are bad! – the old woman snapped. – But how can I fix them?
– Don’t get excited, don’t get excited, – Fox reassured her. – Here a completely different approach is needed. You need to understand the reasons…
– What is there to understand about them?! – Baba Yaga exploded again. Although it has calmed down a little, the inner fire has not completely died out. “It all started with Chu-Chukhin,” she explained. “After he managed to escape, they just sprinkled salt on the road to us for the locomotives.” None of them are coming. No one gives in to persuasion. And the magic of the swamp, it begins to seem to me that it used to pull steam locomotives into itself, began to weaken. The magic of mechanical locomotives does not entice you to climb up to the chimney in swampy places.
– So maybe the solution lies on the surface? – the Fox winked at Baba Yaga.
– How is that?
– It all began with Chu-Chukhin and everything must end with Chu-Chukhin. And if his escape somehow affected the swamp itself, then the swamp should return everything to its place.
– You speak wisely, – the old woman grinned. She understood little of what Fox said, but she still realized that she was saying something worthwhile. – So what needs to be done?
– It’s very simple, – Fox smiled. – I read in your books that there are spells for summoning ghosts. So, if you summon several ghosts from the swamp and…
– And let them attack the engines! – Baba Yaga jumped up. “Let them scare them away and disperse this entire depot.”
– We could do it that way, – Fox stopped her. – But the engines will quickly figure out what’s what and everything will go back. – Yes, and it’s somehow straightforward. This requires a more sophisticated approach.
– Which one is this? – Baba Yaga did not understand.
– We will perform a ceremony, – explained the Fox. – We’ll call a few spirits of locomotives that are lying in the swamp, we’ll tell them that we wanted to rescue everyone, but we don’t have enough strength.” And we’ll ask them to go to the neighboring depot and call a locomotive named Chu-Chukhin for help.
– And they will tell you that Chu-Chukhin won’t even want to go from us… – croaked the old woman, always doubting everything.
– I don’t exclude that such a possibility exists, – Fox continued meanwhile. “But we will warn them not to mention us in conversation with him.” Because he is a proud locomotive and if they call him to help, he may be offended and not go.
– And when he comes to us, we’ll push him into the oven this time! – Baba Yaga rubbed her hands. For the first time that day she was in a good mood.
– Exactly! – Fox smiled slyly at her.
***
That evening the fire flared up, only the first star appeared in the sky. The sun had not yet completely set and therefore the glow of the fire blocked even the sunlight.
Dry dead wood, marsh grass, charcoal, for which the cat Chernysh was responsible, burned with a bright fire, piled in a certain way in the middle of the clearing. The trees, as soon as they saw the first flames, tried to move their branches further away, and some even moved to the sides.
Baba Yaga fussed around the fire, now throwing something into the fire, now adding multi-colored liquid tinctures and all the time reciting some spells. With these spells, she scared away all the living creatures that lived nearby, the cat Peach hissed and growled loudly, arching his back, and Chernysh, like a smart cat, this time tried to hide somewhere and wait out all this action.
Somewhere closer to midnight, when the fire, although it began to subside somewhat, it seemed that its entire heat had shifted downwards, forming a dense fireball, a strange fog began to creep through the forest. It began right next to the fire, from there it moved towards the swamp, spreading along the sides along the way and there, mixing with the swamp fog, it formed a luminous mass, under which the surface of the swamp began to ripple. At first, easily, with small splashes, the swamp was marked by movement. The entire contents of the swamp began to move – the buried locomotives creaked, their rusty parts crackled, their sides hit and rubbed, the swamp mass, gray and impenetrable, staggered from side to side, and huge waves appeared on its surface, splashing tens of meters into the forest.
The earth shook, the swamp began to boil, the wind rose, forming a tornado just above the surface and breaking trees.
Some trees collapsed into the swamp, where they were immediately swallowed up by the abyss, the rest rushed to run away, like other forest inhabitants.
The trees crowded together as far as they could from the epicenter itself, forming a strip of emptiness around it. And from all this, under the howling of the wind and the trembling of the earth, from the depths of the funnel that formed in the center of the swamp, a train flew up.
The locomotive was not an ordinary one. It was not material, did not have iron sides and its chimney did not smoke. He emerged from the raging Swamp of old steam locomotives, was surprised by what was happening and suddenly realized that he was attracted by the fire that was burning in the forest. He beckons, calls, wants to tell him something.
The engine passed through a tornado that was just gaining strength, trying to take out of the swamp what was there, rushed past the frightened giant trees darting from side to side and sat down a few meters from the fire.
If he were a real locomotive, made of cast iron and steel, his sides would immediately feel the incredible heat emanating from the fireball into which the fire turned. But he was not quite an ordinary locomotive – he was a ghost, the spirit of an old locomotive that had long since died at the bottom of the swamp, and therefore had forgotten what the world was and what rules existed here. In fact, for this world, he was young and naive.
– Why alone? – the old woman and Fox whispered.
– Why do I know, – Fox snapped. – Maybe there’s no one left there at all. – Maybe the swamp is so ancient that…
– Or maybe the fire was lit incorrectly? – the old woman tried to convict the Fox. – Or did you read something wrong in the book?
– What kind of proceedings have they staged here! – suddenly the cat Chernysh appeared out of nowhere. – Then there will be time. We have a steam locomotive. Even if it’s just one. Even better. He will say that one got out, and the rest are sitting there. – he suggested a solution.
– Oh, who do we have here?! – Baba Yaga suddenly transformed. – Who came to us?!
The Ghost locomotive, and it was he, froze, not understanding what to expect from this trio – Peach had singed his tail and was now sitting on the top of a tree, watching all this from there.
– Don’t be afraid of us, little engine, – the old woman said with the greatest kindness and sincerity. – We are your friends!
– Many locomotives are languishing in the swamp, nicknamed the Swamp of Old Locomotives, – added the Fox. – Yes, you know about it yourself. And so we came to help them.
