"Alexander Green - Crimson Sails" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Alexander)

finely-chiselled and as delicate as a swallow's flight. There was a sad,
questioning look in her dark eyes which seemed older than her face; its
irregular oval was touched with the lovely sunburn peculiar to a healthy
whiteness of the skin. Her small parted lips were turned up in a gentle
smile.
"I swear by the Brothers Grimm, Aesop and Andersen," Egle said,
looking from the girl to the yacht, "that there's something very special
here! Listen, you, flower! This is yours, isn't it?"
"Yes. I ran all the way down along the stream after it; I thought I'd die.
Did it come here?"
"Right to my feet. The shipwreck has made it possible for me, acting as
an off-shore pirate, to present you with this prize. The yacht, abandoned
by its crew, was tossed up on the beach by a three-inch wave - landing
between my left heel and the tip of my stick." He thumped his stick.
"What's your name, child?"
"Assol," the girl replied, tucking the toy Egle had handed her into the
basket.
"That's fine." The old man continued his obscure speech, never taking
his eyes, in the depths of which a kindly, friendly chuckle glinted, from
her. "Actually, I shouldn't have asked you your name. I'm glad it's such an
unusual one, so sibilant and musical, like the whistle of an arrow or the
whispering of a seashell; what would I have done if your name had been
one of those pleasant but terribly common names which are so alien to
Glorious Uncertainty? Still less do I care to know who you are, who your
parents are, or what sort of life you lead. Why break the spell? I was sitting
here on this stone comparing Finnish and Japanese story plots ... when
suddenly the stream washed up this yacht, and then you appeared. Just as
you are. I'm a poet at heart, my dear, even though I've never written
anything. What's in your basket?"
"Boats," Assol said, shaking the basket, "and a steamship, and three
little houses with flags. Soldiers live in them."
"Excellent. You've been sent to sell them. And on the way you stopped to
play. You let the yacht sail about a bit, but it ran off instead. Am I right?"
 "Were you watching?" Assol asked doubtfully as she tried to recall
whether she had not told him about it herself. "Did somebody tell you? Or
did you guess?"
"I knew it."
"How?"
"Because I'm the greatest of all magicians."
Assol was embarrassed; the tension she felt at these words of Egle's
overstepped fear. The deserted beach, the stillness, the tiring adventure of
the yacht, the strange speech of the old man with the glittering eyes, the
magnificence of his beard and hair now seemed to the child as a brew of
the supernatural and reality. If Egle had grimaced or shouted now, the
child would have raced off, weeping and faint from fear. However, upon
noticing how wide her eyes had grown, Egle made a sharp turn.
"You've no reason to be afraid of me," he said in a serious voice. "On the
contrary, I want to have a heart-to-heart talk with you."
Now at last did he see what it was in her face that had struck him so.
"An unwitting expectation of the beautiful, of a blissful fate," he decided.