"Philip Pullman - Dark Materials 02 - The Subtle Knife" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pullman Philip)

somewhere else, just to be sure. Thus the danger passed

But sometime during the next few months, Will realized slowly and unwillingly that those enemies of his
mother's were not in the world out there, but in her mind. That made them no less real, no less frightening
and dangerous; it just meant he had to protect her even more carefully. And from the moment in the
supermarket when he had realized he must pretend in order not to worry his mother, part of Will's mind
was always alert to her anxieties. He loved her so much he would have died to protect her.

As for Will's father, he had vanished long before Will was able to remember him. Will was passionately
curious about his father, and he used to plague his mother with questions, most of which she couldn't
answer.

"Was he a rich man?"

"Where did he go?"
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"Why did he go?"

"Is he dead?"

"Will he come back?'

"What was he like?"

The last question was the only one she could help him with. John Parry had been a handsome man, a
brave and clever officer in the Royal Marines, who had left the army to become an explorer and lead
expeditions to remote parts of the world. Will thrilled to hear about this. No father could be more exciting
than an explorer. From then on, in all his games he had an invisible companion: he and his father were
together hacking through the jungle, shading their eyes to gaze out across stormy seas from the deck of
their schooner, holding up a torch to decipher mysterious inscriptions in a bat-infested cave. ... They
were the best of friends, they saved each other's life countless times, they laughed and talked together
over camp-fires long into the night.

But the older he got, the more Will began to wonder. Why were there no pictures of his father in this
part of the world or that, riding with frost-bearded men on Arctic sledges or examining creeper-covered
ruins in the jungle? Had nothing survived of the trophies and curiosities he must have brought home? Was
nothing written about him in a book?

His mother didn't know. But one thing she had said stuck in his mind.

She said, "One day, you'll follow in your father's footsteps. You're going to be a great man too. You'll
take up his mantle."

And though Will didn't know what that meant, he understood the sense of it, and felt uplifted with pride
and purpose. All his games were going to come true. His father was alive, lost somewhere hi the wild,
and he was going to rescue him and take up his mantle.... It was worth living a difficult life, if you had a