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

be a passage there, or perhaps even a path, and Troy led her firmly
along it.
Path, Hayley decided, as they brushed among leaves and out into
some kind of cold dry place. It was very dark here, but Tollie was
clearly visible when he rushed suddenly and jeeringly across their
way.
“Stupids!” he called out. “You’re on the wrong strand!”
Hayley stopped.
“Take no notice,” Troy said, pulling at her. “He’s always trying to
put people off.”
“Yes, but where are we?” Hayley said.
 “Out in the mythosphere by now,” Troy answered. “I think we’re
nearly halfway, but it’s bound to get more difficult as we go on.”
“Then that’s all right,” Hayley said. “I’ve been out here before
with Flute. How can you and Tollie do it too?”
“Oh, we can all do it,” Troy said. “All our family belongs to the
mythosphere, didn’t you know?”
“What? Even Grandma?” Hayley exclaimed.
“Of course,” Troy said. “But she’s one of the ones, like Mercer,
who does what Uncle Jolyon says and—”
Here Tollie rushed across their path again, coming the other way.
“I’m telling on you!” he shouted, and vanished away into the dark.
Hayley almost stopped again.
“Don’t you believe it!” Troy said, hauling her onwards. “If he tells
tales, he couldn’t play. Uncle Jolyon would stop this game like a
shot if he knew we were playing it. And,” he added, “Harmony
would get it in the neck worse than any of us, for inventing it.”
Hayley hoped Troy was right. She did not trust Tollie one bit.
They could see the strand they were on now, a silvery, slithery
path, coiling away up ahead. The worst part, to Hayley’s mind, was
the way it didn’t seem to be fastened to anything at the sides. Her
feet, in their one pink boot and one black, kept slipping. She was
quite afraid that she was going to pitch off the edge. It was like
trying to climb a strip of tinsel. She hung on hard to Troy’s warmer,
larger hand and wished it were not so cold. The deep chilliness
made the scrapes on the front of her ache.
To take her mind off it, she stared around. The rest of the
mythosphere was coming into view overhead and far away, in dim,
feathery streaks. Some parts of it were starry swirls, like the Milky
Way, only white, green, and pale pink, and other more distant parts
flickered and waved like curtains of light blowing in the wind.
Hayley found her chest filling with great admiring breaths at its
beauty, and she stared and stared as more and more streaks and
strands came into view.
She was taken completely by surprise when a comet came fizzing
past her face, with its tail roaring out behind like a rocket. “I’m
telling, I’m telling!” it shouted in Tollie’s voice. And Hayley went
sideways with the shock of it. She had to save herself by clutching
the sharp, icy edge of the strand.
Troy hauled her upright. “Oh, go away and play your own game!”