羊毛战记 Part 4 The Unraveling 31

　　The Unraveling,　　31,　　The Tragic ¹ Historye of Romeus and JulietteThe walk was long, and longer still for her young mind. Though Juliette took few of the steps withher own small feet, it felt as though she and her parents had traveled for weeks. To impatient youth,all things took forever and any kind of waiting was torture.,　　She rode on her father’s shoulders, clutched his chin, her legs wrapped choking around his neck.,　　Riding so high, she had to stoop her head to avoid the undersides of the steps. Clangs from strangers’,　　boots rang out on the treads above her, and sprinkles of rust ² dust drifted into her eyes.,　　She enjoyed the sounds of the traveling, the footfalls and the rhythmic ⁴ song of her mother andfather chatting about adult things, their voices drifting back and forth ⁵ as she faded in and out.,　　The journey became a haze ⁶ of foggy recollections. She awoke to the squealing ⁷ of pigs through anopen door, was vaguely ⁹ aware of a garden they toured, woke fully ¹⁰ to the smell of something sweetand ate a meal—lunch or dinner, she wasn’t sure. She hardly stirred that night as she slid from herfather’s arms into a dark bed. She awoke the next morning beside a cousin she didn’t know in anapartment nearly identical to her own. It was a weekend. She could tell by the older kids playingloudly in the hallway instead of getting ready for school. After a cold breakfast, she returned to thestairs with her parents and the sensation that they’d been traveling all their lives instead of just oneday. And then the naps returned with their gentle erasure ¹¹ of time.,　　After another day they arrived at the hundredth landing of the silo’s unfathomable depths. Shetook the last steps herself, her mom and dad holding a hand each, telling her about the significance.,　　She was now in a place called the “down deep,” they told her. The bottom third. They steadied hersleepy legs as she wobbled from the last tread of the ninety-ninth stairway to the landing of thehundredth. Her father pointed ¹² above the open and busy doors to a large painted number with anincredible third digit ¹³:,　　100,Charles was a man doomed to tragic issues.查理是个注定不得善终的人。,She scraped the rust off the kitchen knife.她擦掉了菜刀上的锈 。