Читать книгу The Cup of Galfar. Alderosa's Daughter - Alexander Pererva - Страница 4

Once upon a time Lu really had been a girl, just like Allie, only a little older. She was in ninth grade, so she must have been fourteen or fifteen. She was really pretty, even beautiful.

At that moment Lemonade snorted and covered his mouth with his paws, which earned him a slap on the head from the monkey.

“That’s right,” she repeated, “you may laugh as much as you want, but I really was not ugly like you. All the boys at school were crazy about me. But I never made it something to boast about.”

Lu was never conceited and never acted like she was better than other girls, so she had lots of friends. But she only had one best friend. They used to share a desk at school.

When Lu started to tell Allie about her best friend, she realized with horror that she couldn’t recall the friend’s name. There were lots of names from the past whirling around in her memory – Mary, Jane and Rachel, but Lu just didn’t know how they were all related to her. Allie suggested that they call her Lucy, because Lu and Lucy sounded similar. Lu thought for a moment and then declined the offer, saying that Lu suited her better the way she was now, and, besides, she was used to the name.

She had a hard time remembering her parents, too. Not only their names, but even their faces seemed to have been erased from her memory. The only thing she knew for sure was that she had had parents, and also a little brother who was three. There was also a feeling of warmth and love associated with them.

This might seem strange, but Lu clearly remembered everything she had been taught during her nine years at school. She had been an excellent student, and was even now ready to take a test on any subject.

She also remembered well the last day of her normal, human life.

***

It was late spring, and the weather was summery warm. The tender green leaves on the trees were starting to turn dark emerald, but were still fresh and untouched by dust. The chestnut trees were in full bloom, covered in tall foamy-white pyramid blossoms. The air was fresh and clear, the sky was high and blue. It was that delightful time of the year when every school kid was keenly aware of the fact that there were only a handful more days left till summer vacation.

On one of those lovely days the two ninth-graders went to the city park after classes. A traveling carnival had come to town.

After going on roller coaster rides several times each, and taking a spin on the carousel, and bumping around in bumper cars, the girls finally stopped in front of a sign that read “Cave of Horrors” in blood-red letters. The whole pavilion was painted with skeletons, ghosts and many kinds of monsters. The entrance to the cave was draped in heavy black cloth and looked just like a cave mouth. Miniature cars on miniature rails were waiting just outside the cave. Each had two seats. Those who desired to be “horrified” got in one of the cars, which followed one another with a metallic rattle into the pavilion. There was laughter and there were shrieks, as well as wailing and the pop of gunshots (or more likely, fire crackers) coming from the inside. In a few minutes, the cars, with their excited and disheveled passengers, rolled out of the pavilion. The women were, as a rule, giggling nervously and fixing their hair; the men were smiling condescendingly, trying to look unimpressed. No one gave clear answers as to what was inside the cave, so there were more than enough curious people who wanted to find out for themselves. The cars were transferred back to the cave mouth on the rails that went around the pavilion, and they were ready to take in more visitors.

After a moment’s hesitation, the friends gave in to the temptation and went to buy the tickets.

Taking their seats in the car, they gripped the handles and were carried off into the “cave”. The black curtain fell behind the car, and the girls found themselves in a dim space that was lit by colorful blinking lights. A few feet in front of them there was another car that had entered the “cave” a few seconds before they did. The car jerked and made sharp turns and sometimes dropped a couple of feet down. Lu and her friend’s car repeated the same maneuvers several moments later. It felt as if the cars were moving down a cleverly designed maze. There were “horrible” things happening all around them: glowing and dancing skeletons would jump out of a gaping tomb; enormous bats would plunge down from somewhere above, brushing the girls’ faces with their leathery wings; a medieval executioner in a red hood rose his huge glistening axe that then fell on the visitors’ heads, but missed every time as the cars would always manage to carry their passengers past him. It would go suddenly dark, a menacing roar would rumble and some furry paws would grab the passengers’ arms and shoulders. After another sharp turn the car would roll into a dinosaur’s gaping mouth. Terrified shrieks and yells continued non-stop. It was great fun.

The two friends were also yelling and shrieking, fighting the furry paws and dodging the bat wings. They didn’t notice when the car ahead of them disappeared. Only, when they popped out of a pitch-black stretch of the track again, the other car was gone, and they were rolling along between giant stalactites – enormous icicles hanging down from the cave ceiling. Some of them had reached the floor and turned into picturesque pillars. The rail tracks made their way around these pillars. The cave was dimly and mysteriously lit. The girls could see no light source, and it seemed that the ice pillars themselves were glowing, shimmering and sparkling with bright colors. They couldn’t see the size of the cave, but judging by the 50-feet-tall pillars, the tops of which were hidden in the dark up above, the space was truly colossal.

The girls were so awe-struck by the magnificent ice kingdom that they did not at first feel scared or surprised but only looked around in amazement and admired the magical dancing lights inside the blue crystals. It was the icy cold that brought them to their senses. They realized that something bizarre had happened. The cave was, no doubt, a real cave: the car had been rolling along for five minutes now, and there was no end to it in sight. The two friends grew anxious. They decided to jump out of the car and make their way back, but, no matter how hard they tried to unbuckle, the belts would not budge. The girls were trapped in the car that continued to slowly but inexorably roll down the track into the unknown. The cave was gradually becoming narrower; its walls and ceiling were closing in on the girls. Finally they saw a rocky wall ahead with a gaping black hole of a narrow tunnel into which the tracks disappeared.

Lu’s heart was frozen with fear. The dark hole that was fast approaching exuded menace. The girls, eyes wide with terror, exchanged glances and held on to each other. The next moment the darkness swallowed them.

Lu could not be sure whether the following events really happened or existed only as her hallucinations, or maybe both. She only remembered that she found herself surrounded by silent figures dressed in long hooded cloaks. She tried to talk to them and ask them questions, and look under their hoods. She still harbored a hope that it was all just a silly practical joke, a part of the ride, and that everybody would burst out laughing now and take off their hoods, and her fear would evaporate.

To bring this about, Lu quickly reached out towards one of the figures and pulled off its ridiculous hood. The nightmare continued: a hideous toad face was staring at her, its bulging web-covered eyes blinking on top of its forehead, and its enormous half-open mouth studded with small sharp teeth.

Lu felt sick to the stomach and fainted. Then she remembered being carried somewhere on a giant animal. Half-awake, she felt the rhythmic trod and, when she opened her eyes, saw herself lying down on satin pillows inside a lacy canopy on top of the animal’s wide back. Her friend was lying next to her on the pillows. She was motionless, so she must have been asleep or unconscious.

That was the last thing Lu remembered about her human life.

The memories that followed were all related to Lu the stuffed monkey. She remembered her box being opened for the first time; remembered being taken out of the box and placed on the shelf at the store next to other toys; remembered a price tag being pinned to her belly (that didn’t hurt but still felt somehow offensive).

Then Allie’s Dad bought her, and Lu moved in with their family. The monkey watched Allie grow, and it surprised her, because time seemed to stand still for herself. She still remembered herself as the same fifteen-year-old-girl, and she lived off those memories although they were fading fast.

And then – a blue flash that felt like waking up from a dark nightmare, where you cannot move your limbs or escape approaching danger.

“The cylinder rays literally brought me back to life. I can move and talk now. I feel, I am absolutely positive, that I will eventually remember everything,” Lu said enthusiastically. “Maybe I will be myself again. What do you think?”

She looked at Allie hopefully.

But Allie was so fascinated by Lu’s narration that she missed her last question. The whole story was so incredible that Allie wouldn’t have believed a word of it, if she’d heard it from somebody else. But this… this was the living proof of the monkey’s words. You could reach out and touch it. Allie did just that: she touched the monkey’s soft plush head and petted it. Lu clung to her hand gratefully and sighed. Then she pulled away with determination and said:

“All right, we have no time for all this touchy-feely nonsense. We need to help Allie’s parents. And, I’m sure, Allie’s in danger too. Lemonade, what do you think?”

The cat had been lying down that whole time with his head on his front paws and his eyes closed. He didn’t respond to Lu’s question, and the monkey grabbed and pulled his ear:

“Wake up, sleepyhead! The food’s almost gone!”

Lemonade shook his head, yawned and stretched:

“I believe those mice come from the same hole,” he murmured.

“Oh, come on, there are no mice here. Wake up already!”

“I wasn’t sleeping. I was thinking.”

“Oh really? What were you thinking about?” Lu asked mockingly.

“I was calculating how old you are. You know what I think?”

The cat went silent and started to lick his paw.

Lu slapped his paw impatiently. Lemonade looked at her in surprise and met with an expectant questioning glare.

“Oh, right,” the cat continued. “Allie is ten now, isn’t she? When you got in all that trouble, you were fifteen. Which means…”

“Which means that you are twenty-five years old now, Lu!” Allie finished Lemonade’s sentence, feeling excited and horrified at the same time.

“Not exactly,” pronounced Lemonade, unperturbed. “This would be correct if we knew for sure that Lu got to the toy store right after she stopped being human.”

He paused for effect and gave them a sly look.

“But, we do not know that. What if there was a year in between? Or ten years? She could be as old as my own grandmother now.”

“I used to pull such grandkids by their tails back in my days,” Lu was getting hot under the collar.

However, Lemonade’s arguments seemed pretty reasonable.

“Well, I don’t feel old, even twenty-five years old. I feel like a girl, just like I used to be.” Lu shrugged, puzzled.

“‘Pull by their tails,’” muttered Lemonade, whose feelings were hurt. “Just look at yourself.”

“Guys!” Allie pleaded, “Let’s not start a fight. We’ve got more than enough trouble on our hands. Let’s better think what we should do next.”

That was hard to argue with. Putting their petty disagreements aside, the strange little group began to plan their further actions.