Methodius Buslaev. Ticket to Bald Mountain

“By the way,” the fairy continued. “Since I’ve settled here, there’s something I must confess. Are you ready for it?”

“Depends,” Eddy replied carefully.

“This! If you notice that I’ve changed abruptly, stopped recognizing you, threaten or try to hex you, don’t be disturbed or angry. The thing is, it won’t be me.”

“Why not angry?” Khavron did not understand. “Then I also want to warn you. If at some point I launch a hammer at you, make a hole with a drill, or accidentally pour boiling milk on your head, don’t be disturbed or stand up for your rights! It won’t be me.”

“You see, here’s the thing… It’s an unpleasant family secret, almost a skeleton in the closet,” Middlelina continued with embarrassment in her voice. “I had a twin sister. As painful as it is to say this, she wasn’t a very pleasant person in every respect. Fairies usually serve Light, she served Gloom. The lifespan of dark fairies is usually not long. As for how she met her end, I won’t tell you. If she wants, she’ll tell you herself…”

“What will she do?” Khavron asked again with superstitious fear. He was not too drawn to dealing with dead fairies.

Middlelina ignored his rejoinder. She was suffering. Her small hands creased the rim of her straw hat.

“For better or worse, a sister is a sister. I let her – later regretted it a hundred times – settle in my body for any third of a day of her choice. So, she still uses this right. I don’t know exactly what happens in those hours, when she borrows my consciousness, but I guess that it’s nothing particularly good. The body is always returned to me gorged and tired. I need to sleep it off, spending a good half of my sixteen hours on it. It turns out that, although only a third of a day belongs to her, in reality we’re equal, since I still need a third to sleep it off and generally tidy myself up!”

“Is there really something not right with you?” Eddy carelessly said.

“OF COURSE NOT!” the fairy soared up. “See what this glutton has turned me into! I hate her! Sometimes, in order that she could no longer get into anything, I’d eat two crumbs of a nut roll and drink a thimble of milk to spite her! But really, how do you make an impression on this pig? With her, everything’s like water off a duck’s back!”

Middlelina’s indignant face turned purple. Eddy listened patiently. He was already used to the fact that as soon as it comes to relatives, especially brothers and sisters, the most decent-looking people would start to gnaw the finish with their teeth.

“And what she can do at all! No diligence, no curiosity! Doesn’t know how to braid sun rays! Or stitch dew on eucalyptus leaves! Or transform tears into sea pearls! She’s only capable of predicting the future! Oh, she also knows combat magic very well! But it’s bad taste! A fairy, and suddenly a combat wizard arranging brawls in pubs!”

Eddy squinted sweetly, imagining to himself the tiny fairy, smashing the Queen of the Beach club with drunken eyes. “Would be good to send her there… Kind of like working out with a straw from the bar,” he thought.

“I understand, I understand. You have a terrible sister! I commiserate. I have a sister of my own, so you don’t have to tell me,” he said, trying to end the outpouring of family issues.

“Sister? What, also a crazy sorceress?” the fairy sympathized.

“Worse. She constantly searches for a man who can be chained with a wedding band on the finger. I don’t envy this poor fellow in advance.”

“A ring of celibacy?” the fairy asked with interest. “Your sister didn’t quarrel with powerful wizards, did she?”

“How would I know? I don’t think so,” Eddy said.

“And has she been searching for long?”

“Yes, as soon as she was divorced from Methodius’ papa, she has been searching… About ten years already, probably…”

“That’s still tolerable,” the fairy said authoritatively.

Khavron, however, did not think so. “But not in the same room! To have an older sister is such a monstrosity. I was thirteen when all sorts of idiots began to come to Zoe! They hung around here all day, sat on my bed, broke my roller skates, neighed like horses… Now and then I wanted to borrow a gun from someone! And then she acquired this fair-haired little thing with a chipped tooth, and it became a hazard warning!” Khavron said, displeased.

“Well, well. Don’t complain. Still suffer for about ten years. When that small boy hanging in the frame comes into his own, you’ll have a little more room. How would you like to settle in the Kuskovo estate?[1] If you want, it’s possible to rename it Khavronovo village!” the fairy proposed.

Eddy blinked in bewilderment. He took the fairy’s words as a silly joke. “How’s that?”

“You think it’ll be rather small? Well then, you’ll relocate to Versailles!”

“I need it very much. Better that I kick everyone out of our entrance, break all the partition walls here, plant a palm forest, and I’ll swing in a hammock and eat bananas. I’ll place a sniper on the roof so that he will shoot everyone who at least resembles a groom from a distance!” Eddy said. Now and then he fantasized in this direction, so he had everything worked out to the smallest detail.

“As you say,” the fairy said obediently. “I could arrange all this for you, but, I fear, it’s not worthwhile for me to especially attract attention with magic. Now, my sister is another matter. Sometimes she gets carried away, and she starts doing stupid things.”

“Hmm… But how can I tell you apart? Well, you and your sister?” Eddy asked, interested.

“My sister and me? Oh, you won’t confuse us, don’t worry! I grow thin, but that pig is a glutton. It’s precisely because of her that my waist is nearly equal to my height. I smoke, but she hates tobacco. She gets my hair dirty! She uses nightmarish perfume! She quarrels with my friends! Well, and many, many other things! The only thing that comforts me is that lately we don’t communicate. When I’m here, she isn’t. When she’s here, I’m not,” Middlelina stated.

“She won’t finish me off?” Eddy asked doubtfully.

“Just let her try! I’ll draw a sign on you and she’ll understand that you’re a moronoid under my protection!” Middlelina said decisively.

She raised her fan and, before Khavron had time to figure out what she was going to do, quickly drew a sign in the air. It seemed to Eddy as if something burning touched his chest. He yelled and grasped his chest, but the strange sensation was already gone.

“No need to be startled! It’s my personal magic brand. We fairies mark unicorns this way, and not a single vampire dares to shoot an arrow at them… Don’t worry, in your case the mark is temporary. About three days, no more… But now my sister will recognize you.”

After looking under his T-shirt and detecting nothing on his chest except the usual hair, Eddy calmed down little by little. “All the same, you should have warned me… Also considered me a unicorn! And what’s your sister’s name?”

“Indexelina!”

“Well, that’s a name. But this… what’s her name… Thumbelina isn’t related to you?” Eddy asked and immediately paid for his innocent question. The magic field of the indignant fairy threw him a good half metre away.

Middlelina stomped her foot. “Who? Thumbelina? You’d even ask if I’m related to a rifle, as one self-taught wit asked me! Now deceased, I dare add!!! Thumbelina! Phew! That scandalous person! What is the unacceptable flirtation with a mole worth to her, and, by the way, it was not a mole at all originally! The nicest retired treasurer of the gnomes. A little boring and frugal, I agree, but not at all deserving of such a fate… And then, just between us, Thumbelina’s marriage with the elf king was too hasty. In our circle, unequal marriages aren’t recognized. And you know why? Because when love disappears, inequality remains! And then what do the poor people do? Gnaw their elbows and throw darts at the wedding pictures!”

“But in the fairy tale, everything’s different!” Eddy said, backing further away from the angry fairy just in case.

“Fairy tales, young man, are political ads of the magic world. Just that! The side that won immediately orders a fairy tale about itself. Take at least the fairy tales about Ivan the Fool! They were all ordered by his wife, Vasilisa, who was actually the one ruling the realm, after overthrowing Tsar Gorokh! Ivan, though, was anguishing till old age. Vasilisa had to invest huge funds, spinning him as an independent political figure. She bribed robbers, dragons, and giants, trumpeting everywhere that he beat them. She even forced her uncle Koshchei the Deathless to kidnap her, but Ivan foolishly, instead of finding her in six months, as dictated by the script, searched for a whole seven years… On the whole, an old and boring story! Look into any textbook of magic PR! Hey, aren’t you listening to me?”

“Aha. I mean, not aha!” Khavron corrected himself. He was actually not thinking about magic PR. A thought so brilliant and so bold suddenly dawned on him. It came to his mind that he could ask the fairy for money and pay off Felix.

However, he did not have time to bring himself to this, as something strange began to happen with Middlelina. Her face – not even the face but the expression – subtly changed. It became sarcastic and irritable. The fairy stared squeamishly at the cigarette in her fingers, threw it away, and began to wave the hat indignantly. “Disgusting smoke! That nitwit filled my lungs with smoke again!”

Then the fairy’s gaze paused on what she used to scatter the smoke. “And this hideous hat again! I wrote to that bore so that she wouldn’t dare wear it! Well, let’s see her reply,” she said and peeked at the inner part of the brim of the hat. “What? Where must I go? And she writes this to her own sister, whom she hasn’t seen for so long!” she said in outrage and, after tossing the hat, incinerated it with a stare.

Eddy squinted at his watch. The minute hand had barely crawled over the “12” mark. The hour hand was on four. “Any third of the day! So, this is Indexelina!” Eddy realized.

After finishing with the hat, the fairy deigned to notice Khavron. “And what’s this giant runt? Did the bore really get herself a new moronoid page? Oh, she even tagged him! Well, of course! She signed all her things even in childhood! Pencil cases, rulers, stockings, magic wands! Hey, creature, what’s your name, and where did my sister dig you up?”

Eddy introduced himself. He explained that he was not exactly dug up anywhere and that Middlelina was hiding in his apartment from persecutors from Bald Mountain.

“Of course! The bore ran to the moronoid world all the same and was ready to do something! I warned her not to make promises to anyone! Well, well, Khavron Eduardovich, or whatever your name is, tell more tales! What did my sister tell you about me? That I’m hysterical, a psychopath, a dark fairy who turns people into snakes, frogs, or drunk plumbers? Don’t be silent! Answer!” Indexelina ordered.

Khavron mumbled something out of caution, not going into details. Indexelina did not insist, quite satisfied with the mumbling. “Jumbo! March after me! Don’t look around! Don’t communicate telepathically with flies!” she ordered.

Having flown to the kitchen, she immediately, by some magic scent, saw clearly the bottle of cognac hidden in the cupboard behind the saucepans. Eddy did not even know about this bottle, part of Zozo’s secret strategic reserves. Khavron mentally butted his sister’s aura. “Hidden! From her own brother!” he thought with indignation.

After uncorking the bottle with one motion of the fan, the fairy forced it to soar up into the air and fill the little cup of dark opaque glass that appeared in her hand. It was no bigger than a thimble.

“Don’t fairies drink nectar? Ambrosia and all that?” Khavron asked politely.

“Fairies drink everything they don’t eat… And eat everything they don’t drink! Well, to our meeting!” Indexelina said.

The thimble was emptied in a flash. A second one followed the first. Then, pausing for a bit with the cognac, Indexelina busied herself with opening Vienna sausages. Where they had been taken from, Eddy would have difficulty saying, but, all things considered, Indexelina stole them from one of the small restaurants in the Centre. Taking into account the size of the sausages, the fairy had to shrink them two or three times. The hungry Eddy watched this blasphemy sadly.

“Don’t want to treat me, then don’t! I won’t ask. No sense in wasting time on trifles. Better to fire a shot at her for money…” Khavron thought. “Here, they threatened to kill me,” he began from a distance.

Indexelina nodded with her mouth full. “Good thought! I approve. If help is needed, let them whistle for me. You’re so huge and silly,” she muttered.

Khavron realized that it was useless to aim for pity. “I need a lot of money! I thought that you could…” he started.

“No need to continue further, jumbo. Item XII of the Book of Prohibitions,” the fairy interrupted.

“What?”

“I articulate: Under the threat of deprivation of magic, fairies and other magical beings are forbidden to create money and other media of exchange from air, mud, sea water, and others. To cast a spell on calculators and ATM, and to dupe servers and bank terminals. And they are especially forbidden to transfer to moronoids monetary funds obtained in the aforementioned manner. Everything was different in the Middle Ages. Although making gold from air, now, alas… Ne-ver!”

“But why? This is such nonsense!” Eddy exclaimed.

“What did you say? Don’t argue! Si-i-i-lenc-e-ee!” the fairy yelled.

Khavron quieted down uneasily. The angry fairy tried to fly over from the sink to the kitchen table, where she had left her cup; but she was too full and her dragonfly wings worked in vain. On noticing this, Eddy delicately placed his palm under the fairy and transferred her to the table.

“Abort the ‘silence’ command!” Indexelina relented. She, as any self-respecting fairy, had not seven but seventy-seven Fridays. Moreover, not even in one week, but on one Thursday.

“I’m beginning to like you, jumbo! You’re so roomy, not too bulky. I can send you for grub, when I’m too lazy to use the magic wand. Do you want to become my page, to spite my sister? I can imagine what she’ll say when she sees my mark instead of hers on you!”

Eddy immediately confirmed his readiness to become anyone’s page and again started to beg for money. “Please! It’s so simple!” he said with hope.

“It’s precisely because it’s simple that it’s forbidden. Were it otherwise, any batty wizard could pelt the moronoid world with packages of money no less real than real banknotes. Or even turn all the paper of the world into money. This would lead the moronoid world, which is holding on by a hair, to catastrophe,” the fairy said didactically and drained yet another thimble of cognac. Her small ears, slightly protruding as in all fairies, grew red.

“But can’t you go around this ban?” Khavron asked conspiratorially. “Well, instead of the money give me a small thingy of ten diamonds?”

“How many?” the fairy asked with a smile.

“Well, five…” Eddy unwillingly corrected himself.

“Won’t you burst?”

“At the very least… well, as a last resort… one,” Eddy uttered, crushed, and experiencing a strong desire to drop a saucepan on the all-knowing fairy.

“Of course it’s possible. Even very simple,” Indexelina assured glumly. “The whole problem is that you intend to turn the diamonds into money, and this I know… Even on condition that they on Bald Mountain don’t find out anything, this will become known to the Book of Prohibitions, and then I’ll be deprived of my magic. Every drop. The Book of Prohibitions, you see, isn’t simply a book. It’s a law that fulfills itself without knowing leniency.”

Convinced that he could not count on voluntary enthusiasm, Eddy decided to induce forced enthusiasm. After jumping onto a chair, he launched into a heartfelt tirade. In his speech he especially emphasized that fairies always helped people, and at the end, in an oratorical fit, he stated his readiness to turn to Middlelina for help and become her page for eternity. In spite of the want of rhetorical figures, the speech, especially its final part, had a sobering effect on Indexelina.

The fairy moved uneasily and expressed her readiness to help. “Only without money! Think of something else!” she stated.

Eddy jumped from the chair. He decided not to nickel and dime but to promptly ask a lot. “No money, no need! Then something else. Anything that will help me to get rich quick. Some brilliant find from the future. For example, a perpetual motion machine? No? Then the secret of transforming pencil lead to diamonds or tap water to gasoline? Huh?”

“Jumbo, you’re quite silly!” the fairy said softly. “You overestimate me. I’m a sorceress, not a techie. If necessary, I can make a horse appear right here and now, but ask me for the blueprint of a machine to make live horses, and I’ll twirl a finger at my temple…”

Eddy grabbed his head. He wanted to get on all fours and howl at the moon. Jumping up, he ran around the kitchen. Suddenly, an old newspaper tenderly encircled his foot. Khavron kicked it, but meanwhile, his gaze involuntarily caught a headline.

“Prophet! Here it is! Prophet! Here’s what will help me!” he shouted, kissing the newspaper.

“Oh, wild insanity! This is what happens when the proportion of one to nine isn’t maintained between the head and the body!” Indexelina said with knowledge of the matter.

Finally, Eddy calmed down and began to express himself more clearly. “Our gold mine is prophecy!” he explained. “Prophet is a popular TV show. The more predictions that come true, the bigger the prize. Of course, much depends on the global character of the predictions. Such trifles as rain in the middle of the evening or an increase in oil price aren’t quoted on Prophet. Striking, unusual, sensational predictions are necessary. You’ll manage! Your sister said that you are excellent at guessing!”

After ascertaining that the giant no longer jumped nor howled, the fairy asked if the prize was large.

“The sum triples each time. I believe three for one correct prediction, nine for two, and twenty-seven thousand for three…” Eddy recalled.

“Twenty-seven thousand what?”

“Dollars.”

“Oh!” Indexelina was surprised. “Are dollars really still worth something? In my opinion, after America abandoned the national currency…”

Eddy leaned forward. “Wait! America gave up the dollar?”

“Didn’t it? I somehow idly foretold this on coffee ground. Dollars and Euros will be no more. The entire world will move onto one common currency. Called homosap, derivative of homo sapiens. I won’t even hint what all sorts of stupid people will immediately nickname it… He-he! You can’t imagine how predictable the first circle of association is, even among seemingly sensible moronoids!”

“Are you sure about the dollar?” Eddy asked seriously.

“What? How dare you, jumbo! Coffee grounds are my favourite,” the fairy stated.

Sensing the sensational, Eddy grabbed a pencil. “What year will these homosaps be adopted?”

The fairy furrowed her brow. “2050, I think. No, I lie, in 2050 Russia will again become a monarchy… That means, sometime in 2045,” she hummed lightly.

After making a note on paper, Eddy twirled the pencil in his fingers. “Too long to wait,” he said dejectedly. “If this were to happen tomorrow, then it’s quite a different matter. Do we have anything else?”

Eddy gripped the pencil tighter and inspiration wandered along his face. About ten minutes later, he thoughtfully contemplated a column of predictions.

“A surge in birthrate – 2012. Three years in a row, everyone will only have twins. The secret of eternal life – 2018…” he muttered. “The timeless novel The Thirty-first Piece of Silver – 2019. Shifting the capital to Saratov – 2040. Moscow becomes a health resort city after the formation of a new shelf sea in Ramenki. Pineapple and banana plantations turn green around Moscow – roughly 2060. The Chukchi migrate south and give humanity seven geniuses one after the other – after 2065 and beyond. In the Urals a new mountain with a height of nine kilometres will appear – 2068. The creation of cerebral prostheses – around 2090… Oh, no! If I announce this, they’ll put me away in the loony bin; moreover, before 2034 all loony bins will be closed for business…”

Eddy again looked skeptically at the paper and crumpled it, though for some reason very carefully. “No good! Prophet won’t take these. Such crazy predictions it has a dime a dozen. To make them believe, we need to add some zing to it! The event that’ll happen in the very near future! Tomorrow! The day after tomorrow!” he stated.

Indexelina sighed. “Well, fine… All right… I’ll try to predict something from the nearest future. Just to annoy my sister. But consider, jumbo, just you dare become her page after this! If I see her mark on you again, the next mark will be on your coffin!” she warned.

The fairy wiped her lips and, standing up, squinted out the window. Eddy heard her mutter, “So, what do we have here? The moon’s on the wane. Venus is no longer visible… North-West wind at nine drafts per second. The third leaf has dried on the violet… First letter in the name of this blockhead’s great-grandfather is ‘V’… Well now, friend, pull out as much of your own hair as you want!” she suddenly demanded, raising her voice.

“What, just like that?” Eddy was alarmed.

“Yes, are you also a coward? Rip! Be brave! Magic needs sacrifice… How many did you pull out? Count! What, nine? Exactly nine? Well, all the worse for you…”

“Why worse? Did it not turn out?” Khavron was uneasy.

“On the contrary, everything turned out just superbly!” Indexelina assured him. “Listen, silly jumbo! Tomorrow, the picture Boy with a Sabre by an unknown artist will be stolen from the restoration workshop at the Pushkin Museum. It’ll vanish in broad daylight from the guarded premises, and nothing will be recorded by the around-the-clock video camera directed at it. Someone will put on it – on the video camera, that is! – a sock with the price tag left on.”

The low-hanging lamp swayed, caught by the back of Eddy’s head flying up. “When will they rob the workshop?” he shouted.

Indexelina raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Well, I believe I said tomorrow! And again I repeat: don’t even think about becoming my sister’s page. Do you understand, jumbo? Just you try to serve her and not me, and I’ll change your ears into those of pigs! Hey, where are you going? Who am I talking to?”

But Eddy was already rushing to the door, as if a swarm of wasps were after him.

“Oh, these jumbos! Ran away and didn’t even kiss my hand! Perhaps I’ll drink cognac? Let my sister’s head crack later!” Indexelina uttered dreamily.

* * *

An hour later, the glass door of the canteen in the main building of Stakankino reflected a rapidly rushing Eddy. By some miracle, he had snuck past the police post in the entrance below, clinging to the group of participants in the sports show Pull-Push. Barely slipping through the squeaking metal detector, which perceived a threatening weapon in the usual keys, he boldly fled from the sports show’s assistant and immediately lost his way in one of the hallways. Here, switching from a cross-country run to a jogging, he caught the elbow of a very young secretary, just finishing a piece of shortbread on the way.

“Where is Prophet?” Eddy shouted into the newcomer’s ear.

“Sixth floor. Third room from the elevator,” the secretary explained, timidly dropping crumbs.

Soon the former waiter pensively contemplated the identical iron doors. On the first was: NOT ACCOUNTING! OUTSIDERS DO NOT ENTER! On the second: ACCOUNTING! DO NOT ENTER! and on the third: RECEIVING PREDICTIONS STRICTLY BY PHONE! Besides the mentioned inscriptions, one of the doors flaunted a soiled shooting schedule, on which someone had added sarcastic question marks with a pencil.

“Let’s consider that I’m not an outsider! I’m the chicken who will create a sensation for them. They’ll accept me with open arms,” Eddy said to himself, with dread opening the first door.

The former waiter naively expected to find himself in a creative hell, where, by trial-and-error, in endless takes and directorial shouts, popular art is forged, but, alas, the room cluttered with tables was almost empty. Only by the window did some semblance of activity take place. At a table, with the back of his head to Eddy, a young man in a light T-shirt sat and, suffering in sweat, pounded the computer keyboard with two fingers.