"Diana Wynne Jones - Castle In The Air" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones Diana Wynne)

longer than half an hour, and I'm almost sure you've been here twice as
long as that. But now we know each other, you can stay at least two
hours next time."

"Thank you. I shall," said Abdullah.

She smiled and passed away like a dream, beyond the fountain and behind
two frondy flowering shrubs.

After that the garden, the moonlight, and the scents seemed rather tame.
Abdullah could think of nothing better to do than wander back the way he
had come. And there, on the moonlit bank, he found the carpet. He had
forgotten about it completely. But since it was there in the dream, too,
he lay down on it and fell asleep.
He woke up some hours later with blinding daylight streaming in through
the chinks in his booth. The smell of the day before yesterday's incense
hanging about in the air struck him as cheap and suffocating. In fact,
the whole booth was fusty and frowsty and cheap. And he had an earache
because his nightcap seemed to have fallen off in the night. But at
least, he found while he hunted for the nightcap, the carpet had not
made off in the night. It was still underneath him. This was the one
good thing he could see in what suddenly struck him as a thoroughly dull
and depressing life.

Here Jamal, who was still grateful for the silver pieces, shouted
outside that he had breakfast ready for both of them. Abdullah gladly
flung back the curtains of the booth. Cocks crowed in the distance. The
sky was glowing blue, and shafts of strong sunlight sliced through the
blue dust and old incense inside the booth. Even in that strong light,
Abdullah failed to discover his nightcap. And he was more depressed than
ever.

"Tell me, do you sometimes find yourself unaccountably sad on some
days?" he asked Jamal as the two of them sat cross-legged in the sun
outside to eat.

Jamal tenderly fed a piece of sugar pastry to his dog. "I would have
been sad today," he said, "but for you. I think someone paid those
wretched boys to steal. They were so thorough. And on top of

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that, the Watch fined me. Did I say? I think I have enemies, my friend."

Though this confirmed Abdullah's suspicions of the stranger who had sold
him the carpet, it was not much help. "Maybe," he said, "you should be
more careful about whom you let your dog bite."

"Not I!" said Jamal. "I am a believer in free will. If my dog chooses to
hate the whole human race except myself, it must be free to do so."