"Diana Wynne Jones - Witch Week" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones Diana Wynne)

Gripped again. Reached up again, with fearful concentration. Yes, this was it! She was doing it at last! The
secret must be to keep your eyes shut. She gripped and pulled. She could feel her body easily swinging
upward toward the ceiling, just as the others did it.
But, around her, the giggles grew to laughter, and the laughter grew into screams, then shouts, and
became a perfect storm of hilarity. Puzzled, Nan opened her eyes. All round her, at knee level, she saw
laughing red faces, tears running out of eyes, and people doubled over yelling with mirth. Even Miss Phillips
was biting her lip and snorting a little. And small wonder. Nan looked down to find her gym shoes still
resting on the knot at the bottom of the rope. After all that climbing, she was still standing on the knot.
Nan tried to laugh too. She was sure it had been very funny. But it was hard to be amused. Her only
consolation was that, after that, none of the other girls could climb the ropes either. They were too weak
with laughing.
The boys, meanwhile, were running round and round the field. They were stripped to little pale blue
running shorts and splashing through the dew in big spiked shoes. It was against the rules to run in anything
but spikes. They were divided into little groups of laboring legs. The quick group of legs in front, with
muscles, belonged to Simon Silverson and his friends, and to Brian Wentworth. Brian was a good runner in
spite of his short legs. Brian was prudently trying to keep to the rear of Simon, but every so often the sheer
joy of running overcame him and he went ahead. Then he would get bumped and jostled by Simon's friends,
for everyone knew it was Simon's right to be in front.
The group of legs behind these were paler and moved without enthusiasm. These belonged to Dan
Smith and his friends. All of them could have run at least as fast as Simon Silverson, but they were saving
themselves for better things. They loped along easily, chatting among themselves. Today, they kept bursting
into laughter.
Behind these again labored an assorted group of legs: mauve legs, fat legs, bright white legs, legs with
no muscles at all, and the great brown legs of Nirupam Singh, which seemed too heavy for the rest of
Nirupam's skinny body to lift. Everyone in the group was too breathless to talk. Their faces wore assorted
expressions of woe.
The last pair of legs, far in the rear, belonged to Charles Morgan. There was nothing particularly
wrong with Charles's legs, except that his feet were in ordinary school shoes and soaked through. He was
always behind. He chose to be. This was one of the few times in the day when he could be alone to think.
He had discovered that, as long as he was thinking of something else, he could keep up his slow trot for
hours. And think. The only interruptions he had to fear were when the other groups came pounding past
him and he was tangled up in their efforts for a few seconds. Or when Mr. Towers, encased in his nice
warm tracksuit, came loping up alongside and called ill-advised encouragements to Charles.
So Charles trotted slowly on, thinking. He gave himself over to hating Larwood House. He hated the
field under his feet, the shivering autumn trees that dripped on him, the white goalposts, and the neat line of
pine trees in front of the spiked wall that kept everyone in. Then, when he swung round the corner and had
a view of the school buildings, he hated them more. They were built of a purplish sort of brick. Charles
thought it was the color a person's face would go if he was choking. He thought of the long corridors inside,
painted caterpillar green, the thick radiators which were never warm, the brown classrooms, the frosty
white dormitories, and the smell of school food, and he was almost in an ecstasy of hate. Then he looked at
the groups of legs straggling round the field ahead, and he hated all the people in the school most horribly of
all.
Upon that, he found he was remembering the witch being burned. It swept into his head unbidden, as
it always did. Only today, it seemed worse than usual. Charles found he was remembering things he had not
noticed at the time: the exact shape of the flames, just leaping from small to large, and the way the fat man
who was a witch had bent sideways away from them. He could see the man's exact face, the rather blobby
nose with a wart on it, the sweat on it, and the flames shining off the man's eyes and the sweat. Above all,
he could see the man's expression. It was astounded. The fat man had not believed he was going to die until
the moment Charles saw him. He must have thought his witchcraft could save him. Now he knew it could
not. And he was horrified. Charles was horrified too. He trotted along in a sort of trance of horror.