“Ha, this“ choke ”is trembling with fear from just one of my kind,” Dasha said in an arrogant tone.

Hanging around the vines, as if on cue, began to curl and rise upward, to a large shapeless mass.

“Strange,” said Teira. “Usually they try to hold onto all the tentacles and pull them up to their bodies.”

“They are dangerous for you, but people like us, all forest creatures are afraid!” - Dasha said.

“Not at all,” Avdotya muttered. - And stop fooling around already, Dasha.

The forest parted just as suddenly as it began. Ahead was another mini-town, in which there were hardly more than fifty houses.

“Wait here,” Dasha said in an excited voice. “I’ll run away and see if there are any outsiders, and then we’ll look at our piglets.”

- What other pigs? - I wondered. “We are going to go to this damn lake to deal with the predictions of your seer!”

- I quickly! - Dasha threw, already rushing towards houses.

She had a completely original style of running: huge leaps two or three meters long. Perhaps she could easily outrun the cheetah. If desired, I could also run very, very quickly, but there was simply nothing to determine the exact speed.

Not a couple of minutes passed before Dasha returned and showed us to follow her. In the courtyard we found Dasha's sister, Masha. The last time I saw her, she did not utter a single word, and now she spoke as if nothing had happened. However, after a couple of minutes, I completely forgot about this riddle, since all my thoughts were taken by a mysterious object in the center of the courtyard.

- Here, look! - happily said, Dasha, pointing to a small piece of land, surrounded by the likeness of a fence.

We did not share the same enthusiasm with it, so we approached the suspicious design with caution. Inside was a thick layer of black slurry and a lot of unknown objects.

- And what are we supposed to admire here? - I asked, when I noticed something moving.

- But on this! - Dasha said snatching a small creature with dark blue skin and huge eyes.

I almost fainted when I realized what it was.

- Well, how? This is my Kasia, she is the smartest! - continued Dasha, wiping her own small daughter from the black mass.

- Oh, Dasha! Well, why the hell would you show them? - Avdotya said with displeasure. - But now they are terribly ugly - and Sasha will see that again he will give a tear like that night.

- So it was not a joke? - I asked in a changed voice. - About three daughters, by phone?

- And you, as we thought we multiply? - answered Dasha. - We are very few, so we use every opportunity. But this is not at all easy to do, certain conditions are necessary, and more often than not nothing happens. But with you we are very lucky.

My daughters looked like a revived nightmare, too, they reminded monsters from different films about aliens. Anya was not so stunned, so she was very interested in them. A small toothy creature named Kasya even almost bit her finger.

- Why do you keep them in this liquid? - Anya asked.

“It’s better for them, they themselves are trying to get into it,” Avdotya’s second daughter, Masha, suddenly spoke up. - So they grow faster.

- Hmm, why only girls? - Anya asked again. “And how do you even get pregnant?”

- To do this, we need a man who has not yet managed to acquire his own "keeper" or, if this happened recently, - explained Masha. - And the boys are simply not born here.

- You do not want to hold daughters? Laughed Thur, slapping me on the back.

“Nnnet,” I replied with difficulty, staring at the three hellish creatures. - I'm afraid I lose my fingers.

My fears were not unfounded: the little fairies recognized only their favorite mummies and reacted very aggressively to everyone else. In their behavior, they were very similar to the Tasmanian devils. Avdotya said that they can even get their own food. The “keeper” also directs them to edible food and water, and for some reason the forest animals do not touch them.

Dash was pretty amused by the expression on my face, it seems that for this she started it. Finally Avdotya was tired of this kind of fun: she planted all the babies back into the black muck and began to feed with some berries.

“Hehe, okay - now you can go to Black Lake,” said Dasha, slightly calming down.

Avdotya stayed with her daughter Masha and the little creatures, and we moved along the previous route. Then we had to be careful, because a lot of houses were scattered around the lake, some of which were inhabited. Me, Anya and Teira even had to disguise themselves as the purple fairies themselves. Under this cover, we more or less resembled local ones, but close contacts were better avoided. Dasha said that one should not worry too much about this - her reputation alone would scare all curious people away. And if this is not enough, she will attach them before they begin to examine her companions and ask unnecessary questions.

Black Lake is not in vain got such a name. The dull black surface was in complete calm, hardly reacting to the whiff of the wind. The shape of the lake was an ideal circle with a diameter of about three kilometers. The shores are stony, there is almost no vegetation, and even more living creatures. The spectacle was eerie, even by local alien standards.

- Wow, this I have not exactly met on Tenebris! Said Thur.

- It is filled with the very black slurry, which sat down in each of us? - Anya asked, carefully approaching the shore.

“No, this is just the top layer, and ordinary water under it,” Dasha answered.

- And what about the lake is your seer Albina? - I asked.

“She constantly turns around him, and then disappears somewhere, so it is impossible to find her,” answered Dasha.

“Didn't you try to follow her?”

“Of course I tried, and not just me,” answered Dasha. - But no one did it. In addition, Albina forbids us to approach the lake. Once she even caught me on the shore.

- Oh, what happened then? - got interested in Thur.

“She just showed up behind my back: I didn't even have time to understand how I received a stab in the back,” Dasha said. “And then this damn grandmother grabbed my foot and threw me straight into the water!” I almost died of fear, there is no bottom at all, a solid black.

- I understand that it was then that you found out that there is ordinary water under the upper layer? - I asked.

- Not only this! In vain, this shrew threw me into the lake, - Dasha smiled maliciously. - I, of course, almost managed it while trying to determine where the top is and where the bottom is. But I felt that there, at the depth, there is something very big.

“How did you determine this if absolute darkness reigns there?” - Anya noticed. - Even improved vision will not help in such conditions.

“With a special sense,” Dasha answered importantly.

“And it was impossible to take a pair of powerful flashlights and do without much instinct,” I asked.

“As if I didn’t guess by myself,” Dasha muttered. - The top black layer serves as protection, it does not miss anything except people. Or at least intelligent beings.

- And how does it work?

- Foreign objects simply dissolve, - explained Dasha. - When I got out of the water, I was completely naked.

A couple of hours we climbed along the shore, but found nothing remarkable. Along the coast there is the same gray stone and rare bushes. But Albina is clearly not spinning around here, somewhere she spent much of her time, and then crawled out with her predictions. The only thing Dasha was sure of was the fact that the so-called. The seer never entered the water.

After useless wanderings around ... Read more →