"Kim Wilkins - The Autumn Castle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilkins Kim)

"You must put every one of these ideas out of your head," Papa said, brandishing the drawings.

"You must respect the faeries."

"We have our good fortune because of them," Mama said. "You owe them gratitude and love."

But no matter how long they nagged and bullied me, no matter how many clips around the head and
bruising shakings they gave me, I knew the opposite was true.

I owed the faeries only contempt. I owed them only my sincerest hatred.

***
The afternoon air bit cold as Christine walked home from Friedrichstrasse Station, vainly pulling her
cardigan tighter. Of course, she could have taken the U-bahn down to Oranienburger Tor, which was
much closer, but underground travel was something she avoided at all times. Thirteen years of bad
dreams about tunnels meant an obsessive frostiness stole over her skin every time she approached an
underground space.

Her back ached in hot buzzes. It had been a bad day. Busy and tiring, and the continual stress of those
half-forgotten memories haunting her as though they were desperately important. As she crossed
Weidendammer Bridge, she scratched at her left thumb. It had become irritated around lunchtime and
now an itchy red blotch had spread across its tip. She paused, leaning on the bridge railing above the
pale gray Spree, and examined her thumb. An old memory fought back toward her and she shook her
head in wonder. This was too weird. May Frith had disappeared nearly twenty-five years ago, but her
memory was alive in Christine's body. At seven, after reading a cowboy story together (May was a
precocious reader), they had decided to become blood sisters. They had each pricked their thumbs, then
smeared the tiny drops of blood together. Christine touched the spot now, and it prickled gently. Surely
coincidence. Surely she had received a tiny paper cut during the day, and it had grown inflamed. She put
the tip of her thumb in her mouth and sucked it delicately; thought she could faintly taste blood.

"I'm going nuts from the pain," she muttered to herself, turning and heading home.

Hotel Mandy-Z was a gently crumbling, late nineteenth-century apartment building on Vogelwald-Allee,
a dead-end street that dipped into an enormous storm drain and a square of green behind
Friedrichstrasse. It had once been the head office of an Asian travel agency, but the Reiseb├╝ro sign had
been painted over in gray (she could still see the letters faintly underneath) and "Hotel Mandy-Z" had
been added in gold by one of 1998's Zweigler Fellows. She let herself into the tiny lobby, checked the
mail, dashed past the gallery door so Mandy wouldn't see her, then proceeded upstairs. The gallery was
situated on the lower floor with the studios, Gerda and Pete lived across the hall from each other on the
first floor, and Jude and Fabiyan on the second. The third, fourth, and attic were Mandy's.

Christine unlocked the apartment door and called out, "Jude?"

"In here."

Christine looked around as she closed the door behind her. Jude had cleaned the entire apartment. The
kitchen gleamed, the ashtrays were empty, the tables were free of the usual piles of books and papers.
Jude had clearly had a bad day too. When he couldn't paint, he cleaned. Obsessively.