Читать книгу Fairy Tale Fuss - Сергей Пятенок - Страница 5

Masha hardly opened heavy eyelids, which seemed to resist and deny what their master wanted.

The room was mysteriously semi-dark. The walls had torches burning with red fire and hardly visible paintings hanging on them. The girl was lying on a soft bed under a warm blanket. Somebody stirred very close to her, and she decided that was her mom.

"Mom," she said rubbing her eyes. "You can't even imagine what I saw in my dreams. First we got into a car crash, then there was a bear, then Vanya and I got into a pit with a passage. From this passage we came to… to… I don't know who we came to, but there we found a magic tablecloth, which fed us with tasty food. And what happened next, I don't really remember."

Somebody began to purr in reply. At that moment the girl finally woke up and took a look around. She instantly understood that her mom was not there, and the one she thought to be her mother was a sleeping grey cat, which reclined at ease near her legs. It purred its melody and, probably, was dreaming of something.

"What is it? the girl thought. "What kind of cat is it? Where am I?"

Masha carefully looked under the blanket and saw that she was wearing a torn dress, the same as she wore in her dreams.

"It means that all this was real!" the idea flashed across the girl's mind.

With the same care Masha got out of the bed on the floor, which was stony and very cold. Jumping from foot to foot, Masha found her shoes and quickly put them on. Then, very silently, on the tips of her toes she reached the gridded window, through which she saw all signs of night.

With a great number of big and small stars, the sky was really shining and seemed to gleam with colors. Small clouds were slowly drifting. The moon was so large that it looked like a huge round cheese with wrinkles, dimples and craters.

Masha looked down and reflexively held her breath. She found herself on top of a high tower with a very long distance to the ground.

The girl looked round, but did not find anything that could attract her attention. Suddenly, she heard a clatter and a heated argument below. Masha looked there and saw the following picture.

Some old man in a striped night-gown and a red cap hooted in the yard after a huge green Zmey Gorynych, who apparently had made him very angry.

"You, three-headed lizard! You, useless animal!" the old man shouted brandishing a strange stick and trying to whip Gorynych at his back. "I told you not to speak with him. I told you not to listen to him!"

"What have we done? We haven't done anything!" poor Gorynych only excused and dodged the zinging stick. "This Ivan got us round!"

"It's a sin not to get you round, fool," the old man, who got tired to hoot after Zmey, sighed with disappointment. "You will be punished for that."

"How?" Gorynych asked with fear. "Will you turn me into stone again?"

"Why? You are exactly like an over-grown chicken, stupid and dupable!" with these words the old man turned Gorynych into a fat spotted chicken.

"Cluck-cluck! Cluck-cluck!" the chicken clucked something indignantly waving its wings.

The old man laughed and told:

"A good chicken I've made! I'm tempted to roast you for lunch, it'll be more use. Maybe I should do it?" enchanted Gorynych, having heard such words, made several steps back, then rushed to hug the legs of the wizard.

"OK, OK then!" Koschei soothed him immediately. "You'll live like this a month or another, then we'll think what to do with you."

The chicken calmed down and slowly made its way across the yard looking for something to eat on the ground.

"Did they really spoke about Vanya? Why did he escape from them at all, and where did we get?" Masha said quietly.

Suddenly Koschei, as if he had heard the girl's words, looked at the tower, trying to see if anybody was staying at the window or not. But Masha managed to hunker down and hide.

Having waited a little, Masha with one eye then with another looked out of the window again and only noticed that the old wizard was leaving and muttering something under his breath.

The girl went to the bed and sat down but rose sharply because somebody began to move and groan under her.

"Who is trying to squash me here?" she heard somebody grumbling.

"I'm sorry, it was not inten…" Masha did not finish, as she saw she was talking to the grey cat, who looked at the girl sleepily. "Who are you, talking cat?"

"I am Puss in Boots," told the animal pompously.

"I am Masha. Where am I?"

"At the same place with me, the tower of some Koschei," the grey cat started his story. "I've been sitting here for a month already as a punishment. It all started when I went bathing in the river. When I dove, it was morning and warm; when I came up, it was evening, chilly and raining. Then I wandered the wood hungry for several days: not a mouse, not a rabbit there. In the end, I came to this castle. I thought, "Aha, the ogre is living here. I'll go and steal something from the kitchen."

"But how did you get in the castle? I don't think he meets everybody with open gates, does he?"

"I climbed to the top of a tree, then jumped into an open window and… got into the kitchen. There, in the fridge I found several juicy franks and smoked sausage. But before I managed to eat a half of the frank, the horrid old man came. He yelled at me and closed in this tower warning that he would turn me into a neckpiece if I tried to escape from this room."

"Didn't you try it?" Masha wondered.

"I'm not ill-minded, and my mind tells me that it's silly and no use," the cat, who obviously valued his skin, told and added, "Besides, he's taken away my boots."

"Here you're wrong!" the girl disagreed. "I will not just sit here. At least, you were punished for a reason, while I'm sitting here for nothing. Besides, nothing ventured, nothing gained."

Masha walked around the room looking for anything, which could help her escape. She looked into the nightstand in the corner of the room, but it was empty. Then Masha examined the table with a pile of books of various width and color, which were of no interest for the girl, who could not read.

Soon the girl understood that there was nothing useful in the place of her imprisonment.

"Will you run with me?" she asked the cat almost with no hope.

"No! I'll be waiting for you here. I think you will return very soon," she heard quite an expected reply.

"All right then, I'll go alone," Masha approached the door and quietly pulled the handle. The door did not open.

"In vain you think they left the door open. I tried, it doesn't open."

"You had a bad try," Masha rebelled and said, "Open Sesame!"

The door went forward with squeaks. To show that she was right, Masha gave a hum to the grey cat, who could not believe his eyes and looked at the disappearing girl in surprise.

Behind the door there was a steep and well-lit stairway. The girl listened if there was anybody below, then went down on the tips of her toes.

At the first floor, Masha saw an empty corridor, which was like all other rooms she had already been in tastelessly decorated with stuffed animals.

She headed that way. Masha did not suspect at all, what the consequences her walk around the castle could have.

Suddenly, she heard shambling steps somewhere afar. That was Koschei, who was returning to his bedroom deep in his thoughts. Masha quickly whisked into the first available door, where, in fact, the wizard's bedroom was. The steps approached and became more and more distinct. Masha could only hide in the wardrobe filled with different clothes. A minute later Koschei entered the same door.

He walked across the room, closed the open vent window, from which whoops of wise eagle owls were heard, and closed the window blinds. Then the old man came to the table with drinks, poured something and took a sip.

He stood at the bed and talked to himself:

"When will this all be over?! I'm so tired of different troubles. But OK, another couple of days and I'll be in another world. There I'll have another life. I'll show them all what real fear is…

Masha watched Koschei in an uncomfortable position through a small hole between the doors. She was so uncomfortable among that large number of clothes left by the old man in a mess that she had to stand almost on one foot. But when that foot went dead so that became a tingle, Masha decided to change the position.

The girl slowly moved the dead foot taking a step back and felt that she stepped in a metal bucket with some liquid. Masha tried to get free at once, but when she lifted her foot, she lost balance.

She began to flounder in the unstable wardrobe trying to grip hand of anything, but all clothes on the hangers easily slipped of their places as soon as the girl touched them.

Koschei stared with fear at the wardrobe, which wiggled wildly and from which strange jingles and clanks were heard.

After all, Masha managed to grip hand of a bathrobe, not for a long time though, as in a moment it slipped off the hanger and fell on the girl covering her up to the hilt. A shelf where Koschei kept homeware also fell on the girl together with the bathrobe. After the shelf, the homeware, which had been collecting dust for years, also dropped down.

Altogether, different jars, flasks, rags, papers, blotters dropped on Masha's head. One jar, and the girl clearly felt it with her head, broke spilling a stinking liquid on the bathrobe.

Unable to stand the nasty smell, and generally to stand on one foot, Masha all wrapped in old rags fell out of the wardrobe right on the old man, who came by. She fell on the floor knocking Koschei off his feet. When he saw a falling monster glowing in the dark, with a metal bucket on the foot, who swung arms-sleeves, he choked and passed out.

When Masha got out of the bathrobe, she saw Koschei lying on the floor with an empty shot glass in his hand. It turned out that the nasty smelling liquid, which spilt on the bathrode, was nothing but a glowing paint, with which Koschei some time ago wanted to paint the walls of his castle.

Masha ran out of the bedroom wasting no time and, hopping to slip off the tightly stuck bucket rushed away from Koschei.

When she reached the end of the corridor, which led further somewhere on the right, she met Gorynych turned into a chicken. Being half asleep, when he saw Masha all in glowing stains and with a buzzing bucket, he took her for a ghost and laid several eggs.

The girl rushed past the frightened chicken without paying any attention to it and kept running. Soon she reached the entrance door, which was closed…

Masha tried to open the door, even with a magic word, but the door did not open. She kicked the door with the foot stuck in the bucket and sat beside. In reply the door told:

"Who is kicking here?"

"Me!" Masha said finally free of the bucket.

"Do you want to exit? Give the password."

"What password?"

"Here is a riddle, the right answer will be the password. It grows everything, it sees everybody and everything, it comes from afar, how is it called?"

"Maybe rain?" the girl nearly whispered in reply dubiously.

"Wrong!" the door told and spit out green powder on Masha.

She felt slack in all her body again, sprawled on the floor and fell asleep.