"Ian Watson - Slow Birds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watson Ian)

working up a sweat before the whistle blows?"
By now a couple of sisters from Buckby were out too with matching
black sails, skating figure-eights around each other, risking collision by a
hair's breadth.
"Go on, Jay," urged young Daniel. "Show "em."
Contestants from the other villages were starting to flood on to the glass
as well, but Jason noticed how Max Tarnover was standing not so far
away, merely observing these antics with a wise smile. Master Tarnover of
Tuckerton, last year's victor at Atherton despite the drenching spray. . . .
Taking his cue from this, and going one better, Jason ignored events on
the glass and surveyed the crowds instead.
He noticed Uncle John Babbidge chatting intently to an Edgewood man
over where the silver band was playing; which was hardly the quietest
place to talk, so perhaps they were doing business. Meanwhile on the
green beyond the band the children of five villages buzzed like flies from
hoop-la to skittles to bran tub, to apples in buckets of water. And those
grownups who weren't intent on the band or the practice runs or on
something else, such as gossip, besieged the craft and produce stalls.
There must be going on for a thousand people at the festival, and the
village beyond looked deserted. Rugs and benches and half-barrels had
even been set out near the edge of the glass for the old folk of Tuckerton.
As the band lowered their instruments for a breather after finishing The
Floral Dance, a bleat of panic cut across the chatter of many voices. A
farmer had just vaulted into a tiny sheep-pen where a lamb almost as
large as its shorn, protesting dam was ducking beneath her to suckle and
hide. Laughing, the farmer hauled it out and hoisted it by its neck and
back legs to guess its weight, and maybe win a prize.
And now Jason's mother was threading her way through the crowd,
chewing the remnants of a pasty.
"Best of luck, son!" She grinned.
"I've told you, Mum," protested Jason. "It's bad luck to say 'good luck'."
"Oh, luck yourself! What's luck, anyway?" She prodded her Adam's
apple as if to press the last piece of meat and potatoes on its way down,
though really she was indicating that her throat was bare of any charm or
amulet.
"I suppose I'd better make a move." Kicking off his sandals, Jason sat to
lace up his skates. With a helping hand from Daniel he rose and stood
knock-kneed, blades cutting into the turf while the boy hoisted the sails
across his shoulders. Jason gripped the leather straps on the bowstring
and the spine-spar.
"Okay." He waggled the sail this way and that. "Let's go, then. I won't
blow away."
But just as he was about to proceed down on to the glass, out upon the
glass less than a hundred yards away a slow bird appeared.
It materialized directly in front of one of the Buckby sisters. Unable to
veer, she had no choice but to throw herself backwards. Crying out in
frustration, and perhaps hurt by her fall, she skidded underneath the slow
bird, sledging supine upon her now snapped and crumpled sail.