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Chapter 6

We walked through a bunch of empty rooms and found ourselves in a huge hall. Here, the walls were covered in beautiful handwriting that described all of the different grammar rules. It seemed like our journey started off very well. I easily remembered the rules and opened the lock! If this was indicative of all the obstacles in this land, I would have absolutely no problem surviving here…

In the depths of the hall sat an old man with white hair and a white beard. He sat in a high chair and had he been holding a little Christmas tree in his hands, I would have mistaken him for Santa Claus. The old man’s white cloak was embroidered with shiny black silk. When I got a little closer, I noticed that the cloak was embroidered with punctuation marks.

A hunched old woman with evil red eyes was buzzing in the old man’s ear and was pointing at me with her hand. We immediately grew to dislike the old woman. She reminded Kuzya of Lucy’s grandmother, who often hit him with a broom for stealing her sausages.

“I hope that you will devise an appropriate punishment for this ill-educated young man, Your Majesty, the Imperative Verb!” said the old woman.

The old man looked at me very crossly.

“Oh, stop it! Don’t be so mad, Comma!” he ordered the old woman.

It turns out that she is a Comma! Oh, and was she angry!

“How can I not be mad, Your Majesty? After all, the boy has not once put me in the correct place!”

The old man shot me a stern look and waved his hand for me to approach the throne. I came closer.

“Would you just look at him! It is immediately clear that he is illiterate!” hissed the Comma.

Was it really that noticeable in my face? Or was she able to read it in my eyes, just like my mother?

“Tell me how you’re doing at school!” ordered His Majesty the Verb.

“Tell him that you’re doing well,” whispered Kuzya in my ear. I felt shy and simply answered that I was doing just like everyone else.

“Do you know any grammar rules?” asked the Comma sarcastically.

“Tell her that you know them perfectly well,” Kuzya suggested once again.

I gave him a slight shove with my foot and answered that I know the rules of grammar no worse than others in my class. After I had opened the castle lock with the help of my knowledge, I had every right to answer this way.

Enough of the questions about my grades, I thought. Ignoring Kuzya’s cues, I told everybody that I had various grades for every subject.

“Various?” hissed the comma. “I suppose that now would be a good time to check them out!”

I wondered how she would do that without my report card. I didn’t bring it with me.

“Bring in the Papers,” the old woman yelled in a nasty voice.

Little men with identical round faces rushed into the hall. Some had black dots embroidered on white dresses, while others had commas, and others yet had both dots and commas. Two little men brought forth a giant blue book. When they opened it up, I realized that it was the workbook for my grammar class. For some reason, it was now bigger than me.

The Comma showed everyone the first page of the workbook. Now that the workbook was enlarged to such extreme proportions, it looked even uglier. An awful lot of corrections in red ink. And how many ink stains! I guess I had a really bad pen back then. At the very bottom of the page, there was a big red D, which looked a little bit like a sideways bowl of soup.

“It’s a D!” gloated the Comma, as if it wasn’t immediately clear that this was a D and not an A.

His Majesty the Verb ordered to turn the page. Two little men ran up to the workbook and flipped the page. The workbook groaned, as if in pain. The second page contained a summary paragraph. It seemed to be even worse than the previous assignment, as there was an F at the bottom of the page.

“Flip the page,” the Verb ordered.

The workbook groaned even more pitifully than before. It’s a good thing that nothing was written on the third page. I simply drew a stick figure on it with a long nose and narrow eyes. Clearly, there were absolutely no errors here, as the only three words on the page were: “Zis iz Nick.”

“Shall we flip the page?” inquired the Comma, even though she quite clearly saw that there were no more pages left in the workbook. The workbook contained only three pages, as I ripped out the rest to make paper airplanes.

“Enough,” growled the old man. “Why did you tell us that your grades were all different?”

“If I may meow,” Kuzya interjected. “Indeed, my master was correct. The notebook not only contains a D, but an F as well. So, his grades are, in fact, different.”

The Comma let out an annoying giggle and Stick cried out in delight:

“Ah! Oh! I get it! Oh! Funny! Smarty-pants!”

I stood there, motionless. It wasn’t very clear to me what was happening. My ears and cheeks were burning. I couldn’t bring myself to look the old man in the eye. So, without looking at him, I said that he knows who I am and knows everything about me, but I don’t know who they are. Kuzya enthusiastically supported me. In his opinion, they were playing a very unfair game.

All this while, His Majesty the Verb carefully listened to us. After we were done, he promised to show us all of his subjects and introduce them. He waved a ruler in midair; music rang out, and little men with dots on their dresses ran out into the middle of the hall. They began to dance and sing:

Precision is our game,

They call us lovely Periods.

To write correctly every time,

You’ll need to know our place!

Kuzya asked if I knew where to put them. I replied that I sometimes put them in the correct place.

The Verb waved his ruler in the air again and the Periods were replaced by two little people with two commas on their dresses.

We are funny sisters,

The inseparable Quotation Marks.

“If I start a single phrase,” one of them sang,

“I’ll know to end it after,” the other one picked up.

Quotation Marks! I know them! I know them, and I don’t like them. If I ever put them down, the teacher tells me that they shouldn’t be there. If I don’t put them down, the teacher always tells me that they were necessary. You can’t ever guess correctly with these guys.

After the Quotation Marks, came the turn of Hook and Stick. What a funny couple they were!

The Hook sang in a deep voice:

Everyone knows me and my brother,

As we are an expressive bunch.

Am I the most significant?

The Question Mark?

And the Stick sang a very short verse:

I am the most wonderful!

The Exclamation Mark!

The Question Mark and the Exclamation Mark! My old friends! They were slightly better than the rest of the punctuation marks. They were seldom used, therefore they seldom got me into trouble. Besides, they were a lot more pleasant than this evil hunchback Comma. But at this point, she was already standing in front of me and Kuzya, singing in her squeaky voice:

A dot with a ponytail,

So small and insignificant.

Of all the other signs,

I am the Holy Grail.

For everyone to read the lines,

They’ll need to know me well.

And everyone, no doubt,

Knows what the Commas tell.

Even Kuzya’s hair was sticking straight up from such unpleasant singing. He asked for my permission to yank the Comma’s ponytail and turn her into a period. Of course, I did not allow him to do that. Even I wanted to say something to the old woman, but I had to somehow restrain myself. Who knows, maybe if you’re rude, they won’t even let you out of here. And that wouldn’t be good, as I longed to leave this place as soon as possible. Ever since I saw my workbook.

I quietly went up to the Verb and asked him if I could leave the castle. The old man didn’t even have a chance to open his mouth, when the Comma started screaming across the hall:

“Absolutely not! First, let him prove that he can apply grammar rules properly!”

She immediately started coming up with various words on which to test my knowledge.

Fortunately for me, a huge dog ran into the hall. Kuzya, of course, immediately started hissing and jumped up onto my shoulder. But the dog could care less about him. I bent down to pet it.

“Ah, so it appears you like dogs!” said the Comma with malice in her voice and clapped her hands. A black chalkboard immediately appeared in front of me once again, this time with the word “PU…Y”.

I quickly realized what was happening, picked up the chalk, and wrote the letter P into the blank space. PUPY.

The Comma burst out laughing. The Verb frowned with his big gray eyebrows. The Exclamation Mark whined and wailed. The dog bared its teeth and growled at me. I got scared of its evil look and started running away. The dog chased after me. Kuzya hissed, frantically clutching at my jacket with his claws. I figured out that I had put in the wrong letters, quickly returned to the board, and added another P to the blank space. PUPPY. The dog immediately stopped growling, licked my hand, and ran out of the hall. Now I will never forget that a puppy is spelled with two Ps.

“Maybe only this dog was spelled with two Ps?” inquired Kuzya. “And all the others are spelled with a single P?”

“The cat is just as ignorant as its owner,” the Comma giggled gleefully. Kuzya objected that he knew dogs better than she did. In his opinion, one can always expect meanness from them.

As Kuzya was explaining this to the Comma, a ray of sunshine peeked through one of the tall windows. The room immediately got brighter.

“Ah! The sun! Wonderful! Lovely!” exclaimed the Exclamation Mark joyfully.

“Your Majesty, the sun,” the Comma whispered to the Verb. “Ask the boy…”

“Very well,” the Verb agreed and waved his hand. The word ‘puppy’ disappeared from the blackboard and was replaced by the word ‘sunny’.

“Which letter is missing?” asked the Question Mark.

I read the word again: SU…NY. In my opinion, there were no missing letters. It was a trick question! And I was determined not to fall for it! If all of the letters were there, why should I insert any extra ones? You should have seen what happened when I said this out loud! The Comma laughed like crazy. The Exclamation Mark started crying and fidgeting. The Verb started to frown more and more. The hall suddenly became dark and very cold.

“Ah! Alas! Oh! The sun! I’m dying!” cried the Exclamation Mark.

“Where’s the sun? Where is the heat? Where is the light?” the Question Mark asked over and over.

“The boy angered the sun!” the Verb roared angrily.

“I’m freezing,” Kuzya cried and clung to me.

“Answer how the word ‘sunny’ is spelled!” ordered the Verb.

How, I wondered, do you spell the word ‘sunny’? Zoya Fillipovna had always advised us to change the word for a similar one that you know how to spell. Perhaps I should try it? And I started shouting: “Sunny! Bunny! Funny!” Yes! A double consonant had revealed itself. I grabbed the chalk and quickly added another N. At that very moment, the sun peered into the cold hall. It was bright and warm once more. For the first time in my life, I realized how much I love the sun.

“Long live sunny weather with a double consonant!” I shouted out.

“Hooray! The sun! Shine! Joy! Life!” shouted the Exclamation Mark.

I spun around on one leg and began to shout:

Say hello

To the merry sun.

Otherwise,

It would be no fun!

“Quiet!” shouted the Verb.

Everybody froze. The fun was sucked right out of the air around me. Somehow, everything became unpleasant and a little scary.

“It seems that a fourth-grade student, Viktor Perestukin, who has arrived here,” said the old man sternly, “has revealed a rare, ugly ignorance and contempt for his native language. For this, he shall be severely punished. I’m retiring to deliberate on the possible sentence for him. Enclose Perestukin into square brackets!”

His Majesty the Verb started walking away. The Comma ran after him, chattering into his ear:

“No mercy! You shall show him no mercy, Your Majesty!”

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