"Somtow Sucharitkul - The Fallen Country" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sucharitkul Somtom)

whiteness. It didn't feel like the world at all. The snow
didn't stop. Sometimes it tickled his face. Sometimes it
swirled in the sky, its flakes like stars in a nebula. There was
no sun or moon. Misty in the horizon, an impossibly far
horizon, Billy saw white crenellated castle walls that ran
behind a white hill and emerged from the other side of it;

they went on as far as he could see, twisting like marble
serpents. Billy began walking towards the hill. He did not
wonder at where he was. The cold didn't touch him, not
like sticking your hand in the freezer. He walked. By a
strange foreshortening or trick of perspective he found
himself facing the hillтАФ

The hill's wings flapped, eyes flared briefly, fire-brilliant
blue. It was a dragon. Again the eyes flared, dulled, flared,
dulled . . . Billy gazed at the dragon for a long time. In a
rush that sent the wind sighing, the dragon spread its
wings, sweeping the snow into fierce sudden flurries. Billy
saw that the dragon had no scales but little mozaic-things
of interlocking snowflakes; when the dragon's eyes
flashed, the flakes caught rainbow fire and sparkled for a
few seconds.

The dragon said, "Billy Binder, welcome to the fallen
country."

Billy was afraid at last. "Send me home!" he cried. And
then he remembered Pete and said nothing.

When the dragon spoke, its voice was piping dear,
emotionless, like the voice of a child's ghost. It wasn4 a
booming, threatening voice at all.

"What are you thinking?" he said. "That I don't sound
fierce and threatening the way a dragon should? That I
don't roar?" He did roar then, a tinny, buzzing roar like an
electric alarm clock.

Billy said, "Who has stolen your roar?" He felt a twinge
of pity for the dragon; but then his anger slapped It down.

"This is the fallen country. Billy. Here there is no emo-
tion at all. We cannot love or hate. We cannot utter great
thunderous cries of joy or terror. . .the world is muted by
perpetual snow. That is why you are here,"

"What do you mean?" Billy was scared and wanted to
go back to his bike. He looked behind him and saw it,
impossibly far away; it seemed strange that he could have