Then the fairy’s gaze paused on what she used to scatter the smoke. “And this hideous hat again! I wrote to that bore so that she wouldn’t dare wear it! Well, let’s see her reply,” she said and peeked at the inner part of the brim of the hat. “What? Where must I go? And she writes this to her own sister, whom she hasn’t seen for so long!” she said in outrage and, after tossing the hat, incinerated it with a stare.
Eddy squinted at his watch. The minute hand had barely crawled over the “12” mark. The hour hand was on four. “Any third of the day! So, this is Indexelina!” Eddy realized.
After finishing with the hat, the fairy deigned to notice Khavron. “And what’s this giant runt? Did the bore really get herself a new moronoid page? Oh, she even tagged him! Well, of course! She signed all her things even in childhood! Pencil cases, rulers, stockings, magic wands! Hey, creature, what’s your name, and where did my sister dig you up?”
Eddy introduced himself. He explained that he was not exactly dug up anywhere and that Middlelina was hiding in his apartment from persecutors from Bald Mountain.
“Of course! The bore ran to the moronoid world all the same and was ready to do something! I warned her not to make promises to anyone! Well, well, Khavron Eduardovich, or whatever your name is, tell more tales! What did my sister tell you about me? That I’m hysterical, a psychopath, a dark fairy who turns people into snakes, frogs, or drunk plumbers? Don’t be silent! Answer!” Indexelina ordered.
Khavron mumbled something out of caution, not going into details. Indexelina did not insist, quite satisfied with the mumbling. “Jumbo! March after me! Don’t look around! Don’t communicate telepathically with flies!” she ordered.
Having flown to the kitchen, she immediately, by some magic scent, saw clearly the bottle of cognac hidden in the cupboard behind the saucepans. Eddy did not even know about this bottle, part of Zozo’s secret strategic reserves. Khavron mentally butted his sister’s aura. “Hidden! From her own brother!” he thought with indignation.
After uncorking the bottle with one motion of the fan, the fairy forced it to soar up into the air and fill the little cup of dark opaque glass that appeared in her hand. It was no bigger than a thimble.
“Don’t fairies drink nectar? Ambrosia and all that?” Khavron asked politely.
“Fairies drink everything they don’t eat… And eat everything they don’t drink! Well, to our meeting!” Indexelina said.
The thimble was emptied in a flash. A second one followed the first. Then, pausing for a bit with the cognac, Indexelina busied herself with opening Vienna sausages. Where they had been taken from, Eddy would have difficulty saying, but, all things considered, Indexelina stole them from one of the small restaurants in the Centre. Taking into account the size of the sausages, the fairy had to shrink them two or three times. The hungry Eddy watched this blasphemy sadly.
“Don’t want to treat me, then don’t! I won’t ask. No sense in wasting time on trifles. Better to fire a shot at her for money…” Khavron thought. “Here, they threatened to kill me,” he began from a distance.
Indexelina nodded with her mouth full. “Good thought! I approve. If help is needed, let them whistle for me. You’re so huge and silly,” she muttered.
Khavron realized that it was useless to aim for pity. “I need a lot of money! I thought that you could…” he started.
“No need to continue further, jumbo. Item XII of the Book of Prohibitions,” the fairy interrupted.
“What?”
“I articulate: Under the threat of deprivation of magic, fairies and other magical beings are forbidden to create money and other media of exchange from air, mud, sea water, and others. To cast a spell on calculators and ATM, and to dupe servers and bank terminals. And they are especially forbidden to transfer to moronoids monetary funds obtained in the aforementioned manner. Everything was different in the Middle Ages. Although making gold from air, now, alas… Ne-ver!”
“But why? This is such nonsense!” Eddy exclaimed.
“What did you say? Don’t argue! Si-i-i-lenc-e-ee!” the fairy yelled.
Khavron quieted down uneasily. The angry fairy tried to fly over from the sink to the kitchen table, where she had left her cup; but she was too full and her dragonfly wings worked in vain. On noticing this, Eddy delicately placed his palm under the fairy and transferred her to the table.
“Abort the ‘silence’ command!” Indexelina relented. She, as any self-respecting fairy, had not seven but seventy-seven Fridays. Moreover, not even in one week, but on one Thursday.
“I’m beginning to like you, jumbo! You’re so roomy, not too bulky. I can send you for grub, when I’m too lazy to use the magic wand. Do you want to become my page, to spite my sister? I can imagine what she’ll say when she sees my mark instead of hers on you!”
Eddy immediately confirmed his readiness to become anyone’s page and again started to beg for money. “Please! It’s so simple!” he said with hope.
“It’s precisely because it’s simple that it’s forbidden. Were it otherwise, any batty wizard could pelt the moronoid world with packages of money no less real than real banknotes. Or even turn all the paper of the world into money. This would lead the moronoid world, which is holding on by a hair, to catastrophe,” the fairy said didactically and drained yet another thimble of cognac. Her small ears, slightly protruding as in all fairies, grew red.
“But can’t you go around this ban?” Khavron asked conspiratorially. “Well, instead of the money give me a small thingy of ten diamonds?”
“How many?” the fairy asked with a smile.
“Well, five…” Eddy unwillingly corrected himself.
“Won’t you burst?”
“At the very least… well, as a last resort… one,” Eddy uttered, crushed, and experiencing a strong desire to drop a saucepan on the all-knowing fairy.
“Of course it’s possible. Even very simple,” Indexelina assured glumly. “The whole problem is that you intend to turn the diamonds into money, and this I know… Even on condition that they on Bald Mountain don’t find out anything, this will become known to the Book of Prohibitions, and then I’ll be deprived of my magic. Every drop. The Book of Prohibitions, you see, isn’t simply a book. It’s a law that fulfills itself without knowing leniency.”
Convinced that he could not count on voluntary enthusiasm, Eddy decided to induce forced enthusiasm. After jumping onto a chair, he launched into a heartfelt tirade. In his speech he especially emphasized that fairies always helped people, and at the end, in an oratorical fit, he stated his readiness to turn to Middlelina for help and become her page for eternity. In spite of the want of rhetorical figures, the speech, especially its final part, had a sobering effect on Indexelina.
The fairy moved uneasily and expressed her readiness to help. “Only without money! Think of something else!” she stated.
Eddy jumped from the chair. He decided not to nickel and dime but to promptly ask a lot. “No money, no need! Then something else. Anything that will help me to get rich quick. Some brilliant find from the future. For example, a perpetual motion machine? No? Then the secret of transforming pencil lead to diamonds or tap water to gasoline? Huh?”
“Jumbo, you’re quite silly!” the fairy said softly. “You overestimate me. I’m a sorceress, not a techie. If necessary, I can make a horse appear right here and now, but ask me for the blueprint of a machine to make live horses, and I’ll twirl a finger at my temple…”
Eddy grabbed his head. He wanted to get on all fours and howl at the moon. Jumping up, he ran around the kitchen. Suddenly,