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

The book she had been reading was under her pillow, pressing its cover against her ear as if to lure her
back into its printed pages. "I'm sure it must be very comfortable sleeping with a hard, rectangular thing
like that under your head," her father had teased the first time he found a book under her pillow. "Go on,
admit it, the book whispers its story to you at night."
"Sometimes, yes," Meggie had said. "But it only works for children." Which made Mo tweak her nose.
Mo. Meggie had never called her father anything else.
That night тАФ when so much began and so many things changed forever тАФ Meggie had one of her
favorite books under her pillow, and since the rain wouldn't let her sleep she sat up, rubbed the
drowsiness from her eyes, and took it out. Its pages rustled promisingly when she opened it. Meggie
thought this first whisper sounded a little different from one book to another, depending on whether or
not she already knew the story it was going to tell her. But she needed light. She had a box of matches
hidden in the drawer of her bedside table. Mo had forbidden her to light candles at night. He didn't like
fire. "Fire devours books," he always said, but she was twelve years old, she surely could be trusted to
keep an eye on a couple of candle flames. Meggie loved to read by candlelight. She had five
candlesticks on the windowsill, and she was just holding the lighted match to one of the black wicks
when she heard footsteps outside. She blew out the match in alarm тАФ oh, how well she remembered it,
even many years later тАФ and knelt to look out of the window, which was wet with rain. Then she saw
him.
The rain cast a kind of pallor on the darkness, and the stranger was little more than a shadow. Only his
face gleamed white as he looked up at Meggie. His hair clung to his wet forehead. The rain was falling
on him, but he ignored it. He stood there motionless, arms crossed over his chest as if that might at least
warm him a little. And he kept on staring at the house.
I must go and wake Mo, thought Meggie. But she stayed put, her heart thudding, and went on gazing out
into the night as if the stranger's stillness had infected her. Suddenly, he turned his head, and Meggie felt
as if he were looking straight into her eyes. She shot off the bed so fast the open book fell to the floor,
and she ran barefoot out into the dark corridor. This was the end of May, but it was chilly in the old
house.

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Funke,%20Cornelia%20-%20Inkheart%200.9.html (7 of 295)22-12-2006 15:56:23
 Inkheart

There was still a light on in Mo's room. He often stayed up reading late into the night. Meggie had
inherited her love of books from her father. When she took refuge from a bad dream with him, nothing
could lull her to sleep better than Mo's calm breathing beside her and the sound of the pages turning.
Nothing chased nightmares away faster than the rustle of printed paper.
But the figure outside the house was no dream.
The book Mo was reading that night was bound in pale blue linen. Later, Meggie remembered that, too.
What unimportant little details stick in the memory.
"Mo, there's someone out in the yard!"
Her father raised his head and looked at her with the usual absent expression he wore when she
interrupted his reading. It always took him a few moments to find his way out of that other world, the
labyrinth of printed letters.
"Someone out in the yard? Are you sure?"
"Yes. He's staring at our house."
Mo put down his book. "So what were you reading before you went to sleep? Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?"
Meggie frowned. "Please, Mo! Come and look."
He didn't believe her, but he went anyway. Meggie tugged him along the corridor so impatiently that he
stubbed his toe on a pile of books, which was hardly surprising. Stacks of books were piled high all over
the house тАФ not just arranged in neat rows on bookshelves, the way other people kept them, oh no! The
books in Mo and Meggie's house were stacked under tables, on chairs, in the corners of the rooms. There