"James Lovegrove - Wings" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lovegrove James)

you like that?" Az nodded again, and Michael let him go. The whine of the
autogyro rose behind him as he wandered slowly up to the porch. Michael's
"Catch you later!" was cut short by a slammed front door. "Dear?" His
mother's voice, from the kitchen. "Azrael?" She came out into the hallway,
drying her hands on a dishtowel. "Was that Michael I heard just now? Isn't
he going to stay for supper?"
Az shook his head. "I don't know."
"Some girl, I bet," said his mother, indulgent wrinkles multiplying around
her eyes.
"Maybe," said Az. Then: "I'm going up to my room."
To reach the upper storey of the house Az had to use a contraption his
father had built for him, a space-consuming succession of cantilevered
wooden steps that rose diagonally through an aperture in the ceiling. His
parents used the steps too whenever he was around. As a rule, they made
sure to walk as much as possible when he was in the house, out of respect
to his feelings.
His room was like any other twelve-year-old's room, save that the door
went all the way down to the floor (another of his father's D.I.Y.
adaptations). The carpet was strewn with clothing, books, pieces of a
long-abandoned jigsaw, some small die-cast biplanes and a larger scale
model of a Corbeau which Michael had given him on his last birthday,
saying it would do until Az was old enough to earn his pilot's license, at
which point Michael would buy him the real thing. He dropped his satchel
into the middle of all this debris and stretched out on his bed, flat on
his back. Lying on his back, Az reflected, was the one thing he could do
that no one else could. Some compensation. Yeah, right. What a talent. The
kids at school were forever asking him to show them how well he could lie
on his back.
He stared up at the ceiling for a long time, trying to think of nothing.
At some point during the long slow diminuendo of the afternoon, he fell
asleep. And he dreamed.
One morning Az wakes up to find he has grown a fully-fledged pair of
wings. He doesn't know how they got there, he doesn't dare ask why. He
simply accepts.
His parents are happy and amazed. His mother cries, his father thumbs some
grit from his eye. They forgive Az. For what, they do not say, but it is
enough for Az to be forgiven. He kisses them both, and prepares to fly off
to school under his own steam for the first time ever.
Flying, he finds, is not so difficult. He has the instinct for it, and now
he has the means. A little practice, some plummeting and frantic
fluttering, and he's on his way.
Heads turn and mouths gape in the school yard. A cry goes up. Look! Look
at that! Did you ever...? Who'd have thought...?
Az alights in the middle of the school yard and his peers cluster round
him, jabbering excitedly. They fire off a million questions at him. They
ask him if they can touch his wings. He tells them they can. They touch
them with reverential awe and care. It tickles.
Word gets around, and before he knows it Az is a celebrity in school. He
is clapped and cheered wherever he goes. When he glides down a shaft with
his wings outstretched, every feather intricately splayed to catch the