"Bruce Holland Rogers - A Common Night" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rogers Bruce Holland)

again. Then it yawned, shook itself, got down from the branch and crawled away over the black carpet
of fallen leaves. "You've got to go deeper in to get further out," it said. "That's the nature of the tulgey
wood."
"The tulgey wood?"
"Where you are!"
"Where you are!" said another voice, as if in Julian's ear. He turned, but this time he was quite sure that
there was nothing before him but the trees.
"And as long as you are," said another nearby voice, "you've got to be somewhere."
"Until you aren't," said a third voice, "and sooner or later you won't be."
"Won't be what?" said Julian.
"Whatever you are," said the first voice.
"Or anything else, for that matter," said the third.
Julian wasn't sure, but he thought it might be the trees themselves that were speaking to him. They
seemed to sort of sway in time with the words.
"I wish I could see you," Julian said. "It's awfully dark."
"Awfully splendidly," said the first voice.
"Awfully wonderfully," said the second.
"Awfully terribly beautifully dark," said the third. "Too dark to see the stars!"
"No stars! How delightful!" said the first.
Now Julian was positive-the voices were indeed coming from the trees, and they were swaying as they
spoke. Not only did they sway from side to side, but the bare branches moved like arms. One branch
bent down and pushed Julian backwards. Before he could protest, another was pushing him in the same
direction.
"Careful!" he said. "I can't see where I'm going!"
But the trees showed no sign that they heard him. They kept pushing him toward a part of the forest
that was, if anything, darker than where he already was. And as the branches shoved him, the tulgey
wood sang in voices that varied as he moved past different trees:
Beautiful Dark in heaven so wide

Through thine emptiness we glide

How to escape you? There's nowhere to hide,

Dark of the nightfall, beautiful Dark!

Dark of the nightfall, beautiful Dark!

* * *


Beau-- ootiful Daa-- aark!

Beau-- ootiful Daa-- aark!

Darkness of Nightfall,

Beautiful, beautiful Dark!

* * *