"Beagle, Peter S - Last Unicorn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Beagle Peter S)

"She doesn't look like much, does she?" Rukh asked. "But no hero can stand before her, no god can wrestle her down, no magic can keep her out -- or in, for she's no prisoner of ours. Even while we exhibit her here, she is walking among you, touching and taking. For Elli is Old Age."
The cold of the cage reached out to the unicorn, and whereever it touched her she grew lame and feeble. She felt herself withering, loosening, felt her beauty leaving her with her breath. Ugliness swung from her mane, dragged down her head, stripped her tail, gaunted her body, ate up her coat, and ravaged her mind with remembrance of what she had once been. Somewhere nearby, the harpy made her low, eager sound, but the unicorn would gladly have huddled in the shadow of her bronze wings to hide from this last demon. Elli's song sawed away at her heart.


"What is sea-born dies on land,
Soft is trod upon.
What is given burns the hand --
What is gone is gone."


The show was over. The crowd was stealing away, no one alone but in couples and fews and severals, strangers holding strangers' hands, looking back often to see if Elli were following. Rukh called plaintively, "Won't the gentlemen wait to hear the story about the satyr?" and sent a sour yowl of laughter chasing their slow flight. "Creatures of night, brought to light!" They struggled through the stiffening air, past the unicorn's cage, and on away, with Rukh's laughter yapping them home, and Elli still singing.
This is illusion, the unicorn told herself. This is illusion -- and somehow raised a head heavy with death to stare deep into the dark of the last cage and see, not Old Age, but Mommy Fortuna herself, stretching and snickering and clambering to the ground with her old eerie ease. And the unicorn knew then that she had not become mortal and ugly at all, but she did not feel beautiful again. Perhaps that was illusion too, she thought wearily.
"I enjoyed that," Mommy Fortuna said to Rukh. "I always do. I guess I'm just stagestruck at heart."
"You better check on that damn harpy," Rukh said. "I could _feel_ her working loose this time. It was like I was a rope holding her, and she was untying me." He shuddered and lowered his voice. "Get rid of her," he said hoarsely. "Before she scatters us across the sky like bloody clouds. She thinks about it all the time. I can feel her thinking about it."
"Fool, be still!" The witch's own voice was fierce with fear. "I can turn her into wind if she escapes, or into snow, or into seven notes of music. But I choose to keep her. No other witch in the world holds a harpy captive, and none ever will. I would keep her if I could do it only by feeding her a piece of your liver every day."
"Oh, that's nice," Rukh said. He sidled away from her. "What if she only wanted your liver?" he demanded. "What would you do then?"
"Feed her yours anyway," Mommy Fortuna said. "She wouldn't know the difference. Harpies aren't bright."
Alone in the moonlight, the old woman glided from cage to cage, rattling locks and prodding her enchantments as a housewife squeezes melons in the market. When she came to the harpy's cage the monster made a sound as shrill as a spear, and spread the horrid glory of its wings. For a moment it seemed to the unicorn that the bars of the cage began to wriggle and run like rain; but Mommy Fortuna crackled her twiggy fingers and the bars were iron again, and the harpy sank down on its perch, waiting.
"Not yet," the witch said. "Not yet." They stared at each other with the same eyes. Mommy Fortuna said, "You're mine. If you kill me, you're mine." The harpy did not move, but a cloud put out the moon.
"Not yet," Mommy Fortuna said, and she turned toward the unicorn's cage. "Well," she said in her sweet, smoky voice. "I had you frightened for a little while, didn't I?" She laughed with a sound like snakes hurrying through mud, and strolled closer.
"Whatever your friend the magician may say," she went on, "I must have some small art after all. To trick a unicorn into believing herself old and foul -- that takes a certain skill, I'd say. And is it a twopenny spell that holds the Dark One prisoner? No other till I --"
The unicorn replied, "Do not boast, old woman. Your death sits in that cage and hears you."
"Yes," Mommy Fortuna said calmly. "But at least I know where it is. You were out on the road hunting for your own death." She laughed again. "And I know where that one is, too. But I spared you the finding of it, and you should be grateful for that."
Forgetting where she was, the unicorn pressed forward against the bars. They hurt her, but she did not draw back. "The Red Bull," she said. "Where can I find the Red Bull?"
Mommy Fortuna stepped very close to the cage. "The Red Bull of King Haggard," she muttered. "So you know of the BulL" She showed two of her teeth. "Well, he'll not have you," she said. "You belong to me."
The unicorn shook her head. "You know better," she answered gently. "Free the harpy, while there is time, and set me free as well. Keep your poor shadows, if you will, but let us go."
The witch's stagnant eyes blazed up so savagely bright that a ragged company of luna moths, off to a night's revel, fluttered straight into them and sizzled into snowy ashes. "I'd quit show business first," she snarled. "Trudging through eternity, hauling my homemade horrors -- do you think _that_ was my dream when I was young and evil? Do you think I chose this meager magic, sprung of stupidity, because I never knew the true witchery? I play tricks with dogs and monkeys because I cannot touch the grass, but I know the difference. And now you ask me to give up the sight of you, the presence of your power. I told Rukh I'd feed his liver to the harpy if I had to, and so I would. And to keep you I'd take your friend Schmendrick, and I'd --" She raged herself to gibberish, and at last to silence.
"Speaking of livers," the unicorn said. "Real magic can never be made by offering up someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back. The true witches know that."
A few grains of sand rustled down Mommy Fortuna's cheek as she stared at the unicorn. All witches weep like that. She turned and walked swiftly toward her wagon, but suddenly she turned again and grinned her rubbly grin. "But I tricked you twice, anyway," she said. "Did you really think that those gogglers knew you for yourself without any help from me? No, I had to give you an aspect they could understand, and a horn they could see. These days, it takes a cheap carnival witch to make folk recognize a real unicorn. You'd do much better to stay with me and be false, for in this whole world only the Red Bull will know you when he sees you." She disappeared into her wagon, and the harpy let the moon come out again.









III


Schmendrick came back a little before dawn, slipping between the cages as silently as water. Only the harpy made a sound as he went by. "I couldn't get away any sooner," he told the unicorn. "She's set Rukh to watching me, and he hardly ever sleeps. But I asked him a riddle, and it always takes him all night to solve riddles. Next time, I'll tell him a joke and keep him busy for a week."
The unicorn was gray and still. "There is magic on me," she said. "Why did you not tell me?"
"I thought you knew," the magician answered gently. "After all, didn't you wonder how it could be that they recognized you?" Then he smiled, which made him look a little older. "No, of course not. You never would wonder about that."
"There has never been a spell on me before," the unicorn said. She shivered long and deep. "There has never been a world in which I was not known."
"I know exactly how you feel," Schmendrick said eagerly. The unicorn looked at him out of dark, endless eyes, and he smiled nervously and looked at his hands. "It's a rare man who is taken for what he truly is," he said. "There is much misjudgment in the world. Now I knew you for a unicorn when I first saw you, and I know that I am your friend. Yet you take me for a clown, or a clod, or a betrayer, and so must I be if you see me so. The magic on you is only magic and will vanish as soon as you are free, but the enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes. We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream. Still I have read, or heard it sung, that unicorns when time was young, could tell the difference 'twixt the two -- the false shining and the true, the lips' laugh and the heart's rue." His quiet voice lifted as the sky grew lighter, and for a moment the unicorn could not hear the bars whining, or the soft ringing of the harpy's wings.
"I think you are my friend," she said. "Will you help me?"
"If not you, no one," the magician answered. "You are my last chance."
One by one, the sad beasts of the Midnight Carnival came whimpering, sneezing, and shuddering awake. One had been dreaming of rocks and bugs and tender leaves; another of bounding through high, hot grass; a third of mud and blood. And one had dreamed of a hand scratching the lonely place behind its ears. Only the harpy had not slept, and now she sat staring into the sun without blinking. Schmendrick said, "If she frees herself first, we are lost."
They heard Rukh's voice nearby -- that voice always sounded nearby -- calling, "Schmendrick! Hey, Schmendrick, I got it! It's a coffeepot, right?" The magician began to move slowly away. "Tonight," he murmured to the unicorn. "Trust me till dawn." And was gone with a flap and a scramble, seeming as before to leave part of himself behind. Rukh loped by the cage a moment later, all deadly economy. Hidden in her black wagon, Mommy Fortuna grumbled Elli's song to herself.