"01 - The White Mountains" - читать интересную книгу автора (Christopher John)

I said. in a low voice, stumbling over the words. "Do you go out into the fields at all?"

"When the sun shines."

"Farther along the road on which I met you there's an old ruin, on the right-I have a den there, on the far side where the copse comes dose. It has a broken arch for an entrance and an old red stone outside, like a seat"

He said softly. "I hear, Will. Do you spend much time there?"

"I go there after school, usually."

He nodded. "Do so."

Abruptly his gaze went from me to the sky. and he held his arms out above his head and shouted, "And in that year came Jim, the Prophet of Serendipity, and with him a host of angels, riding their white geldings across the sky, raising a dust of clouds and striking sparks from their hooves that burned the wheat in the fields, and the evil in men's hearts. So spake Ozymandias. Selahl Selahl SeW

The others were coming up the road from the school I left him and hurried on toward home. I could hear him shouting until I passed the church.

I went to the den after school with mingled feelings of anticipation and unease. My father had said he hoped he would hear no more reports of my mixing with Vagrants, and had placed a direct prohibition on my going into Vagrant House. I had obeyed the second part and was taking steps to avoid the first, but I was under no illusion that he would regard this as anything but willful disobedience. And to what end? The opportunity of talking to a man whose conversation was a hodgepodge of sense and nonsense, with the latter very much predominating. It was not worth it

And yet, remembering the keen blue eyes under the mass of red hair, I could not help feeling that there was something about this man that made the risk, and the disobedience, worth while. I kept a sharp lookout on my way to the ruins, and called out as I approached the den. But there was no one there; nor for a good time after that I began to think he was not coming that his wits were so addled that he had faded to take my meaning, or forgotten it altogether when I heard a twig snap and, peering out, saw Ozymandias. He was less than ten yards from the entrance. He was not singing or talking, but moving quietly, almost stealthily.

A new fear struck me then. There were tales that a Vagrant once, years ago, had murdered children in a dozen villages, before he was caught and hanged. Could they be true, and could this be such another? I had invited him here. telling no one, and a-cry for help would not be heard as far from the village as this. I froze against the wall of the den, tensing myself for a rush that might carry me past him to the comparative safety of the open.

But a single glance at him as he looked in reassured me. Whether mad or not, I was sure this was a man to be trusted. The lines in his face were the lines of good humor.

He said, "So I have found you. Will." He glanced about him in approval. "You have a snug place here."

"My cousin Jack did most of it He is better with his hands than I am."

"The one that was Capped this summer?"

"Yes."

"You watched the Capping?" I nodded. "How is he since then?"

"Well" I said. "but different"

"Having become a man."

"Not only that"

"Tell me."

I hesitated a moment, but in voice and gesture as well as face he inspired confidence. He was also, I reali2ed, talking naturally and sensibly, with none of the strange words and archaic phrases he had used previously. I began to talk, disjointedly at first and then with more case, of what Jack had said, and of my own later perplexity. He listened, nodding at times but not interrupting.

When I had finished, he said. Tell me. Will -what do you think of the Tripods?"

I said truthfully. "I don't know. I used to take them for granted-and I was frightened of them, I suppose-but now .. . There are questions in my mind."

"Have you put them to your elders?"