Lucien the hedgehog in the town of strange people

Chapter 4. The unexpected guest

Taking Lucien in his arms, Artem went upstairs. The sister followed him, although she was not eager to sneeze constantly from dust in a room with hanging webs. She thought so, because she had only been to her brother's room a few times. The last was before Christmas, when the mom asked her for help with cleaning, and that ended up lasting for a few hours.

"And I've seen these things many times. Only big ones," said the hedgehog, glossing over a car on the wallpaper on the wall.

Dasha stayed at the foot of the bed. Oddly enough, her brother's room was not as dirty as she had imagined. There are no spiders in sight, and there is only one web in the corner behind the door. On the table there is a pile of books, notebooks and plasticine lumps; dust on the chest of drawers; and an inverted backpack lying against the wall. And that's it!

Artem put the hedgehog next to his sister and went to the table. He was embarrassed that Lucien saw his school supplies that were out of place.

It'll be a good lesson for him. Maybe now he will stop throwing things around. Dasha smiled crookedly, noticing her brother's confusion.

"Of course, you saw; many people have them. Our parents have it too. We drive these things. They’re called "cars", Artem explained to the hedgehog, choosing textbooks from the pile. Somehow, he stuffed them into his desk drawer.

"Why do people drive them?"

"Well, on them faster than on foot," replied Artem, pushing the plasticine figures off the table onto the retractable keyboard shelf. When the parents bought this table for a new school year, he immediately adapted this shelf for plasticine. And now there were so many figurines on the shelf that it was difficult to fit new ones.

"Oh!" the hedgehog suddenly shuddered and felt himself from top to bottom, as if checking invisible pockets. "I've lost! Lost my spoon! What will I do without it?"

"We left it in the kitchen! I will bring it now," Dasha said and came out.

Artem carried the hedgehog onto the table and stood nearby.

"You probably know a lot of spells…" he said quietly.

"No, not much. Before, yes, now I have forgotten a lot of things," Lucien answered with sadness in his voice.

There were loud exclamations outside the window, sounds of fuss. The hedgehog turned and looked down at the hot afternoon street. Two women were fighting with their bags in the middle of the street. Natalia Fedorovna sat on the threshold of her house and took turns encouraging one or the other.

"What are they doing?" The hedgehog was surprised.

"Well, they're struggling."

"Why?"

"They probably had a falling out."

"It's abnormal."

"It's normal…"

Dasha returned, twirling the small, shiny thing in her fingers.

"That's what I found!"

Lucien shone.

Dasha handed the hedgehog his valuable item.

"It's good that you remembered about it right away. Fox already wanted to drag it away. I had to take it from him."

"Thank you! Fox, who is it?"

"The cat that's grey. Matvey, tabby, slept, but Fox was walking around it."

"It's hard to expect decency from a predator." The hedgehog looked closely at his thing and rubbed it on his fair tummy.

"You promised to let us see it," Artem reminded him.

"There is something on it – some multicolored spots, but such small ones, you can't see what it is," said Dasha to her brother.

"Right, you need a magnifying glass for it. There are a lot of interesting things on my spoon…" The hedgehog smiled mysteriously.

"A magnifier, right? I have it! Now I will find…" Artem began to take out all the contents from the drawers of the table and throw them on the floor.

The sister looked at the growing pile with displeasure. It seemed like there was everything you could imagine, and even more. Textbooks with notebooks, only removed in the drawer. Colorful erasers in the form of dinosaurs and animals that Artem valued like jewels. Scribbled notebooks for all his school years, starting with the first grade. Lots of broken toys. A heap of rumpled sheets with drawings of robots and alien creatures. Throwing them, Artem almost hit his sister.

"What are you doing?" Dasha waved the papers away.

"What, what… I can't find it!" Artem replied irritably.

"Help you?" Lucien asked the boy calmly.

"No, I'll do it."

Finally, Artem reached the lower drawer. The magnifying glass was securely hidden under Christmas decorations.

"This is it," Artem put it on the table in front of the hedgehog.

Lucien looked at the magnifying glass with such an important and serious expression on his face, as if he were a tenth-generation glass master.

"Yes, it will do," he finally said and stepped back.

Dasha took the magnifying glass by the handle and brought it close to the spoon. Then she lifted it a little higher.

"Whoa…"

"Let me see too!" Artem impatiently demanded.

"One second… Here, take it."

Artem hurriedly sat down in his computer chair, bent over the magnifying glass. There was something to be surprised at: on the handle of the copper object there were many relief images of different animals and birds: a lion, a whale, an eagle, a hare, a tortoise, an antelope and others. Everyone was smaller than a bead and had color, coinciding with the color of the real animal: the lion was sandy beige, the elephant was gray, and the monkey and bear were brown.

"Wow…" the boy said, stunned.

"Why are animals here? Why these animals?" Dasha asked Lucien and returned to bed.

"All of them… I wouldn't call them just "animals." That doesn't sound very respectful." The hedgehog replied.

"Oh, sorry."

"They are the progenitors of all magicians. Fine leaders. They are immortalized on every Grifost's cutlery. It is thanks to them that wizards came to the Earth."

"Grifost is on Earth, right? Where did you come from then? I don't understand…" Artem looked up from the magnifying glass and raised his eyes to the hedgehog.

"It's on Earth, but people can't see it," Lucien replied and took the spoon. He took his paw behind his back and hid his valuable object in his needles. In some unfathomable way, the bronze thing was fixed at the roots of his needles, becoming almost invisible. "I'll tell you from the beginning. For a very long time, all the wizards lived on one of Saturn's moons. At the biggest. You call it "Titan." People call it like that," the hedgehog corrected himself, guessing from the faces of the children that they were hearing about Titan for the first time.

"Wait. Does Saturn have moons? Only a big ring, that's it," Artem doubted.

"Saturn has several dozen moons and many rings. The rings are located close to each other, so it seems like this is only one." Lucien sat on the table's edge and hung down his lower paws.

"Just a minute!" asked Artem, taking out the phone from his pocket. "I'll check it on the Internet!"

"All right," the hedgehog agreed. The word "Internet" was unfamiliar to him, but he did not question the boy. He wanted to share his thoughts and knowledge. For a long time, he had not spoken to anyone. He has already forgotten how pleasant it is. Moreover, he felt that the children would not tell anyone what he would tell them. And how long before there's someone else, can he share his secrets with?

Dasha was not going to wait for her brother.

"He doesn't want to listen!" she said. "Tell me!"

Lucien was surprised by her impatience.

"We're not in a hurry, are we?"

In a hurry, poking his fingers across the screen, Artem typed "Sturn" instead of "Saturn." But a browser anyway found the necessary; Lucien's words were confirmed.

"Yes, that's true," the boy uttered indistinctly, putting his phone in his pocket.

"Can I keep going?" the hedgehog asked.

"Sure…" Artem answered, looking wary of his sister.

"So, it was incredibly hard to live there. Imagine: there is almost no atmosphere, dust stands like fog, visibility is very low, very intensely cold and millions of meteors are flying here and there. The magicians defended themselves from them almost all the time, changed their trajectory, destroyed them and used other methods."

"Why did the wizards settle there? Or were they there from the very beginning?" Dasha asked.

"I don't know that. All history books in Grifost from that time begin. Maybe the wizards were born there. Maybe they flew from there. I didn't find anything about it anywhere. But I tried, yes," the hedgehog sadly explained.

"Books, textbooks?" asked Artem with distrust.

"Yes?"

"You can read?!"

It seems the hedgehog almost lost his speech, so surprised he was.

"Unlike you!" Dasha snorted at her brother.

"I just asked…"

Regaining his composure, Lucien calmly declared:

"I can assure you that I can do more than just read. I know all human languages, even the most ancient ones, which people no longer use. Human languages were not part of my training program; I taught them on my own. As it turned out, it was not in vain. Thanks to this, I can understand you. Should I continue telling?"

"Yes, please," Dasha said, while her brother was focused on his toenails.

"Once the rulers, the ones on the spoon, decided to find a new place to live. They could not decide where to go for a long time. Kerb, who is the lion, suggested one planet. Rinal, the hare, another. Juf, the whale, is the third. Everyone had a celestial body in mind. That prompted a vote. That's how we ended up here."

"That's all?" Artem asked with some frustration.

"What do you mean?"

"I thought you would tell how they got here, how they flew in space; it's such a long distance… Well, between Earth and Saturn."

"Why are you so stupid?" Dasha hissed to her brother. "How can you not understand this?"

"We can move any distance. Magicians, I mean. And the progenitors were extremely strong wizards. A good spell, amplified by every person in attendance, and here we are."

"Ah, now I see… I also wanted to ask…" Artem began carefully and intensely, pretending that he had not heard her sister and didn't notice her at all.

"Of course, what do you want to know?"

"Where exactly is Grifost? You never said."

"It's here on Earth, but you can't get into it without a kebo. It's a magical object, like a badge of honor. They gave it to the most diligent and capable disciples in Grifost. And now, probably, they also give it. A very powerful thing. I also had a kebo." Lucien said sadly. "For me, it was a wig."

"I can't believe!" Artem exclaimed.

"A wig?" Dasha's face lit up with an astonished smile.

"Yes, a wig…" Lucien was confused, not realizing why the children were so amused. "Not a usual one that people wear to hide the absence of hair but made from a substance brought from Saturn. Leonard kept it for many centuries."

"Leonard?"

"Ruler of Grifost. He often said that I have a special ability for magic and a desire for study, which not every wizard has. That's why he gave me kebo." After a little silence, Lucien perked up: "I remembered! I have something else interesting! Show you?"

"Yes!"

"Sure!"

The hedgehog pulled an oval-shaped, dark-blue object resembling a river pebble from his needles and placed it on the table. Artem turned, not getting up from the chair; Dasha came up; both looked at the thing.

"Looks like a stone…" Artem looked inquisitively at the hedgehog. He expected to see something more interesting than a blue piece of rock.

"What is it?" Dasha asked Lucien.

"It's burron. It sings".

"Like a player or a phone? Does it have songs in it?" Dasha clarified.

"No, no. It has no songs. It's alive. Feels the mood of its owner and begins to play something suitable… You just need to push on it. It is so fun! Listen," the hedgehog touched the corner of the little thing with his claw. The object glowed with a cold white light and began to make sounds like hissing and cackling.

The brother and sister looked at each other in confusion.

"I'm sorry. I will now change this language into yours," Lucien said, noticing the bewilderment of the children, and hit the pebble with his finger. A rhythmic melody replaced the strange sounds; almost immediately, the words were heard:

It's time to sing with pleasure,

And enjoy dancing!

Forget about shyness

And overcome everything!

"It's amazing…" Dasha whispered, stunned.

"Well, do you see? It realized that today I'm set for any activity… Wonderful thing," the hedgehog smiled at the children.

The music went quiet.

"Will it sing anything to me? If I want to?" asked Artem.

"No, it only sings to its owner. It can sing to others only, if necessary," Lucien replied, hiding the burron in his needles.

"Did Leonard give it to you too?" Sat down in the chair, Artem looked at the hedgehog.

Dasha sat on the floor with her back against the bed and waved in the face of her palm: "Too hot here."

"No, I found it. There is one special lake in Grifost. The water there is so affectionate and caring; it supports bathers on the surface; you can relax and not think about anything… Lightly rinses with its waves. Melodically seething, motion sickness that you do not notice how you fall asleep… And near it, on the shore, there are so many burrons! And they also glow in the dark."

The hedgehog became so sad, and the children no longer wanted to disturb him with questions.

"Okay," Artem said, and he got out of his chair. "It's time for you to sleep."

"Yes, now I'm lulling you!" The girl picked up.

The boy carried the hedgehog to the bed.

"Lu-lli-ng?" Lucien asked Dasha and looked at the ceiling with tension.

The girl covered him with a blanket.

"You're tired; have a rest…" the girl said affectionately, stroking his needles with her finger.

"Don't be afraid," Artem encouraged the hedgehog, and turned to the pile of things he had thrown out of the drawers of his table. Standing a little with a dejected look, he began to put the things back, not worrying about neatness. Only drawings of monsters remained on the floor. Then the boy started opening and closing the desk drawers, checking to see if anything was sticking out.

"Hey!" Dasha was indignant. "Stop, it's very loud!"

"Okay, okay…"

Artem retreated from the table and began picking up sheets with his

drawings. And suddenly, half straightened, he froze with a concentrated face.

"Did you hear?" he whispered to his sister.

"Heard what?"

"There is someone there!" the brother quickly said and ran out of the room, dropping his drawings.

Lucien frowned and crawled across the bed closer to the wall.

Artem's voice was heard outside the door. A girly voice answered him, which seemed familiar to Dasha.

"I'll go see," she whispered warily, rose, pushed aside the drawings that were getting in the way, and walked out.

Artem was standing one step away from the door of the room, facing the stairs.

"She's not home," he told someone.

Dasha stepped aside and saw on the upper step Nastya who was wearing a short skirt and high-soled sandals. The classmate was leaning her shoulder against the wall.

"Hi!" Nastya waved her friend's hand and, with contempt, glanced at Artem: "She's not home, right?"

"She stood here near the door and eavesdropped," Artem told his sister, turning around.

"Hi, I didn't expect you now…" Dasha muttered, not taking her eyes off her classmate.

Artem looked at his sister with undisguised disapproval. We have a magic hedgehog. Why doesn't she kick this grandstander out of our house?

Nastya went to great lengths to stand out, even trying to make her voice higher and ringing, like the female character of old cartoons. Obviously, she couldn't raise her voice to that pitch. Because of this, the students had to endlessly enjoy her squeaky falsetto during recess. Artem was lucky that he hardly hears or sees Nastya because lessons in her class are held on the second floor underground. But not everyone was so lucky. There were a lot of people at school who detested her, but they didn't show it because they didn't want to attract Tatiana Yulievna's attention. Some schoolchildren fawned over Nastya because of her mother, but Nastya believed that this was only her merit, and she became increasingly inflated with her own importance. Also, teachers avoid asking Nastya in class – half of a lesson will pass while she answers, emphasizing stresses and deliberately stretching words.

"I noticed. You promised to come. I've been waiting for you for half a day. I called a million times. Have you lost your phone?" Nastya said to Dasha, making pronounced spaces between words. Of the three, only she was in a good mood, as if eavesdropping under the door was a common thing for her.

"Uh-uh… no. I didn't have time."

"What do you do? Something important?" Nastya approached Dasha. At every step, her high sandals tried to lay to one side or the other. It was like the first time she wore shoes like this, although in fact she had been wearing high heels for several months.

"Nothing, go home," Artem said, looking at the floor. Why, why doesn't his sister kick her out?

Nastya casually dismissed Artem as something insignificant and almost lost her balance again.

"I know you have someone here," she said to Dasha. "Who are you hiding?"

"We do not hide anyone…" Dasha started to answer, but Artem didn't let her finish. He interrupted his sister and rudely shouted to the impudent girl:

"Get out!"

Nastya gave him a dismissive look and turned her head to Dasha.

"I see it's pointless to speak to you," she delivered, singing "pointless". "Then I'll check it myself." She went to the door to Artem's room with a shaky gait.

Angry, Artem blocked her path.

"Where are you going? To MY room?"

"Get out of my way!" commanded Nastya, as if she did not want to get into someone else's room but into her own.

Artem did not move. Then Nastya sneaked between him and the wall and almost reached the door handle. But Artem pushed her and pressed his back against the door. Nastya began to rest on his side with her hands, trying to push him away.

"Scram, you, stupid!" she jangled in an ordinary, nonmusical voice.

Artem stood firmly, not giving the guest any opportunity to get into the coveted room, beat her on her hands, and threatened, "I'll throw you down the stairs!"

Dasha looked at the struggle with a dejected expression; her fingers were crossed, and her hands were hanging down. She did not like the manner of her classmate, but it was scary to object she did not want to be the next Maria Bratishko or Arina Lokhanskaya. Nastya used to be friends with them, but now she tells nasty things about them and their families everywhere. Also, she got her mother to gossip about them.

"Freak! Get out of here!" Nastya yelled, pushing Artem.

"Crazy chicken, come on, come on, stick your hand here; I'll pinch it now with the door…" Artem was sentencing, pulling Nastya's hand to the gap between the door and the door opening, while the nasty girl tried to grab the door handle. In addition, now and then, the boy glanced at his sister with a call to action.