Vovask2: переводы

→They stood for a few more minutes. Lina stopped cranking the generator, and they stared down at the one dim, wavering light still shining in their old home. Then Doon turned around to head back into the passage to the outside. As Lina turned to follow him, the candle sticking up from her back pocket struck the cave wall and toppled out. Oh, no, she thought. She assumed the candle had fallen over the edge of the cliff—but when she started up the generator again and looked down, she saw the candle not far from her feet. It was rolling very slowly away, not out toward the edge but sideways.

→“I wish we could fly down,” Lina said.

→Doon sighed and got to his feet again. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not sure how we can do it. It would be really hard to get down there. And even harder to get back up.”

→Carefully, Doon lowered himself to his knees and then lay down completely so that his head was just over the edge of the cliff. Lina stretched out both hands as far as she dared, one holding the generator and the other cranking, and Doon peered down. He’d been hoping the slope was more gentle than it had seemed, making it possible to walk or perhaps slide down. Or maybe steps had been cut into it long ago by the Builders of Ember. Or perhaps they’d left a ladder of some kind. But as far as he could tell, the cliff was bare, vertical rock. The only way to descend from here into the city would be to have a very long rope and climb down it—or many long ropes tied together, the distance was so great. The rope would have to be anchored to something at the top—maybe a sturdy spike driven into the ground. It might be possible to rig up a pulley system for hoisting things from below. But it would all be difficult.

→“It’s a strange sort of light,” said Doon. “I think it must have something to do with what the book was about. Someone else has found it, whatever it was.”

→“All right,” Lina said. “Well, at least we have a little bit to go on.” She felt only slightly encouraged, though. Had they come up here to find a jewel in someone’s yard? Or to spend endless hours searching for a jewel in the storerooms? She had never cared much for jewels. In Ember, a jewel had been anything a person used as decoration for the body. Some people had worn bits of polished glass on strings around their necks, or bracelets of shiny metal. In Sparks, she had seen jewels sometimes on the harnesses of oxen, and now and then a roamer would bring something called jewelry from the ancient world, just some pretty stones wired together. No one got very excited about it. But she supposed they might be useful for trading.

→“Yes!” Doon said. “I think it could be.”

→“A cell is a room, isn’t it?” she said. “Like a cell in the Ember prison. So rooms connected to each other—it sounds like the storerooms.”

→“But then listen to this,” Doon said, turning to the next page, which was half torn away. “Here it says, ‘. . . a number of cells of many sizes and shapes, connected . . .’” He looked up at Lina triumphantly. “What does that remind you of?”

→“Maybe,” said Lina. “Not too helpful, though.”

→“It’s an ancient document,” Doon said. “They probably spelled things differently in those days.” Doon squinted at the smudged page in the unsteady light. “And then on page sixty-five,” he went on, “there’s part of a sentence that says, ‘those which are positive and those which are negative . . .’ And then, ‘. . . lose, gain, or share them, which creates . . .’ So that could mean something about having a positive or negative view of things, or about sharing . . .” He trailed off.

→Lina peered over his shoulder. “But they’ve spelled ‘jewel’ wrong,” she said. “It isn’t j-o-u-l-e.”

→“On the same page,” Doon said, “there’s something about a square yard. That could be a space that’s a yard long on each side—or it could be a backyard that’s a square shape. ‘Square yard receives,’ it says. Then there’s a smudge, and the only two words I can read in the rest of the sentence are ‘jewel’ and ‘second.’”

→“But ninety million of them sounds like a long way, even if a mile is short,” said Lina. “I hope it doesn’t mean we have to walk for ninety million miles.”

→“Here on page sixty-one,” he said, “is something about distance. “‘More than ninety million miles,’ it says. I’m not sure how long a mile is.”

→They practiced making whistles and earsplitting noises for a while. Then, by the light of the little generator, Doon read Lina the clues he’d picked out from the remains of the eight-page book.

→Doon showed her how it worked. “It’s a wolf-scaring whistle, Kenny told me. All you need is one blade of grass.”

→“That reminds me,” said Doon. “Let me show you something Kenny taught me.” He went outside the cave, plucked a sturdy grass blade from the ground, and clamped it between the sides of his thumbs. Then he blew hard against it, and an amazingly loud noise, part squawk and part shriek, blasted out into the air. Lina jumped and then laughed. “How did you do that?”

→They listened, but the cries quickly died away.

→“No, I think it’s wolves,” Lina said. “Kenny told me they sing.”