"Charles De Lint - Spiritwalk" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Lint Charles)

Sara felt restless after Julie went home. She put away her guitar and then distractedly set about
straightening up her room. But for every minute she spent on the task, she spent three just looking out the
window at the garden.

I never dream, she thought.

Which couldn't be true. Everything she'd read about sleep research and dreaming said that she had to
dream. People just needed to. Dreams were supposed to be the way your subconscious cleared up the
day's clutter. So, ipso facto, everybody dreamed. She just didn't remember hers.

But I did when I was a kid, she thought. Why did I stop? How could I have forgotten the red-haired
boy in the tree?

Merlin.

Dusk fell outside her window to find her sitting on the floor, arms folded on the windowsill, chin resting
on her arms as she looked out over the garden. As the twilight deepened, she finally stirred. She gave up
the pretense of cleaning up her room. Putting on a jacket, she went downstairs and out into the garden.

Into the Mondream Wood.

Eschewing the paths that patterned the garden, she walked across the dew-wet grass, fingering the
damp leaves of the bushes and the low-hanging branches of the trees. The dew made her remember
Gregor PenevтАФan old Bulgarian artist who'd been staying in the House when she was a lot younger.
He'd been full of odd little stories and explanations for natural occurrencesтАФmuch like Jamie was, which
was probably why Gregor and her uncle had gotten along so well.

"Zaplakala e gorata, "he'd replied when she'd asked him where dew came from and what it was for.
"The forest is crying. It remembers the old heroes who lived under its branchesтАФthe heroes and the
magicians, all lost and gone now. Robin Hood. Indje Voivode. Myrddin."

Myrddin. That was another name for Merlin. She remembered reading somewhere that Robin Hood
was actually a Christianized Merlin, the Anglo version of his name being a variant of his Saxon name of
Rof Breocht WodenтАФthe Bright Strength of Wodan. But if you went back far enough, all the names and
stories got tangled up in one story. The tales of the historical Robin Hood, like those of the historical
Merlin of the Borders, had acquired older mythic elements common to the world as a whole by the time
they were written down. The story that their legends were really telling was that of the seasonal
hero-king, the May Bride's consort, who with his cloak of leaves and his horns, and all his varying forms,
was the secret truth that lay in the heart of every forest.

"But those are European heroes," she remembered telling Gregor. "Why would the trees in our forest be
crying for them?"

"All forests are one," Gregor had told her, his features serious for a change. "They are all echoes of the
first forest that gave birth to Mystery when the world began."

She hadn't really understood him then, but she was starting to understand him now as she made her way