"Kim Wilkins - Giants of the Frost" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilkins Kim)

stopped myself, took a breath and banished sums from my head. There was something familiar about this
place and I wondered why. Had I been somewhere similar? In my head, I tracked back over places I'd
visited and couldn't recall. The sense of familiarity was very deep, very strong, like a memory from
childhood that won't be pinned down. Mum would know. Had we been on holiday near a forest? Given
we were so poor we hardly ever left Lewisham, I couldn't imagine we had.

Two hundred and forty-eight, two hundred and forty-nineтАж

Damn it, I was still counting. I turned and made my way back to the cabin, subtracting a footstep each
time from my total. I used fewer footsteps going back, probably because I was more confident about
where I was going. I had eight left over.

Evening shadows crowded in and by the time I had unpacked and eaten the plastic-wrapped sandwich I
had bought at ├Еlesund, I was exhausted: the result of four days of sleep troubled by new-life trepidation.
I showered and snuggled under the tie-dyed bedspread.

It was nine o'clock. If I wanted to be at work at 8:00 a.m., I would have to wake up at seven, so I set
the alarm on my watch. But maybe I needed to rise earlier, as I had to find the galley. Why hadn't I
asked Magnus what time breakfast was available? Was there food in the cupboards in the kitchen here?
Would I have to make my own breakfast? I obsessed about this for a while, realized it was now eleven
o'clock and if I wanted eight hours' sleep I'd have to nod off precisely then, and of course that chased
sleep away. So I calculated some more: most people really only needed seven hours' sleep so I had an
hour to nod off, unless I decided to get up earlier. No, I wouldn't get up earlier, the galley couldn't be
hard to find. And now it was after midnight, and I was still doing sums and trying to convince myself that
six hours' sleep is all one really needs to feel refreshed and finally I gave up and got out of bed.

I set up my laptop on the coffee table in the lounge room and worked on writing up my thesis. Inside, the
light was yellow and the bar heater warmed my toes. Outside, the forest waited, peaceful and cold in the
rain; dense and dark and vaguely, vaguely familiar.


Any insomniac will tell you that they can nearly always sleep between 5:00 and 7:00 a.m., which is a pity
as this is when most alarm clocks in the world go off. I'd been sleeping for just over an hour when a
knock at the door of my cabin woke me. I resisted coming up; I willed the knock to go away. But my
visitor knocked again and, with a groan, I pulled myself all the way to wakefulness. Checked my watch.
Five minutes to seven.

Gunnar waited on the other side of the door. "Sorry," he said, when he saw how bleary I looked.
"Magnus sent me. He forgot to tell you about breakfast."

It occurred to me that both my exchanges with Gunnar had commenced with him apologizing to me. "I
had some trouble sleeping last night," I explained.

"Ah. Magnus told us you have insomnia."

"Not every night. Just when I'm tense. Would you like to come in?"

He slouched in, eyes averted from my blue-hippo pajamas. "Take your time. Get dressed and I'll show
you around the station this morning."