Девочка, которая объехала Волшебную Страну на самодельном корабле

Осень – душа метаморфоз, время, когда мир замирает на пороге зимы, то есть на пороге Смерти, но еще не обрушивается в нее. Это противоречивый мир – пора урожая и изобилия, но также холода и невзгод. Здесь мы ныряем в самую гущу жизни, но не забываем о том, что все проходит и увядает. Осень обращает мир из одного состояния в другое. Год становится зрелым и мудрым, но еще не дряхлым и слабоумным.

Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.

- I am Death. I thought that was obvious.

- But you are so small!

- Only because you are small. You are young and far from your Death, September, so I seem as anything would seem if you saw it from a long way off - very small, very harmless. But I am always closer than I appear. As you grow, I shall grow with you, until at the end, I shall loom huge and dark over your bed, and you will shut your eyes so as not to see me.

Не омрачай день сегодняшний, оплакивая день завтрашний.

“This is a very secret place, September. And a very sad one. Each of these clocks belongs to a child who has come to Fairyland. When it chimes midnight, the child is sent home--all in a huff, whether she asked to go or not! Some clocks run fast, so fast a boy might dwell in Fairyland for no more than an hour. He wakes up, and what a lovely dream he had! Some run slow, and a girl might spend her whole life in Fairyland, years upon years, until she is snapped horribly back home to mourn her loss for the rest of her days. You can never know how your clock runs. But it does run, and always faster than you think.”

“I work at the shoe factory, girl! We all do, it’s what we do. Why, before the Marquess came, we just lay about on beaches and ate mangoes and drank coconut milk and knew nothing about industry whatever! How gladsome we are now, that she has shown us our laziness! Now we know the satisfaction of a full day’s labor, of punchcards and taxable income.”

“Too right he does,” warned the panther Iago, batting at a little cotton beetle skittering through the dusty pen. “I wouldn’t even consider it, if I were you. But then if I were you, I would not be me, and if I were not me, I would not be able to advise you, and if I were unable to advise you, you’d do as you like, so you might as well do as you like and have done with it.”

...Do you say no to your Queen?”

“We don’t have a Queen where I live.”

“Then I’m sorry for you. Queens are very splendid, even when they call themselves Marquesses and chain up poor Wyverns. Well, very splendid and very frightening. But splendid things are often frightening. Sometimes it’s the fright that makes them splendid at all. What kind of place did you come from, with no Queens and bad fathers and Anna-Marees?”

“Why do you need that thing?” September asked. “None of the airports back home have them.”

“They do, you just can’t see them right,” grinned Betsy Basilstalk. “All customs agents have them, otherwise, why would people agree to stand in line and be peered at and inspected? We all live inside the terrible engine of authority, and it grinds and shrieks and burns so that no one will say: lines on maps are silly. Where you live, the awful machinery is smaller, harder to see. Less honest, that’s all. Whereas Rupert here? He’s as honest as they come. Does what it says on the box.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, Sir Wind,” said September after a respectable time had passed, “how does one get to Fairyland? After awhile, we shall certainly pass India and Japan and California and simply come round to my house again.”

The Green Wind chuckled. “I suppose that would be true, if the earth were round.”

“I’m reasonably sure it is…”

“You’re going to have to stop that sort of backwards, old-fashioned thinking, you know. Conservatism is not an attractive trait. Fairyland is a very Scientifick place. We subscribe to all the best journals.”

The Leopard of Little Breezes gave a light roar. Several small clouds skipped huffily out of their path.

“The earth, my dear, is roughly trapezoidal, vaguely rhomboid, a bit of a tesseract, and altogether grumpy when its fur is stroked the wrong way! In short, it is a puzzle, my autumnal acquisition, like the interlocking silver rings your Aunt Margaret bought back from Turkey when you were nine.”