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.

Spurred on by an impatient Stinktopp bobbing up and down, the second graders set about pounding agate and getting flowers of fern from a leather bag. Meanwhile Gunya Glomov, transferred into grade two only because in first grade he had mortally bored all instructors, was chasing a dead rat, which had shown extraordinary quickness and bolted, having bitten Gunya’s finger.

Professor Stinktopp grumbled, claiming that one of the senior pupils had revived the rat and that he, Stinktopp, would definitely report this disgrace to Slander Slanderych. Finally, Stinktopp calmed down, drank two spoonfuls of cognac with bile, and even permitted Rite On-The-Sly to partially pluck his waistcoat, which he had already been wearing for many centuries in a row without taking it off. “Indeed I didn’t know it’s made of rat skin!” Bab-Yagun, making a face, whispered to Tanya.

Tanya lit the fire under the cauldron and, stirring slowly with a frog leg, began to wait for the swamp water to boil. Occasionally either the boiled burdock or the flower of fern floated to the surface. The sliver of a coffin pensively turned like a compass needle in the smelly bubble coming up from the bottom.

At the same time Tanya was curiously watching Vanka Valyalkin, who recently, after attempting to unnoticeably eat a cutlet, dropped it into the cauldron. Now a thick orange smoke was belching from the cauldron; Vanka tried to hide it from Stinktopp, covering the cauldron with the lid. But this did not help. The smoke nevertheless belched, and on top of that, squeaked with a rusty senile voice. Vanka probably had disturbed the rest of some ancient genie. Now the genie was rioting and breaking for freedom.