"Stewart, Mary - Thorny Hold" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mary Stewart - Thorny Hold)

except that its bright mirror made a point to aim for, I wandered
downhill to the water's edge, and sat down in the grass.

I believe that I remember every moment of that afternoon, though at
first it was only a blur, a richness of colour like something in an
impressionist painting. There was a confusion of sound, bird song from
the wood beyond the hedgerow and grasshoppers fiddling in the long
grass near at hand. It was hot, and the smell of the earth, of the
crushed grasses, of the slightly stagnant pond-water drugged the sleepy
day. I sat dreaming, eyes wide open, focused on the glimmer of the
pool where the lazy stream fed it.

Something happened. Did the sun move? What I seem to remember is a
sudden flash from the pool as if a fish had leaped and scattered the
light. The dreamy haze of colour sharpened. Everything, suddenly,
seemed outlined in light. The dog-daisies, white and gold, and taller
than I was, stirred and swayed above my head as if combed through by a
strong breeze. In its wake the air stilled again, thick with scents.
The birds had stopped singing, the grasshoppers were silent.

I sat there, as still as a snail on the stem, in the middle of a full
and living world, and saw it for the first time, and for the first time
knew myself to be a part of it.

I looked up, and Cousin Geillis was standing there.

She cannot have been much more than forty, but to me, of course, she
seemed old, as my parents, in their thirties, were old. She had
something of my mother's look, the proud mouth and nose, the piercing
grey-green eyes, the erect carriage. But where my mother's hair was
golden-red, Cousin Geillis's was dark, clouds of it, swirled and
swathed up with tonoiseshell pins. I don't remember what she wore,
except that it was dark and voluminous.

She sank down beside me on the grass. She seemed to manage it without
disturbing the dog-daisies. She ran a forefinger up the stem of one
daisy, and a ladybird came off it onto the finger and clung there.

"Look," she said.

"Quickly. Count the spots."

Young children take the strangest things for granted, a double-edged
innocence that can be totally misunderstood by the adult using the
guidelines of maturity. I saw nothing | odd about Cousin Geillis's
sudden appearance, or her greeting. It was part of the child's world
of magical appearances I and vanishings, timed inevitably as they are
for the child's I need. : I counted.

"Seven." ; "Seven-spot Coccinella," agreed Cousin Geillis.