"Jane Yolen - Lost Girls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Yolen Jane)

Lost Girls
JANE YOLEN
"It isn't fair!" Darla complained to her mom for the third time during
their bedtime reading. She meant it wasn't fair that Wendy only did the
housework in Neverland and that Peter Pan and the boys got to fight
Captain Hook.
"Well, I can't change it," Mom said in her even, lawyer voice. "That's
just the way it is in the book. Your argument is with Mr. Barrie, the
author, and he's long dead. Should I go on?"
"Yes. No. I don't know," Darla said, coming down on both sides of the
question, as she often did.
Mom shrugged and closed the book, and that was the end of the night's
reading.
Darla watched impassively as her mom got up and left the room,
snapping off the bedside lamp as she went. When she closed the door
there was just a rim of light from the hall showing around three sides of
the door, making it look like something out of a science fiction movie.
Darla pulled the covers up over her nose. Her breath made the space feel
like a little oven.
"Not fair at all," Darla said to the dark, and she didn't just mean the
book. She wasn't the least bit sleepy.
But the house made its comfortable night-settling noises around her:
the breathy whispers of the hot air through the vents, the ticking of the
grandfather clock in the hall, the sound of the maple branch
scritch-scratching against the clapboard siding. They were a familiar
lullaby, comforting and soothing. Darla didn't mean to go to sleep, but she
did.
Either that or she stepped out of her bed and walked through the closed
door into Neverland.
Take your pick.
It didn't feel at all like a dream to Darla. The details were too exact. And
she could smell things. She'd never smelled anything in a dream before. So
Darla had no reason to believe that what happened to her next was
anything but real.
One minute she had gotten up out of bed, heading for the bathroom,
and the very next she was sliding down the trunk of a very large, smooth
tree. The trunk was unlike any of the maples in her yard, being a kind of
yellowish color. It felt almost slippery under her hands and smelled like
bananas gone slightly bad. Her nightgown made a sound like whooosh as
she slid along.
When she landed on the ground, she tripped over a large root and
stubbed her toe.
"Ow!" she said.
"Shhh!" cautioned someone near her.
She looked up and saw two boys in matching ragged cutoffs and
T-shirts staring at her. "Shhh! yourselves," she said, wondering at the
same time who they were.
But it hadn't been those boys who spoke. A third boy, behind her,
tapped her on the shoulder and whispered, "If you aren't quiet, He will
find us."