"Applegate, Katherine A - Animorphs - 11 - The Forgotten (3)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Applegate Katherine A)

language. Most of my close friends are human. And I was born a human, in
a human body with arms and legs and hair and a mouth.

Now, though, I have wings and talons and feathers. And instead of a
mouth I have a hooked beak.

I can make sounds with my beak. But nothing that sounds human. To speak
with regular humans I use thought-speak.

But there were no people nearby right then in the early morning, as I
waited patiently in the branch of a dying elm tree.

I kept my eyes focused sharply on the meadow. I knew the pathways and
homes of the mice and rats and rabbits who lived there. And I knew what
it meant when the tall, dry grass twitched just the smallest bit.

With my hawk's eyes I could see what no human could hope to see. I could
see the individual stalks of grass barely tremble as a mouse brushed
between them.

And with my hawk's ears I heard the faint sound of mouse teeth, chewing
on a seed.

The mouse was seventy or eighty feet away. An easy target.

3 I opened my wings slowly, not wanting to make a sound. I released the
grip of my talons on the branch and fell forward. My wings caught the
cushion of air and I swooped, almost silent, toward my prey.

The grass twitched.

Through the grass I saw a flash of brown. The mouse was running.

Too slowly.

I raked my talons forward. I swept my wings forward to cancel my speed,
dropped one wing to turn, and fell the last foot like a rock.

It was all over very quickly.

But this time as I dragged the mouse away to a safer spot, I stumbled on
a faded magazine someone had thrown away. The wind whipped the pages by,
one at a time. Advertisements. Graphs. Pictures of the president with
some foreign leader.

And then one page stayed open. A photograph of a classroom. Kids my age.
Some of the kids were goofing off in the back of the class. Some looked
bored. Most looked more or less interested, and three were practically
leaping from their seats, waving their hands for the teacher. All that,
frozen in a photograph.