Darkhenge (Catherine Fisher) читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги (ч. 5)

B. BEITHNE: BIRCH

“Eat,” he keeps saying. “Eat,” but I won’t. If I do I may be trapped here forever, and I’m not even hungry. He leaves me alone if I scream at him; he doesn’t like that.

Outside the door of the room are endless corridors. I’ve explored them for miles. At least I think I have. They all look the same—stone-flagged and cobwebbed. Empty. There are sounds in the building. They echo distantly, but I don’t know what they are. Sometimes I come across a window, and scrub dirt off tiny leaded panes to look out. It’s hard to be sure, but the sky here seems a sullen, dim twilight. It never gets darker or lighter, but there are faint stars in strange constellations, billions of them.

What scares me most, though, are the trees.

There are trees everywhere. Tangly and green, pushing right up against the walls, tapping and knocking.

As if they wanted to get in.