"Brown,.Mary.-.Unicorn's.Ring.2.-.1994.-.Pigs.Don't.Fly" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Mary)

PIGS DON'T FLY
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clear of cloud, the stars were bright and a crispness to the air confirmed
frost.
I loaded up the sledge I used for wood with what I thought necessary, did a last
check, then piled wood around the bed, sprinkling it with oil the better to
burn. I opened the shutters for a draught and left the door open. That done I
made a last check, then gazed around the cottage that had been my home,
expecting nostalgia.
Nothing. Nothing at all.
It was just a place that two people had lived in, an empty shell with now no
personality left. A room, nothing more, as empty of life as the still figure on
the bed, the living and memory seeping from it as surely as the body became cold
in death. No, there was nothing for me here
now.
"Goodbye, Mama," I said, and threw a lighted brand from the fire towards the
bed.
Part II
SUMMER'S JOURNEY
CHAPTER FIVE
Someone had opened both shutters and door, and pulled back the bedclothes; the
light was shining in my eyes and I was freezingЧ
I came to with a start. I was in a forest, so had I fallen asleep while
collecting wood? Realization came as bitter as the early morning taste in my
mouth, as I struggled out of the blanket I had wrapped myself in.
I was in the woods somewhere oetween the village and the High Road, I was alone,
and I was hungry and needed to relieve myself First things first, and as I
squatted down I glanced around the little dell in which I had hidden myself the
night before. Last night's frost still silvered the grasses and ferns, but the
rising sun promised a warm day. Already a cloud of midges danced above my head
and a breeze stirred the almost leafless trees. A pouch-cheeked squirrel darted
across the glade ahead, and I could hear the warning chink of a blackbird as I
scrambled to my feet. Otherwise everything was quiet, except for the tinkle of a
stream away to my right.
So, I hadn't been followed. So far ...
I cringed when I remembered my escape of the night before. Once I had been sure
the cottage was blazing merrily, the flames lighting up the night sky until I
feared
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Mary Brown
the conflagration would be spotted in the village, I had set off down the path,
dragging the loaded wood sledge behind me. Sighting the way had been easy, with
the fire behind and the moon above, so I had not needed my lantern. But where
had my caution, my fear of the night, gone? As I remembered it I had strode
through the village as if it were a midsummer day, singing some crazy song I
couldn't now remember, almost asking those within doors to come out and discover
the suddenly-
f one-mad girl who had made the cottage a funeral pyre >r both her mama and all
those goods that now belonged to someone else, and who was now disregarding the