He threw the bundle onto the floor, hung over it like a hawk, and began to hack the pastry to pieces, not paying attention to the cream and the jam smearing his fingers. At the same time, he contrived to keep his magic ring in readiness in order to throw a combat spark if necessary. Finally, the pastry was destroyed and even trampled by his feet. On the floor remained only an ugly mash on which wasps began to congregate. One of them even stung the principal’s finger. For some reason this calmed Slander down. “Wasps cannot be mistaken. This was truly pastry…” he said to himself quietly. “Okay, Grotter, go! Only don’t think that I believed you! You still have to give an explanation, and very soon!” He bored Tanya with his view one more time, and again withdrew into the niche.
Tanya had time to notice a little folding there, created with the help of the simplest magic. “Aha, Slander sits in ambush! Interesting, who is he on watch for? And my pastry is something he did not like!” she thought.
Soon, after contriving not to bump into anyone anymore, Tanya stood at the door of Tararakh’s room, trying to recall the prearranged knock. But she did not have time to knock, as the door was thrown open and the pithecanthropus literally dragged her inside by the sleeve. Likely the impatient Tararakh was on duty at the door, peeping through a crack. He put his head out into the corridor and, after looking at both sides, locked the door.
Tanya looked around with curiosity. Not without reason Tararakh called his room a den. To call it something else was somehow difficult. Soot covered the walls with the exception of those places where the pithecanthropus scratched with a stone the silhouettes of deer and aurochs. Piled up in the corner was a not bad collection of spears, knotty clubs, and rock axes. There were especially many axes. Tararakh hewed them into shape in the long winter evenings, remembering the times in the caves. A fireplace was laid out in stones in the middle of the den, leaves and dry grass lay next to it by armfuls. Tararakh slept on them, asserting that it was much more comfortable this way. “Still!” he said with pride. “The bed must be repaired, linen cleaned, so once a year I throw the straw into the fire, and I’m able to gather new leaves from there!”
“Did anyone see you?” Tararakh asked anxiously.
“I did. Stumbled upon Slander. He was hiding in wait for someone,” acknowledged Tanya.
The pithecanthropus dropped the log, which he was going to toss into the fire. “Where was this? Far from here?” he asked seemingly casually.
“Ne-a, not very. You know, between the stairs of the Atlases and the Tower of Ghosts there is a little curved corridor where the torches always go out.”
“Ah, understandable!” Tararakh said. It seemed to Tanya that he feared to hear something else and was now at ease.
“And he even crumbled and trampled my pastry. Do you know why? His brain all tied up in a knot perhaps?” she was interested.
Tanya thought that Tararakh would be surprised or at least agitated by the action of the principal, but this for some reason did not occur. The pithecanthropus listened to the information about the pastry without any special interest. He only muttered, “Pastry… Oh! Slander left something. This in no way can be pastry, although who knows him, what it’ll turn out to be…”
“What are you about talking? What is this?” Tanya quickly asked.
“I cannot tell you. Honestly speaking, I know little myself. Still, there are some guesses…” Tararakh answered evasively.
The pithecanthropus approached the curtain dividing his den into two halves. He already undertook to draw it aside, but suddenly took his hand away and turned to Tanya. “I can’t. This isn’t a joke! You must take a terrible oath that you’ll be silent as the grave! Understand?”
“Do you have in mind the fatal oath?” Tanya asked with trembling in her voice. Tararakh sternly nodded. Tanya felt dryness in her mouth. To her, as to everybody in Tibidox, it was well known what the fatal oath was. A magician, uttering the fatal oath of his free will or under coercion, can no longer destroy it under any conditions. Even a random disturbance of the oath – for example, if, not keeping himself under control, he tells the secret to his closest friend – entails an agonizing and terrible death.
“Are you ready?” Tararakh asked.
“I swear that I will never describe to anyone or under any condition what I will see now! No one will find out from me about the Sleeping Adonis! Strike thunderus!” Tanya blurted out. The green spark, tearing away from her ring, hung in the middle of the room, after changing for a moment into the likeness of lightning. Precisely the same lightning would pierce Tanya if she decided to make a slip of the tongue.
“Sorry it was necessary to demand the oath from you… But I think you will soon understand everything yourself. Be introduced: here is the Sleeping Adonis!” Tararakh said, decisively parting the curtain.
Tanya involuntarily recoiled. A crystal coffin was swinging on silver chains behind the curtain. The girl irresolutely approached, looked at the Sleeping Adonis, and in her heart confined the worm of disappointment. She must acknowledge that she expected to see something else. In the crystal coffin, breathing heavily with hands under a cheek, was a short-legged man with such porous cheeks that they were the right size for planting flowers. A drying carnation doubled over pitifully in the buttonhole of his white dress coat.
“Phew, how terrible! What’s in his family tree? Crocodiles?” Tanya asked.
Tararakh merrily evaded the question. “What do you want? They did not find him in time; here he was also a little dusted! But then this is the real Ludwig Champignon! Somewhere here even his uniform was signed. It was mandatory that they marked all Sleeping Adnoises in the Middle Ages… Wait!” Tararakh fussily began to inspect the collar and showed Tanya the nametag. “Here you see! What I did say? Ludwig Champignon!” the pithecanthropus was pleased. Tanya did not begin to disappoint him, although it was clearly “Gottfried Bouillon” on the nametag. She had long since known from Vanka that the pithecanthropus read and wrote rather poorly.
Tanya looked at Tararakh, and her suspicion suddenly started to nag like a dental drill. “Know what, Tararakh… I’ll sit with him, but I won’t kiss him! If you need this, indeed better call Coffinia. She would even kiss a frog. And if it’s necessary to squeeze and tickle – it’s Dusya Dollova,” she stated.
Tararakh was even frightened. “You… What thought is that? The reason I asked you to sit with him is that I was certain: you will not begin to kiss him. Or else, he, for all I know, will wake up! All these Sleeping Adonises are a little nutsy. He’ll roam and annoy everyone. And then may even be violent. Yes, in general he’s somewhat…kind of strange. I don’t entirely like it.”
“Listen, Tararakh! Where did you get this Gottfri…Ludwig Champignon? What’s he to you in general?”
The pithecanthropus reproachfully stared at the girl, with his entire look showing that Ludwig Champignon was not particularly necessary to him. Even more, he would be glad to be done with him, but could not in view of specific circumstances.
“You have to understand, here’s some business… It’s a personal request of Sardanapal. I could not refuse. The academician found him in a cave on the coast approximately one month ago. Earlier the entrance into the cave was covered with sand, and here a storm washed away the sand. Sardanapal saw a crack, squeezed in, and looked: he was in the cave, before him a coffin on chains, and an inscription carved on the cliff above the coffin. I was not so good with reading and writing, but from the words of Sardanapal the meaning was this: ‘Caution! Deferred curse! The year he is taken away will be the year of terrible ordeal for all of Tibidox!’ Now do you understand why I made you take the oath?
