Chapter Ten
Acquaintance with Scholarchkin

When the toys returned to Olga’s home after the battle with the soldiers, Flamy and Muffin were still asleep. Muffin, according to her mood in general, could sleep all day, waking up only in cases of extreme necessity. Now, the cat was probably dreaming that she was clambering along a tall tree, because she was moving her paws and turning her head in her sleep. Flamy occasionally snored, releasing a small fountain of flame and smoke.

Muffin and Flamy were sleeping soundly. No matter how they were shaken or shouted at, it was all in vain. Finally, a lucky thought came into Olga’s head to clink the lid of a pot above their ears. It worked. Immediately the sleepyheads woke up and began to look around. Olga and Pookar described how they had fought with the soldiers.

“How many were there?” Flamy asked.

“Three…” Pookar, not very strong in arithmetic, counted on his fingers just in case.

“Then it wasn’t Dobrynya Nikitich,” Flamy sighed with relief.

“Who’s this Dobrynya Nikitich?” Pookar asked. “A soldier?”

“I already told you about him! Not a soldier, but a hero.”

“I saw Dobrynya Nikitich in a picture. He’s on a horse and has a sword,” the doll Olga said.

“Precisely… Then one of us ate the horse and left the sword. As I remember now, it was such a huge sword,” said Flamy.

“How big? How many kilometres-metres-centimetres-millimetres?” someone’s thin little voice asked suddenly.

Flamy looked around. “Who said that? Did you, Pookar?” he was surprised.

“Neuh-uh, not me,” Pookar said.

“I did. How many kilometres-metres-centimetres-millimetres was the sword?” the same little voice repeated impatiently.

Everyone saw a stranger in large glasses on a snub nose and a funny red cap standing in the doorway of the dollhouse. The stranger had on a green velvet jacket and black shoes with white laces. He was holding a small briefcase in his hands.

“Who are you?” Olga was astonished.

“Please excuse me!” the guest pronounced stiffly. “I forgot to introduce myself. I’m the gnome Scholarchkin, physicist-chemist-mathematician.”

“Are you from the same box as the soldiers?” the doll Olga asked suspiciously.

“No. I had the honour of arriving here in Masha’s schoolbag. Earlier, I lived in the school, but now I’ve decided to leave there. I can’t watch how catastrophically the level of education has fallen,” the gnome said.

Pookar opened his mouth to make a spiteful remark, but Muffin gave him a slight smack with her paw. She was a serious cat and loved to talk about clever subjects.

“I utterly agree with you. A disgrace, simply a disgrace! It was all different in our time. The current generation just doesn’t know what they’re missing,” she meowed, turning to Scholarchkin. The two-year-old cat Muffin never studied anywhere but considered herself terribly highly experienced and grown-up. No one convinced her to the contrary, because Muffin, when angry, immediately began to scratch and bite.

“You have the right views, respectable one! I fully agree with you. May I ask, with whom do I have the honour of talking?” the gnome asked.

“Muffin… That is, Martha,” embarrassed, the cat introduced herself.

“And I’m Flamy!” said the dragonet.

“FLAmy or FlaMY? How should you be correctly struck?” the gnome asked with an air of importance.

The dragon was offended. “No need to strike me. I can surrender!” he growled.

“That’s not what I wanted to say. I’m asking, where is the stress in your name?”

“He’s FLAmy! The stress is on ‘fla’!” clever Olga said. She alone understood what the gnome had in mind.

“I’m Pookar… Olga… He’s Sineus… This is Truvor… That’s the twin hiding behind Olga… Don’t pay any attention, he’s shy…” the friends were introduced.

“Very, very nice… But let’s return to our conversation. So how many metres-kilometres-centimetres was Dobrynya Nikitich’s sword?” the gnome pulled out an abacus from the briefcase and clicked the beads.

Flamy thought for a bit. “I don’t know exactly how many kilothese there were. But it was like this!” He instantly transformed into a sword, big and heavy. It was immediately clear that this was a real sword for a hero. Everybody gasped. They, of course, already knew earlier that Flamy knew how to transform, but when a sword suddenly appeared instead of Flamy, it was impossible not to gasp.

“Curiouser and curiouser! Scientifiker and scientifiker… A curious specimen!” Scholarchkin approved.

The gnome measured the sword with a measuring tape. “Two centimetres three metres five kilometres! To a T,” he said. After clicking the abacus, he took out a small notebook in an emerald binding and recorded the dimensions of the powerful sword.

All the toys, mouths open, watched as the gnome wrote carefully with a red pencil in his little notebook. “Ah! What a poetic look he has… Pity he isn’t a cat…” The cat Muffin was carried away.

Scholarchkin closed the notebook, hid it in the briefcase together with the abacus, and stretched happily. “You have a nice place here! Cosy. Much better than a school desk. I think I’ll stay.”

“Stay, of course. But why did you leave the school? It always seemed to me that it’s nice there,” Olga asked.

“It’s not bad,” Scholarchkin agreed with authority. “But indeed very noisy. Earlier, I suggested the correct answers to those who got twos and they fed me sandwiches. I knew the multiplication table by heart! Imagine! Now, for some reason, I’ve started to forget everything. Three times three is ten. Five times seven is forty-seven. It’s like this every time! Time for a vacation!”

“Where will you live?” Pookar was worried. He liked Scholarchkin, but he did not like the idea at all of that one settling in the boot with him.

“I have a room to spare in the attic. Scholarchkin will be comfortable there. Only have to sweep it,” Olga took the gnome by the hand and led him to see his new home.

Chapter Eleven
The Mysterious Abduction of the Bunny Truvor

The gnome Scholarchkin settled in the attic of the doll Olga’s home. There was no bed, and a small comfortable hammock had to be hung up. The school gnome liked the new room very much. Scholarchkin lay in the hammock all day and made notes in his notebook. In the evening, he told stories, in which it was impossible to believe. So, the gnome claimed that water in a kettle becomes hot when the little things – MOLECULES – in it begin to run quickly.

“That can’t be! These molecules would start to run free. What are they, trained?” Pookar argued.

“I myself have seen them under a microscope! The molecules are small and live in the water like fish. While the water is cold, they swim by themselves quietly, as in a pool, but when the water starts to boil, they dart here and there very quickly,” said the gnome.

“For sure. The poor things! You would dart about this way too if they scalded you with boiling water,” Olga shook her head.

“Hiss-hiss! What are they, these molecules? What do they look like?” Flamy was interested.

Scholarchkin thought for a little bit, rubbed his forehead, and said uncertainly, “Molecules, they’re like insects, only very small.”

Pookar looked maliciously at Olga. “Bugs and roaches? Doll, you’ve been fighting with roaches but don’t know that they’re swimming in your tea and washing your feet. Watch you don’t choke on some bugs.”

Pookar’s words worked. Olga’s face became tearful; she waved her hands and ran out of the room. “Got into a bad mood. Now she’ll sulk for an hour! Does she really have to be so stupid?” Pookar shrugged.

After their defeat, Gorilla, General, and Grabber appeared no more, and they were gradually forgotten. It was even believed that the soldiers had moved to another room, but it was not so, and the opportunity to make sure of it soon introduced itself. Unpleasant things began to happen in the room. A piece of twine, on which Pookar usually hung his socks out to dry, disappeared. At first, no one paid the disappearance any attention because Pookar was always a scatterbrain. However, when Olga’s favourite pot with white polka dots vanished, the toys gathered together and started to think.

Pookar assumed a serious look. “Tsk-tsk, the case is clear! We can’t manage without a sleuth here. I’ll be Sherlock Holmes, and you, Sineus, will be Dr. Watson. Do you understand, Sineus?” he said.

“Yes,” the bunny whispered, dropping his eyes and timidly fidgeting with a foot.

“Who’s this Sherlock Holmes?” asked Flamy.

“Sherlock Holmes is a great researcher, and Dr. Watson is his assistant.”

Pookar pulled the deerstalker to his eyes and strolled around the room. “Watson, do you have any ideas?”

“Nada,” the bunny babbled, barely audibly.

“So, it’s clear,” Pookar said meaningfully. “No one has any ideas? Then I’ll start.” The great detective turned around and closed his eyes. “One, two, three, four, five, I’ll go search! Look out, pot thief! The great Holmes goes on the warpath!”

“Better tell me where’s the pot? Is it you who stole it?” Olga hurried him, watching out for Pookar’s tricks without any special acknowledgement.

“First conclusion.” Pookar straightened the deerstalker. “If there’s no pot, then it means someone took it, because pots don’t walk by themselves. Second conclusion: the one who took it was probably very hungry, because only a very hungry creature can eat the sour kasha that Olga cooks.”

“What did you say? My kasha is sour? If it’s sour, who asked you to gobble it up?” Olga was offended.

“I eat the kasha out of sympathy,” said Pookar.

“Here, I’ll show you sympathy! Are you actually going to find the pot or just chitchat?” Olga flew into a rage.

“I’m going to. I’ll find it in no time at all. But first, let’s find out if the pot was lost at all. Perhaps you hid it somewhere so as not to cook dinner? Ah-h, mama!” Fleeing from Olga, Pookar quickly hid behind the cat Muffin and from there bravely stuck his tongue out at Olga.

It was not known how far the fighting would have gone but at that moment Flamy suddenly shouted, “Look! There’s our pot running!” Everyone looked around and saw that the pot was quickly crawling along the floor to the other side of the room. It was crawling by itself, completely inexplicably.

“Quick! We still have time to catch it!” Pookar shouted.

“A scientific sensation! A self-moving pot!” The gnome Scholarchkin was delighted.

Everybody except the frightened bunnies, who remained in the house, rushed after the pot. Flamy flew ahead. Muffin rushed behind him with soft bounds, Scholarchkin clinging to her tail. Pookar barely kept pace behind the cat. Olga, holding her skirt, ran last.

“Of course, milk boiled over at my place. But this, a pot running off, this has never happened to me!” Olga muttered under her breath.

Meanwhile the pot was crawling quietly by itself along the floor, sometimes stopping as if teasing its pursuers. From the outside, one would think that it was just going for a walk. Very soon, the friends overtook it. Flamy grabbed the handle with his teeth and held it until the others arrived. The cat Muffin arched her back and hissed. The pot did not stir anymore and did not try to crawl away.

“It’s not running by itself; someone was dragging it with a rope,” said Scholarchkin, walking around the pot and looking at it through a magnifying glass.

“This is my sock string that disappeared!” Pookar yelled suddenly.

The friends all looked at each other. They understood nothing.

“It’s probably the soldiers. But why did they have to drag the pot by a rope?” said Olga.

“Quite mysterious. A secret, shrouded in mystery… Look, Sineus is running to us!”

Stumbling, Sineus ran up to the toys. He was so agitated that he could not utter a word but only waved his paws. Olga had to take him into her arms and hold him tight.

“He’s shaking like a jackhammer!” Pookar said in amazement.

Only after five minutes did Sineus manage to utter, “Truvor… The soldiers stole Truvor! They also wanted me, but I hid!”

“It can’t be!”

“They waited until you ran after the pot and stole Truvor! They thought up everything on purpose! It’s all that tubby, whose helmet slides down over his eyes!”