"Patricia A. McKillip - The House on Parchment Street" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

of it was a picture of the church. She stared at it, moving slowly up the stairs. The church rose brilliant
against the rising sun, its shadow swept back to uncover hunched worn gravestones. In the dim hall light
she could see the delicate stonework ornamenting the lean arched windows, the patterning of glass in
one great window that opened like a rose to the sunlight. And in one corner of the graveyard, curving
with a tuft of grass, she found Bruce's name.
She swallowed, something inside of her fluttering with excitement and fear. She went up the stairs to the
closed door at the end of them. She knocked softly. She heard the sudden roll of bedsprings and the
creak of floorboards. The door opened to Bruce's face, twisted painfully into a scowl. It melted a little
into surprise. She held out the drawing.
"You must have dropped it when you came in."
He looked down at it without moving. Then his face moved, and he reached out for it. He held it, his
breath still, the color rising slowly in his lowered face.
"I didn't know," Carol whispered. "I never knew before that when you see a beautiful drawing, there's a
person who has done it."
His face rose. The unbruised eye looked at her, uncertain, unguarded. He said hesitantly, "I got up,
before the sun rose. I climbed on the roof, so the trees weren't in the way."
"Is that how you got your black eye? Falling off the roof or something?"
His brows pulled together. He looked away from her. "No. I was sitting in a field drawing a cow." He
opened the door, and his eyes came back to her face. "I think тАФThere's something else I'd like to show
you. Come in."
He went to his window-seat. It opened like a chest, and he reached into it for a tablet. He sat down on
the floor, leafing through it. Carol watched the pictures flicker between his fingers.
"How long have you been drawing?"
"Three years."
"And nobody knows? Doesn't Uncle Harold know?"
His hands paused. "No."
"But he likes pictures."
"He likes facts. I just want to do things my own way, without being bothered orтАФor teased by anyone."
His mouth tightened suddenly. He looked down at the tab-
let, turning drawings without looking at them. Carol watched him for a moment, her brows crinkled. She
drew a silent breath, and said tentatively, "Is thatтАФis that what happened? They teased you?"
His eyes rose surprisedly. "How did you know?"
"If you had got kicked by a cow, you would have said so."
"Mm. I wish I'd thought of it." He leaned back against the window-seat and said wearily, "They came тАФ
they came so suddenly I didn't even have time to hide things. And they did whatтАФwhat we always do to
peopleтАФwhat we did to you. There was a picture of flowersтАФthat's when I tried to stop them, when they
teased me about that one. I was so angry I couldn't see. I don't know who I was righting withтАФI didn't

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care. I never want to see any of them again. I didn't want to see anyone. So I drew until it was too dark to
see, and I had to come home." He caught his breath in a slow sigh and turned pages slowly in the
notebook. "It's hard to get a proper perspective with only one eye workingтАж . Here it is. This one, I
drew a few months ago, just after we moved in." He held it out to her. Something brushed feather-light
down her back as she looked at it. Her mouth opened, closed again, wordless. Her voice came finally,
small, tight.
"Then I'm not nuts."
IV.
OUT OF THE TAUT VIVID MASK OF BRUCE's FACE, HIS