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

swat a bat. The dragon uncoiled menacingly at her and she
snatched her arm back. Next moment the darkness was filled with
more burning flakes from the dragon, all blowing towards Troy and
Hayley in the wind from the woman’s movements. Troy grabbed
one as it sailed past his face and stood holding it while the dragon
floated away beyond the huge woman.
“I’ve got one,” he said, looking rather stunned. “We’ve done it.
Come on, let’s get back. We might even win.”
He took Hayley’s hand, and together they went sliding and
scrambling down the silvery strip. Sometimes they sat down and
slid, sometimes they stood up and ran along the flatter parts, while
around them great misty swatches of the mythosphere turned and
arched and rippled. Troy hauled Hayley along so fast that she had
little time to notice anything they were passing, but she did notice
that the star-shaped flake in Troy’s other hand grew dimmer as
they went. And now that Tollie did not seem to be around to
distract her, she caught glimpses of planets whirling in the
distance, and saw a centaur—unless it was a man on a horse—and
a person who seemed to be half goat, and several odd-looking ladies,
and a man with a bull’s head. After that she kept glimpsing people,
who seemed more like ordinary humans as they went downwards,
until Troy dragged her between some bushes and they were once
more in the garden shed. By then the thing in Troy’s hand was a
shiny curved oval that looked like a metal seashell.
Up at the top of the paddock, where Harmony was standing by
the table, the clock was still chiming out its tune. Harmony smiled
as Troy and Hayley came panting up to her. “Any luck?”
“We got one!” Troy gasped.
“It kept shaking them loose,” Hayley explained.
Before Harmony could answer, Lucy came dashing up, pink and
proud and pleased. “I got it! I picked it up when it fell off her foot,”
she panted, and held out a little glass shoe. “This truly is
Cinderella’s slipper! Have I won?”
James raced in from one side, equally out of breath, and held out
something clenched in his fist. “Prester John’s beard is
seventy-seven centimetres long and he says we’re to stop coming
and asking him for hairs all the time.” He looked at Lucy, Troy and
Hayley. “Damn! Didn’t I win? Who did?”
By this time, the clock’s little tune was slowing down. Tighs and
Laxtons began arriving from all directions. Harmony was soon
surrounded by people waving strange objects at her and saying
things like “This is Blind Pugh’s stick!” or “I got the firebird feather!
Look!” or “One Aladdin’s lamp, as ordered!”
Harmony picked each object up as it was pushed at her and
looked at it very closely. She nodded at the curly grey hair James
was holding and at Troy’s dragon scale and Lucy’s shoe. “Those are
genuine,” she agreed. “They can go in the trophy cabinet. So can
this lamp. Put it down on the table, Charlie, and be careful not to
rub it. But you got this feather from the vase in the lounge, didn’t
you, Sarah? Go and put it back. Yes, this says DRINK ME—it’s