Chapter 2. 1. Comfort

  The dense foliage was intricately intertwined, like birds with long flexible necks.

  The smooth trunks entered, like spokes, into continuous merging thickets, lush, inconceivably intertwined, which were washed by the yellow muddy waters of the turbulent river.

  At the turn, the water flow suddenly calmed down and lazily splashed on the shore with bursting foam.

  The cook, his head turned with his ears pressed back, sat in blue shoe covers right by the water and looked somewhere back.

  Dark red stripes lined his powerful body, and the wool of his robe sparkled and bathed in the sun's rays.

  His paws rested on the brown earth, and his striped and thick tail, like a lemur's, was raised.

  No, there was no tail. Just a heavy ladle.

  Cascades of water splashes blossomed over the river, the fog formed by them smoothly passed into the distant haze of blue mountains, ghostly protruding from the kingdom of the jungle Energy. Beyond the soft green plain, in contrast to it, stretched gloomy impenetrable thickets, ancient trees with necklaces of various lianas, bamboo shoots, sullenly looking at the sun with a thick layer of greenery, an insatiable mouth swallowing generous warmth.

  The cook stood up and went to the bushes, bending his whole body.

  The white coat moved like a huge, well-fed python, the powerful neck moved, the cap was bent low.

  Soon he disappeared where monkeys jumped and squealed in the jungle, where hump-nosed parrots flashed, and orchids blazed on the tree trunks.

  The jungle swallowed him.

  Lagoon stirred in a tree nearby.

  I continued to look through the binoculars at the place where the highly qualified specialist had just sat.

  The decoration of any restaurant in the capital.

  “What did you see there?”

  I lowered the binoculars.

  My eyes were tired from the strain.

  “Nothing interesting,” I said.

  “Why are you holding your breath?” Lagoon asked suspiciously.

  “There was a leopard,” I said. “A big one. I've never seen one like that before.”

  “A leopard!” Lagoon said.

  “Big,” I repeated. “Fat.”

  Lagoon looked through the binoculars for a while, then lowered them and handed them back to me.

  “Maybe we should go straight to the nest?” I suggested.

  “No. I'm scared. She'll cook us.”

  “We'll turn off the device.”

  Lagoon grinned.

  “When you see the creature, you'll forget about everything.”

  “Did you see it?”

  “I didn't see it,” Lagoon admitted. “I heard. I saw a trace.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “I already told you,” Lagoon got angry. “You don't believe me.”

  Deep in the jungle there are the swamps Cabinet with vases growing like trees right out of the water, which for some reason is transparent around them.

  In them I found a wonderful watch that I was going to give to Drama.

  Between them, large bubbles of gum with an opaque shell the color of dirty foam float on the surface.

  Nauseating bubbles, sometimes they burst.

  In the thickets that surround the swamps like an impassable wall, there are huge bright red collectors.

  Having seen living creatures, they rush towards them with high jumps.

  There are dark collectors, the color of the thickets. They are even bigger, but they do not jump.

  With long tongues they seem to shoot at their prey and attract them to themselves.

  In the swamps there are other disgusting creatures, trays, reminiscent of rays.

  When they surface, their oily backs and small antennae are visible above the water – they are watching.

  They move without the slightest effort, they go under the water as if someone is pulling them from the bottom.

  It is enough to blink, as the flattened backs of them disappear without the slightest splash.

  No one really knows how dangerous they are – their appearance and habits do not encourage testing this by experience.

  On the trays you can find elegant filigree dishes.

  Engineer Conveyor, who looks like a hippopotamus, often splashes in the mountain lakes.

  He has an insatiable appetite.

  And sometimes giant multicookers Magmas descend from age-old trees, rumors of which have spread all along the coast.

  No one has seen them with their own eyes, but many locals talk about traces of such dishes or the consequences of their adventures.

  I thought that these were all legends. Appetite has big eyes.

  “I saw it myself,” said Lagoon. He got angry when someone didn't believe him. “Myself.”

  “What did you see?” I began to survey the surroundings again.

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  “A footprint in the sand,” said Lagoon.

  Lagoon thoughtlessly spread his arms, keeping his palms at shoulder level, but then doubted that it would not be enough, and spread his palms wider.

  “True,” he said, bowing his head and looking from one hand to the other, apparently comparing the considerable distance with what he saw.

  I tore myself away from the binoculars and also stared at Lagoon's hands. They trembled and moved apart again.

  “Exactly,” he said, not quite decisively.

  “So, it's the size of a table,” I stated.

  “Why a table?” Lagoon was surprised.

  “It's even bigger than a table.”

  “So, it's a table,” Lagoon said, agreeing. He got tired of holding his hands up and lowered them.

  “Why do you think that a slow cooker should come to the river?”

  “It should!” Lagoon said confidently. “They often come. They need to drink.”

  “Do slow cookers drink water from the river?” I asked, puzzled.

  “Of course!” Lagoon said insistently. “They drink, of course. They drink water. Darkness.”

  “So, she didn't come today?”

  “Or we missed her. Why do you need her?”

  “I'll give her to our home cook.”

  We went down and followed the path.

  Lianas hung limply around us, and invisible birds screamed desperately in different voices high above.

  “Client has guests,” said Lagoon. “I saw a car drive up today, and they got out with their things. The daughter of the new mayor.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “I was sitting on the fence.”

  “That's reasonable.”

  “We need to deceive her. Guests are circumstances. Remember how our holiday began?”

  That's right. With deception. You lie about a guest, and an event appears.

  “They will probably come to you today.”

  “I don't need guests...” I grumbled.

  “Will you be home?”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “We'll go to Plagiarism. It will be fun today.”

  “It's always fun there.”

  Plagiarism was the most remote bar in the city. It was a real club right next to the slums.

  Everything was fine, but relatives, neighbors, former friends confidently chose it as a favorite place to clear up old accumulated grievances.

  Recently, a relative used a serious toy weapon and created a precedent: now not a single evening goes by without conflicts.

  And, as a rule, tourists suffer.

  The tourists posted a policeman, but the neighbor again became unbearable, and this neighbor was not alone, so the fight broke out uncompromising, and together they managed to paint all the visitors, the colorful pattern was also on the policeman.

  Real duels are held in the bar, and the atmosphere is always brewing, like in westerns.

  The tourists closed the public bar. But the other day, guests reopened it.

  Bully Lagoon was there yesterday.

  He says that everything is decent, clean and shiny.

  There are few visitors. They are meteorologists in disguise.

  “Do you think we can go there?” I asked, having listened to Lagoon.

  “Of course we can!” said Lagoon. “It's like a restaurant now. “He raised his hand majestically. “We'll sit and talk...”

  “Of course we can,” I agreed. “How are we going to catch the multicooker?”

  “Do you need this multicooker!” Lagoon said haughtily. “Have you ever seen saucepans?”

  “I've never seen any like these...” I sighed. “With tentacles...”

  “We'll definitely find an item for the kitchen,” said Lagoon magnanimously. “Tomorrow. In the morning.”

  “Do you think we'll wake up in the morning?” I said doubtfully. “Agreed.”

  The jungle is over.

  There was sand here, solid sand, the beach was infinitely long, hidden in the haze, and wide, and the sand was completely white and very fine, like flour, and huge boulders began to appear in different positions, and standing too, dark, burnt by the sun, they were like stone idols without faces, left by aliens, and between them stuck out rare dry thorns that could easily pierce a foot.

  Behind one of the boulders a boat was hidden.

  We dragged it to the water.

  The sand creaked and hissed, and a smooth, smoothly deepening trace from the bottom remained, and the boat finally rocked on a wave, Lagoon, already sitting in it, fussily twirled the oars, catching the surface with them and sending splashes across it.

  I jumped and sat down next to Lagoon, who was rowing furiously.

  A foamy wake remained behind the boat.

  Beyond the invisible line connecting the edges of the bay, the boat began to rock like a duck, from side to side, noticeably stronger, here a large swell was moving across the ocean.

  Lagoon and I, barely able to stay on our feet, changed places.

  “I don't see Client,” said Lagoon, lying comfortably in the boat. “Is he sick?”

  “I don't see him either,” I said.

  “Neighbors!”

  “He disappeared.”

  The hard-hearted Lagoon disliked Client, the plump son of a successful lawyer.

  Our cottages were next to each other, and Lagoon constantly made clumsy jokes about this, pretending to be surprised that we had not become best friends.

  “Look how the spire sparkles,” said Lagoon.

  “Where?” I said. I was rowing hard. Lagoon's head was in the way.

  “Between the palm trees.”

  “Maybe it's golden?” I said, looking ahead.

  “Maybe it's edible?” suggested Lagoon.

  “Maybe. Let me see.”

  We changed places again, and I saw that the spire of the observatory Toast really did sparkle, as if covered in lemon icing, and sparkled between the palm trees.

  The shore was left behind.

  The further the boat moved away from it into the open ocean Ballast, the more picturesque and majestic it looked.

  The bay from which we cast off became quite small.

  There was brown and green there - bushes grew on the rocks, eternally wet at the foot.

  Along the entire shore, as far as the eye could see, stretched the white, dazzling, sparkling strip of beach Compartment, deserted even here, so close to the city.

  In the morning and evening, single tourists appeared in folding chairs - gentle aristocrats, taking sunbaths here, without fail, by the hour.

  Their clean, white skin easily, bashfully blushed under the stream of morning ultraviolet light, and none of them were missing for the whole day.

  True, it wasn't their fault. Few could stand the daytime heat.

  All living things took cover wherever there was a saving shadow.

  Sometimes, in the hottest part of the sun, you could see a group of optimists on the shore, migrating from place to place.

  These were gloomy guys without personalities, ready for anything, with tanned skin, soft faces and kind smiles.

  They wandered along the beach, looking at empty sun loungers, kicked empty boxes, tin cans and, turning into dots, disappeared into the distance.

  “Let me row,” I said.

  I sat down at the oars.

  It was starting to get hot.

  The sky was clear and deep, a light breeze was blowing.

  The shore disappeared into the shimmering fog.

  There were only waves around, dark green, transparent, elastic, and a multitude of blinding glare between them.

  I breathed deeply, pushing on the oars, and looked over my shoulder - did the land appear?

  I noticed her when she was already very close - the sandbank in this part of the island was narrow, washed out by the waves, and from afar it was hidden by the foamy crests of even the lowest waves.

  Lagoon and I immediately, almost simultaneously, jumped into the water, spreading our arms, pushing sharply from the side with our feet, so that the boat shook violently, and, raising a cascade of splashes, we went into the depths.

  Air bubbles stretched after us.

  Through the thickness of the water, one could see how unclear sun circles and glare were spreading along the bottom, and green algae were growing from them.

  They were moving, and between them, wriggling, now freezing, then, as if on command, quickly, with a turn, schools of striped flat fish moved, as if they were being blown away by an underwater wind.

  Knee-deep in water, I pulled the boat onto the sand and began to examine the surface.

  Soon Lagoon emerged and, snorting like a walrus, swam to the shore.

  “Look,” I said quietly. “Look who's there.”

  “Excellent,” answered Lagoon. “I see.”