It was a beautiful April day, though you wouldn’t have guessed it from the way Majka and Maxík were walking. They were practically running down the Main Street in Košice, the capital of Haravara. Kaško, their ghost friend, hadn’t shown up for several days, which meant he was sick or something had happened—and that something could be anything.
“What if he hit his head on the bell at Elizabeth’s?!” Majka even thought of this in her desperation.
“I told him several times not to just fly around there,” Majka continued, getting upset.
“Or maybe he was flying around somewhere in that ghost world of theirs and ran into a wizard,” Maxík continued with his terrifying scenarios, “and maybe that wizard turned him into a bar of soap.”
“Or into a goose, but probably not—he wouldn’t turn him into an animal,” Majka mused.
While they were imagining these super-scary scenarios, they made their way to the tower where Kaško lived. They climbed all the way up and saw it there. Kaško was rummaging through books; about 157 books were lying on the floor, and there were papers and scribbled pieces of stone everywhere.
“Kaško,” Majka said quietly, not wanting to disturb him.
“Kaško,” Maxík also began quietly when he saw Kaško darting from book to book, then flying out the window, coming back inside, and then banging his head against the tower wall and shouting, “Recall, recall, Kaškoooooooo!!!”
“Kaško!” Majka raised her voice a little, but Kaško didn’t even notice them.
“It might still be there!” Kaško shouted and flew toward Maxík.
He stopped in front of him and, instead of saying hello, began examining his backpack.
“Maybe I left it here!”
“Kaško!!!!” Maxík called out in a loud voice.
“Don’t be mad, guys, but today—and probably the next few days too—I won’t have time,” Kaško kept darting from place to place.
“We can see you don’t have enough time,” Majka surveyed the mess once more, “but we haven’t seen you in a few days and we don’t know what’s going on with you.”
“It’s over for me,” Kaško sat down on the window of the big tower.
“But what happened?” Maxík walked over to him.
“What could have happened! I lost it,” Kaško stated dryly.
“But what did you lose?” Majka came closer and began stroking his hand.
“I lost the ice cream recipe,” Kaško blurted out.
“For what?” they both shouted at once, and Majka stopped stroking him.
“For our ghostly ice cream,” Kaško looked at them blankly.
“You have your own ice cream?!” Maxík imagined it in his mind.
“Of course, we don’t have just any kind, but a cherry one,” Kaško smacked his lips.
“Why cherry?” Majka asked, trying to remember what they’d learned about cherries.
“You probably don’t know this,” Kaško explained, looking through the books again, “but we, ghosts, only like a few things. I don’t know why that is, but it’s been that way for thousands of years, and one thing we love is cherries and everything related to cherries.”
“Oh, and you don’t know why that is?” Maxík smirked.
“We don’t, but that’s exactly why there are so many of us right here in Haravara,” Kaško continued, taking four more books from the shelf and flipping through them.
“Because we have the best cherries in Haravara?” Majka asked, trying to understand Kaško’s words.
“You don’t know that?” Kaško looked at them over the open book.
“What should we know?” the children looked at him curiously.
“You don’t know anything about Brdárka?!”
“Is that some kind of female author who writes about cherries?” Majka wondered, since it sounded like a writer’s name.
“Or is she a kind of plant breeder who bred some amazing cherries,” Maxík chimed in.
“No, it’s a place in Haravara. It’s a small village with huge cherry orchards, and there used to be as many as 120 varieties of cherries growing there.”
“120 varieties?” Maxík and Majka couldn’t believe it and imagined what 120 varieties of cherries might taste like.
“And that’s not all. These cherries are blooming right now, in April,” Kaško explained nervously.
“Wow, let’s go there!” Majka shouted with joy, imagining those beautiful cherry blossoms.
“We could, but we can’t,” Kaško replied strangely, though he’d still be running back and forth all day.
“Explain!” they stopped Kaško.
“We ghosts take turns,” Kaško began slowly.
“What do you take turns with?” they wouldn’t let Kaško go back to the books.
“Every year, one of us has to make cherry ice cream for the whole year and store it, and most importantly, it has to be made according to an old recipe, because that’s the only kind we ghosts can eat,” Kaško whined again.
“But you still have time; the cherries don’t grow until sometime…” Majka tried to cheer him up.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, but we, ghosts, make our ice cream not from cherries, but from cherry blossoms,” Kaško whispered the big secret to his friends.
“And that’s right now,” Maxík realised.
“In a few days, the blossoms will slowly fall to the ground like snow, and I have to catch them all, gather them, and make ice cream,” Kaško began fluttering about again.
“Then let’s go catch the petals—we’ll have winter in spring,” Majka joked.
“But I lost my note on where to find that recipe,” Kaško began whining strangely again, “my friend Gerhard sent it to me—he made ice cream a year ago—and I pinned it somewhere or filed it away or…”
“Kaško?” Majka asked timidly.
“Not now, Maji,” Kaško growled nervously and picked up the book he’d already held in his hands about a hundred times.
“There’s a spiderweb above your bed, up there on the ceiling, and I’m afraid of spiders,” Majka whispered.
“That’s impossible,” Kaško replied.
“But there really is something there,” Maxík confirmed.
“Good heavens, Saint Amálka, that’s it!” Kaško shouted.
“What?” Majka looked fearfully at the spiderweb, thinking Kaško had seen a spider there.
“It’s that note from Gerhard. It’s on a little net, and I put it above my bed so I wouldn’t forget about it,” Kaško slapped his forehead.
“But you’ve been flying around among the books all day and didn’t look above your bed?” Maxík and Majka laughed.
“That’s true, but now,” Kaško shot up toward the ceiling and heroically grabbed the instructions on how to get the recipe, “now we can pick petals and make ice cream.”
“Come on!” Kaško called out, giving them a bit of flying herb, because there was no time for trains or buses, and off they flew—toward Rožňava and then Brdárka.
“I’m going to faint,” Majka shouted with joy when she saw those beautiful trees—white as snow, with flower petals already fluttering from them as if it were really snowing.
“You don’t see this every day,” Maxík agreed, and immediately began examining the petals with his magnifying glass, while Majka started sketching a picture titled Winter in Spring.
Kaško picked up the message from Gerhard and read:
“Collect the flower petals and take them to Domica; there you’ll find our pink droplets and the treasure vault. Call up Hahuha and get the grinder from him, then choose a coin for the ferryman in the treasure vault. He’ll tell you what to do next.”
Kaško gazed at the orchards full of white petals and trees and set about collecting the petals. It looked beautiful.
“Kaškooo!!” Majka called out.
“Yes?” Kaško replied cheerfully, but didn’t stop flitting around the trees so quickly that the petals fell to the ground.
“I have always thought,” Majka continued, “that the wind blows into the trees and knocks the petals down.”
“It does in some, but not in cherry trees,” Kaško practically sang, and flew so fast past one cherry tree that half the blossoms fell.
“No?” Majka didn’t understand.
Maxík stopped in surprise and stopped collecting the petals.
“No, because even the breezes love the colour of cherry blossoms,” Kaško revealed the ghosts’ secrets.
“So, you’re the ones blowing on those petals?” Maxík scratched his forehead.
“And right now, it’s me,” Kaško laughed.
“So, when we look at the cherry trees in our garden and the petals seem to fall to the ground faster there…” Majka pondered.
“...Then you have a ghost there,” Kaško exclaimed as he flew past another tree, “but you should be able to see it now.”
“That’s great, how many ghosts we’ve had close to us,” Maxík and Majka grumbled a little.
“And now, friends, let’s get to work!” Kaško flew around the trees, the petals flew like snow, and the three of them were collecting them. In the early evening, they headed to Domica.
“Have you been to Domica yet?” Kaško asked.
“Not yet,” Maxík and Majka admitted.
“That’s a shame, because it’s the largest cave in the Slovak Karst, but most importantly, people and ghosts have been living here for 56,000 years,” Kaško murmured casually.
“What?!” Majka nearly dropped all her potato chips.
“And the oldest ghost of Haravara—Hahuha—lives here too.”
“What’s tickling your throat?” Majka looked seriously at Kaško.
“Nothing, why are you asking?” Kaško began to check his throat.
“Well, because you coughed so hard, that ha hu ha,” Maxík repeated.
“That ghost is called Hahuha,” Kaško explained.
“And why does he have such a funny name?” Maxík laughed.
“Because when he moved here about 30,000 years ago, neither the ghosts nor the people knew any words yet, so they just called each other ‘ha hu ha,’” Kaško said as they approached the secret entrance to the cave, known only to the ghosts—and now to Maxík and Majka as well.
“Hahuha!!!” Maxík shouted at Majka to scare her.
“Guys, we have to be a little quiet now; we’re going underground. First, we have to find our pink stalactites, then the treasure chamber, and then our Hahuha,” Kaško reassured Maxík and Majka.
“Let’s go, then,” Maxík said decisively.
“Won’t we be cold down there?” Majka asked.
“No, it’s short-sleeve weather down there; the temperature stays at 10–11 degrees all year round,” Kaško smiled, watching to see if his friends would get a little scared.
“Oh, but you can’t have ice cream there—it would melt,” Majka mused.
“But we’re just looking for a recipe for now,” Kaško explained.
“Right,” Maxík and Majka tapped their foreheads and started paying attention.
They walked through a beautiful cave full of stalactites, recesses, and chambers.
“Here it is,” Kaško pointed and was already running.
“What is it?” Majka looked at the beautiful stalactites in disbelief.
“These are pink stalactites,” Kaško explained.
“Beautiful,” added Maxík.
“But we’re looking for our pink stalactites,” Kaško looked around.
“Do you have your own stalactites?” Majka asked.
“Everyone admires these pink stalactites here, and they formed because water passes through red clay, which turns the stalactites pink,” Kaško gazed at the stalactites too.
“Oh, and yours?” Majka wouldn’t let it go.
“And ours,” Kaško whispered, “are stalactites that are also pink, but not from the clay—they’re from the oldest cherry ice cream in Haravara, and on Earth.”
“Wow!,” the children almost shouted.
“Shh,” Kaško hushed them, “I have to take a little bit of them as a secret ingredient for our ice cream.”
“Oh, that’s why we have to be quiet, so no one finds out, because we’re not allowed to touch the stalactites,” Maxík and Majka understood.
“Exactly,” confirmed Kaško, “if you touched the stalactites that have been growing in the cave for thousands or even millions of years, you would destroy them.”
“And if we touched yours?”
“You would destroy them completely, because we only touch them using magic.”
Kaško began to cast a spell and sing; he walked over to three pink stalactites, and suddenly a piece of something pink broke off from them and slipped into Kaško’s pocket. Kaško closed his pocket and walked on.
“What are we looking for now?” asked Maxík.
“We’re looking for a treasure chest,” Kaško looked around.
“And what’s that?” Maxík wanted to know more.
“It’s a stalactite, like this, like this… ah, here it is!” Kaško shouted so loudly that an echo rang throughout the cave.
“It’s beautiful,” Majka stopped and couldn’t take her eyes off what she was seeing.
“Step back!” Kaško commanded and began chanting again. After a moment, he took some powder out of his pocket, threw it into the air, and suddenly something happened that the friends had only ever seen in movies about aliens. The Treasure Chest floated up, opened, and a small coin fell out of it and then returned.
“And what is this?” Majka whispered.
“That’s our Haravarian obolus, and we call it an ojbolo,” Kaško laughed.
“And what do we need it for?” Maxík examined the obolus.
“For the journey across the River Styx,” Kaško whispered as well, turning the coin in his hand.
“Kaško,” Majka said fearfully, “but the Styx is the river of the dead in ancient Greek legends.”
“But they just took our name from the Haravara River,” Kaško explained.
“Do we have a Styx too?” Majka was speechless.
In a moment they were by the river, and on it was a small boat just like on the River Styx in Greek myths. Kaško gave the coin to a sort of little ghost on the boat, who didn’t say a word, and they continued on the boat. Suddenly, a strange ghost appeared on the bank, sitting and muttering to himself. Kaško began to mumble as well.
“Kaško, who is that?” Maxík asked quietly.
“That’s the oldest ghost of Haravara, the one I was telling you about.”
“Then why aren’t we going to see him?” the friends asked, confused.
“No one can reach him; he only advises us or reveals the greatest secrets of the ghostly or even human mysteries.”
Majka and Maxík knew they were encountering something extraordinary.
“Wow, just like in the myths of the ancient Greeks,” Majka whispered excitedly.
“We have to go to the Silická Ice Cave, and there we’ll find the recipe,” Kaško said. As he spoke, Hahuha turned and threw something so precisely that it landed right at Maxík’s feet. Once it landed, he turned and left.
“Kaško, what is it?” Maxík examined the little object at his feet.
“I don’t know,” said Kaško, unwrapping the package, “now it’s clear.”
“What’s clear?” the siblings asked curiously.
“These are old grinding stones,” Kaško said, picking up the round, almost white stones.
“They used to grind things on these right here—we ghosts showed these millstones to the people who lived here in Domica 5,000 years ago, and we use them to crush our flakes.”
The ferryman brought them to the shore, waved, and moved on; Kaško headed for the secret exit.
“So, we’re looking for some kind of icy surface?” asked Maxík.
“No, we’re looking for an icehouse,” Kaško repeated, describing the place they were searching for.
“And what’s that?” Majka didn’t understand.
“Back when there were no refrigerators, people used to store meat and all the things they needed to keep cold in the ground—in places where it was cold—and they called those places icehouses.”
“Oh, so they were natural refrigerators?” Majka asked.
“Without electricity,” Kaško recalled his childhood in his mind.
“Awesome,” Kaško’s friends agreed appreciatively.
“And there’s one right nearby. Let’s go!”
The kids grabbed Kaško and were already running. They stopped in front of a sort of hollow that looked like the entrance to a cave.
“Is this it?” Majka asked.
“This is it,” Kaško confirmed and was about to step inside.
“And here’s the recipe—are you sure?” Maxík asked nervously, because he didn’t want to go inside.
“Right here,” Kaško pointed to the hole in the ground.
“Well, let’s go look,” Maxík commanded decisively.
“Hahuha told me we should look on the rock,” Kaško recalled the words of the oldest ghost in Haravara.
They went inside, and it really did look like a cave, but without any stalactites. They looked for something on the wall, but there was nothing there except ordinary rocks.
“There it is—up there!” Kaško pointed and flew up to one wall, on which there were some drawings.
“But those are drawings!” Majka marveled.
“And how did people write when there was no writing?” Kaško looked down at the children from above.
“They drew like in Egypt,” Maxík realized.
“So, these aren’t just drawings, but a message,” Kaško began deciphering the drawings on the wall.
Kaško muttered something, started chanting some kind of spell, and suddenly the images lit up.
“There it is,” Kaško smiled and jotted down the recipe.
“Help!!!” Majka screamed.
“What’s going on?” Kaško and Maxík asked at the same time.
“There are some monsters here,” Majka whispered quietly, looking around.
“Where?” Kaško looked for dragons and werewolves.
“Thereeee!” Majka started screaming again.
“But those aren’t monsters, they’re millipedes,” Kaško laughed and stopped Maxík, who wanted to swat one of the millipedes to defend his sister.
“Millipedes?” Maxík asked.
“Millipedes,” Kaško repeated slowly.
“And what are they doing here?” Majka shouted, still clinging to her brother.
“They’re little bugs that live only here and have been living here for millions of years,” Kaško explained.
“No way!” Maxík looked at the little bugs.
“But yeah,” Kaško replied and winked at one millipede, which immediately knew what to do.
“Where did it go?” Majka noticed the wink.
“They’ll help us mix our ice cream with their little legs,” Kaško smiled when he saw the slight look of horror on his friends’ faces.
“Well, I’m definitely not eating it,” Majka said firmly.
Kaško poured all the petals onto the ground, recited a spell, and the millstones, thousands of years old, began to turn, crushing the petals and forming a mixture. Suddenly, pieces of pottery began to emerge from the ground, joining together to form bowls.
“About 45,000 pieces of pottery were found here in the ice cave, but luckily some was left over. You took the rest to the museum,” Kaško explained. And that mixture went into the bowls along with the millipedes, and they began to produce ice cream mix.
Kaško added a secret ingredient from the pink stalactites, and that was it.
“And now?” asked the friends.
“Now I’ll hide it here in a secret spot that even you won’t know about, and we’ll come here all year round to enjoy it. The children turned away, and Kaško hid the ice cream. But he brought them a little piece. And even though Majka didn’t want it because of the millipedes, it smelled so wonderful that she had to taste it. And she didn’t regret it.
When the children fell asleep, they drooled all night long, dreaming of how wonderful it would be if there were a real ice cream shop in their town or somewhere in Haravara.
