"Dark Rising 5 - Silver on the Tree" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cooper Susan)

'Oh, well,' said Will. A very large velvety bee, overloaded with pollen, landed on his book and waddled dispiritedly across the page. Will blew it gently on to a leaf, pushing back the straight brown forelock that flopped over his eyes. His glance was caught by a movement on the river beyond the held where they lay. 'Look! Swans!'

Lazy as the hot summer day, a pair of swans sailed slowly by without a sound; their small wake lapped at the riverbank.

'Where?' said James, clearly with no intention of looking.

'They like this bit of the river, it's always quiet. The big boats stay over in the main reach, even on a Saturday.''Who's coming fishing?' said Stephen. But he still lay unmoving on his back, one leg folded over the other, the slender stem of grass swaying between his teeth.

'In a minute.' James stretched, yawning. 'I ate too much cake.'

'Mum's picnics are as huge as ever.' Stephen rolled over and gazed at the grey-green river. 'When I was your age, you couldn't fish at all in this part of the Thames. Pollution, then. Some things do improve.'

'A paltry few,' Will said sepulchrally, out of the grass.

Stephen grinned. He reached out and picked a slender green stalk with a tiny red flower; solemnly he held it up. 'Scarlet pimpernel. Open for sun, closed for rain, that's the poor man's weathervane. Grandad taught me that. Pity you never knew him. What does your friend Mr Gerard say about this one, Will?'

'Mmm?' Will was lying on his side, watching the weary bumblebee flex its wings.

'Book,' James said. 'Scarlet pimpernel.'

'Oh.' Will turned the crackling pages. 'Here it is. Oh loverly. The juyce purgeth the head by gargarising or washing the throat therewith; it cures the tooth-ach being snift up into the nosethrils, especially into the contrary nosethril.'

'The contrary nosethril, of course,' Stephen said gravely.

'He also says it's good against the stinging of vipers and other venomous beasts.'

'Daft,' said James.

'No it's not,' Will said mildly. 'Just three hundred years old. There's one super bit at the end where he tells you very seriously how barnacle geese are hatched out of barnacles.'

'The Caribbean might have foxed him,' Stephen said. 'Millions of barnacles, but not one barnacle goose.'

James said, 'Will you go back there, after your leave?'

'Wherever their Lordships send us; mate.' Stephen threaded the scarlet pimpernel into the top buttonhole of his shirt, and unfolded his lanky body. 'Come on. Fish.'

'I'll come in a minute. You two go.' Will lay idly watching as they fitted rods together, tied hooks and floats. Grass-hoppers skirled unseen from the grass, chirruping their solos over the deep summer insect hum: it was a sleepy, lulling sound. He sighed with happiness. Sunshine and high summer and, rarer than either, his eldest brother home from sea. The world smiled on him; nothing could possibly be improved. He felt his eyelids droop; he jerked them apart again. Again they closed in sleepy content; again he forced them open. For a flicker of a moment he wondered why he would not let himself fall harmlessly asleep.

And then he knew.

The swans were there on the river again, slow-moving white shapes, drifting back upstream. Over Will's head the trees sighed in the breeze, like waves on distant oceans. In tiny yellow-green bunches the flowers of the sycamore scattered the long grass around him. Running one of them between his fingers, he watched Stephen standing tall a few yards off threading his fishing-line through his rod. Beyond, on the river, he could see one of the swans moving slowly ahead of its mate. The bird passed Stephen.

But as it passed, it did not disappear behind Stephen. Will could see the white form clearly through the outline of Stephen's body.

And through the outline of the swan, in turn, he could see a steep slope of land, grassy, without trees, that had not been there before.

Will swallowed.

'Steve?' he said.