"Lisa Goldstein - Fools Road" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goldstein Lisa)

"Stars and narwhals!" he said to the woman next to him. "You were supposed to be
keeping an eye on her!"

"I?" the woman said. "Who gave me the responsibility?"

"Well, look what you've gone and done," he said. "Who knows what they've been
telling her? Come along," he said, going over to Amanda. "It's time to go."

"Go?" Amanda said. "But we just got here."

"We've got to go," the small man said. He grasped her by the hand and pulled her
along behind him, out into the street.

The sky had grown darker while they were inside. The moon was higher and
smaller, a white stone tossed up against the black sky. The band ran on ahead.
She hurried after them until she was breathless, until trees and telephone
poles, cracked walls and windowpanes, blurred around her. They passed streets
she had never seen before, River Road, Forest Drive, Moon Crescent. Endless
Street, Darkness Road, Way of the Dead. "Wait," she called out. "Wait!"

Terror gave her speed; she ran until she was safely in the midst of them again,
surrounded by them. "Where are we?" she asked.

"Don't you know?" a woman asked. Her smile reached nearly to her ears.

"Who was that woman with the pearls?"

"Never you mind." The woman grasped her roughly by the shoulder. "Come along."

They turned down Fool's Road. There were trees all around them now, their
branches clasping hands overhead in the darkness, their leaves whispering
secrets. Ahead of them a light shone through the forest.

"Is this wise?" one of the little men asked. "Who knows what might happen
there?"

"Hush," a woman said. "It's the best place, under the circumstances."

"Circumstance," someone said. "Circumscribe," said someone else, and
"Circumvent" added another.

"Hush," the woman said again.

"Circumspect," someone whispered loudly, and several of them snickered.
They rounded a bend in the forest. A castle stood ahead of them, glowing like a
rind of moon. The small band marched forward openly, not noticing, or not
caring, how hopelessly out of place they looked in their red and russet fox's
colors. As they came closer the walls of the castle loomed high above them;
stars stood like sentinels on the battlements.