Читать книгу Shade’s Children - Гарт Никс, Garth Nix - Страница 7

’I’m Ninde. I’ve been waiting for ages to do this video, but Shade won’t let anyone record anything till they’ve been here for three months. He says it takes that long for us to get our thoughts together and sometimes even to remember who we are and where we came from.

Of course, I had no problems remembering any of that. I think it’s just laziness when you get people… like Nik when he came here… who’ve forgotten how to talk and wash and everything. You just have to practise thinking every day.

Oh, I’m supposed to say how I got out of the Dorms. That’s what this first video is always about. “How I got out of the Dorms.”

You’d think Shade would let us talk about something more interesting. I’ve watched heaps of these videos and really everyone just does whatever they can do with whatever they have, whether it’s finding something useful or using a Change Talent. Of course, hardly anyone has a really useful and powerful Talent like mine…

Which is lucky, because I’d hate to have had to cut my tracer out like Ella did, because her scar is really ugly and it must have bled heaps. Ella doesn’t care about blood, but I don’t like it. It’s so unfair that we women have to bleed once a month anyway. You shouldn’t have to cut yourself open as well.

I am getting to the point, Shade. I was going to say that since I reached puberty… did I say that right? Pew-berty. Stupid word. We never said that in the Dorms. We just called it bleeding and hoped it wouldn’t come too much before thirteen at least. I mean it’s bad enough having your brain ripped out at fourteen without having to have babies first. Of course, some people used to say the girls that got taken away for breeding got an extension to sixteen… or even eighteen…

It is connected and I am getting to the point. When I reached puberty, somehow I started hearing what the creatures were thinking. Which is not much for most of them, but the Myrmidon Master who was in charge of my Dorm used to think a lot. And one of the things he thought when I was listening was about deactivating the Tracer when you get taken away on your Sad Birthday.

So I learned where the Tracer Key was, and then I sneaked in one night and used it. That was a bit hard, but I did know where everyone was, and I’d overhead the Master thinking about the access codes for the doors and gates…

The only thing was, I hadn’t heard him thinking about an alarm that’s connected to the Key, so when it went off, I had to leave a bit more suddenly than I expected.

So that’s how I got out of the Dorm. Straight after that, I was—

<VIDEO INTERVIEW HALTED BY SHADE.

THIS SESSION NOT RESUMED.>