Tanya grimaced. She did not want to cry, turned away, but tears flowed nevertheless. And then she could not control herself and burst into tears. “Why mope, just think, a piece of wood! Better think about the leg. If it grows together crooked – to the end of your life you’ll waddle like a goose…” Yagge muttered unhappily, nodding to the medical orderlies.

The rest of the day turned out to be not especially pleasant for Tanya in magic station. All her cuts and scratches were covered with the pungent and odorous ointment, which reeked awfully of harpies and frightened skunks. The broken leg was stretched out and placed in a cast, under which Yagge, whispering something, put a whole box of well-fed bonegrafts similar to flat coins with paws. The bonegrafts immediately crawled away along the leg. They were sticky, disgusting, and forced Tanya to experience itch and a continuous tingle. The only comfort was that behind the partition in magic station lay Bab-Yagun, getting a heatstroke in the white-hot stomach of the dragon and on top of that badly scratched by Rita On-The-Sly.

Outside, enthusiastic fans greeted Coffinia. Their roar even penetrated through the double frames of magic station. The hero-bouncers Usynya, Dubynya, and Gorynya hammered together a kind of mobile wooden dais and, having loaded it on their shoulders, carried Coffinia in triumph through Tibidox. Carried past from time to time, Cryptova appeared in the windows of magic station and smiled caustically, waving the hand with long bright green nails at Tanya.

“Everyone says that she scored, and you only interfered with her. Hampered her vacuum, hung onto her foot… Why were you so? Lost you head, huh?” Bab-Yagun asked, leaning over from behind the partition. Tanya silently flung a pillow at him. “Oh, my granny mama! Beating up the overheated!” Yagun shouted with laughter, pulling the pillow like a Napoleonic bicorne over his eyes.

Tanya turned away from him and covered her head with the blanket. She wanted to bite, to kick someone with her healthy foot, and to howl like Pipa. Who would think that from the stands everything looked so idiotic? She, it appears, prevented Cryptova from scoring! If even Yagun thinks so, what would the rest say? Gradually her anger burnt out. She started to feel sorry for herself and even cried in the pillow, but very quietly so that Yagun would hear nothing. The broken leg under the cast stung and tingled. It seemed as if the bonegrafts enmeshed her in a sticky, hot cobweb. Rocking with waves of pain and taking pleasure in the least bit of calm, Tanya finally fell asleep.

How long she slept, she did not know, but probably not for long, because in the middle of the night deafening crashes woke her. Peals of thunder shook Tibidox, forcing this structure squat like a rock tortoise to shudder all the way to the basement. The downpour lashed at the windows of magic station. It seemed a river was flowing outside along the glass. Raindrops seeped into the cracks badly calked by spells and accumulated into puddles on the floor and the wide windowsill. The sky was highlighted every second by fiery arrows of lightning – two and three simultaneously. It seemed to Tanya, whose bed stood very near the glass, as if all the lightning was beating exactly at one point – the garret of the Big Tower.

Unexpectedly, Tanya recalled the words of Nightingale: “But nevertheless only the neck was cracked!” Tanya became terrified. Stretching with difficulty to the chair on which her clothing was, the girl reached the notebook and in a hurry began to turn its pages. Crib notes for studies of evil spirits, prescriptions on how to quiet a raging dragon… But where is it? Aha! Here it is – instruction on the use of the magic double bass! How nice that once she surmised to copy it from the white birch bark, and even more pleasant that these records had not disappeared, as it happened with the attempt to duplicate a forbidden spell!

Bluish flashes of lightning snatched out scraps of phrases. The glass shuddered with each thunderclap, “This double bass… by magician Theophilus Grotter… for flights to Bald Mountain… of fine magic… material… deck boards from Noah’s Ark… inside the neck the Rope of the Seventeen Hanged Men, snapping..... to execute the innocent…

“…avoid collision with solid objects! Violation of the rules...... liberation of the powerful curse contained in the Rope…”

Tanya dropped the notebook. And what if the Rope of the Seventeen Hanged Men broke and this terrible thunderstorm – clearly magic in origin – was somehow connected with the liberation of the ancient curse? But now Tanya was too tired to ponder the vague hints of great-grandfather Theophilus. What could have appeared to the grumbling hypochondriac magician living several centuries ago? To the magician whose voice was living in her ring?

The girl wrapped herself up in the blanket. It was damp. Behind the partition, Bab-Yagun was sweetly smacking his lips. From time to time, he stopped smacking and angrily, clearly in a dream, told someone, “And quick away from here, else I’ll make you!” And again he smacked. Heavy jets of rain lashed the glass and the overhanging tiled canopy of magic station. It was not simply a downpour. It seemed the ocean itself, confined in an invisible cup, was hovering over the island, and made haste now to pour onto Tibidox. Tanya closed her eyes and fell asleep under the incessant noise of rain, wind gusts, and rolling thunder…

The Snake of Time is a strange essence. Having rolled up into a ring, it lies somewhere at infinity, and minutes, days, years, and centuries are trapped in a great majority of its scales. They whisper, true, that in the old days the strong black magician Ludwig Snot-Nose put a spell on the snake. The essence of this spell is that time always runs too fast in one’s happy moments, whereas during unpleasant ones it drags on, like cold pasta wound around a fork and will in no way end.

During the first lesson of practical magic Tanya specifically pondered this and the vacations that flashed past imperceptibly, looking with loathing at her slippery cauldron, smelly after the summer, along the bottom of which crawled disgusting white maggots, having managed to appear not without the help of numerous Tibidox flies. But then Professor Stinktopp was extremely satisfied with this, asserting that filth gave additional magic abilities to the cauldrons.

“Not a bad rest! Three weeks lying in magic station in order to discover later that one can’t bathe after bonegrafts! What’s the sense of being a magician if you’re allowed less than the most common moronoid?” Tanya reflected, simultaneously trying not to miss the explanations of Professor Stinktopp.

The wrinkled professor of practical magic walked leisurely around the class and, dropping quick glances in all directions with his spiteful eyes the colour of dried orange peel, growled, “For ze preparation of elixir of foresight you take one large leaf of burdock and vrap up in it flovers of fern and finely ground agate. Copy? Zen you add a splinter of a coffin, dragon mucus, fur of a dead rat, stone from ze goitre of a chicken, and boil efferyzing in svamp vater. Ven it boil, you must not lover a spoon in zere, but stir it viz a cut off frog leg! If you do efferyzing sehr gut, zen ven ze slush begin to boil – somezing interesting vill happen! Copy efferyzing? But now schnell, schnell, young dumdums! Do efferyzing as I said! And I vill vatch you viz great pleasure!”

In Professor Stinktopp’s voice was concealed malicious joy, so badly hidden that all the students noticed it. Even the professor’s favourite Rita On-The-Sly suspiciously raised her head. Coffinia Cryptova squinted, first trying to consider what filth would be prepared by Stinktopp.