"Diana Wynne Jones - Howl's Moving Castle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones Diana Wynne)

The third encounter came towards the end of the afternoon when Sophie had worked her
way quite high into the hills. A countryman came whistling down the lane toward her. A shepherd,
Sophie thought, going home after seeing to his sheep. He was a well-set-up young fellow of forty or so.
"Gracious!" Sophie said to herself. "This morning I'd have seen him as an old man. How one's point of
view does alter!"
When the shepherd saw Sophie mumbling to herself, he moved rather carefully over to the
other side of the lane and called out with great heartiness, "Good evening to you, Mother! Where are
you off to?"
"Mother?" said Sophie. "I'm not your mother, young man!"
"A manner of speaking," the shepherd said, edging along against the opposite hedge. "I was
only meaning a polite inquiry, seeing you walk into the hills at the end of the day. You won't get down
into Upper Folding before nightfall, will you?"
Sophie had not considered this. She stood in the road and thought about it. "It doesn't matter
really," she said, half to herself. "You can't be fussy when you're off to seek your fortune."
"Can't you indeed, Mother?" said the shepherd. He had now edged himself downhill of
Sophie and seemed to feel better for it. "Then I wish you good luck, Mother, provided your fortune
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Jones, Diana Wynne - Howl's Moving Castle.txt
don't have nothing to do with charming folks' cattle." And he took off down the road in great strides,
almost running, but not quite.
Sophie stared after him indignantly. "He thought I was a witch!" she said to her stick. She
had half a mind to scare the shepherd by shouting nasty things after him, but that seemed a little unkind.
She plugged on uphill, mumbling. Shortly, the hedges gave way to bare banks and the land beyond
became heathery upland, with a lot of steepness beyond that covered with yellow, rattling grass. Sophie
kept grimly on. By now her knobby old feet ached, and her back, and her knees. She became too tired to
mumble and simply plugged on, panting, until the sun was quite low. And all at once it became quite
clear to Sophie that she could not walk a step further.
She collapsed onto a stone by the wayside, wondering what she would do now. "The only
fortune I can think of is a comfortable chair!" she gasped.
The stone proved to be on a sort of headland, which gave Sophie a magnificent view of the
way she had come. There was most of the valley spread out beneath her in the setting sun, all fields and
walls and hedges, the winding of the river, and the fine mansions of rich people glowing our from
clumps of trees, right down to blue mountains in the far distance. Just below her was Market Chipping.
Sophie could look down into its well-known streets. There was Market Square and Cesari's. She could
have tossed a stone down the chimney pots of the house next to the hat shop.
"How near it still is!" Sophie told her stick in dismay. "All that walking just to get above my
own rooftop!"
It got cold on the stone as the sun went down. An unpleasant wind blew whichever way
Sophie turned to avoid it. Now it no longer seemed so unimportant that she would be out on the hills
during the night. She found herself thinking more and more of a comfortable chair and a fireside, and
also of darkness and wild animals. But if she went back to Market Chipping, it would be the middle of
the night before she got there. She might just as well go on. She sighed and stood up, creaking. It was
awful. She ached all over.
"I never realized before what old people had to put up with!" she panted as she labored
uphill. "Still, I don't think wolves will eat me. I must be far too dry and tough. That's one comfort."
Night was coming down fast now and the heathery uplands were blue-gray. The wind was
also sharper. Sophie's panting and the creaking of her limbs were so loud in her ears that it took her a
while to notice that some of the grinding and puffing was not coming from herself at all. She looked up
blurrily.
Wizard Howl's castle was rumbling and bumping toward her across the moorland. Black