"Diane Duane - Young Wizards 06 - A Wizard Alonel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duane Diane)
Duane, Diane - Young Wizards 06 - A Wizard Alone
Yet it hadnтАЩt worked that way for Nita the first time she actually went to one. Where the other kids in the
audience had laughed and clapped, she sat amid all the raucous noise feeling terribly unnerved. It wasnтАЩt
so much being afraid that an acrobat would fall, that a lion would eat the lion tamerтАж nothing so
concrete or obvious. But the darkness, the gradually strengthening smells of sawdust, animal sweat,
greasepaint, and canvas, the spotlighting that left too many other things purposely obscure while half-
seen forms moved in those shadows, themselves concealed by the lightтАФall these slowly combined to
suggest that something unexpected, something unavoidable, was going to happen. And that looming
unknown frightened Nita badly. At intermission sheтАЩd begged her parents to take her home. Dairine had
cried at the thought of leaving, and so their mom had stayed with Dari while her father drove Nita back
to the house.
That her dad had never pressed her for details about this was still one of the things Nita thought about
when counting up the reasons she loved him. But even his silent support couldnтАЩt do anything about the
nightmares that followed, nightmares full of leering clown faces and the musky smell of big cats. Finally
the nightmares faded away and left Nita wondering what in the world had been the matter with her. Yet
she never went to another circus. And even now, sometimes the mere sight of a spotlight aimed at an
empty floor, with darkness lying silent beyond it, was enough to induce in her a feeling of tremendous
foreboding that would darken her soul for hours.
clowns. To Nita, there was a fake quality about them, nothing genuinely humorous. It was strange to
think that someone seriously thought that makeup could make you funny. But there was no question in
NitaтАЩs mind that makeup could make you scary. The stylized clown face, too generic, too cartoony: That
really bothered her. The baggy, motley costume, disguising the real body shape so that it could have
been a bare steel skeleton underneath instead of flesh and bone. The slapstick jokes, endlessly repeated,
which were supposed to be amusing because of the repetitionтАФall these left Nita cold. There was
something mechanical about clowns, something automatic, a kind of robot humor; and it gave her the
creeps.
It was doing so again, right now, because here in the darkness, followed around by one of those sinister
spotlights, was a typical clown actтАФthe clown riding around and around in circles on a ridiculously
small bicycle, in ever decreasing circles. There was nothing funny about it to Nita. It was pitiful. Around
and around and around, in jerky, wobbling movements, around and around went the clown. It had a
painted black tear running down its face. The red-painted mouth was turned down. But the face under
the white greasepaint mask was as immobile as a marble statueтАЩs, expressionless, plastered in place.
Only the eyes were alive. They shouted, I canтАЩt get off! I canтАЩt get off! And, just this once, the clown
didnтАЩt think it was funny, either.
The drumroll went on and on, as if for a hanging rather than a circus stunt. The chain of the bicycle
rattled relentlessly in the silence inside the light. Beyond the light, in the darkness, the heartless crowd
laughed and clapped and cheered. And through the sound of their applause, low, but building, came the
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