Methodius wrapped the dictionary in skin and placed it in front of the client. After that, he quickly ran to the kitchen and brought a kettle. Judging by the way the grandfather carried it, it was heavy, filled to the brim. From there he poured a viscous black liquid (was it tar?) into a bowl that stood on the window, and then splashed the substance onto the skin in which the book was wrapped. As soon as the first drop touched the fur, the fur began to glow bright blue. Having finished with the impregnation, the old man removed the skin from the book and wrapped it around the head of Dan, who was sitting at the table.
The black dragon sat comfortably in a corner and immersed himself in his favorite pastime. Alina looked at everything that was happening with her mouth open. She had seen similar actions more than once in television programs on the first layer, where various psychics and other suspicious individuals who considered themselves magicians performed.
When the skin stopped glowing, the old man removed the bandage from Dan’s head. The necromancer sat on a chair, closed his eyes, and was afraid to move.
«Well,» the grandfather lisped, «say something in the new Russian.»
– Cool, bro! – the magician slapped the old man on the shoulder, so that he could not stand on his feet and sat down in surprise.
– Whaaaat?!?!?! – Alina was indignant.
– Oh, great, chick! – Dan smiled, hugging the girl’s hips.
Five minutes ago, this intelligent Czech guy addressed her so respectfully: «beautiful girl,» but what if… something is wrong… Is it possible that along with knowledge of the language, a person acquires disgusting character traits?
«Dan,» she said offended, pulling his hand away. – What do you say?
She grabbed the guy by the shoulders and started shaking him in the hope of knocking out this gross nonsense.
– What a cool bazaar, absolutely nothing! Are you, like, not getting it?
«I get it, I get it,» the sorceress mimicked him, «but why, having learned a foreign language, start being rude in it?»
– I’m freaking out! – the necromancer rolled his eyes, picking up a thin dictionary.
«Modern Russian slang and obscene expressions,» Alina read what was written on the cover.
«Dear Methodius,» she shouted at her grandfather, «do you even pay attention to what you teach a respectable foreigner?»
– Why the hell stare?
The old man chuckled, took the book from the girl and put it in its place, and then began to look for something.
– Isn’t this necessary? – she asked, taking out from under the leg of the stepladder Ozhegov’s thick black Explanatory Dictionary.
Almost every Russian schoolchild knew this book very well. But… the ladder, from under which the thick book was taken out, naturally fell to one side along with the old man.
It turned out that the grandfather carelessly touched his lamp and it, coming into contact with the bear’s skin, started a serious fire. With the number of books in the room, everyone present could have burned alive in a matter of minutes.
The dragon jumped up on its hind legs, clutching the precious manuscript to its chest. Dan, deprived of any vocabulary except Russian Newspeak, stomped on the tabletop and shouted heart-rendingly:
– The author is burning! Ftopku sovar of the Russian language!
Methodius, numb with horror, watched as the fire approached both him and his precious collection.
And only Alina, who by some miracle did not lose her composure, stretched out her hand, free from the dictionary, and shouted:
– Sandstorm!
The spell again spontaneously surfaced in her memory, from which book or film – she did not remember. The girl imagined how the earth began to move under her feet, how dust rose in a column and circulated around her feet, and then dispersed and was covered by fire, which had almost reached the dictionaries of the polyglot magician. The grandfather sat on his knees, looking with fear at the burnt wool on one of the skin-carpets, and tears welled up in his clear blue eyes. His collection was saved!!!
When Alina lowered her hand, the tornado stopped circulating, and the sand fell to the ground in an even circle around the girl. Definitely, after this spell, the magician’s apartment required cleaning.
The sorceress put Ozhegov’s dictionary on the table at Dan’s feet and stared at the old man with an imperious gaze:
– Teach him Russian back! Correct your mistakes.
Grateful for saving the collection, Methodius agreed, despite the fact that the fire happened due to Alina’s carelessness. Somehow the old man quickly forgot the bad things, but he seemed to remember the good things well for a long time. He did not demand a hundred dollars from the brave sorceress in exchange for the necromancer’s half-burnt bill sticking out of the sandy hill.
Grandfather shook the sand out of his sandals and asked Dan to get off the table and sit on a chair.
– Shave yourself! – the client stuck his tongue out at the grandfather.
– I’ll shave you! – the magician groaned, kicking one of the table legs.
Dan expected anything from the old man, but not that his leg would be kept on his word of honor. As a result, he fell painfully on his back, hitting his head on a stack of dictionaries.
– You’re a fool, rotten old man, ax-head! – he hissed through his teeth, picking up the extinguished lamp from the floor.
Alina took it from the magician’s hands and, snapping her fingers, lit the wick, wanting to give the lamp to her grandfather, but that was not the case. The necromancer held it by the base with a strong grip and was not going to give it up. He jerked the lamp towards himself so that the sorceress almost fell nose-first into the dusty, scattered books of the old man Methodius. Dan squeezed the lamp in his left hand, and with his right began to move over the flame, as if he was writing fancy runes in the air. So this is how necromancers cast their spells!
The magician with the lamp walked straight towards the old polyglot, who at that time was reciting a spell over Ozhegov’s dictionary.
The dragon diligently scribbled quatrains without raising his head. At such moments, the muse came to him without asking and did not leave until the poet’s owner accomplished a feat.
Alina was unable to do anything. All that remained was to rely on fate. The fox’s skin sparkled blue, and the old man turned to the necromancer. And he had already raised a lamp high above him with a ready-made spell and a soul summoned from the Kingdom of the Dead. It’s just like an illustration for «Crime and Punishment» in the magical world, only Raskolnikov’s motives are completely stupid.
The grandfather, as the sorceress often recalled later, turned out to be dexterous and prepared for any actions on the part of his clients, so he accurately threw the skin at the necromancer’s head, and he rolled head over heels at his feet.
Blinded Dan, who did not expect such a turn of events, dropped the lamp into a pot of ficus standing on the window.
At the same moment, the room was filled with the smell of incense, and everyone present closed their eyes, because the acrid fog painfully stung the iris. Only a minute later the desperate dragon-writer decided to see with his own eyes the heroic feat of his grandfather.
– What was it? – the necromancer removed the faded fox skin from his forehead.
Alina and Methodius sat in different corners, closing their eyes and bowing their heads. The satisfied dragon, biting his tongue, wrote the next chapter of the poem, and instead of a ficus, a motionless long-haired tortoiseshell cat sat on the window.
– Yana?! – Dan rolled his eyes. – I didn’t call you!
The animal meowed in response, but did not move. The frightened sorceress first opened one eye, and, realizing that the danger had passed, opened the second one. The polyglot grandfather did the same.
