"Diana Wynne Jones - The Game" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones Diana Wynne)

things,” she called them to herself.
She was building a particularly elaborate rock garden about a
week later, made of carefully piled gravel and ferns, when she
looked up to see Flute standing among the laurels with his hands in
his pockets. He was staring up at the house as if he were wondering
about it. Hayley could not think how Flute had got in. There was a
high brick wall round the garden and no way in except through the
house.
“Hallo,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
Flute had obviously not known she was there. He whirled round,
thoroughly startled, and his green scarf blew tastefully out among
his hair. “Oh,” he said. “I didn’t see you. I was wondering what
went on in this house.”
“Nothing much does,” Hayley told him, rather dryly. “Grandad
works and Grandma makes rules.”
Flute frowned and shook his head slightly. The green scarf
fluttered. His eyes stared into Hayley’s, green and steady. “I know
you,” he said. “You were with the Russian lady and the shoes.”
 “Martya. She left,” Hayley said.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Flute said. “This house isn’t for the
likes of her. Why are you in it?”
“I’m an orphan,” Hayley explained. “They bring me up.” Flute
nodded, taking this in, and then smiled at her, with some little
doubtful creases beside his mouth. Hayley found herself adoring
him, in a way she never adored even Grandad. “How did you get in
here?” she said. “Over the wall?”
Flute shook his head. “I don’t do walls,” he said. “I’ll show you, if
you’ll just follow me for a few steps.” He turned and walked, with a
soft clatter of leaves, in among the laurel trees.
Hayley sprang up from her rock garden—it was finished
anyway—and followed the swishing and the glimpses of green scarf
among the dark leaves. There had to be a gate in the wall that she
had never found. But she never saw the wall. She followed Flute
out of the laurels into a corner of the common. Really the common.
She saw cars on the road in the distance and Grandad’s familiar red
house in the row beyond the road. “Good heavens!” she said, and
looked up at Flute with respect. “That’s more magic, isn’t it? Can
you show me some more more?”
Flute thought about it. “What do you want to see?”
There was no question about that. “The mythosphere,” Hayley
said.
Flute was rather taken aback. He put his hands into his baggy
pockets and looked down at her seriously. “Are you sure? Someone
has warned you, have they, that things in the mythosphere are
often harder and—well—fiercer than they are here?”
Hayley nodded. “Grandad said the strands harden off when they
get farther out.”
“All right,” Flute said. “We’ll take a look at some of the nearest
parts then. It’ll have to be just a short look, because I wasn’t
expecting to see you and I have things to do today. Follow me then.”