people. Still, there is an opportunity to get around this negative moment. I found a remarkable recipe of a magic potion, which can be prepared only on a full moon light. It is so forceful that it allows you to get into the real world and retain your fairy tale features. However, apart from other multiple rare ingredients, this potion requires blood of a living creature, for example an animal. Then a fairy tale character can come into the real world as this animal without being afraid to lose its capabilities. To tell you straight, I cooked this potion many times and added blood of different animals there. The potion really works. I've been visiting the real world as animals for several months already. But that was not enough for me. I suddenly wanted more," after these words Koschei sprang to his feet and walked to his portrait. "I wanted to live in the real world, to be a man, do really evil things and stop being a character of an ordinary horror story for children. So, according to the recipe, for that purpose I need to add in the potion blood of a child, not a fairy tale one, but one from the real world, moreover, one who genuinely believes in fairy tales. I couldn't find a suitable child for a long time. And I'm very glad that today it happened, and during another walk I met you."
"So you put it all up on purpose?" Vanya cried out and felt he was itching with anger. "The stone on the road? The bear? Everything? But I must upset you I don't believe in fairy tales."
"You're no use to me," Koschei replied calmly turning to the boy. "I need the girl! Since the beginning I've been trying to prevent you from leaving that iron wreck, but, unfortunately, you turned out to be smarter and quicker!" Koschei touched his swollen nose again.
"No, old man, now my sister and I will get back to our parents. Masha let's go. Masha!" Vanya looked at his little sister and only then he noticed that she was sleeping heavily at the chair.
"She will not go anywhere!" the voice of the old man changed. "She will stay here. And you can get back to your parents."
"I will not go anywhere without my sister" Vanya said and walked to Masha. He took his sister onto shoulders and headed to the hatch. "We're leaving."
"No!" Ivan bumped into Koschei, who suddenly appeared in his way. "You've had an opportunity to leave. If so, you'll never leave the fairy tale. I'll feed you to Zmey Gorynych. He will be really glad."
With these words, Koschei put out the other hand, opened his palm and blew some green powder into Ivan's face. The boy reeled and dropped on the spot.
The only thought he had, when he was falling, was "What is going to be next?". The boy fell asleep, and his little sister was snoozing nearby.
"So stupid you are, boy! Stubborn and stupid," the evil old man smiled walking around Vanya. "Well, like all other Ivans the Fools!"
Escape Attempt
Masha hardly opened heavy eyelids, which seemed to resist and deny what their master wanted.
The room was mysteriously semi-dark. The walls had torches burning with red fire and hardly visible paintings hanging on them. The girl was lying on a soft bed under a warm blanket. Somebody stirred very close to her, and she decided that was her mom.
"Mom," she said rubbing her eyes. "You can't even imagine what I saw in my dreams. First we got into a car crash, then there was a bear, then Vanya and I got into a pit with a passage. From this passage we came to… to… I don't know who we came to, but there we found a magic tablecloth, which fed us with tasty food. And what happened next, I don't really remember."
Somebody began to purr in reply. At that moment the girl finally woke up and took a look around. She instantly understood that her mom was not there, and the one she thought to be her mother was a sleeping grey cat, which reclined at ease near her legs. It purred its melody and, probably, was dreaming of something.
"What is it? the girl thought. "What kind of cat is it? Where am I?"
Masha carefully looked under the blanket and saw that she was wearing a torn dress, the same as she wore in her dreams.
"It means that all this was real!" the idea flashed across the girl's mind.
With the same care Masha got out of the bed on the floor, which was stony and very cold. Jumping from foot to foot, Masha found her shoes and quickly put them on. Then, very silently, on the tips of her toes she reached the gridded window, through which she saw all signs of night.
With a great number of big and small stars, the sky was really shining and seemed to gleam with colors. Small clouds were slowly drifting. The moon was so large that it looked like a huge round cheese with wrinkles, dimples and craters.
Masha looked down and reflexively held her breath. She found herself on top of a high tower with a very long distance to the ground.
The girl looked round, but did not find anything that could attract her attention. Suddenly, she heard a clatter and a heated argument below. Masha looked there and saw the following picture.
Some old man in a striped night-gown and a red cap hooted in the yard after a huge green Zmey Gorynych, who apparently had made him very angry.
"You, three-headed lizard! You, useless animal!" the old man shouted brandishing a strange stick and trying to whip Gorynych at his back. "I told you not to speak with him. I told you not to listen to him!"
"What have we done? We haven't done anything!" poor Gorynych only excused and dodged the zinging stick. "This Ivan got us round!"
"It's a sin not to get you round, fool," the old man, who got tired to hoot after Zmey, sighed with disappointment. "You will be punished for that."
"How?" Gorynych asked with fear. "Will you turn me into stone again?"
"Why? You are exactly like an over-grown chicken, stupid and dupable!" with these words the old man turned Gorynych into a fat spotted chicken.
"Cluck-cluck! Cluck-cluck!" the chicken clucked something indignantly waving its wings.
The old man laughed and told:
"A good chicken I've made! I'm tempted to roast you for lunch, it'll be more use. Maybe I should do it?" enchanted Gorynych, having heard such words, made several steps back, then rushed to hug the legs of the wizard.
"OK, OK then!" Koschei soothed him immediately. "You'll live like this a month or another, then we'll think what to do with you."
The chicken calmed down and slowly made its way across the yard looking for something to eat on the ground.
"Did they really spoke about Vanya? Why did he escape from them at all, and where did we get?" Masha said quietly.
Suddenly Koschei, as if he had heard the girl's words, looked at the tower, trying to see if anybody was staying at the window or not. But Masha managed to hunker down and hide.
Having waited a little, Masha with one eye then with another looked out of the window again and only noticed that the old wizard was leaving and muttering something under his breath.
The girl went to the bed and sat down but rose sharply because somebody began to move and groan under her.
"Who is trying to squash me here?" she heard somebody grumbling.
"I'm sorry, it was not inten…" Masha did not finish, as she saw she was talking to the grey cat, who looked at the girl sleepily. "Who are you, talking cat?"
"I am Puss in Boots," told the animal pompously.
"I am Masha. Where am I?"
"At the same place with me, the tower of some Koschei," the grey cat started his story. "I've been sitting here for a month already as a punishment. It all started when I went bathing in the river. When I dove, it was morning and warm; when I came up, it was evening, chilly and raining. Then I wandered the wood hungry for several days: not a mouse, not a rabbit there. In the end, I came to this castle. I thought, "Aha, the ogre is living here. I'll go and steal something from the kitchen."
"But how did you get in the castle? I don't think he meets everybody with open gates, does he?"
"I climbed to the top of a tree, then jumped into an open window and… got into the kitchen. There, in the fridge I found several