poison_girl: переводы

→And Claudia had said she could do it. She had given her word. And now she was faced
with the problem of how to do it, how to explain to the others, who were old enough to
be skeptical about magic, so they would understand.

→"I want you to come back here," the vixen had said, "sometime after sunset. Say, as
near to seven o'clock as you can manage. And I want you to bring your brother and
sisters. Can you do it?"

→No, not fox, she corrected herself. Vixen. That was what the animal had called herself
when Claudia asked. "I am a vixen, a female fox," she had replied with a quiver of her
nostrils, and Claudia had immediately recognized that a vixen was a very grand and
glorious thing to be.

→Claudia thought about this as she slowly walked home from the house on the hill, a very
damp and crumpled letter clutched in her hand. She thought about it because her
brother and sisters had suddenly become terribly important to her. And the reason they
had become important was that the fox wanted them.

→There were four children in the Hodges-Bradley household. Their mother, who had been
Dr. Eileen Bradley before she married, and their father, who had been Mr. Michael
Hodges, had planned it this way. They'd decided to have a nice big family so that no
child of theirs would ever be lonely for lack of a brother or sister as a playmate.
Consequently they were a little disappointed when their children, though generally
cheerful and obliging, showed no inclination whatsoever to play together. It wasn't that
the children disliked each other; there was simply too much difference in their ages and
interests.

→Claudia was on Alys's heels as she pushed the door open and stepped inside. The
flashlight threw a wavering ellipse of white on the floor and walls of the huge dark room.
Charles crowded behind Claudia, breathing in her ear, and Janie shuffled in after him.

→"I'll go in first. You hang on to the flashlight, Claudia."

→Alys looked at her, then at the door. "Here, hold this," she said at last. She gave Claudia
the flashlight and gently tried the door handle. "It isn't locked, anyway." Slowly she
pushed the door open a few inches. Just like the door in any horror movie, it creaked.

→"She's awake, but she can't open the door," said Claudia. "She's got paws."

→"That ought to wake 'em up," said Janie, and she chuckled.

→"All right," said Alys, and she banged with the bat on the door. Claudia jumped at the
sudden noise.

→Claudia knocked. The door was hard and solid, and her knuckles made only a faint
tapping sound.

→"Just do it."

→"But she can't-"

→Alys was holding the baseball bat in one hand and the flashlight in the other. "Knock,"
she said to Claudia.

→With Claudia in the lead they walked around the side of the house to the heavy wooden
back door.

→The vixen was waiting.