When Mama returned, Papa was unloading things from the van. Peter and Vicky were helping him, and Alex was roaming around the courtyard seeking out anything interesting. He discovered quite a lot of interesting things. A rusty rake without a handle, a watering can in the shape of a flamingo, originally pink but faded from the sun to almost white, two very old car license plates, and a big shoe. The shoe had probably been in concrete once, because it still had cement on it now and even its shoelaces were stiff.
Alex took the shoe, thought for a bit, held it in his hands, and then with the words, “Why is it lying in our yard?” threw it over the fence to the neighbour’s yard.
“Don’t!” Mama yelled, but she was too late. She only had time to hear as the shoe fell on the other side onto something metallic, because the sound was of scraping metal.
“Well! Now we have to go to the neighbour’s to apologize!” Mama said. However, before she took a step, the shoe flew back and plopped down between Mama and Alex.
“Wow!” Alex said and, faster than Mama could even move, tossed it back again.
This time it managed without crashing. Hence, the shoe had flown past the iron sheet. But after three seconds, the shoe appeared over the fence again, spinning in the air. Obviously, someone had launched it by the stiff lace. Peter, walking across the yard with boxes, dropped the boxes and rushed to catch the shoe. He managed to intercept it immediately; it barely appeared from behind the fence and Peter hammered it exactly like a volleyball.
“You’re sick!” Vicky said.
“Cool, eh? Flinging shoes at each other!”
“We started first!”
“We can! This shoe is not ours!”
“What do you mean it’s not ours? It’s on our lot!”
“It’s still not ours. Let them show the receipt that it’s ours!”
The shoe again whistled in the air. Peter grabbed his ear and slowly began to get upset.
“Ah! It hit you? Are you hurt?” Vicky exclaimed.
“No! It tickled me! Better you all leave, because I can miss!” Peter said in a voice terrible in its quietness.
Having taken the shoe by its laces, he twirled it and launched it up with force. Almost reaching the sun, the shoe, gaining speed, rushed down, and hung safely on the branches of the walnut tree.
Peter tried to get to it, but the upper branches of the walnut tree were brittle and could not hold his weight. Then Peter sent Alex, stating, “The chief monkey goes to the arena!”
A flattered “chief monkey” climbed up the walnut tree, but the branches began to crack even under him and the “monkey” came back with nothing. Seeing that time had passed but the shoe did not come flying, someone was romping about in disappointment on the other side of the fence. They heard something being dragged, most likely a chair, onto a sheet of iron, and then someone, sighing, scrambled onto it. A pale face with red-brown freckles appeared over the fence. It belonged to a boy about eleven.
“I would like to draw to your attention that throwing objects is rude!” the boy informed them. His head was swinging like a pendulum, first disappeared, and then appeared again.
“It’s you throwing? Now I’ll give it to you in the forehead! You hit me in the ear!” Peter yelled.
The pale boy looked seriously at Peter’s ear. “Wait a minute! Sorry to digress, but I must promptly finish an unpleasant matter!”
“What matter?”
The boy did not reply and disappeared, and a moment later, the iron sheet rattled terribly.
“What, running away?” Peter asked.
“No,” a weak voice came from the other side of the fence. “Not exactly. I fell off the chair.”
Peter realized that this was the same unpleasant matter that the boy had to finish. “How is it possible to fall from a chair?”
“I stood on its back, and it broke. Could you get me up please? I’m stuck.”
Peter and Vicky, followed by Kate, leapt over the fence and jumped down on the iron sheet. They were in a courtyard resembling a tennis racket. The racket handle was paved with coloured tiles. The round part of the racket was a small courtyard. Two cages were in the yard. Four chickens were languishing in the first. Five or six bikes were locked in the second cage adjacent to the wall.
A chair with a broken back lay on the iron sheet. A boy was lying on his back near the chair. His foot was stuck in the forked trunk of an acacia, on the thorny branches of which a great number of socks were drying. The boy was pressing his hand to his chest. His white t-shirt was slowly stained pink.
“Goodbye!” the boy said solemnly, looking not at them but at the sky. “Please tell my parents that I’ve died. Although, I think they’ll also guess!”
Vicky began to squeal, but Kate squatted down and asked why he decided that he was dying.
“I cut myself,” the boy informed her.
“Cut what? A vein?”
“No. I ripped open my finger on this iron sheet. Of course, my parents will now throw it out, but it’s already useless! A person cut by a rusty object dies within a few hours. Tetanus starts in him.”
Kate disengaged the boy’s leg from the forked acacia and helped him up. The boy stood and swayed. He pressed his injured hand to his chest and would not show it to anyone. His t-shirt continued to stain.
“Anyone home?” Kate asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, let’s go there! What’s your name?”
“Andrew! Andrew Mokhov,” the boy introduced himself.
Kate and Peter grabbed him by the elbows and led him away. Andrew Mokhov walked firmly, but only until he looked at his shirt. Then he began to pale and his knees buckled.
“Of course everything will be bad!” he said, making his way between the cage with bicycles and the cage with chickens. “That’s your car there? So big? I saw it from behind the fence. How many of you kids are there? Although you don’t have to answer. Already doesn’t matter to me now!”
“Seven,” Kate said.
“For some reason this would be valuable information!” Andrew admitted. “There are two of us. Nina and Seraphim.”
“Then why two? Aren’t you Andrew?”
“Correct. But when I die, only Nina and Seraphim will be left. I corrected the number, so as not to mislead you.”
“How old are Nina and Seraphim?”
“Nina’s fourteen, Seraphim’s eight. But he’s been lost since this morning, so Nina’ll probably remain alone.”
At the end of the yard, they saw a small house with cracked paint. It was entwined not with a grapevine but an ivy with a trunk the thickness of two human arms. In order that the roots of the ivy would not wreck the walls, pieces of wood were placed near them.
“Wow! Some house! Where did it come from?” Peter was surprised.
“It has always been here,” Andrew said with an air of importance. “Even before yours. Yours is sixty years old. Ours will soon be a hundred. See, what thick limestone.”
“Why didn’t we see your gate?”
Andrew sighed. “Because our gate isn’t here. There’s a wicket gate, but it’s far… it’s all very complicated in the city. A bunch of all kinds of side-streets and courtyards.”
“We already realized this when searching for our house,” Peter said.
“You realized nothing. The figure eight, it’s this here.” Andrew traced with a finger in the air. “And here’s one more lane, like a one. It turns