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

loose-limbed among Mrs. Brewster's fragile glassware. "Poetry. Can IтАФcan I read some?" "If you
want." He looked toward the window. "I think they've stopped for the day. We'd better get the cardboard
under the stone and clear out." "Right."
The knuckles stood out white in Alexander's hands as he shifted the stone upward. Bruce slid the
cardboard underneath it and it settled again, gently tilted. "Let's put some boxes in front of it to hide it,"
Alexander said. "Oh. Your mother thinks we've gone fossil-hunting, in case she asks."
Bruce stared at him over a box of books. "Fossil-hunting? In Middleton? Why would she think that?"
"I don't know." He took a box from Carol's arms and added it to the stack in front of their work.
"Perhaps it was something I said."
They drew the stone out the next morning after breaking through the rest of the mortar. They pulled the
cardboard until the stone balanced delicately half-in, half-out of its place, and Bruce said, "Carol, move
back in case we drop it."
She stepped back.
"SteadyтАФ" Alexander breathed. They shifted it, breaking the balance, their hands splayed beneath the
cardboard. The unexpected weight of it broke through their hands. They jerked away. The stone hit the

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floor with a dull, ponderous thud and cracked.
Alexander closed his eyes. "How many toes have we got left among us?"
Bruce stared upward. There was no sound from the study. Carol uncurled her bare toes. She looked at
the hole they had made, and something in the unbroken darkness behind it drew her forward. She
stepped on the stone and pushed her arm through the hole.
"Bruce!"
"Half a minuteтАФHere's the lightтАФ"
She drew back; he flicked it on over her shoulder. They were silent as the light melted through the
darkness, traced an arch across it. Then Bruce's voice came, with a contentment she had never heard
before in it, "Vaulted."
Alexander's breath whispered slow next to Carol's ear. An arch of stones ran before them into darkness
over an earth floor.
"It's there," Carol whispered. "It's there. It was there all the time. It wasn't a legend. It was really there."
"I wonder if it still goes to the church."
"Shouldn't wonder," Alexander murmured. "I feel small inside. Humble. You've answered a riddle no-
body else could answer. I wish we could squeeze through the hole. I say, BruceтАФ"
"What?"
He hesitated, staring into the tunnel. "WhenтАФAre you going to tell your Dad, now? He'll have to know,
sometime."
"I know. So will Mrs. Brewster. I wishтАФ"
"I wish it could be a secret," Carol said. Her voice was soft, muffled by the stone. "It's so quiet тАж like a
piece of another world. And if we tell people, the first thing they'll say isтАФ"
"However did you know?" Bruce said. "And then we'll get started on ghosts and Puritans and Madame
Tussaud's waxworks, and Dad will tell us nicely but firmly that we didn't really see ghosts, which we did
see. I think we found the tunnel, but we still haven't quite answered the riddle, and I'd rather keep it quiet
until then."
"Which riddle?"
"Edward. Why the girl comes back at all. Why should she? What we should do isтАФ"
"Open the tunnel," Carol said. "And the next time she says 'Come' we'll come."
Alexander smiled. "Follow a ghost. Right. I've always wanted to, but I never knew it." He drew another
long slow breath. "Ghosts and a tunnel and a mystery. Such richness."