TANYA GROTTER AND THE MAGICAL DOUBLE BASS
by Dimitriy Yemets
Eksmo, 2002
This unauthorized translation is by Maureen O'Brien.
Chapter 10: Veterinary Magic
Next day, her first lesson was Undead Management. Meduziya Gorgonova
came into the classroom, and dryly nodding at everyone, headed for her
table. Two hefty watchmen from the reeducated shamans had charge of a
cage in which raged a small creature with wiry hair, yellow horns, and
and an unpleasant ratlike tail.
Tanya started. She was convinced that she'd run into him before and
had seen those horns: one long and the other short and crooked.
This was obviously Agukh!
"Before you is a typical representative of the undead -- a marsh
hmir," in a teacher's voice said Meduziya, pulling a pointer out of
the air. "An unpleasant, unclean being, drinking in the energy of
those whom it makes suffer. It has a basic ability to speak and weak
telepathic powers. Individuals who are undiscriminating in their magic
methods use hmirs in the role of messengers or accomplices to
crime...This example I caught today in my own office. He stuck his
nose into my papers, not figuring out that I lock my drawers NOT ONLY
with a key."
Explaining, Meduziya incautiously stuck her pointer through the bars
of the cage. Agukh instantly snapped his teeth and bit the pointer
right through the middle. "Hate! I hate you, Gorgonova, and Tanka
Grotter! Soon blood is spilled! Much blood! I rip out guts!" yelled
the hmir.
Meduziya disdainfully extracted the wreckage of the pointer from the
cage and threw it into the trashbasket. "You see for yourselves what
sort of character it is," she continued as if nothing had happened.
"Luckily, marsh hmirs are very frightened of certain spells. They have
a special horror of this one: 'Motis-botis-obormotis'."
Agukh, just as if they'd poured cold water on him, stopped yelling
threats and hid in the corner of his cage.
"Ai, you must not pronounce this filth at me," in panic he said.
"I'll be good! I won't saw off anybody's head! I will plant little
flowers and shuffle my little feet!"
"Lovely," said Meduziya. "You may begin."
She opened the cage and allowed Agukh to find his way out. The
children looked around in surprise. Meduziya really trusted him? For
some time the marsh hmir stared around with a hunted look, but as the
seconds passed his little eyes grew hateful.
"I take my leave! I fluff up guts! Everyone tremble!" yelled he, and
rushed at Meduziya.
"Sparkis frontis!" quietly but clearly pronounced Docent Gorgonova.
A green spark released from her ring struck the marsh hmir in the
chest and flung him back into the cage. The door slammed. Meduziya
blew on her ring.
"One more lesson. 'Sparkis frontis', as you know, is mainly a
protective spell of white magic. We call live sparks with the spell.
With Dark mages, I sincerely do not recommend its use. This weapon
they might themselves turn against you. Any questions? Then take this
away!"
The two guards picked up the cage and carried it out of the
classroom.
"Memorize well what you just saw. I _very_ much advise this to you,"
said Meduziya, particularly stressing the word 'very'. At this she
looked expressively at Tanya, as though what she'd said and shown
applied mainly to her.
------
After Undead Management they all proceeded to lunch, which usually
was held in the Hall of the Two Elements -- the first part of Tibidox
built, it was able to seat a few hundred people at the same time. The
Dark section of Tibidox gathered on its half, and the Light on its
own. The teachers, both white and black mages, descended down the
Atlas stairway, and downstairs they each joined their own section.
With the Light students sat Academician Chernomorov, Meduziya, and
Yagge; and with the Dark -- Zuboderiha, Professor Klopp, and the
magical piloting trainer, Solovey O. Robber. Director of Studies
Slander Slanderich, as a universal mage who used both white and dark
spells, walked here and there, not avoiding the flames.
The ancient oak tables, preserving on themselves the accidental
scratches and graffiti (sometimes very funny) of diverse ages, were
still completely empty. While Tanya figured that this way they managed
at to get everyone there at the same time, Sardanapal went out into
the middle of the hall and threw open a small wooden case which was in
his hand.
"Two from the box, one place per face, and...oh, well, feed us
quickly!" cried Sardanapal.
In that instant the lid of the little case was thrown open, and from
it flew out two speedy tornadoes. Squinting, Tanya made out that they
were two ruddy broad-shouldered young men in red shirts moving at an
incredible velocity. A few seconds behind them, self-filling
tablecloths unfolded on all the tables, and on them appeared a round
loaf of bread, kalach rolls, pretzels, pelmeni meat dumplings,
varenniki cheese and fruit dumplings, pirogies, vatrushka pastries
filled with cheese and jam, tall round walnut cakes, pampushki, fruit
cakes, blinis with lox, and caviar. All of this came in such
quantities that one might satisfy any appetite.
Seeing that both Bab-Yagun and Vanka Valyakin moved to attack the
meal, Tanya followed their example. It seemed to her that after Aunt
Ninel's sticky vermicelli and steamed radishes, she would be in a
position to go through the whole table. But this was impossible,
since the more they ate the more appeared. Twenty minutes hadn't yet
passed, and it already seemed to Tanya that one more little piece and
she would simply burst. Bab-Yagun, also able to eat his fill, blearily
slammed his eyes shut. Only Vanka Valyakin was most likely still ready
to have a bite to eat, but he was a special case....
Sard clapped his hands. "Thank you two from the little case! Please,
that's enough!"
The young men in red shirts bowed at the waist and dove back into
the little box. Before its lid slammed shut, Gunya Glomov and his
friend Yura Idiothereov quickly threw a few bones in there. They
thought that this prank would go unnoticed and they'd laugh a little
over Sardanapal, but in that second, with the speed of lightning the
young men once again flitted out of the little case. One squeezed the
noses of Glomov and his friend, and the other at that very instant
into their open mouths poured a half jar of horseradish from their
table.
With loud howls, with unhappy tears from their eyes, scarcely not
breathing flame, Glomov and Idiothereov jumped up and flung themselves
out the doorway, as the young men, very pleased with themselves, dove
into the little case again.
Sardanapal smiled thinly, making it look like he hadn't noticed a
thing.
"All done? Now to your studies once again!" he ordered.
"Uh huh! And now for my favorite thing -- veterinary magic!" said
Vanka Valyakin joyfully, pulling his heavily stuffed friends off the
bench.
"Oh, yes! To fix a harpy's teeth -- she always dreamed of such work.
Bigger fingers, smaller fingers -- what's a little thing like that?"
snorted Gravinya Cryptova, walking past.
"She can't ever forget that old business," explained Vanka. "And the
thing's simple; you just have to convince the animal entrusted to you
that you won't harm him and you want to help. With Tararah here, you
never know how the class will turn out before you take it...."
This really turned out to be true of Tararah; so very true that
Tanya totally shared Vanka Valyakin's ecstasy. True, in the first
minute Tararah didn't seem so pleasant -- she was even scared, when in
the big hall with latticed windows where it smelled strongly of dragon
droppings, first a big barrel rolled in and then the person pushing it
from behind yelled right from the doorsill, "Keep back, and let it
go!"
Rolling the barrel out into the middle of the classroom, the
possessor of this loud voice echoing like a bogatyr's brought it into
a vertical position and came out from behind it. Tanya stared at him
astonished. Tararah was very short and bowlegged, but was so broad-
shouldered that it seemed he was wider than he was high. His hair was
long and never combed, his eyes black as two olives, and his bottom
jaw looked simply enormous.
"Hi, new girl!" with joy said Tararah, welcomingly waving his hand.
"Today we treat a rusalka. They get eaten up by carp lice, so they're
all awfully cross. So when I open the barrel, don't poke your noses in
close. They are also intelligent, yes, only not exactly. You must be
careful! And don't let a rusalka tickle you; she'll tickle you to
death! Clear?"
"Clear!" Vanka answered for everyone.
"Well, okay! Let's go!"
Tararah decisively pulled the lid off the barrel, and instantly from
it looked out a pale young woman with unbound green hair.
"Phew, what a fishy smell! It turns me inside out now!" squeamishly
said Gravinya, holding her nose.
The rusalka laughed unpleasantly, and splashing her tail, began to
primp, giggling with embarrassment and fixing her hair.
Tararah showed how to prepare a solution from spruce cones,
dandelion roots, and poisonous buttercup flowers that would kill the
carp lice, and he adroitly cleaned the rusalka's tail.
"You see?" said he. "And now it's your turn. Who haven't I called on
for a long time? Pupsikova!"
Reluctantly dragging herself toward the blackboard, Dusya tried to
perform herself what Tararah had done, but the rusalka suddenly
grabbed her by the hand and began to tickle her, so much indeed that
Dusya's eyes fell back into her head.
"Now, now, calm down!" ordered Tararah, sending Dusya back to her
place. "That was because you held her by the head! Don't touch
rusalka's heads; they don't like it! But here there's as much to do as
you could want! Who's next?"
The lesson flew by before one knew it -- for Tanya, anyway. Though
many Dark and some Light people, she sensed, did not feel very
pleased.
"Well, that's all! I hope everything about the rusalka was made
clear to you," said Tararah, glancing at the time. "For the next
lesson, you all should bring a helmet. We will be changing Pegasus'
horseshoes, and he, the rascal, gives a good kick with his left
hind...."
The children began to leave. Tanya, with Vanka, approached Tararah,
who was shoving the rusalka back into the barrel.
"Oof! Help me, kids! I must let her back out into the pond!" he
panted, trying to close the lid on the loudly laughing rusalka. In the
end he succeeded in this, and hopping up neatly, he sat down on the
barrel.
"Tararah, this is Tanya Grotter!" said Vanka Valyakin.
"Uh huh, I realized. You can't be confused with anybody else,"
nodded he.
Figuring out that he was talking about the look of her mole, Tanya
wanted to take offense, but for some reason she couldn't. It was
impossible to carry a grudge at Tararah -- he was so full of joy.
"You probably want to know why I'm so strange?" he continued, still
teaching veterinary magic. "The heavy jaw and all the rest? Also, I
really am not quite a mage -- not White and not Dark. But I'm also not
a lopear. I'm a pithecanthrope."
"An Australopithecanthropus? But they lived awfully long ago!"
Tararah smiled. His teeth were very large and strong, though also
crooked. "If you see how history works out...Well, we captured
something, and it seemed it was a white dragon -- very rare. Even
among dragons, they're one in a million. Well, this I knew even then,
back a few thousand years ago. And then I simply wanted to catch
them...But the others who ate the dragon with me carried the shorter,
smaller ones. At first they swelled up like balloons, and then --
bang! Good thing that pithecanthropes are generally not weak-nerved,
and some people would have had to fall into faints...They told me
that it was forbidden to eat white dragons from then on. But there is
just one piece near the tail which grants immortality, and I'd eaten
it. So I suffered from this, except that in the end Sardanapal picked
me up and took me in to look after the magical creatures. This
business was much to my liking."
Unexpectedly, Tararah grew gloomy, as if remembering someone.
"Here's another thing, kids. Don't go into the basements, and tell
the others, so they won't fall in."
"Are you talking about the Nameless Basement there, where the hair
is?" asked Tanya.
Tararah shook his head. "Don't you go there...and so, don't you
poke around all the entrance covers. I'm talking about the lower
basements, where the Gruesome Gate is...They started to tremble from
something recently, as if someone was breaking through from that
direction. I said that to Sardanapal, and he says, 'The bulwark is not
disturbed.' But somehow I know that from the Gruesome Gate that
shaking's no joke! Well, I'm leaving...." Tararah energetically
turned the barrel onto its side and rolled it through the exit. The
rusalka laughed loudly inside; most likely, she enjoyed being