"Whitley Strieber - Cat Magic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Strieber Whitley)

Then she saw that there was another door in the back of the gateman's house, one that led into the estate.
It opened easily. As she pushed it, paper rattled. There was a note taped to the back, where it couldn't
be seen from the street. тАЬPlease be sure this locks behind you, Miss Walker.тАЭ

Obviously this was the way she had been intended to come. Nice of Will T. Turner to tell her. He really
was a very marginal person.

Once inside the estate she went around to the back of the main gate and looked for some sort of a
handle. There was nothing.

Furious that none of these procedures had been explained to her, she hurried back to her car and parked
it as far off the road as possible, then dragged her precious portfolio out of the back seat and reentered
the estate on foot. All of her most important work was in this worn black case, everything she had ever
drawn or painted relating to Grimm's fairy tales.

The portfolio was heavy. Mandy couldn't be too mad at Will. He tried hard. If she had been planning
intelligently, she would have called Miss Collier last night to reconfirm, and found out about this hike.

A few moments after she started off she found herself slowing her pace, despite her lateness. Finally she
stopped altogether. She simply could not help it. She was in a wonderful cathedral of trees, their black
trunks stretching to crowns of brilliant autumn color. Leaves littered the dirt road, marking the dust with
bright splotches.

This was awesome. Too many months in Manhattan had made her forget the passionate silence of the
woods. She began to walk again, now also noticing the rich scent of the air, cleansed by autumn rot.

This place was not only beautiful and dark and huge, it was also something else she could not quite name.
The very slightest of shivers coursed through her body and she began to walk a little faster. It was as if
the woods itself was not entirety unconscious.

She had no idea how long this road might be. In any case it was longer than necessary to make her
thoroughly late. She marched along lugging the portfolio, trying to hum and not succeeding.

Her imagination was really too vivid for this. тАЬYou know I'm here, don't you,тАЭ she whispered. Leaves
stirred down. The trees filtered the bright morning sun to golden haze.

The colors here were magnificent: these must be very robust trees. Plants die gaily because they are sure
of their own resurrection. Not so higher creatures. All things that share the terror of final death are
brothers, from the microbe to the man.

The road curved upward, finally cresting a hundred yards ahead. Long before she was close to the top,
Mandy was breathing hard. Even so the chill of morning had vitalized her. She felt physically wonderful,
her whole body singing.

What, she wondered, was the origin of the legend of the watcher in the woods? This place was so alive,
but not in a human sort of a way. Trees were enigmatic beings. She knew that man had once
acknowledged this alienness by considering them the temples of his most mysterious gods, me forest
spirits. Now those gods were cast low. Who once had been worshiped in the woods was today
captured in fairy tales and called a troll.