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

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Flute turned and strode back among the laurels, green scarf
streaming. Hayley pattered after him in the greatest excitement.
Not much happened at first, except that they came out into proper
woodland where paths seemed to run in several directions. Flute
looked this way and that and finally chose a path that was lightly
strewn with brown and yellow autumn leaves. After a short way,
the leaves were in thick drifts and the trees overhead were yellow
and brown and apricot, and rattled in a sad, small autumn breeze.
Hayley—and Flute too—began to enjoy shuffling the leaves into
heaps and then kicking them, until Flute put a hand out for Hayley
to stop.
Someone was coming along a path that crossed theirs, whistling
merrily.
Hayley stood nearly knee-deep in leaves and watched a splendid
young man go striding past, crunching coloured leaves under his
sandals. He was obviously a hunter. His main clothing was a big
spotted leopard skin that draped over one shoulder and fastened
around his hips to make a sort of skirt, and he carried an enormous
longbow almost as tall as himself. The arrows for it hung in a long
leather box over his left shoulder. His muscles bulged and gleamed.
Grandma would have called him a dirty savage, but to Hayley he
looked neat and crisp, like an actor dressed up as a hunter for a
film. She could see that his neat little beard and his chestnut curls
were shining and clean.
“Who is he?” she whispered.
“Orion,” Flute whispered back. “He’s a hunter.”
There seemed to be a group of ladies in long dresses suddenly, in
among the trees. The hunter stopped whistling, peered, and
whipped an arrow, long and wickedly sharp, out from his arrow
holder. Then, holding it ready beside his bow, he broke into a fast,
striding run. The ladies all screamed and ran away.
Hayley did not blame them. “Can’t he see they’re not animals?”
she said.
 “Not always,” Flute said, as hunter and ladies all disappeared
among the trees.
Flute and Hayley turned a corner and came out beside a lake
then, where it seemed to be nearly winter. All the trees and bushes
around the bleak little stretch of water were brown and almost
empty of leaves. A young lady in a white dress came down the bank
towards the shore. When she was right beside the water, she looked
around, grinning mischievously, and crouched down. Her white
dress melted into her all over and she was suddenly a swan. Off she
launched, white and stately, and sailed across the lake.
Hayley saw a hunter then. She thought he was not the same
hunter as the first one, but it was hard to be sure. He was in dark
clothes, but he had the same sort of huge bow and a case of arrows.
He was coming stealthily down to the lakeside with an arrow ready
beside his bow. When he saw the swan lady, he put the arrow in