Коралина / Coraline

Coraline's father had his arm around her mother.

In the mirror Coraline's mother and father stared at her. Her father opened his mouth and said something, but she could hear nothing at all. Her mother breathed on the inside of the mirror glass, and quickly, before the fog faded, she wrote

with the tip of her forefinger. The fog on the inside of the mirror faded, and so did her parents, and now the mirror reflected only the corridor, and Coraline, and the cat.

“Where are they?” Coraline asked the cat.

The cat made no reply, but Coraline could imagine its voice, dry as a dead fly on a windowsill in winter, saying Well, where do you think they are?

“They aren't going to come back, are they?” said Coraline. “Not under their own steam.[9 - Not under their own steam. – Только не сами по себе.]”

The cat blinked at her. Coraline took it as a yes.

“Right,” said Coraline. “Then I suppose there is only one thing left to do.

”

She walked into her father's study. She sat down at his desk. Then she picked up the telephone, and she opened the phone book and telephoned the local police station.

“Police,” said a gruff male voice.

“Hello,” she said. “My name is Coraline Jones.”

“You're up a bit after your bedtime, aren't you, young lady?” said the policeman.

“Possibly,” said Coraline, who was not going to be diverted, “but I am ringing to report a crime.”

“And what sort of crime would that be?”

“Kidnapping.

Grown-up-napping[10 - Grown-up-napping – “Похищение родителей”] really. My parents have been stolen away into a world on the other side of the mirror in our hall.”

“And do you know who stole them?” asked the police officer. Coraline could hear the smile in his voice, and she tried extra hard to sound like an adult might sound, to make him take her seriously.

“I think my other mother has them both in her clutches.

She may want to keep them and sew their eyes with black buttons, or she may simply have them in order to lure me back into reach of her fingers. I'm not sure.”

“Ah. The nefarious clutches of her fiendish fingers, is it?” he said. “Mm. You know what I suggest, Miss Jones?”

“No,” said Coraline. “What?”

“You ask your mother to make you a big old mug of hot chocolate, and then give you a great big old hug.