“And why did I say that? It’s altogether only an unverified rumour! Oho! The swamp turned out to be deeper than High-rise assumed! It vanishes in the slush at a depth of the Broiler Legs and sinks in floor after floor. The witch-grannies in panic climb to the roof along the fire escape. Interesting, how will all this end? Aha, after falling in almost to the roof, High-rise nevertheless gropes for the bottom, pushes off, and begins to row! Bravo! Lukerya-Feathers-on-the-Head’s cabin jumps after it. The substantially shallow swamp no longer hides the mounds. Oh, how careless! One Ukrainian hut, two cabins, and two yurts nevertheless contrive to get stuck in the swamp and blunder their success! The rest have moved onto the shore and are racing to the finish! Who will succeed in being first? In front of all is Solonina Andreevna’s cabin! Lagging far behind it hurries Aza Camphorovna’s cabin covered in slime, on the heels of which pursue Lukerya-Feathers-on-the-Head and High-rise on Broiler Legs. Last trudges Big Matrena’s cabin.”

“Nothing unusual about her trudging! Big Matrena is one-and-a-half times the size of Aunt Ninel!” Tanya remarked thoughtfully. “And three Aunt Ninels equal an elephant,” Vanka qualified, once having seen a photo of Aunt Ninel.

Yagun rose on tiptoes. “The finish line is getting closer! A little more and Solonina Andreevna’s cabin will reach it. Hey, Granny, what are you doing? What did you forget on the field? Someone please detain her, else they’ll trample her!”

Two cyclopes, spreading their arms wide, rushed to Yagge, but the old lady hushed them with a tooth, looked sternly at them, and the cyclopes completely wilted. Yagge ran out onto the field and stopped slightly right of the finish line. “Sashka-messy-slob! Well, recognize me?!” having whistled no worse than Lukerya, she shouted loudly.

“Oh, my granny mama! I’m probably going nuts!” her wonder-struck grandson began to jabber. “Solonina Andreevna’s cabin stands still by the finish line, not stepping over it. It turns to my granny with a squeak! Solonina Andreevna hits it with an umbrella, but the cabin is not obeying. It runs up to Yagge, losing tiles on the way. The mistress, not expecting this trick, tumbles out of the window, miraculously hooking onto the window-sill with the umbrella.”

“Sashka-messy-slob! Come up as before, like mother trained you!” Yagge ordered quietly. The cabin stopped. The green tiles finally crumbled. Under it revealed a tattered roof of straw and brushwood, with the rook nests in the chimney.

Solonina Andreevna sat on the sand, mechanically holding the opened umbrella over her head. Yagge, red and indignant, advanced on her. “So, foreign beet, did you try to fool me? How do you like that, herring, covered up the roof! Painted the porch! And aren’t you ashamed, shameless? She thought that I don’t recognize my cabin on feet! It was a long-legged chicken!”

“You’re out of your mind! It’s an insolent seizure of property! Such can only happen in Russia! I have Antarctica citizenship! Magciety of Jerky Magtion will not leave this alone!” Solonina Andreevna squeaked.

“So that’s how it is, even dragged in Magciety! That’s right, muddle things up! We will now ask the cabin, whose it is. Well, Sashka-messy-slob, tell us, who’s your mistress!”

“Cabins don’t talk! You’ll prove nothing!” Solonina Andreevna objected, with anxiety observing how the cabin, from which she was thrown out recently, began to move back.

“And now we’ll see!” standing akimbo, Yagge promised.

An amazed Bab-Yagun feared most of all to let slip anything. “Don’t know what my granny was planning, but the long-legged cabin clearly intends on a penalty kick. It runs back a couple of dozen metres, rushes forward, and… Contact! Go-o-al! Solonina Andreevna passes over the stands and disappears into the depths of the forest, accompanied by an entire flock of harpies. Now it’s understandable whom these stin… eh-eh… exotic smelling persons are fans of! My granny deftly jumps up onto the porch and shouts something to the cabin! The cabin swiftly rushes forward and steps over the finish line an instant before Aza Camphorovna and Lukerya-Feathers-on-the-Head! VICTORY! Everybody, I can no longer do it, please comment on it yourself! I’m running to them!”

Yagun jumped from the tower. In the same second High-rise on Broiler Legs arrived at the finish line and everything clouded up with dust. When the dust finally settled, everyone saw that Yagge and Bab-Yagun were standing in the middle of the field and affectionately hugging the chicken legs of their newly found cabin…

The fans poured out onto the field with joyful howls. The cyclopes, after setting up chains, tried not to let them through, but Usynya, Dubynya, and Gorynya, who wanted to magtograph against a background of cabins, literally dared them.

The for-life and posthumous head of Tibidox, not stingy on compliments, awarded the winners. Yagge and her cabin won the shining copper samovar. For Aza Camphorovna and Lukerya-Feathers-on-the-Head, one received a magic tablecloth and the other a new mortar and broom.

“Outstanding broom! A beauty for going anywhere! Simply for Puper in the team if nothing else!” Nightingale O. Robber winked smartly, presenting it to Lukerya. The old woman looked over the broom, picked at the edge of the mortar with a yellow nail strong as tortoise shell, and remained contented. “What Puper! We are no worse than any Puper!” she screeched.

“Tararakh, Slander, Deni! Why are you standing? Please invite all the grannies to the table! Medusa, on this occasion it’s not a sin to pass the cup, eh? Are you with us, Professor Stinktopp? How’s your magic block, it’s not in the way?” the academician asked. The for-life and posthumous head of Tibidox contributed an increase to the wild activity. The tip of his nose was blazing keenly. The moustaches were conducting the combined orchestra of cyclopes. The earlobes were blinking like semaphores. The downy beard first disappeared, then again reappeared.

Medusa sighed. She understood too well what this meant. She cautiously looked sideways at Stinktopp, certain that she would meet his condemning view, and…already sighed with relief. Professor Stinktopp’s cheekbones were covered with a tender maidenly bloom. His chin flushed a bright tomato colour. “Please, possible to tug in a cup or two! I zink, as an exception I must not break from ze collectiff!” he said.

Leaving the cabins in the courtyard, the witch-grannies and the hosts poured into the Hall of Two Elements. The air there was ringing with the strokes of hundreds of wings. Cupids were hanging above the magic tablecloths and hurriedly filling their quivers and mouths with chocolate candies and pastries prepared for the guests. “Well, shoo! Quick! Here I’m after you!” The academician, slapping with his hands, yelled with laughter. On seeing Sardanapal, the winged babies scattered to different sides, not forgetting to drop a dish of cakes on Professor Stinktopp’s nose.

The merry-making turned out boisterous and jolly. The magic tablecloths barely managed to produce new foods. The children gobbled pies with cabbage or apple jam, washing them down with zesty lemonade. When so much was drunk that it already got up the nose, Medusa generously waved her hand and changed the lemonade into hot chocolate. Moreover, this was precisely hot chocolate and not the pitiful kiddie cocoa – an absurd moronoid invention.

Tanya, Vanka, and Bab-Yagun were satisfied. Not so long ago, they succeeded in casting a centenary evil eye on the radish tablecloth – so capital that all the food from it reeked of slops for a hundred metres. Sardanapal for a while persistently asserted that radish was good in any form, but the squeamish Dentistikha and Medusa seized the tablecloth from use and hid it for a hundred years, until the period of the evil eye had elapsed. So that now their table, as before, participated in the daily battle-lottery for chocolate, pancake, donut, and other decent tablecloths.

The difficult-to-raise students of Tibidox drank chocolate and with interest cast looks at the teachers’ table, where the hosts and guests were already singing Russian folk songs. Lukerya-Feathers-on-the-Head and Big Matrena particularly excelled. With her rich high voice – you will not believe it! – the Great Tooth herself sang the second part. When she sang: “How could I, a mountain ash, get over to the oak? Then I would not bend and shake.” tears welled up in Slander Slanderych’s eyes. The theme of unrequited love was especially dear to him.

But almost a miracle took place near the end of the party. Professor Stinktopp was so excited that he performed a Tyrolean dance, and instead of “Olé!” shouted “Solé!” Then he slowly went along the hall on his hands. The students were thunder-struck. Rita On-The-Sly expressed the best of everyone’s thought. First, she looked intently at the instructors for a long time and then, incredulously shaking her head, announced, “Yes, Teaches are people too! Who would have thought?”

Bab-Yagun touched Tanya’s shoulder. “Tan, they’re calling you from that table there!” he said.

“Me? Who?” Tanya was astonished. She raised her head and saw that Lukerya-Feathers-on-the-Head was beckoning her. She got up and, smiling just in case, approached the old woman.

“You don’t say, what a dark complexion! Would Theophilus Grotter be your grandfather?” Lukerya asked.

“Yes.”

“Indeed, I knew the old guy… A lion among all the fine fellows, here only his nature was so nasty to the point of collapse!”

“Faber est suae quisque fortunae (Every man is the architect of his own destiny. (Appius Claudius Caecus))!” Flaring up a spark, the ring said.

Lukerya-Feathers-on-the-Head burst out laughing; the unique yellow tooth began to jump in her mouth, showing up in the most improbable places: first on top, then below, then completely disappearing somewhere under the hooked nose. “I recognize the dear by the gait, and the old grouser by the ring in Latin…” said the old woman. “So, that means you’re Tanya? I’ve heard much about your exploits. Manage to learn?”

“Manage,” answered Tanya. Questions about studies always irritated her terribly. And not because she learned badly. Quite the opposite. Simply there was some obligation in this question. It seemed to Tanya that they posed it in ignorance, that they would ask a teenager and then forget the answer in five minutes. She promised herself that when she had quite enough of it, she would also ask the adults, “Manage work?” “Yes!” “Please continue in the same fighting spirit!”

“Distressing without parents, perhaps?” Lukerya asked.

“Never better!” Tanya said with a challenge. To be an orphan is doubly distressing. It is not enough that you are deprived of the people closest to you, but you are also forced to answer idiotic questions and to listen to feigned sympathies.

The old woman gave her a penetrating look. “What do you know, proud! Right, never bare your soul to everyone. You only have to do that and they’ll spit on it! Pity! I know what I’m talking about,” encouragingly said Lukerya. She took out a wooden snuffbox with the portrait of some old man (for a moment the thought flickered in Tanya: and what if this is The Ancient One?) and opened it. From the snuffbox jumped out a tiny black cat and, growing bigger on the run, it dashed to tease Sardanapal’s gold sphinx, which was too big and could in no way get under the table.

Lukerya-Feathers-on-the-Head sniffed the tobacco. “Don’t think, Tanya, that I simply called you over in order to delve with my callous finger in your wound. I want to give you a gift. Perhaps, you don’t often receive gifts. Here it is! They’ll be useful to you yet!” The old woman did not let out sparks, did not utter incantations, but suddenly a towel and a wooden comb appeared by themselves in her hands.

“Thanks, but I’ll not take them,” said Tanya.

“Take, don’t refuse! Obviously not stolen, I present my own!” Lukerya ordered.

While Tanya was having some doubts whether she should accept the gift, Sardanapal’s gold sphinx began to roar and jumped at the cat. The table, at which sat Zhikin, Parroteva, Liza Zalizina, and several first year magicians, toppled over. The cat, having jumped out from under it, rushed to Lukerya. Behind it on its heels, blazing with fury, rushed the sphinx. Lukerya-Feathers-on-the-Head stamped with her bone foot. The cat, growing smaller on the run, jumped into her snuffbox and disappeared. The repeatedly fooled sphinx travelled by with its feet on the flagstones and made off with nothing. While the thunder-struck Tanya was coming to, the old lady thrust the comb and towel into her hands, slammed shut the snuffbox, and leisurely walked away.

Tanya had barely returned to Vanka and Bab-Yagun when a concerned Yagge, short of breath, ran up to her. “What did Lukerya-Feathers-on-the-Head say to you?” she whispered.

“Nothing. First about my grandfather, then gave me a towel and a comb as presents. Should I not have taken them?”

Yagge sighed. It seemed to Tanya with relief, “Why not? Not without reason people say: they give – take, they hit – run. Lukerya is not an unkind old woman but a soothsayer. Aside from her, there remain no such soothsayers in the world already. What she says, so it will happen. Not along, not across, but right into the heart with a word! She told you nothing? Recall!”

Tanya honestly thought. “No, likely nothing much… Yagge, but how does she conjure without a ring, without incantations?”

“But that’s how she does it. All real witches conjure only this way, from the heart… A ring is but a magic wand, perhaps made for fools. Where can the fools develop a heart and amass kindness in themselves in hundreds of years – they took the wand, hooked on the ring, and made a mess of things… If Lukerya said nothing to you, you know it’s for the best,” Yagge said and went away.

But in Tanya’s memory, as always with delay, floated up the words of the witch. “They’ll be useful to you yet!” Lukerya said, giving her the comb and the towel. Only is it worthwhile to consider this prediction? Perhaps the old woman only wanted to say that she will comb her hair with the comb, and even the towel will come in handy? And was it not a strange story with the cat, that the sphinx attacked precisely the minute when she had already turned down the gift? Here, crack your brain. Not life, but continuous riddles.

* * *

In the evening, after the satisfied witch-grannies had departed, Tararakh went out into the courtyard of the school of magicians. For some time the pithecanthropus, swaying, stood in the middle of the courtyard and ambiguously squinted at the moon, and then, having turned to the Big Tower, demanded, “Tibidox, Tibidox, turn your back to the forest, your front to me!” The huge stone thing remained motionless; however, it seemed to the impressionable Tararakh that the arches of the tower contemptuously trembled, and the thin spire on the roof, from a distance similar to the broken frame of a pair of glasses, became double. “Hey you! What kind of cabin are you after this! You’re indeed a monolithic cabin!” the instructor of veterinary magic said reproachfully and withdrew, leaning back heavily.