Neil Gaiman - Coraline - Глава 13
текст песни

Coraline's parents never seemed to remember anything about their time in the snow-globe. At least, they never said anything about it, and Coraline never mentioned it to them.

Sometimes, she wondered whether they had ever noticed that they had lost two days in the real world, and came to the eventual conclusion that they had not. Then again, there are some people who keep track of every day and every hour, and there are people who don't, and Coraline's parents were solidly in the second camp.

Coraline had placed the marbles beneath her pillow before she went to sleep that first night home in her own room once more. She went back to bed, after she saw the other mother's hand, although there was not much time left for sleeping, and she rested her head back on the pillow.

Something scrunched gently as she did do.

She sat up and lifted the pillow. The fragments of the glass marbles that she saw looked like the remains of eggshells one finds beneath trees in springtime: like empty, broken robins' eggs, or even more delicate, wrens' eggs, perhaps.

Whatever had been inside the glass spheres had gone. Coraline thought of the three children waving goodbye to her in the moonlight, waving before they crossed that silver stream.

She gathered up the eggshell-thin fragments with care and placed them in a small blue box which had once held a bracelet that her grandmother had given her when she was a little girl. The bracelet was long-lost, but the box remained.

Miss Spink and Miss Forcible came back from visiting Miss Spink's niece, and Coraline went down to their flat for tea. It was a Monday. On Wednesday Coraline would go back to school: a whole new school year would begin.

Miss Forcible insisted on reading Coraline's tea leaves.

"Well, looks like everything's mostly shipshape and Bristol fashion, lovey," said Miss Forcible.

"Sorry?" said Coraline.

"Everything is coming up roses," said Miss Forcible. "Well, almost everything. I'm not sure what that is." She pointed to a clump of tea leaves sticking to the side of the cup.

Miss Spink tutted and reached for the cup. "Honestly, Miriam. Give it over here. Let me see . . ."

She blinked through her thick spectacles. "Oh dear. No, I have no idea what that signifies. It looks almost like a hand."

Coraline looked. The clump of leaves did look a little like a hand, reaching for something.

Hamish the Scottie dog was hiding under Miss Forcible's chair, and he wouldn't come out.

"I think he was in some sort of fight," said Miss Spink. "He has a deep gash in his side, poor dear. We'll take him to the vet later this afternoon. I wish I knew what could have done it."

Something, Coraline knew, would have to be done.

That final week of the holidays, the weather was magnificent, as if the summer itself were trying to make up for the miserable weather they had been having by giving them some bright and glorious days before it ended.

The crazy old man upstairs called down to Coraline when he saw her coming out of Miss Spink and Miss Forcible's flat.

"Hey! Hi! You! Caroline!" he shouted over the railing.

"It's Coraline," she said. "How are the mice?"

"Something has frightened them," said the old man, scratching his moustache. "I think maybe there is a weasel in the house. Something is about. I heard it in the night. In my country we would have put down a trap for it, maybe put down a little meat or hamburger, and when the creature comes to feast, then—bam!—it would be caught and never bother us more. The mice are so scared they will not even pick up their little musical instruments."

"I don't think it wants meat," said Coraline. She put her hand up and touched the black key that hung about her neck. Then she went inside.