: An eleven-year-old boy finds himself on an invisible island and finds friends there. Together, they free the inhabitants of the island from the yoke of the monstrous Lizard.

The narration is conducted on behalf of the fifth grader Zhenya Ushakov. The division of the retelling into chapters is conditional.

Invisible Dvin Island

That evening, eleven-year-old Zhenya Ushakov played knights with friends.

On his makeshift shield, he painted a coat of arms - a deer. His "opponent", Tolika from the neighboring block.

Eugene drove to the edge of the ravine, overgrown with nettles, but showed nobility and did not dump it there. The guys became friends. Tolik presented Zhenya with a hand-carved dagger from a pine with a carved handle.

Zhenya's parents left for a week, and the boy went to spend the night with his grandmother, out of town. On the bus, Zhenya noticed that a thin guy in an old-fashioned jacket was watching him intently. The boy did not like it, he got off at the nearest stop and went on foot further.

The stranger caught up with Zhenya at the lake. He called himself Ktor Echo, the first deputy ruler of the island of Dvid.

For a long time this island is under the yoke of the Lizard. According to an ancient legend, the island will release the young knight from a distant land. Ktor saw how nobly Zhenya did with Tolik, and decided that the Deer Knight could kill the Lizard.

As proof, Ktor showed Zhenya the island through a magic mirror and assured that everything would take no more than three days. The boy agreed - grandmother does not know that his parents left, and will not worry, and he will return quickly.

Ktor took Zhenya to the invisible island of Dvid and introduced the ruler, who believed that the Lizard does not oppress anyone, but simply sensitively “reacts to any disturbance in the balance of order” and begins to get angry. Once a month, a monster rises from the bottom of the lake and looks to see if everything is in order on its island.

Monstrous octopus, death sentence and prison escape

The next day, Ktor showed Zhenya the only city on the island. The boy realized that the inhabitants of Dvid completely obey the laws of the Lizard. On the island it was forbidden to run, play, sing and laugh - this disturbed the peace of the monster. Offenders, mostly children, were publicly flogged on special mobile platforms.

Zhenya noticed that there are no youth at all on the streets of the city — only children and adults. Ktor explained that here children are brought up in such a way that they immediately become sedate and obedient, because there are too many troubles from young people - they always come up with something new.

Zhenya did not like everything he saw, and he decided to certainly kill the Lizard. The boy was given a sword and shield, and the next day he went to the lake. He expected to see a dragon, but a huge octopus, covered with steel armor, so terrible that the boy threw his sword and escaped rose from the lake.

Zhenya was caught and put in prison. In the evening, Ktor visited the boy and said that Zhenya had become a state criminal and that his head would be cut off. Feeling guilty, he showed the boy an underground passage, and Zhenya escaped from prison.

Acquaintance with the Bird and meeting with the hermit

An underground passage led Zhenya into the forest, where he met a three-meter bird that looked like a blue flamingo. Her chick fell out of the nest, and the boy helped lift him back. An extremely intelligent Bird made friends with Zhenya.

Any mother, any father will be grateful to those who help their child out of trouble.

The boy found that the Bird flies in if it hangs down in a large antique key to his apartment, and its feathers reflected the light so that it became invisible.

Zhenya went further, lost his way in the forest and met a hermit who settled here to find the Eternal Truth - the meaning of human existence, and did no good or evil to anyone. Zhenya ate and spent the night with him. In the morning he went along the path indicated by the hermit and somehow miraculously ended up right on the town square, where the executioner was already waiting for him.

Escape and make new friends

Zhenya was seized, searched and sentenced. As a last wish, the boy demanded that his things be returned to him - the key to the apartment and the dagger presented by Tolik. Zhenya whistled at the key, the bird flew in and carried the boy clinging to her legs to a dilapidated fortress on the island. Defending himself during the escape, Zhenya discovered that his wooden dagger could pierce chain mail from steel rings.

In the fortress there lived children who ran away from city shelters, away from the "balance of order". The head of this small tribe of ten boys and one girl was Doug, a red-haired young man who did not age like the other islanders.

Among them was a boy nicknamed Kid, who got lost in the Enchanted Forest and forgot his name.

Zhenya told the children about the "Far World", about which they did not know anything. He learned that the Invisible Birds were considered extinct and became a half-hint, and the paths in the forest surrounding the city always led to the town square and the hermit knew this very well. Doug explained that young knights from the outside world are lured to the island to be executed in public - then people forget about the legend for a long time.

The legend of the Lizard and the young knights

Doug told the legend in the evening, by the fire. Once upon a time on the island of Dvid lived cheerful, hardworking and skilled craftsmen. They sailed the seas and traded with other countries. At that time, two friends lived on the island - the Scientist and the Ruler.

The neighbors, envious of the wealth of Dvid, decided to unite and attack the island. Coastal fortresses were built for protection, but this did not help. Then the Scientist built a huge steel Lizard, which sank the enemy ships, and then, having studied the properties of the Invisible birds, made the island invisible.

Now no one threatened Dvid, and the Scientist wanted to destroy the Lizard, but the Ruler decided to use it to stay in power forever. The scientist did not want to help him and tried to make a device for the destruction of the Lizard, but did not have time - the Ruler sentenced him to death. The scientist cast a metal sculpture of two boys who would free Dvid from the Lizard, and drank poison.

The ruler promised the Scientist not to destroy the sculpture and not to prevent people from looking at it. The sculpture was installed on a mountain plateau away from the city, and soon people forgot about it. Many years passed, an “equilibrium of order” was established on the island, reinforced by fear of the anger of the Lizard. But the children from time to time recalled the legend, and then the Ruler lured another knight to Dvid to execute him as a warning to others.

All children are born courageous ...

From Doug, Zhenya learned that ten days later a fair southwestern wind will blow, and then the Bird will be able to bring it to the house.

Meeting with a fellow countryman and involuntary betrayal

Zhenya stayed in the fortress. Once, while swimming in the sea, he noticed red swimming trunks on Malysh and suddenly realized that the boy was his fellow countryman Yulka Garanin, who was considered to have drowned.

Eugene called out to Julia by name, and he remembered everything. He also met a stranger who spoke about the island of Dvid and Lizard, but did not believe him, so Yulka was simply kidnapped and thrown into prison. The boy escaped from there, lost his way in the Enchanted Forest and lost his memory. The boys decided to return home together.

In the middle of the fortress is a huge cannon with stone cores. Zhenya thought that the shell of this gun could reach the lake and destroy the Lizard. He told Doug about this, the guys searched the fortress and found gunpowder. Everything was ready, but during the search one of the boys stepped on a dirty fish bone and his leg was swollen.

Yulia was sent to a local healer for medicine, he was seized by the servants of the Lizard, began to threaten terrible torture and a frightened boy betrayed his friends and led the enemies to the fortress. On the way, Julia managed to explode the stockpiles of gunpowder and the only exit from the fortress collapsed.

Lizard servants began shelling the fortress and killed Doug. The bird brought the other children to the fertile Blue Valley, abandoned by the inhabitants due to the blue fog that crawled out of the crevices in the mornings. For children, the fog was safe, and adults, breathing it in, were dying.

Death of the Bird and the destruction of the Lizard

Finally, a southwest wind blew. Zhenya and Yulka did not want to leave friends, but they could not stay on the island, because they were sentenced to death. The rest of the children were threatened only by a shelter - it was forbidden to kill local children on Dvida.

Having sat on a bench tied to the paws of the Birds, the friends set off. They were shelled along the way. The bird died, and the boys were on the plateau where the sculpture stood. Under the sculpture, they found a device destroying the Lizard. Using it and a dagger, the boys destroyed the Lizard and headed into the city.

To the surprise of friends, life in the city has not changed. They broke into the palace and found out that the Ruler is Ktor, who knew how to change his appearance. The ruler began to persuade friends to go home in a balloon, because this is not their war. Zhenya agreed, but Julia, who felt like a traitor, at the last moment decided to stay and help friends.

Return to the island of Dvid

A few days later, Zhenya was found unconscious in the forest near the house. Almost the whole winter he fell ill, and he began to think that all the adventures were ordinary delirium. Only in the spring he told Tolik everything, and then in the old shorts he found the key and blew into it. At the call, the surviving Bird chick flew.

The guys cut themselves a dagger and went to the island of Dvid. It turned out that many invisible birds help the rebellious children of the island. In a swift blue landing, the children descended into the city and overthrew the Ruler.

On that day, children began to laugh bolder, and many adults became younger ...

Then Zhenya, Tolik and Yulka returned home. Zhenya forever remembered the cry of Yulka running to her parents: “Mom! Mommy! Mom, ah! I've come…".