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

PIGS DON'T FLY 9
or sleep? In very truth I believe the pain of my wound has conjured up a dream
of angels....' "
How very romantic! No wonder Mama was impressed.
"The very next moment he crumpled in a heap on my doorstep, out like a snuffed
candle! What else could I do but tend him?" and she spread her hands helplessly.
And that was how my father had come into her life. At once she had taken him
into both her heart and her bedЧwhat woman wouldn't with that introduction?Чand
nursed him back to health. For an idyllic month, while the village still lay
under the curse of a low fever, my father and mother enjoyed their secret love.
"He was both a courtly and a fierce lover," said my mother. "A trifle
unpolished, perhaps, but not beyond teaching. He was always eager to learn those
little refinements that make all the difference to a woman's enjoyment. ..." and
my mother paused, a reminiscent smile on her face.
"And what did he look like, my father?"
But here always came the odd part. Perhaps the passage of years had played
strange tricks with my mother's memory for my father never looked the same for
two tellings. At first he was tall, then recollection had him shorter. Dark as
Hades, fair as sunlight; eyes grey as storm clouds, blue as sky, brown as autumn
leaf, green as duck-weed; he was loquacious, he was taciturn; he was happy, he
was sad; shy, outgoing ... I was sure that if ever I loved a man I would
remember every detail forever, right down to the number of his teeth, the shape
of his fingernails, the curl of his lashes. But then Mama had known as many men
as there were leaves on a tree, so she said, and always tended to remember them
by their physical endowments rather than their physiognomy. In this respect she
assured me that my father was outstanding.
I hated the sad part of my father's story, but it had to be told. One frosty
day, as my mother told it, the men from the village came and dragged him from
the cottage and carried him away, never to be seen again. "They were jealous of
our love," she said, and she had never ceased
10
Mary Brown
hoping that he would return, her wounded lover who came with the falling leaves
and left with the first frosts.
He had left nothing behind save his tattered cloak, a purse full of strange
coins, and a ring. Mama said the coins were for my dowry, but that the ring was
special, a magic ring. She had shown it to me a couple of times, but it looked
like nothing more than the shaving of a horn, a colorless spiral. It would not
fit any of my mother's fingers, and she would not let me try it on.
"He wore it round his neck on a cord," she said, "for it would not fit him
either. He said it was from the horn of a unicorn, passed down in his family for
generations, but it did nothing for him...."
She had tried to sell it a couple of times, but as it looked so ordinary and fit
no one, she had tossed into a box with the rest of her bits and pieces of
jewelryЧ necklace, brooch, two braceletsЧwhere it still lay, gathering dust.
My days were not all work and no play, though I mostly made my own free time by
working that much harder. I had two special treats. If the weather was fine,
summer or winter, I would escape into the woods or down by the river, lie under
a tree and gaze up into the leaf-dappled sunshine and dream, or sit by the river
and dangle my toes in the fast-running water. This would be summer, of course,