"Anthony Piers - Incarnations Of Immortality 5 - Being A Green Mother" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anthony Piers)

Being a Green Mother Piers Anthony

put both hands up on the solid knob and turned it, and after
a brief struggle got the door open.

The summer dawn was cool but not cold. Orb hurried out,
intent on the melody, not caring what time or temperature
it was. The landscape seemed preternaturally bright, better
than real life; this was fun!

She paused before the house, reorienting on the sound.
The farm backed onto a forest, and the sound was from the
forest. She ran across the field, scattering chickens, and
reached the edge of the wood, panting. She was four years
old, and this was a good-sized trek for her to accomplish
alone. She wasn't supposed to come here without an adult,
and that gave her a bad twinge of unease, but the music was
fading, and she knew she had to catch it right away.

The forest loomed thick and dark, and it was girt with
monstrous spider webs and mean brambles and other awful
things, so she scouted along the edge, hoping for a way
through. The music was becoming quite faint, making her
desperate.

She found a path! She ran down it, into the depths of the
wood. But the music was now fading out entirely, to her
horror. She stopped to listen for it, but it was gone.

ExceptЧthere was another sound, not the same, but pos-
sessed of its own melody. Maybe that would do. It was ahead
and, as she continued along the path, it grew louder.

The path debouched at the river. Orb had encountered the
river before, but not at this spot. Here it was crippling merrily
over rocks, making its music. She strained to hear the tune
of it behind the rushing noise of water, and it came clearer,
but imperfect.

She made her way along its irregular bank, guided more
by her ears than her eyes. Now she heard another sound,
neither the first melody nor the second, but a kind of tittering
laughter. It was coming from a swirling pool a little
downstream.

Then she spied the source of the mirth. Girls were playing
in the pool! Lovely, lithe, bare girls with long tresses. They