“What will she do?” Khavron asked again with superstitious fear. He was not too drawn to dealing with dead fairies.
Middlelina ignored his rejoinder. She was suffering. Her small hands creased the rim of her straw hat.
“For better or worse, a sister is a sister. I let her – later regretted it a hundred times – settle in my body for any third of a day of her choice. So, she still uses this right. I don’t know exactly what happens in those hours, when she borrows my consciousness, but I guess that it’s nothing particularly good. The body is always returned to me gorged and tired. I need to sleep it off, spending a good half of my sixteen hours on it. It turns out that, although only a third of a day belongs to her, in reality we’re equal, since I still need a third to sleep it off and generally tidy myself up!”
“Is there really something not right with you?” Eddy carelessly said.
“OF COURSE NOT!” the fairy soared up. “See what this glutton has turned me into! I hate her! Sometimes, in order that she could no longer get into anything, I’d eat two crumbs of a nut roll and drink a thimble of milk to spite her! But really, how do you make an impression on this pig? With her, everything’s like water off a duck’s back!”
Middlelina’s indignant face turned purple. Eddy listened patiently. He was already used to the fact that as soon as it comes to relatives, especially brothers and sisters, the most decent-looking people would start to gnaw the finish with their teeth.
“And what she can do at all! No diligence, no curiosity! Doesn’t know how to braid sun rays! Or stitch dew on eucalyptus leaves! Or transform tears into sea pearls! She’s only capable of predicting the future! Oh, she also knows combat magic very well! But it’s bad taste! A fairy, and suddenly a combat wizard arranging brawls in pubs!”
Eddy squinted sweetly, imagining to himself the tiny fairy, smashing the Queen of the Beach club with drunken eyes. “Would be good to send her there… Kind of like working out with a straw from the bar,” he thought.
“I understand, I understand. You have a terrible sister! I commiserate. I have a sister of my own, so you don’t have to tell me,” he said, trying to end the outpouring of family issues.
“Sister? What, also a crazy sorceress?” the fairy sympathized.
“Worse. She constantly searches for a man who can be chained with a wedding band on the finger. I don’t envy this poor fellow in advance.”
“A ring of celibacy?” the fairy asked with interest. “Your sister didn’t quarrel with powerful wizards, did she?”
“How would I know? I don’t think so,” Eddy said.
“And has she been searching for long?”
“Yes, as soon as she was divorced from Methodius’ papa, she has been searching… About ten years already, probably…”
“That’s still tolerable,” the fairy said authoritatively.
Khavron, however, did not think so. “But not in the same room! To have an older sister is such a monstrosity. I was thirteen when all sorts of idiots began to come to Zoe! They hung around here all day, sat on my bed, broke my roller skates, neighed like horses… Now and then I wanted to borrow a gun from someone! And then she acquired this fair-haired little thing with a chipped tooth, and it became a hazard warning!” Khavron said, displeased.
“Well, well. Don’t complain. Still suffer for about ten years. When that small boy hanging in the frame comes into his own, you’ll have a little more room. How would you like to settle in the Kuskovo estate?[1] If you want, it’s possible to rename it Khavronovo village!” the fairy proposed.
Eddy blinked in bewilderment. He took the fairy’s words as a silly joke. “How’s that?”
“You think it’ll be rather small? Well then, you’ll relocate to Versailles!”
“I need it very much. Better that I kick everyone out of our entrance, break all the partition walls here, plant a palm forest, and I’ll swing in a hammock and eat bananas. I’ll place a sniper on the roof so that he will shoot everyone who at least resembles a groom from a distance!” Eddy said. Now and then he fantasized in this direction, so he had everything worked out to the smallest detail.
“As you say,” the fairy said obediently. “I could arrange all this for you, but, I fear, it’s not worthwhile for me to especially attract attention with magic. Now, my sister is another matter. Sometimes she gets carried away, and she starts doing stupid things.”
“Hmm… But how can I tell you apart? Well, you and your sister?” Eddy asked, interested.
“My sister and me? Oh, you won’t confuse us, don’t worry! I grow thin, but that pig is a glutton. It’s precisely because of her that my waist is nearly equal to my height. I smoke, but she hates tobacco. She gets my hair dirty! She uses nightmarish perfume! She quarrels with my friends! Well, and many, many other things! The only thing that comforts me is that lately we don’t communicate. When I’m here, she isn’t. When she’s here, I’m not,” Middlelina stated.
“She won’t finish me off?” Eddy asked doubtfully.
“Just let her try! I’ll draw a sign on you and she’ll understand that you’re a moronoid under my protection!” Middlelina said decisively.
She raised her fan and, before Khavron had time to figure out what she was going to do, quickly drew a sign in the air. It seemed to Eddy as if something burning touched his chest. He yelled and grasped his chest, but the strange sensation was already gone.
“No need to be startled! It’s my personal magic brand. We fairies mark unicorns this way, and not a single vampire dares to shoot an arrow at them… Don’t worry, in your case the mark is temporary. About three days, no more… But now my sister will recognize you.”
After looking under his T-shirt and detecting nothing on his chest except the usual hair, Eddy calmed down little by little. “All the same, you should have warned me… Also considered me a unicorn! And what’s your sister’s name?”
“Indexelina!”
“Well, that’s a name. But this… what’s her name… Thumbelina isn’t related to you?” Eddy asked and immediately paid for his innocent question. The magic field of the indignant fairy threw him a good half metre away.
Middlelina stomped her foot. “Who? Thumbelina? You’d even ask if I’m related to a rifle, as one self-taught wit asked me! Now deceased, I dare add!!! Thumbelina! Phew! That scandalous person! What is the unacceptable flirtation with a mole worth to her, and, by the way, it was not a mole at all originally! The nicest retired treasurer of the gnomes. A little boring and frugal, I agree, but not at all deserving of such a fate… And then, just between us, Thumbelina’s marriage with the elf king was too hasty. In our circle, unequal marriages aren’t recognized. And you know why? Because when love disappears, inequality remains! And then what do the poor people do? Gnaw their elbows and throw darts at the wedding pictures!”
“But in the fairy tale, everything’s different!” Eddy said, backing further away from the angry fairy just in case.
“Fairy tales, young man, are political ads of the magic world. Just that! The side that won immediately orders a fairy tale about itself. Take at least the fairy tales about Ivan the Fool! They were all ordered by his wife, Vasilisa, who was actually the one ruling the realm, after overthrowing Tsar Gorokh! Ivan, though, was anguishing till old age. Vasilisa had to invest huge funds, spinning him as an independent political figure. She bribed robbers, dragons, and giants, trumpeting everywhere that he beat them. She even forced her uncle Koshchei the Deathless to kidnap her, but Ivan foolishly, instead of finding her in six months, as dictated by the script, searched for a whole seven years… On the whole, an old and boring story! Look into any textbook of magic PR! Hey, aren’t you listening to me?”
“Aha. I mean, not aha!” Khavron corrected himself. He was actually not thinking