Tanya Grotter and the Golden Leech

Forgetting about everything, Tanya leaned over the cauldron and began to peer impatiently into the smoking slush. For a long time she saw nothing except the burdock already boiled quite soft and the shimmering oily stains of dragon mucus. Tanya thought that something had gone wrong with the preparation of the elixir. Having decided to hide this from Professor Stinktopp in order not to infuriate him and not be enrolled into the Order of Dumdums, the girl wanted to pretend that she saw something. She sank her head lower and suddenly understood that the cauldron had disappeared somewhere. The outlines of the classroom washed away. Someone was standing directly in front of Tanya. She darted, shrieked, and fell through somewhere…

She came to from a sharp smell. Looking around, Tanya understood that she was sitting on a chair, the second graders were crowding all around, and Professor Stinktopp was holding in front of her nose a phial with smelling salt. Observing that the girl had come to, Stinktopp with explicit pleasure sniffed the smelling salt, squawked, and, winking his watery eyes alternately, asked, “Ah-ah-ah! Vat’s viz you? Perhaps, you see somezing special, huh?”

“No… nothing… I simply felt sick… from the stink,” Tanya barely whispered.

“Aha! You hear zis? Nerffous young Grotter fear green slime!” Professor Stinktopp drawled mockingly. Coffinia and Verka Parroteva began to neigh disgustingly.

Tanya tried not to look at anyone. She had lied to Stinktopp just now, but did not feel repentance. The truth was too terrible and it was more than possible for her to recount to Stinktopp. Indeed could she utter in everybody’s hearing what she saw, how the academician Sardanapal was sitting in a tight cell, face hidden in a chipped bowl with swill, and beside him, hardly distinguishable in that seething swampy slush, stood a tall bony figure muffled in a raincoat?

For a long time, for a very long time Tanya remembered to the smallest detail the image that flickered for an instant. How real was this foresight? Is it possible to trust it? And if possible, what to do about it now – run to Sardanapal and recount it to him? It is very doubtful that the academician would treat her warning seriously.

Finally, the lesson ended. Professor Stinktopp, after stunning the class with completely insane homework, was pulled in the hammock to the hatch located in the ceiling.

“Listen, Yagun, was I unconscious for long?” Tanya asked.

Yagun shook his head. “Ne-a. At most – half a minute. I watched: any minute now you’re going to fall into the cauldron and I caught you. Vanka and I put you on the chair, and here Stinktopp was already mincing over with his little bottle. Well, and his face was malicious! I even thought: did he specially cook up all this? Perhaps, gave you some special sliver or whispered something to the slime?”

Unceremoniously pushing Yagun aside, Coffinia walked past importantly, surrounded by a whole crowd of admirers, whom she now had even more of than Katya Lotkova. After that luckily thrown ball, allowing Tibidox to advance to the semi-final, Cryptova simply enjoyed unbelievable success. When she appeared at dinner in the Hall of Two Elements, the school became quiet for several moments, after which many burst into applause. One enamoured third grader – a very shy youth by the name of Shuonk Chpurikov – once spilled over himself a pot of soup just to draw Coffinia’s attention to himself. By the way, Chpurikov came into Tibidox because every time he blushed, he became invisible without any desire on his part. Indeed, he blushed constantly.

Unexpectedly some kind of noise was heard in the corridor. Coffinia‘s admirers, crowding around her, quickly rushed back to the stairs. Towards them, catching the floor with the fingers of his long arms, leisurely walked Tararakh, the instructor of veterinary magic, behind whom Usynya and Gorynya were dragging the infuriated immortal wild boar. Steam poured from the nostrils of the wild boar and fragments of an ancient, seemingly Greek or Persian, spear protruded from its back.

Noticing Tanya, Vanka Valyalkin, and Bab-Yagun, the pithecanthropus stopped and merrily turned to them, “Why are you so glum? Come from Stinktopp? What did you cook there? Temporary glue? Ointment from warts?”

“As if! Elixir of foresight… Mix with frog leg, throw in coffin slivers, and wait till it boils!” Vanka Valyalkin explained.

Tararakh’s eyebrows crawled to his forehead in amazement. “In second grade? Elixir of foresight? If I’m not entirely off my rocker, according to the program you now have yawning liqueur, decoction of malice, dense-bang mixture, and all kinds of nonsense in this vein. You muddled up something!”

“We studied elixir!” Valyalkin began to argue heatedly.

“But you couldn’t be!” Tararakh brushed it off.

“Yes, we did, did, did!” Vanka was not a bit less excited than his favourite instructor was.