The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath. Alan Garner
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Название: The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath
Автор: Alan Garner
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Детская проза
isbn: 9780008164386
isbn:
Sweat was blinding her, her hair and clothes were full of sand, stones added to her bruises, and her lungs ached with the strain of drawing air out of the saturated atmosphere: but she had her Tear, and this time Susan was going to keep it, even if all the witches and warlocks that ever were came after her.
Suppose we can’t go on, though …
But almost at once her fears were allayed: the lamp’s beam outlined the end of the tunnel against a blackness beyond.
“Oh, glory be!” she spluttered, and they crawled out on to a soft mound of sand. At first, they could only droop on all fours, heads sagging like winded dogs, and gulp in the cold air, which was a little more wholesome than that of the tunnel; and, from the sudden lack of resonance, they guessed that they must be in a cavern. Every movement in the tunnel had produced a magnified, hollow echo, which made their breathing now appear dry, and remote. The children staggered to their feet, and looked about them.
In shape and size it was just such another cave as the Cave of the Sleepers in Fundindelve, but instead of the light, darkness pressed in from every side. The yellow walls were streaked with browns, blacks, reds, blues, and greens – veins of mineral that traced the turn of wind and wave upon a shore, twenty million years ago.
Colin bent down and listened at the tunnel mouth.
“I can’t hear anything,” he said, “but we’d better move on, if we can.”
Losing their pursuer was an easy task. It seemed that they were in an intricate system of caverns, connected by innumerable tunnels and shafts. These caverns were remarkable. The walls curved upwards to form roofs high as a cathedral, and the distance between the walls was often so great that, at the centre of a cave, the children could imagine themselves to be trudging along a sandy beach on a windless and starless night. The loose sand killed all noise of movement, and helped the silence to prey on their nerves: moreover, it made walking hot, laborious work, and the air was still not good; ten minutes under these conditions sapped their energy as much as an hour of normal tramping would have done.
Tunnels entered and left the caves at all angles and levels. They turned, twisted, branched, forked, climbed, dropped, and frequently led nowhere. They would run into a cave at any point between roof and floor, and wind out on to dizzy ledges, which in turn dwindled to random footholds, or nothing at all. And the square-mouthed shafts were a continual hazard. Through some, the distant floors of lower galleries could be glimpsed, while others disappeared into unknowable depths. It was no place for panic. Every corner, every bend, every opening, had to be approached with the greatest caution, for fear of an unwanted meeting; and the caves were the worst of all. After crossing through half a dozen or so, and peering round at the holes which stared sightless from all quarters, Colin and Susan took to scuttling over the floor and diving into the first tunnel they saw, trusting blindly that that particular one would not be tenanted. In the tunnels they were close to wall and ceiling, lamps held their own with shadows; but in the caves the children felt truly lost, for their puny light only accentuated their insignificance, and the feeling of being exposed to unseen eyes grew ever stronger. Somewhere within this labyrinth someone was hunting them down, and Colin and Susan were never more aware of this than when they broke cover beneath a soaring dome of rock and ran through the nightmare sand.
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