Однако все эти добра я так что отрабатывал тяжким трудом. Течение революционизирования молодого поколения шел гигантскими ступами. Бои продолжались 8 дней. Через год, в 1919 г. Третьих. С какого места принялась в белой армии иудейская рота? Было проведено месяца два со дня моего прибытия в роту. Это разрешило отыскать единомышленников. Всего в роте существовало около 150 солдат. Батальон сделался нести гарнизонную службу в грамма. Пора находилось приступать к функциональным усилиям. А значит, раз в 3 рабочего дня западную доля города охраняла отечественная рота. Программа комитета кушал этов. Все свершилось по намеченному замыслу. Удача кушала совершенная. Патронов да и куча продовольствия да и амуниции. Операция существовала довершена. Встретили меня дружелюбни. Остальной повествование относится к 1919 г.
Waving a wand, it sang. Then the curtain fell, and the audience reposed and ate candy while discussing the merits of the play. A good deal of hammering went on before the curtain rose again, but when it became evident what a masterpiece of stage carpentery had been got up, no one murmured at the delay. It was truly superb. He came in gorgeous array, with plumed cap, red cloak, chestnut lovelocks, a guitar, and the boots, of course. Kneeling at the foot of the tower, he sang a serenade in melting tones. Zara replied and, after a musical dialogue, consented to fly. Then came the grand effect of the play. It caught in the window, the tower tottered, leaned forward, fell with a crash, and buried the unhappy lovers in the ruins. I told you so! Act as if it was all right! She also defied her sire, and he ordered them both to the deepest dungeons of the castle. A stout little retainer came in with chains and led them away, looking very much frightened and evidently forgetting the speech he ought to have made. A key is thrown in, which unlocks the door, and in a spasm of rapture he tears off his chains and rushes away to find and rescue his lady love. The bag is opened, and several quarts of tin money shower down upon the stage till it is quite glorified with the glitter. This entirely softens the stern sire. Tumultuous applause followed but received an unexpected check, for the cot bed, on which the dress circle was built, suddenly shut up and extinguished the enthusiastic audience. There was ice cream, actually two dishes of it, pink and white, and cake and fruit and distracting french bonbons and, in the middle of the table, four great bouquets of hot house flowers. It quite took their breath away, and they stared first at the table and then at their mother, who looked as if she enjoyed it immensely.
[показать]A poor, bare, miserable room it was, with broken windows, no fire, ragged bedclothes, a sick mother, wailing baby, and a group of pale, hungry children cuddled under one old quilt, trying to keep warm. How the big eyes stared and the blue lips smiled as the girls went in. It is good angels come to us! In a few minutes it really did seem as if kind spirits had been at work there. Hannah, who had carried wood, made a fire, and stopped up the broken panes with old hats and her own cloak. March gave the mother tea and gruel, and comforted her with promises of help, while she dressed the little baby as tenderly as if it had been her own. Not a very splendid show, but there was a great deal of love done up in the few little bundles, and the tall vase of red roses, white chrysanthemums, and trailing vines, which stood in the middle, gave quite an elegant air to the table. March was both surprised and touched, and smiled with her eyes full as she examined her presents and read the little notes which accompanied them. There was a good deal of laughing and kissing and explaining, in the simple, loving fashion which makes these home festivals so pleasant at the time, so sweet to remember long afterward, and then all fell to work. The morning charities and ceremonies took so much time that the rest of the day was devoted to preparations for the evening festivities. Being still too young to go often to the theater, and not rich enough to afford any great outlay for private performances, the girls put their wits to work, and necessity being the mother of invention, made whatever they needed. Very clever were some of their productions, pasteboard guitars, antique lamps made of oldfashioned butter boats covered with silver paper, gorgeous robes of old cotton, glittering with tin spangles from a pickle factory, and armor covered with the same useful diamond shaped bits left in sheets when the lids of preserve pots were cut out. The big chamber was the scene of many innocent revels. The smallness of the company made it necessary for the two principal actors to take several parts apiece, and they certainly deserved some credit for the hard work they did in learning three or four different parts, whisking in and out of various costumes, and managing the stage besides. It was excellent drill for their memories, a harmless amusement, and employed many hours which otherwise would have been idle, lonely, or spent in less profitable society. On christmas night, a dozen girls piled onto the bed which was the dress circle, and sat before the blue and yellow chintz curtains in a most flattering state of expectancy. This cave was made with a clothes horse for a roof, bureaus for walls, and in it was a small furnace in full blast, with a black pot on it and an old witch bending over it. The stage was dark and the glow of the furnace had a fine effect, especially as real steam issued from the kettle when the witch took off the cover. Hagar, in a fine dramatic melody, promised both, and proceeded to call up the spirit who would bring the love philter.
[показать]Where are our bundles? Mine is dishes and dusters, and envying girls with nice pianos, and being afraid of people. What shall we do about that? It was uninteresting sewing, but tonight no one grumbled. At nine they stopped work, and sang, as usual, before they went to bed. Meg had a voice like a flute, and she and her mother led the little choir. They had always done this from the time they could lisp. The first sound in the morning was her voice as she went about the house singing like a lark, and the last sound at night was the same cheery sound, for the girls never grew too old for that familiar lullaby. No stockings hung at the fireplace, and for a moment she felt as much disappointed as she did long ago, when her little sock fell down because it was crammed so full of goodies. A greencovered book appeared, with the same picture inside, and a few words written by their mother, which made their one present very precious in their eyes. Jo put her arm round her and, leaning cheek to cheek, read also, with the quiet expression so seldom seen on her restless face. Hide the basket, quick! Amy came in hastily, and looked rather abashed when she saw her sisters all waiting for her. Thank you for our books. Not far away from here lies a poor woman with a little newborn baby. Six children are huddled into one bed to keep from freezing, for they have no fire. There is nothing to eat over there, and the oldest boy came to tell me they were suffering hunger and cold. Meg was already covering the buckwheats, and piling the bread into one big plate. March, smiling as if satisfied.
[показать]Margaret, the eldest of the four, was sixteen, and very pretty, being plump and fair, with large eyes, plenty of soft brown hair, a sweet mouth, and white hands, of which she was rather vain. She had a decided mouth, a comical nose, and sharp, gray eyes, which appeared to see everything, and were by turns fierce, funny, or thoughtful. Her long, thick hair was her one beauty, but it was usually bundled into a net, to be out of her way. Amy, though the youngest, was a most important person, in her own opinion at least. A regular snow maiden, with blue eyes, and yellow hair curling on her shoulders, pale and slender, and always carrying herself like a young lady mindful of her manners. What the characters of the four sisters were we will leave to be found out. Marmee must have a new pair. What will we get? Hagar, the witch, chanted an awful incantation over her kettleful of simmering toads, with weird effect. I always wanted to do the killing part. She was not elegantly dressed, but a noblelooking woman, and the girls thought the gray cloak and unfashionable bonnet covered the most splendid mother in the world. Jo, you look tired to death. Come and kiss me, baby. The girls flew about, trying to make things comfortable, each in her own way. He is well, and thinks he shall get through the cold season better than we feared. March, patting her pocket as if she had got a treasure there. Beth ate no more, but crept away to sit in her shadowy corner and brood over the delight to come, till the others were ready. Now come and hear the letter. Very few letters were written in those hard times that were not touching, especially those which fathers sent home.
[показать]Oh, be careful," whispered Salmakia, but Lyra's mind was already racing ahead through the story she'd told the night before, shaping and cutting and improving and adding: parents dead; family treasure; shipwreck; escape ... They were both trembling, the angel and the man, but one from weakness and the other from excitement. "As many as there are," said Will. "No one would ever have time to find out." Her eyes were still heavy, and she was racked by deep yawns, but she was desperate to be awake, and he helped her up, putting her arm over his shoulder and taking much of her weight. Ama watched timidly, for now that the strange girl was awake, she was nervous of her. Will breathed in the scent of Lyra's sleepy body with a happy satisfaction: she was here, she was real. Ten minutes later there was a knock on the door. The pale, dark-eyed alethiometrist, with his nightingale daemon on his shoulder, came in and bowed slightly. A moment later the orderly arrived with a tray of bread, cheese, and coffee, and Mrs. Coulter said: Mrs. Coulter said to Lord Roke,My lord, are your spies always sent out in pairs? The first ghosts trembled with hope, and their excitement passed back like a ripple over the long line behind them, young children and aged parents alike looking up and ahead with delight and wonder as the first stars they had seen for centuries shone through into their poor starved eyes. "Yeah, if we do that, it said that we might never come back, Will. We might not survive." She was sitting at her ease in the little canvas chair, with a book on her lap, watching him calmly. She was wearing traveler's clothes of khaki, but so well were they cut and so graceful was her figure that they looked like the highest of high fashion, and the little spray of red blossom she'd pinned to her shirtfront looked like the most elegant of jewels. Her hair shone and her dark eyes glittered, and her bare legs gleamed golden in the sunlight. Where were they? "So on that occasion, the woman Coulter will not have heard the name?" "Any moment now he'll lose patience," she whispered. I told him to make himself small. But he's only an angel, after all, even if he was once a man. And we can wrestle with him and bring him to the edge of the gulf, and we'll both go down with him.She smiled. Will very nearly smiled in response, because he was so unused to the sweetness and gentleness a woman could put into a smile, and it unsettled him. TWENTY-EIGHT - MIDNIGHT In the confusion Lord Roke leapt at the big man's leg as it swung past him, seized the camouflage cotton of the trousers, heavy and sodden with rain already, and kicked a spur into the flesh just above the boot. "The intentions of a tool are what it does. A hammer intends to strike, a vise intends to hold fast, a lever intends to lift. They are what it is made for. But sometimes a tool may have other uses that you don't know. Sometimes in doing what you intend, you also do what the knife intends, without knowing. Can you see the sharpest edge of that knife?" You don't like night pictures, Atal said. they will come, they will.It doesn't matter where it's detonated, does it?" Gradually the ferocity left the gaze of the little brown bird, and Serafina could look at her again. She saw a desolate sadness in its place. It had taken her longer than she thought it would to walk here. It was getting on toward midday, for the shafts of light coming down through the canopy were almost vertical. Drowsily Mary wondered why the grazing creatures didn't move under the shade of the trees during this hottest part of the day. "Now, Fra Pavel," said the Inquirer of the Consistorial Court of Discipline, "I want you to recall exactly, if you can, the words you heard the witch speak on the ship." He was looking through the watchtower telescope at something in the western sky. It had the appearance of a mountain hanging in the sky a hand's breadth above the horizon, and covered in cloud. It was a very long way off, so far, in fact, that it was no bigger than a thumbnail held out at arm's length. But it had not been there for long, and it hung there absolutely still. He reached the foot of the slope, where the trees began, and laid the rifle down silently. Every eye turned to him, and those deaths lying on the floor sat up to turn their blank, mild faces to his tiny, passionate one. He was standing close by Salmakia, his hand on her shoulder. Lyra could see what he was thinking: he was going to say that this had gone too far, they must turn back, they were taking this foolishness to irresponsible lengths. "There is a ship coming," Serafina said. "I left it to fly here and find you. I came with the gyptians, all the way from our world. They will be here in another day or so." Mary felt the burden of it keenly. It felt like age. She felt eighty years old, worn out and
She had told Pantalaimon everything, but it was right that he should have some secrets from her, after the way she'd abandoned him. Baruch's voice faded. Lord Asriel's eyes were blazing, but he held his tongue and waited for Baruch to continue. SIX - PREEMPTIVE ABSOLUTION Lyra was moving and murmuring. Will bent down and squeezed her hand, and the other daemon nudged Pantalaimon, lifting his heavy head, whispering to him. Lord Roke mounted his hawk and followed with the others as Lord Asriel set off down the stairs of the tower and out onto the battlements. "What's happening?" Lyra said. "Where are we? Oh, Will, I had this dream..." "Yes, but... I did, yes, but... I want to go to the land of the dead, that's true. But not to die. I don't want to die. I love being alive, and I love my daemon, and ... Daemons don't go down there, do they? I seen 'em vanish and just go out like candles when people die. Do they have daemons in the land of the dead?" "Did you miss God?" asked Will. "No," said Will, for it was true: the edge diminished to a thinness so fine that the eye could not reach it. "Listen," said Will. "So this is your armor," he said. "Well, it doesn't look very strong to me. I don't know if I can trust it. Let me see." "So you see," she said, "I can betray him easily. I can lead you to where he's taking my daughter's daemon, and you can destroy Asriel, and the child will walk unsuspecting into your hands." Will kept walking. He could make himself inconspicuous; it was his greatest talent. By the time he got to them, the men had already lost interest in him. But then a door opened in the biggest house in the road, and a voice called something loudly. "Pan," Lyra said as he flowed up onto her lap, "you're not going to change a lot anymore, are you?
They must be good at listening and hiding. So maybe we better not mention it at all. We know where we're going. So we'll just go and not talk about it, and they'll have to put up with it and come along." The daemons flew back down now, and changed again, and came toward them over the soft sand. Lyra sat up to greet them, and Will marveled at the way he could instantly tell which daemon was which, never mind what form they had. Pantalaimon was now an animal whose name he couldn't quite find: like a large and powerful ferret, red-gold in color, lithe and sinuous and full of grace. Kirjava was a cat again. But she was a cat of no ordinary size, and her fur was lustrous and rich, with a thousand different glints and shades of ink black, shadow gray, the blue of a deep lake under a noon sky, mist-lavender-moonlight-fog... To see the meaning of the word subtlety, you had only to look at her fur. Iorek was watching closely, his paw held ready to snatch the pieces out. After a few moments the metal changed again, and the surface became shiny and glistening, and sparks just like those from a firework sprayed up from it. "The knife was a human invention." Father Gomez nodded. His daemon, a large and iridescent green-backed beetle, clicked her wing cases. "It said some things I didn't understand then and I still don't understand now. It said the knife would be the death of Dust, but then it said it was the only way to keep Dust alive. I didn't understand it, Will. But it said again it was dangerous, it kept saying that. It said if we, you know, what I thought...” "Mr. Scoresby?" said Lyra. "We can't see anything... What happened?" "Why ever not?" "Yes, sir," she said humbly. And she picked him up carefully, avoiding his spurs, and took him outside into the dark, where a loose piece of corrugated iron roofing was banging in the cold wind with a melancholy sound. The ghost girl spoke, but in her thin, pale voice, it was only a whisper. "I think that's what they do. I just don't know. I'll hate it." The something was a man. "I wish we could look behind," Lyra said when they were a few hundred yards away. "Here is all we know about the woman," he said, "and the world she comes from, and the place she was last seen. Read it well, my dear Luis, and go with my blessing." The people watching looked at one another in bewilderment, and those who could understand translated for the others. There came a cry. A soldier dropped his rifle and stumbled forward, falling to the ground, kicking and thrashing and groaning with pain. In response the President looked up to the sky, put his hands to his mouth, and uttered a piercing yell. "She's growed up, John," he said. "Remember that little girl we took to the north lands? Look at her now, eh! Lyra, my dear, if I had the tongue of an angel, I couldn't tell you how glad I am to set eyes on you again." At the western end of a range of saw-toothed mountains, on a peak that commanded wide views of the plain below and the valleys behind, a fortress of basalt seemed to grow out of the mountain as if some volcano had thrust it up a million years ago. "I swear, Metatron, her daemon is in my power. Please, great Regent, hide yourself a little, my eyes are dazzled..." Will and Lyra exchanged a glance to confirm it.
[показать]Minutes passed; a waterbird on the river beside them stirred and called; the occasional car moved over Magdalen Bridge. They crouched on the cave floor behind a large rock, with the bird-formed Balthamos beside them, their eyes taking some moments to adjust from the moon-drenched brilliance of the other world. Inside the cave it was much darker, and much more full of sound: mostly the wind in the trees, but below that was another sound, too. It was the roar of a zeppelin's engine, and it wasn't far away. "Yes," she said humbly, "I'm sorry, I will. Honest." "How many ages do you think I've been ferrying people to the land of the dead? D'you think if anything could hurt me, it wouldn't have happened already? D'you think the people I take come with me gladly? They struggle and cry, they try to bribe me, they threaten and fight; nothing works. You can't hurt me, sting as you will. Better comfort the child; she's coming; take no notice of me." She got up on shaky legs and walked slowly down toward it. The spring gurgled and trickled through mossy rocks, and she dipped her hands in it again and again, washing them clear of the mud and grime before lifting the water to her mouth. It was teeth-achingly cold, and she swallowed it with delight. And behind them, as the dust cleared, more and more of the ghosts were gazing in horror at the abyss. They were crouching on the slope, too frightened to move. Only the harpies were unafraid; they took to their wings and soared above, scanning backward and forward, flying back to reassure those still in the tunnel, flying ahead to search for the way out. And carrying her away from her body. At about the same time, one of the large blue lizards came across the body of Father Gomez. Will and Lyra had returned to the village that afternoon by a different route and hadn't seen it; the priest lay undisturbed where Balthamos had laid him. The lizards were scavengers, but they were mild and harmless creatures, and by an ancient understanding with the mulefa, they were entitled to take any creature left dead after dark. "My spy in the Society is the Lady Salmakia," said Lord Roke, "a very skillful agent. There is a priest whose daemon, al mouse, she approached in their sleep. My agent suggested that the man perform a forbidden ritual designed to invoke the presence of Wisdom. At the critical moment, the Lady Salmakia appeared in front of him. The priest now thinks he can communicate with Wisdom whenever he pleases, and that she has the form of a Gallivespian and lives in his bookcase." Her daemon was already prizing up one of the heavy old tiles. She joined him, and soon they had lifted half a dozen out of the way, and then she snapped off the battens on which they'd been hung, making a gap big enough to get through. "Bring the medicine with you then," said Will. "I'll meet you here." Something was happening outside. The roar of the zeppelins was now much louder than the wind in the trees, and lights were moving about, too, shining down through the branches from above. The quicker they got Lyra out, the better, and that meant darting down there now before Mrs. Coulter woke up, cutting through, pulling her to safety, and closing again. From time to time one of them would glance at Will or Lyra, or at the brilliant dragonfly and its rider, as if they were curious. Finally the oldest man said: because he's Will." "Oh, and you're offering to tell me a story?" And she herself was partly shadow matter. Part of her was subject to this tide that was moving through the cosmos. And so were the mulefa, and so were human beings in every world, and every kind of conscious creature, wherever they were. "Oh, he can do anything with metal, Will! Not only armor, he can make little delicate things as well..." She told him about the small tin box Iorek had made for her to shut the spy-fly in. "But where is he?" "Come on," said Will to Lyra, and they splashed through the icy, bone-aching water and scrambled up the far side of the gully just in time. The riders who came over the slope and clattered down to drink didn't look like cavalry: they seemed to be of the same kind of close-haired flesh as their horses, and they had neither clothes nor harness. They carried weapons, though: tridents, nets, and scimitars. "But why?" The understanding was beginning to dawn on Will and Lyra. They fought it, they pushed it away, but it was just like the gray light that seeps into the sky and extinguishes the stars: it crept past every barrier they could put up and under every blind and around the edges of every curtain they could draw against it. In the ghost light he saw her bright hair, her firm-set mouth, her candid eyes; he felt the warmth of her breath; he caught the friendly scent of her flesh. But they were trained warriors, and a moment later their daemons
If I can," he said, "I shall. The knife comes from here, does it?" A moment later, the intention craft began to move, and the hawk wheeled away to skim down to Lord Asriel's wrist. No more than two seconds later, the aircraft was already vanishing from sight in the damp and starry air. "Yes," cried No-Name, "to lead them out! What will we do now? I shall tell you what we will do: from now on, we shall hold nothing back. We shall hurt and defile and tear and rend every ghost that comes through, and we shall send them mad with fear and remorse and self-hatred. This is a wasteland now; we shall make it a hell!" And more and more of them clamored for Lyra to tell them about the things they remembered, the sun and the wind and the sky, and the things they'd forgotten, such as how to play; and she turned to Will and whispered, "What should I do, Will?" Will followed eagerly, his weariness forgotten. The window, he saw when he reached it, opened onto a dim, tundra-like landscape that was flatter than the mountains in the Cittagazze world, and colder, with an overcast sky. He went through, and Balthamos followed him at once. Balthamos was terrified. "She is not, but her daemon is." "Well," Lyra said, and found her throat choked, so she swallowed and shrugged. She felt herself beginning to believe it; but all the same, it was heartrending to see the poor little cold thing, so close and yet so out of reach. She tried to grasp his wrist, though her fingers closed in the empty air; but he understood and sat down beside her. "So if you don't know whether you're dead or not, and the little girl swears blind she'll come out again to the living, I say nothing to contradict you. What you are, you'll know soon enough." All through that day the army assembled. Angels of Lord Asriel's force flew high over the Clouded Mountain, looking for an opening, but without success. Nothing changed; no more angels flew out or inward; the high winds tore at the clouds, and the clouds endlessly renewed themselves, not parting even for a second. The sun crossed the cold blue sky and then moved down to the southwest, gilding the clouds and tinting the vapor around the mountain every shade of cream and scarlet, of apricot and orange. When the sun sank, the clouds glowed faintly from within. The Chevalier Tialys replied: "No," he said. "Iorek, old feller, you don't know the half of it. We'll take over now, the Specters aren't afraid of bears. Lyra, Will, come this way, and hold up that knife...” He pushed them away with his armored head. Will plunged after Lee Scoresby's ghost into the undergrowth, slashing to right and left with the knife. The light here was broken and muted, and the shadows were thick, tangled, confusing. "We're going to see Grandpa," the mother said desperately. "I've come to tell you, my Lord Regent," she said. "My left leg is broken," said the Gallivespian calmly. "The last man stepped on me. Listen carefully...” "Yes, but I soon stopped." Oh, that would be far worse than the gray, silent world they were leaving, wouldn't it? "The only way you'll cross the lake and go to the land of the dead," he said, and he was leaning up on his elbow, pointing with a skinny finger at Lyra, "is with your own deaths. You must call up your own deaths. I have heard of people like you, who keep their deaths at bay. You don't like them, and out of courtesy they stay out of sight. But they're not far off. Whenever you turn your head, your deaths dodge behind you. Wherever you look, they hide. They can hide in a teacup. Or in a dewdrop. Or in a breath of wind. Not like me and old Magda here," he said, and he pinched her withered cheek, and she pushed his hand away. "We live together in kindness and friendship. That's the answer, that's it, that's what you've got to do, say welcome, make friends, be kind, invite your deaths to come close to you, and see what you can get them to agree to." The first ghost to leave the world of the dead was Roger. He took a step forward, and turned to look back at Lyra, and laughed in surprise as he found himself turning into the night, the starlight, the air... and then he was gone, leaving behind such a vivid little burst of happiness that Will was reminded of the bubbles in a glass of champagne. "Brother Louis," said the man, soothing his rabbit daemon, "Convener of the Secretariat of the Consistorial Court. If you would be so kind. They feel unhappy there," Will said, guessing. "It's where they've just died. They're afraid of it." She took a deep, shuddering breath and turned the instrument around. It looked strange and awkward in her hands. Pantalaimon, mouse-formed, crept into her lap and rested his black paws on the crystal, peering at one symbol after another. Lyra
The two birds sat close, and in a moment they had changed their forms, becoming two doves. She felt dizzy, and it wasn't only the swaying and rising and falling of the branches she was wedged among. She put the spyglass carefully in her pocket and hooked her arms over the branch in front, gazing at the sky, the moon, the scudding clouds. "And for most of that time, wisdom has had to work in secret, whispering her words, moving like a spy through the humble places of the world while the courts and palaces are occupied by her enemies." "And we had to let them all out." "And is it not time you had a consort?" And she knew that her nature would have to answer for her, and she was terrified that what he saw in her would be insufficient. Lyra had lied to Iofur Raknison with her words; her mother was lying with her whole life. The grass was knee-high, and growing among it were low-lying bushes, no higher than her ankles, of something like juniper; and there were flowers like poppies, like buttercups, like cornflowers, giving a haze of different tints to the landscape; and then she saw a large bee, the size of the top segment of her thumb, visiting a blue flower head and making it bend and sway. But as it backed out of the petals and took to the air again, she saw that it was no insect, for a moment later it made for her hand and perched on her finger, dipping a long needle-like beak against her skin with the utmost delicacy and then taking flight again when it found no nectar. It was a minute hummingbird, its bronze-feathered wings moving too fast for her to see. "Well, sir," he said, "what have you come to tell me?" Suddenly Iorek lunged at Will and cuffed him hard with his left paw: so hard that Will fell half-stunned into the snow and tumbled over and over until he ended some way down the slope with his head ringing. Lyra thought about it. She remembered vividly the horrible scream of pain from Mrs. Coulter, the eye-rolling convulsions, the ghastly, lolling drool of the golden monkey as the poison entered her bloodstream... And that was only a scratch, as her mother had recently been reminded elsewhere. Will would have to give in and do what they wanted. Will found his imagination trembling. "Seepot," said the creature. They tore open the food stores, snarling and growling and tossing their great cruel beaks high as they swallowed the dried meat and all the preserved fruit and grain. Everything edible was gone in under a minute. He walked with Iorek up the slope toward the cave, where the fire glow still shone warmly in the vast surrounding dark. "You have it," snapped the President. "Don't be afraid. You are not a heretic. Report what you have learned, and waste no more time." "If you come, he must stay." "It was... Remember I told you about my friend Roger, and how the Gobblers caught him and I tried to rescue him, and it went wrong and Lord Asriel killed him? "And I shall tell you one thing. You know it already, but you don't want to, which is why I tell you openly, so that you don't mistake it. If you want to succeed in this task, you must no longer think about your mother. You must put her aside. If your mind is divided, the knife will break. "Oh, Asriel, what will happen to us?" Mrs. Coulter said again. "Is this the end of everything?" "I am surprised you did not seek the aid of the Consistorial Court, where we have strong nerves." Pantalaimon cried aloud, a pure, cold owl cry, a sound never heard in that world before. In nests and burrows for a long way around, and wherever any small night creature was hunting or grazing or scavenging, a new and unforgettable fear came into being. Will and Lyra, both of them sick and full of pain, tried to stand upright and face her. "And what did he tell you to do with the knife?" said Iorek Byrnison, handing it carefully back to Will. There was a little clearing in the middle of the grove, which was floored with soft grass and moss-covered rocks. The branches laced across overhead, almost shutting out the sky and letting through little moving spangles and sequins of sunlight, so that everything was dappled with gold and silver. Iorek reached the top of a little rise in the ground and paused. Ahead of them the broken ground sloped down toward a grove about a quarter of a mile away. Somewhere beyond that a battery of great guns was firing shell after shell, howling high overhead, and someone was firing flares, too, that burst just under the clouds and drifted down toward the trees, making them blaze with cold green light as a fine target for the guns. "Thank you, Pagdzin tulku" said Ama, taking the package and placing it in the pocket of her innermost shirt. "I wish I had another honey bread to give you." "He's very young. Well, they are both young. You know, if she doesn't
О себе любимой только одни прелести могу писать, я ужасная стерва, делаю что хочу, когда хочу и с кем хочу. Люблю цветы, подарки, дискотеки, рестораны!!! Короче я просто прелесть)))
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