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

marbled paper, stamps to print patterns in gold on soft leather. Meggie put her head around the open
door and saw Mo covering a book with brown paper. It was not a particularly large book and not
especially fat. The green linen binding looked worn, but that was all Meggie could see because Mo
quickly hid the book behind his back as soon as he noticed her.
"What are you doing here?" he snapped.
"I тАФ" For a moment Meggie was speechless with shock, Mo's face was so dark. "I only wanted to ask if
you had a new book for me. I've read all the ones in my room, and ..."
Mo passed his hand over his face. "Yes, of course. I'm sure I can find something," he said, but his eyes
were still saying: Go away, go away, Meggie. And the brown paper crackled behind his back. "I'll be
with you in a moment," he said. "I have a few more things to pack. OK?"

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


A little later he brought her three books, but the one he had been covering with brown paper wasn't one
of them.


An hour later, they were taking everything out into the yard. Meggie shivered when she stepped
outdoors. It was a chilly morning after the night's rain, and the sun hung in the sky like a pale coin lost
by someone high up in the clouds.
They had been living in the old farmhouse for just under a year. Meggie liked the view of the
surrounding hills, the swallows' nests under the roof, the dried-up well that yawned darkly as if it went
straight down to the earth's core. The house itself had always been too big and drafty for her liking, with
all those empty rooms full of fat spiders, but the rent was low and Mo had enough space for his books
and his workshop. There was a henhouse outside, and the barn, which now only housed their old camper
van, would have been perfect for a couple of cows or a horse. "Cows have to be milked, Meggie," Mo
had said when she suggested keeping a couple. "Very, very early in the morning. Every day."
"Well, what about a horse?" she had asked. "Even Pippi Longstocking has a horse, and she doesn't have
a stable."
She'd have been happy with a few chickens or a goat, but they, too, had to be fed every day, and she and
Mo went away too often for that. So Meggie had only the ginger cat who sometimes came visiting when
it couldn't be bothered to compete with the dogs on the farm next door. The grumpy old farmer who
lived there was their only neighbor. Sometimes his dogs howled so pitifully that Meggie put her hands
over her ears. It was twenty minutes by bike to the nearest village, where she went to school and where
two of her friends lived, but Mo usually took her in the van because it was a lonely ride along a narrow
road that wound past nothing but fields and dark trees.


"What on earth have you packed in here? Bricks?" asked Mo as he carried Meggie's book box out of the
house.
"You're the one who says books have to be heavy because the whole world's inside them," said Meggie,
making him laugh for the first time that morning.
The camper van, standing in the abandoned barn like a solid, multicolored animal, was more familiar to
Meggie than any of the houses where she and Mo had lived. She never slept more deeply and soundly
than in the bed he had made in it for her. There was a table, too, of course, a kitchen tucked into a corner
and a bench to sit on. When you lifted the seat of the bench there were travel guides, road maps, and
well-worn paperbacks under it.
Yes, Meggie was fond of the van, but this morning she hesitated to get in. When Mo finally went back to