her foot, each of them began to pull it to her own side. “Ah-ah-ah!” Young Grotter began to scream in an inhuman voice. It would not be more painful for her even if they simply chopped off her leg. “Oh, how nervous she is! Better let’s go to Coffinia!” the fans were annoyed. The impressionable persons rushed off, chased away by the scream. They dragged away the boot of the star. Then Yagge and the genie medical orderlies could finally make their way to Tanya.

      “It’ll be a little painful now. Can you bear it?” Yagge asked. Biting her lips, Tanya nodded. Yagge quickly examined her leg. She ordered the genies to move Tanya onto the stretcher with great care and convey her to magic station. “And now better for you to not look in a mirror!” she hesitated. “The least that you earned is the burn, dozens of abrasions, five bruises, and a complex fracture. Must put bonegrafts under the plaster, so mind you don’t whine! It’s not too pleasant, I’m warning you!”

      The panting Central-Asian genies, along whose uneven faces roaming eyes, mouths, and ears dreamily crawled from one place to another, picked up the stretcher. Understanding that now they were taking her away, Tanya raised and grabbed Yagge’s wrinkled hand. “Wait! What about my double bass?”

      Yagge turned to Nightingale O. Robber. “What about the double bass of our beauty? Else she’ll in no way lie quietly in magic station!” she asked grumpily. Nightingale was at a loss, “I tried to secure it with a spell while it somersaulted along the sand. Nevertheless only the neck was cracked. Please forgive me that it turned out so.”

      Tanya grimaced. She did not want to cry, turned away, but tears flowed nevertheless. And then she could not control herself and burst into tears. “Why mope, just think, a piece of wood! Better think about the leg. If it grows together crooked – to the end of your life you’ll waddle like a goose…” Yagge muttered unhappily, nodding to the medical orderlies.

* * *

      The rest of the day turned out to be not especially pleasant for Tanya in magic station. All her cuts and scratches were covered with the pungent and odorous ointment, which reeked awfully of harpies and frightened skunks. The broken leg was stretched out and placed in a cast, under which Yagge, whispering something, put a whole box of well-fed bonegrafts similar to flat coins with paws. The bonegrafts immediately crawled away along the leg. They were sticky, disgusting, and forced Tanya to experience itch and a continuous tingle. The only comfort was that behind the partition in magic station lay Bab-Yagun, getting a heatstroke in the white-hot stomach of the dragon and on top of that badly scratched by Rita On-The-Sly.

      Outside, enthusiastic fans greeted Coffinia. Their roar even penetrated through the double frames of magic station. The hero-bouncers Usynya, Dubynya, and Gorynya hammered together a kind of mobile wooden dais and, having loaded it on their shoulders, carried Coffinia in triumph through Tibidox. Carried past from time to time, Cryptova appeared in the windows of magic station and smiled caustically, waving the hand with long bright green nails at Tanya.

      “Everyone says that she scored, and you only interfered with her. Hampered her vacuum, hung onto her foot… Why were you so? Lost you head, huh?” Bab-Yagun asked, leaning over from behind the partition. Tanya silently flung a pillow at him. “Oh, my granny mama! Beating up the overheated!” Yagun shouted with laughter, pulling the pillow like a Napoleonic bicorne over his eyes.

      Tanya turned away from him and covered her head with the blanket. She wanted to bite, to kick someone with her healthy foot, and to howl like Pipa. Who would think that from the stands everything looked so idiotic? She, it appears, prevented Cryptova from scoring! If even Yagun thinks so, what would the rest say? Gradually her anger burnt out. She started to feel sorry for herself and even cried in the pillow, but very quietly so that Yagun would hear nothing. The broken leg under the cast stung and tingled. It seemed as if the bonegrafts enmeshed her in a sticky, hot cobweb. Rocking with waves of pain and taking pleasure in the least bit of calm, Tanya finally fell asleep.

      How long she slept, she did not know, but probably not for long, because in the middle of the night deafening crashes woke her. Peals of thunder shook Tibidox, forcing this structure squat like a rock tortoise to shudder all the way to the basement. The downpour lashed at the windows of magic station. It seemed a river was flowing outside along the glass. Raindrops seeped into the cracks badly calked by spells and accumulated into puddles on the floor and the wide windowsill. The sky was highlighted every second by fiery arrows of lightning – two and three simultaneously. It seemed to Tanya, whose bed stood very near the glass, as if all the lightning was beating exactly at one point – the garret of the Big Tower.

      Unexpectedly, Tanya recalled the words of Nightingale: “But nevertheless only the neck was cracked!” Tanya became terrified. Stretching with difficulty to the chair on which her clothing was, the girl reached the notebook and in a hurry began to turn its pages. Crib notes for studies of evil spirits, prescriptions on how to quiet a raging dragon… But where is it? Aha! Here it is – instruction on the use of the magic double bass! How nice that once she surmised to copy it from the white birch bark, and even more pleasant that these records had not disappeared, as it happened with the attempt to duplicate a forbidden spell!

      Bluish flashes of lightning snatched out scraps of phrases. The glass shuddered with each thunderclap, “This double bass… by magician Theophilus Grotter… for flights to Bald Mountain… of fine magic… material… deck boards from Noah’s Ark… inside the neck the Rope of the Seventeen Hanged Men, snapping..... to execute the innocent…

      “…avoid collision with solid objects! Violation of the rules...... liberation of the powerful curse contained in the Rope…”

      Tanya dropped the notebook. And what if the Rope of the Seventeen Hanged Men broke and this terrible thunderstorm – clearly magic in origin – was somehow connected with the liberation of the ancient curse? But now Tanya was too