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

"What a stupid way to treat a building!" she panted as she threw herself inside it. She had to
drop her stick and hang on to the open door in order not to be jolted straight out again.
When she began to get her breath, she realized there was a person standing in front of her,
holding the door too. He was a head taller than Sophie, but she could see he was the merest child, only
a little older than Martha. And he seemed to be trying to shut the door on her and push her out of the
warm, lamplit, low-beamed room beyond him, into the night again.
"Don't you have the impudence to shut the door on me, my boy!" she said.
"I wasn't going to, but you're keeping the door open," he protested. "What do you want?"
Sophie looked round at what she could see beyond the boy. There were a number of
probably wizardly things hanging from the beams- strings of onions, bunches of herbs, and bundles of
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Jones, Diana Wynne - Howl's Moving Castle.txt
strange roots. There were also definitely wizardly things, like leather books, crooked bottles, and an
old, brown, grinning human skull. On the other side of the boy was a fireplace with a small fire burning
in the grate. It was a much smaller fire than all the smoke outside suggested, but then this was
obviously only a back room in the castle. Much more important to Sophie, this fire had reached the
glowing rosy stage, with little blue flames dancing on the logs, and placed beside it in the warmest
position was a low chair with a cushion on it.
Sophie pushed the boy aside and dived for that chair. "Ah! My fortune!" she said, settling
herself comfortably into it. It was bliss. The fire warmed her aches and the chair supported her back and
she knew that if anyone wanted to turn her out now, they were going to have to use extreme and violent
magic to do it.
The boy shut the door. Then he picked up Sophie's stick and politely leaned it against the
chair for her. Sophie realized that there was now no sign at all that the castle was moving across the
hillside: not even the ghost of a rumble or the tiniest shaking. How odd! "Tell Wizard Howl," she said
to the boy, "that this castle's going to come apart round his ears if it travels much further."
"The castle's bespelled to hold together," the boy said. "But I'm afraid Howl's not here just at
the moment."
This was good news to Sophie. "When will he be back?" she asked a little nervously.
"Probably not till tomorrow now," the boy said. "What do you want? Can I help you instead?
I'm Howl's apprentice, Michael."
This was better news than ever. "I'm afraid only the Wizard can possibly help me," Sophie
said quickly and firmly. It was probably true too. "I'll wait, if you don't mind." It was clear Michael did
mind. He hovered over her a little helplessly. To make it plain to him that she had no intention of being
turned out by a mere boy apprentice, Sophie closed her eyes and pretended to go to sleep. "Tell him the
name's Sophie," she murmured. "Old Sophie," she added, to be on the safe side.
"That will probably mean waiting all night," Michael said. Since this was exactly what
Sophie wanted, she pretended not to hear. In fact, she almost certainly fell into a swift doze. She was so
tired from all that walking. After a moment Michael gave her up and went back to the work he was
doing at the workbench where the lamp stood.
So she would have a whole night's shelter, even if it was on slightly false pretenses, Sophie
thought drowsily. Since Howl was such a wicked man, it probably served him right to be imposed
upon. But she intended to be well away from here by the time Howl came back and raised objections.
She looked sleepily and slyly across at the apprentice. It rather surprised her to find him such a nice,
polite boy. After all, she had forced her way in quite rudely and Michael had not complained at all.
Perhaps Howl kept him in abject servility. But Michael did not look servile. He was a tall, dark boy
with a pleasant, open sort of face, and he was most respectably dressed. In fact, if Sophie had not seen
him at that moment carefully pouring green fluid out of a crooked flask onto black powder in a bent
glass jar, she would have taken him for the son of a prosperous farmer. How odd!
Still, things were bound to be odd where wizards were concerned, Sophie thought. And this