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

got it pointed downwards, all she could see was a sort of trench full
of turbulent water just below her and the square shapes of the
castle parapet beyond that. The drain was obviously deep under
water. She was going to have to guess where it was. The only way
Hayley could see to get near it was to ooze herself out of the
window headfirst. And then grope.
“We’ve got you,” Troy said encouragingly as Hayley began to
wriggle herself forward.
The frame of the skylight was only just big enough for her to get
through. As Hayley wriggled onwards, the spike that the metal bar
hooked onto scraped its way agonisingly down the middle of her
chest, while the bar itself hung down and poked her in the head. By
the time her feet had left the stool and she was hanging half in and
half out, she was still a foot away from the murky ditch of water
and being stabbed in the navel by the spike. She was going to have
to get all of her outside.
Behind her, she could hear the little bathroom filling up with
people. Someone said, “She’ll never get to it like that!”
Oh yes I will ! Hayley thought. “Be ready to hold my feet!” she
shouted and thought she heard someone say “OK.” Then, clutching
the torch in her right hand, she began to inch herself down the
sloping tiles outside. Rain pelted across her.
Before long, she had the feeling it was raining upwards into her
knickers. The skylight bit into her shins, the tiles scraped her front.
The only comforting thing was that she could feel Troy’s hands
warm and strong on her left leg and Aunt May’s hands, softer but
just as strong, holding her right calf. They were paying her out of
the window like a rope.
The hands had reached her ankles before Hayley could even
touch the water. Left, she thought. She had to stretch and ooze and
extend herself sideways before her hand could go into the rippling
flood. It was surprisingly un-cold to her fingers. The hands were
holding her shoes by then. And she stretched and oozed and tried to
lengthen herself again, until finally her fingertips met a rough,
leaded bottom. She couldn’t feel any kind of drain. Rather
desperately, she swished her hand further to the left. Here there
was the faintest feeling that the water was pulling at her fingers.
Almost shrieking with the effort, she managed to move her hand
that way.
The tips of her fingers touched something thick and rubbery
feeling. With another desperate stretch, Hayley somehow got one
finger under it, and then her thumb on top. Then she could pick
whatever-it-was up.
It came up with a gurgle. Hayley was so surprised at how quickly
things happened then that she nearly screamed. Water thundered
past her nose from right to left and tried to take her hair with it. To
the left, it became a whirlpool, fairly whizzing round and round,
and gargled away down the unblocked drain so fast that, by the
time Troy and Aunt May, thoroughly alarmed at the noises Hayley
was making, had started to haul on her ankles, the gutter was