Читать книгу The Secrets of Names. Snow Chronicles. Book 1 - Ар'лан ис'Дрекхэм - Страница 5

That night, sleep came softly into Vera’s room.

Streetlamp shadows lay across the ceiling and made long, uncertain shapes on the walls. Vera had just settled herself comfortably and was almost asleep when she felt a small movement beside her. Domino, dignified and fluffy, climbed on to her pillow and, after turning round twice in cross little circles, arranged himself against her head with one warm side pressed firmly to hers.

And that night Vera dreamed.

At first it was only an ordinary sort of dream. A pale yard, too bright and too empty. A house with no windows. Trees blacker than trees ought to be. Air that made you want to look over your shoulder before you even knew what might be there.

Then Domino appeared.

He was sitting on the fence with his tail wrapped tidily round his paws, looking at Vera in the exact way teachers look at a child who has finally opened the correct page after wasting most of the lesson.

«At last,» he said.

Vera stopped dead.

She had not quite had time either to be astonished or to be frightened. In dreams one is nearly always a little late with the proper feelings.

«You…» she began.

«Yes, yes, you’re dreaming and I’m talking,» said Domino, flicking this aside with his tail. «Don’t behave as if it were a national event. We have better things to do than admire your amazement.»

«Cats don’t talk.»

«First, that is hurtful. Second, they certainly do. They merely do not often stoop to it. Third, pay attention.»

He jumped down from the fence. In the dream he moved differently from the way he did by day: not just softly, but as if the air under him knew beforehand where it ought to be.

«The things that touch names are still weak,» said Domino. «But they are learning. And anything that is learning generally becomes less well-behaved, not more.»

«Who are they?»

Domino twitched one ear.

«They, he, she, it – I am not informed about the finer points. That, however, is what you are going to discover. Assuming, of course, that you have the sense not to dash headlong into the first disaster you come across.»

«Thank you for your confidence.»

«I am a cat,» said Domino. «Not a charitable foundation.»

He came nearer. His eyes were yellow and clear and not properly catlike at all – too understanding by half.

«If you want to make sense of this,» he said more quietly, «you will have to see their world.»

All around them, everything seemed to grow lighter. Or darker. In dreams of this kind one can never be entirely certain.

«What world?» Vera whispered.

Domino looked over her shoulder.

And in the empty air, where a moment ago there had been absolutely nothing, something stirred like snow.

Only this snow did not fall.