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

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A turnip face leered at her. She smelled mildew. Against the wide blue sky, a ragged arm ending in a
stump of a stick wheeled round and tried to paw at her. It was a scarecrow. It was only made of sticks
and rags, but it was alive, and it was trying to come in.
"Calcifer!" Sophie screamed. "Make the castle go faster!"
The stone blocks round the doorway crunched and grated. The green-brown moorland was suddenly
rushing past. The scarecrow's stick arm thumped on the door, and then went scraping along the wall of
the castle as the castle left it behind. It wheeled its other arm round and seemed to try to clutch at the
stonework. It meant to get into the castle if it could.
Sophie slammed the door shut. This, she thought, just showed how stupid it was for an eldest child to
try and seek her fortune! That was the scarecrow she had propped in the hedge on her way to the castle.
She had made jokes to it. Now, as if her jokes had brought it to evil life, it had followed her all the way
here and tried to paw at her face. She ran to the window to see if the thing was still trying to get into the
castle.
Of course, all she could see was a sunny day in Porthaven, with a dozen sails going up a dozen masts
beyond the roofs opposite, and a cloud of seagulls circling the blue sky.
"That's the difficulty of being in several places at once!" Sophie said to the human skull on the bench.
Then, all at once, she discovered the real drawback to being an old woman. Her heart gave a leap and a
little stutter, and then seemed to be trying to bang its way out f her chest. It hurt. She shook all over and
her knees trembled. She rather thought she might be dying. It was all she could do to get to the chair by
the hearth. She sat there panting, clutching her chest.
"Is something the matter?" Calcifer asked.
"Yes. My heart. There was a scarecrow at the door!" Sophie gasped.
"What has a scarecrow to do with your heart?" Calcifer asked.
"It was trying to get in here. It gave me a terrible fright. And my heart-but you wouldn't understand, you
silly young demon!" Sophie panted. "You haven't got a heart."
"Yes I have," Calcifer said, as proudly as he had revealed his arm. "Down in the glowing part under the
log. And don't call me young. I'm a good million years older than you are! Can I reduce the speed of the
castle now?"
"Only if the scarecrow's gone," said Sophie. "Has it?"
"I can't tell," said Calcifer. "It's not flesh and blood, you see. I told you I couldn't really see outside."
Sophie got up and dragged herself to the door again, feeling ill. She opened it slowly and cautiously.
Green steepness, rocks, and purple slopes whirled past, making her feel dizzy, but she took a grip on the
doorframe and leaned out to look along the wall to the moorland they were leaving behind. The
scarecrow was about fifty yards to the rear. It was hopping from clump to heather clump with a sinister
sort of valiance, holding its fluttering stick arms at an angle to balance it on the hillside. As Sophie
watched, the castle left it further behind. It was slow, but it was still following. She shut the door.
"It's still there," she said. "Hopping after us. Go faster."
"But that upsets all my calculations," Calcifer explained. "I was aiming to circle the hills and get back
to where Michael left us in time to pick him up this evening."
"Then go twice as fast and circle the hills twice. As long as you leave that horrible thing behind!" said
Sophie.
"What a fuss!" Calcifer grumbled. But he increased the castle's speed. Sophie could actually, for the
first time, feel it rumbling around her as she sat huddled in her chair wondering if she was dying. She
did not want to die yet, before she had talked to Martha.
As the day went on, everything in the castle began to jiggle with its speed. Bottles chinked. The skull
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clattered on the bench. Sophie could hear things falling off the shelf in the bathroom and splashing into