"Cornelia Funke - Inkheart" - читать интересную книгу автора (Funke Cornelia)

Meggie had a great many favorite books, and she always added another whenever they traveled
anywhere. "If you take a book with you on a journey," Mo had said when he put the first one in her box,
"an odd thing happens: The book begins collecting your memories. And forever after you have only to
open that book to be back where you first read it. It will all come into your mind with the very first
words: the sights you saw in that place, what it smelled like, the ice cream you ate while you were
reading it... yes, books are like flypaperтАФmemories cling to the printed page better than anything else."
He was probably right, but there was another reason why Meggie took her books whenever they went
away. They were her home when she was somewhere strange. They were familiar voices, friends that
never quarreled with her, clever, powerful friendsтАФdaring and knowledgeable, tried and tested
adventurers who had traveled far and wide. Her books cheered her up when she was sad and kept her
from being bored while Mo cut leather and fabric to the right size and re-stitched old pages that over
countless years had grown fragile from the many fingers leafing through them.


file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Funke,%20Cornelia%20-%20Inkheart%200.9.html (14 of 295)22-12-2006 15:56:23
 Inkheart

Some of her books always went away with Meggie. Others were left at home because they weren't right
for where she was going or to make room for new, unknown stories she hadn't yet read.
Meggie stroked their curved spines. Which books should she take this time? Which stories would help to
drive away the fear that had crept into the house last night? I know, thought Meggie, why not a story
about telling lies? Mo told her lies. He told terrible lies, even though he knew that every time he told one
she looked hard at his nose. Pinocchio, thought Meggie. No, too sinister. And too sad. But she wanted
something exciting, a story to drive all other thoughts out of her head, even the darkest. The Witches,
yes. She'd take the bald-headed witches who turn children into mice тАФ and The Odyssey, with the
Cyclops and the enchantress who transforms his warriors into pigs. Her journey could hardly be more
dangerous than his, could it?
On the left-hand side of the box there were two picture books that Meggie had used when she was
teaching herself to read тАФ five years old, she'd been, and you could still see where her tiny forefinger
had moved over the pages тАФ and right at the bottom, hidden under all the others, were the books
Meggie had made herself. She had spent days sticking them together and cutting up the paper, she had
painted picture after picture, and Mo had to write what they were underneath them. An Angel with a
Happy Face, from Meggi for Mo. She had written her name herself, although back then she always left
the "e" off the end. Meggie looked at the clumsy lettering and put the little book back in the box. Mo had
helped her with the binding, of course. He had bound all her homemade books in brightly patterned
paper, and he had given her a stamp for the others so that she could print her name and the head of a
unicorn on the title page, sometimes in black ink and sometimes in red, depending on how she felt. But
Mo had never read aloud to her from her books. Not once.
He had tossed Meggie up in the air, he had carried her around the house on his shoulders, he had taught
her how to make a bookmark of a blackbird's feathers. But he had never read aloud to her. Never once,
not a single word, however often she put books on his lap. Meggie just had to teach herself how to
decipher the black marks and open the treasure chest.
She straightened up. There was still a little room in the box. Perhaps Mo had a new book she could take,
an especially big, fat, wonderful book. ...
The door to his workshop was closed.
"Mo?" Meggie pressed the handle down. The long table where he worked had been swept clean, with
not a stamp nor a knife in sight. Mo had packed everything. Had he been lying after all?
Meggie went into the workshop and looked around. The door to the Treasury was open. The Treasury
was really just a storage room, but Meggie had given the little cubbyhole that name because it was
where her father stored his most precious materials: the finest leather, the most beautiful fabrics,