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

the tree trunk and began to stretch out towards Hayley. “Didn’t
you come with a friend and steal one of my old scales the other
day?” The tip of his nose was nearly on Hayley’s chest by then.
He’s going to eat me! Hayley thought.
The realisation unfroze her mind, and she remembered Erytheia’s
advice. “Yes, I was there,” she said. She managed to bend her stiff
body and jackknife herself away to the outer edge of the
mythosphere.
Everywhere was stars suddenly.
At least that meant that the dragon was quite a long way off.
Hayley could see his starry jigsaw puzzle shape drifting in the
distance, just beyond the huge starry woman, who seemed to have
turned herself round to watch him as he glided towards the mighty
weighing scales. Beyond the weighing scales, an enormous starry
insect with an arched-up tail was just coming into view. When
Hayley looked the other way, she could see the lion, and a crab
receding into the distance beyond the lion.
I suppose it’s better to be safe and not have an apple, she thought
sadly.
Something rustled tinnily above and beside her.
Hayley was sure the dragon had somehow crept up behind her.
She froze again. But when she managed to make herself turn
slowly round towards the noise, she discovered it was made by
starry leaves rattling on a silver tree. It was the wood where she
had come with Troy. She was still in an orchard of sorts, except
that this one was made of stars. Trees stood all around her, gently
quivering in the solar wind, each one heavy with round, moony
fruit. Some of the fruits were blue, some silver-white, and some
gently shining a faint, peachy gold.
“Heaventrees!” Hayley whispered, and wondered who had told
her or where she had read of the trees of heaven.
It doesn’t matter, she thought. Moving very slowly and gently,
she carefully chose the nearest, most golden looking of the fruit and
crept her hand out towards it. As soon as her fingers were around
it, she plucked it off its starry twig. It went twing .
The head of the distant dragon whipped round towards her in a
cloud of fiery flakes, but by then it was too late. Hayley clutched
the golden apple in both hands and became a comet.
She was a proper comet, not like Tollie’s pretend one. Her hair
gathered together and flung itself out ahead of her like the flame on
a blowtorch. Behind it, her body was a small, curled-up, icy ball.
But because she was clutching the golden apple, she knew she was
carrying with her all the seeds of life—all excitement, joy, growth,
and adventure. She could go anywhere in the universe with this
and still be alive.
She forged off on her strange, eccentric comet’s path. She felt as
if she was going crazily fast, bombing along—and yet, at the same
time, it felt like a slow, stately progress. She wheeled away from
the zodiac, and that fell slowly behind, the woman, the lion, the
crab, and two starry men who seemed to be twins, all swinging