"Robert Holdstock - Mythago Wood" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

settlements. He had invented a whole new jargon for himself, and effectively isolated me from any deeper
understanding of his work. I said this to Christian, and added, 'Which is all very interesting, but hardly
that interesting.'

'He was doing much more than that, much more than just mapping. But do you remember those maps,
Steve? Incredibly detailed . . .'

I could remember one quite clearly, the largest map, showing carefully marked trackways and easy routes
through the tangle of trees and stony outcrops; it showed clearings drawn with almost obsessive precision,
each glade numbered and identified, and the whole forest divided into zones, and given names. We had
made a camp in one of the clearings close to the woodland edge. 'We often tried to get deeper into the
heartwoods, remember those expeditions, Chris? But the deep track just ends, and we always managed to
get lost; and very scared.'

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 Mythago Wood



'That's true,' Christian said quietly, looking at me quizzically; and added, 'What if I told you the forest had
stopped us entering? Would you believe me?'

I peered into the tangle of brush, tree and gloom, to where a sunlit clearing was visible. 'In a way I
suppose it did,' I said. 'It stopped us penetrating very deeply because it made us scared, because there are
few trackways through, and the ground is choked with stone and briar. . . very difficult walking. Is that
what you meant? Or did you mean something a little more sinister?'

'Sinister isn't the word I'd use,' said Christian, but added nothing more for a moment; he reached up to
pluck a leaf from a small, immature oak, and rubbed it between thumb and forefinger before crushing it in
his palm. All the time he stared into the deep woods. 'This is primary oak woodland, Steve, untouched
forest from a time when all of the country was covered with deciduous forests of oak and ash and elder
and rowan and hawthorn . . .'

'And all the rest,' I said with a smile. 'I remember the old man listing them for us.'

'That's right, he did. And there's more than three square miles of such forest stretching from here to well
beyond Grimley. Three square miles of original, post-Ice Age forestland. Untouched, uninvaded for
thousands of years.' He broke off and looked at me hard, before adding, 'Resistant to change.'

I said, 'He always thought there were boars alive in there. I remember hearing something one night, and
he convinced me that it was a great big old bull boar, skirting the edge of the woods, looking for a mate.'

Christian led the way back towards the boathouse. 'He was probably right. If boars had survived from
mediaeval times, this is just the sort of woodland they'd be found in.'

With my mind opened to those events of years ago, memory inched back, images of childhood - the
burning touch of sun on bramble-grazed skin; fishing trips to the mill-pond; tree camps, games,
explorations . . . and instantly I recalled the Twigling.

As we walked back to the beaten pathway that led up to the Lodge, we discussed the sighting. I had been