Читать книгу Fairy Tale Fuss - Сергей Пятенок - Страница 6

So, what happened to Vanya, while Masha was asleep?

When Vanya opened his eyes, he saw large and small villages, green woods and even two snaky rivers far down. Vanya was flying in the sky. He constantly heard some kind of rustle, but the boy was much more excited with the feeling of flying.

"What an interesting dream it is," the boy thought. "I can fly wherever I want or I can just float through the clouds. Surely, this dream is much better than the last one – no odious old man, no fleeing away from a bear, no accidents and fear."

Vanya measured the altitude by sight. For reasons known only to him, the boy thought that it was at least five hundred meters to ground, and if he fell down, he would, probably, be just a smashed stain. Ivan grew a little wary of this thought, but he quickly remembered that it was just a dream and he had nothing to be afraid of.

Suddenly, Vanya felt a sharp push into one direction, then into another. "What's that?" the boy wondered and looked up. Now, the dream was looking so differently that Vanya's heart started beating rapidly just like a small kitten's one and seemed to leap out of his chest.

The boy understood that he was neither flying in the sky, nor even sleeping. Being grabbed with strong claws by his backpack, he was carried somewhere by a huge green Zmey Gorynych. Two of his heads were looking ahead, while the third one was looking after the new hostage.

"So, the accident, the bear, the pit, the tunnel and Koschei all were true, and the wizard really wanted to feed me to Zmey Gorynych," Vanya thought with sinking heart.

Having seen that the boy woke up, the third head greedily licked its lips and made a heartrending roar. The two other heads stared at Ivan at once. The baleful stare of the flying lizard made the boy he was not going to a party with tea and buns.

"What are you looking at, you three-headed snake?" Vanya shouted at all the three heads wondering at his own courage and insolence. "Where are we flying to? What is that supposed to mean?"

The baleful look of the monster instantly disappeared, the six pairs of eyes rounded, and the jaws shut like mousetraps. Gorynych, who was, probably, not expecting such a reaction from the boy, was taken aback a little. His heads gazed at each other and started to argue, which one was going to respond.

At last, the Left Head obeyed the two others, moved slowly closer to the boy and muttered something indistinctly floundering: "I… We just… We were told… We flew, but…"

"Stop!" the boy flapped his hands and scared Gorynych even more. "Can you be more clear?"

"Fuuuh," the Left Head breathed out and gathered itself up. "Koschei told us to take you to the place, from which no one gets back, to the desert. So, we are flying there!"

"An why you just not eat me?" the boy asked as if out of the blue. Gorynych made faces.

"We? Eat? Yuck!" the Middle Head suddenly said. "We've been vegetarians for a long time, since we got poisoned with one sailor, who smoked and drank alcohol so much that became poisonous. We felt sick for three weeks then and decided never to deal with humans any more. Our own life is more precious."

"So, you don't eat even animals?"

"No!" the Right Head nipped in. "Surely, we started to hunt for forest animals but then got poisoned again. We ate an ordinary squirrel, and it turned out to be rabid. It was chasing hares across the whole wood thinking that it was a fox. After that, we stopped eating animals either!"

"Gee whizz!" Vanya even felt a little sorry for the flying loser, who talked to him like to a best friend. "Listen, an why is the smell so nasty?"

"It's coming from us!" the Left Head told being a little awkward.

"Haven't you had a bath for a year?"

"We, Zmey Gorynyches, never take a bath!" the Middle Head started but stopped at once and confessed: "To be honest, we're afraid of water. We can… I mean, we cannot catch a cold. No fire then and nobody will fear us then. Peasants already sometimes beat us at night. They come silently, when we are asleep and beat us with a shovel at our back, and sometimes even stab us with a pitchfork in our booty. It is unfair! We even have to sleep on trees."

Gorynych was either complaining, or just voicing his thoughts: "We've told them a lot of times that we've changed, but they do not believe."