cheek with his short fingers and with annoyance pushed the crystal coffin, swaying on the chains. “Medieval magicians loved to play dirty tricks on descendants. Some even contrived to invoke a pile of deferred curses hastily and quickly died in order that they could not be abolished,” he complained.
“Wait! Really, when they’re alive, then…” Tanya started in amazement.
“Aha. What, didn’t you know?” the pithecanthropus interrupted her. “While a magician is still of this world his curse can always be annulled, although sometimes it’s even necessary to wreck your brain, but when he’s dead – now that’s it indeed. How he cursed – so it is. Earlier you even know how it happened: let’s assume a weak magician had a stormy fight with a strong one. He’ll curse him, and quickly jump into a pond with a rock tied to his neck. Well now indeed the strong magician can disappear to nowhere – the curse can no longer be removed, even if you collapse! Later The Ancient One stopped this practice and so arranged that hence deferred curses could not be imposed. But only there’s little sense all the same: do you know how many curses are placed from previous times?” Tararakh even waved his hand, showing that there was a whole pile of such trash everywhere.
“I can imagine how troubled Sardanapal was when he read this warning!” Tanya said.
“‘Troubled’ is not the word! He immediately realized that all this is serious, and began to think how to get out of this. To leave him in the cave – vacations will start any day now. All kinds of curious fools will run along the coast and for sure will stick their noses into the cave. Then at night, he transferred the crystal coffin into Tibidox, handed him over to Yagge, and ordered her to protect him like the apple of her eye. ‘Put him,’ he says, ‘into any remote room in magic station and lock it. Only not in the basement, it’s full of evil spirits.’ But you know Yagge! In a couple of weeks, she was already tired of this Adonis and began persistently to get away from him. Her patients, you know, recover poorly when there’s a coffin in the next room. They, perhaps, even don’t know about it, but it’s unpleasant for her. In short, she got rid of him back to Sardanapal, and that one to me. He knows that I would never kiss this beggar and will allow no one to approach him. Besides, who would come into my den? Perhaps Professor Stinktopp once every hundred years wanders in to drink a glass or two. These adonises are simply all the same to Stinktopp… And the adonises, if you look closely, feel the same also.”
Unexpectedly Tararakh was on guard. The Sleeping Adonis noisily turned in the coffin and opened his eyes. Tanya yelled. Tararakh rushed to the coffin and, rocking it, started to sing in a hoarse voice: “Bye-bye! Quick beddy-bye! Will come a grey top, you will bite into a chop!” The Adonis blinked drowsily and, having closed his eyes again, began to smack his lips sweetly. Tararakh stopped singing and moved away from the coffin. “Ooh! It still works, but getting worse every time… Okay, I’m going. Else I’ll miss how the cabins are settling,” he said.
He was about to move to the door, but Tanya seized his hand. “TARARAKH! Why didn’t you tell me that he wakes up? You were hoping that I would stay, right?”
The pithecanthropus was terribly confused and, although there was no one else besides Tanya and the Adonis in the den, lowered his voice to a barely distinguishable whisper. “You understand… This matter here… It started very recently. He’s not so much awake, but like he suffers sleep-walking! I didn’t know this earlier. But somehow I woke and he was not here. I rushed into the corridor and searched! Barely found him – he had almost strayed into the Hall of Two Elements. I threw my arms around him and dragged him, but he’s strong as a vampire! He pushed me – and I flew away! Good that I thought of singing a lullaby. He immediately calmed down and fell asleep directly on the floor. I could barely drag him back… You do this, as he begins to wake, immediately sing a lullaby – it’ll immediately bring him down.”
“I don’t know any lullaby!”
“Unimportant! You can sing whatever! Deafen him even with a military march… He’s…not especially fastidious. The main thing, don’t be silent. As soon as he begins to stir – immediately sing… Well that’s it, I’ve to speed along!” The instructor of veterinary magic deftly freed himself from Tanya’s hand and slipped to the door quicker than the girl had time to hold him. Steps merrily thumped along the corridor. Whistling, Tararakh, having gotten leave for the entire night, rushed to observe the cabins. Tanya tossed another couple of logs into the fire and sat down on the straw.
Four hours later the Sleeping Adonis stirred again. Tanya had to swing the coffin for a long time, singing contemporary pop – the only thing she could recall. The last vacation Coffinia dragged a moronoid radio into Tibidox and now listened at night to everything that she could catch. Sometimes she invited Gunya Glomov and egged him on so that he would dance together with Page. Once, the jealous skeleton even bit Glomov’s ear. The pop acted as stimulation on the Sleeping Adonis. He turned and gnawed the pillow. Then on the move to rap, Gottfried immediately yawned and dropped off. Happily, Tanya changed to Kalinka-malinka and, having stopped swinging the crystal coffin, returned to the fire.
Drunk on the new gifts of the musical world, the Sleeping Adonis did not wake up for a long time. Tanya stood firm, making circles around the fire and examining the beasts on the walls of the den, until approximately two in the morning. Tararakh was not much of an artist, but he carved with inspiration and with his entire soul. Tired of wandering back and forth along Tararakh’s den, Tanya shovelled straw with the intention of constantly having the crystal coffin in the field of her vision. She lay down, for a while honestly stared at the snoring adonis, and then merely for a second shut her eyelids that had grown heavy and – fell asleep.
Already toward the morning, a vague sound woke Tanya. It seemed to her, not quite awake, that a rock axe fell in the corner. The coals had almost gone out. The Sleeping Adonis was sitting in the coffin and smiling in the dark with bluish teeth. The lid was carefully leaned against the coffin and slightly rocked together with the chains. Fear like thousands of brisk ants was running along Tanya’s veins. She was absolutely paralyzed. The words of all the songs poured like dry peas out of her memory.
The Sleeping Adonis clumsily got out of the coffin and, stretching out his hands forward, made his way to the door. Not noticing Tanya, he stepped over her, nearly stepping on the coals, and went out into the corridor. “Pointus harpoonus!” Tanya whispered, quickly lifting her ring. The ring of Theophilus Grotter ejected a green spark, but it was pale and, barely flaring up, withered away. Tanya recalled that the Sleeping Adonis was under the action of a deferred curse and any other magic was powerless here.
Finally fully awake, she rushed after the sleeping Adonis, but that one had already disappeared somewhere. The corridor was empty. Only water drops, making their way through the cracked stained-glass panel, fell resonantly from above onto the flagstones, and torches not yet extinguished were hissing and smoking with a pinkish flame. Tanya rushed first in one direction, then the other. The twisting corridors of Tibidox were interwoven, exactly like a snake. To search for the Sleeping Adonis in these labyrinths was almost useless, especially not knowing where he had headed.
Suddenly Tanya recalled that Tararakh had told her about the Hall of Two Elements. What if the lethargic Adonis again was drawn to there? Then he would bump into Slander for sure, if that one were again in ambush. Without turning over in her mind what she would say to the principal if he again intercepted her, Tanya ran to the Hall and the stairs of the Atlases. Torches flickered like spots and spread in her eyes. Her heart was pounding and leaping in her tight rib cage. She was already in the gallery between the Tower of Ghosts and the stairs of the Atlases, when unexpectedly her feet painfully hit a step that had jumped out from nowhere. Tanya fell and whimpered very quietly, nursing a hurt knee and whispering heated reproachful words to the step.
Suddenly in front, where the main corridor intersected with the secondary one and where there were almost no torches at all, loomed someone’s shadow. Not pondering, Tanya rapidly crawled away
