Nobody would want to wake up one day in an unfamiliar basement, in utter darkness and uncertainty—and least of all someone used to a calm and well-fed life in a comfortable cage, like the white rat Pafnuty, a pet of a young chemist and inventor of the relocation elixir. If the trouble were limited to just the unknown basement, that would be only half the trouble. But the experiments of the young chemist threw the little rodent into the most real hard times—the harsh post-revolution years, hungry and terrifying!
Fate brought Pafnuty together with a child from an orphanage: Kolyа, the son of a former royal officer. Can friends find Kolyа’s father in the whirlpool of human life? What dangers has the evil fate prepared for them? And what does the black pearl have to do with it?..