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

to give me a huge wink and toss me a copper coin. "Don't spend it all at once..
.."
Money of my own! A whole coin to spend on whatever I wanted! At first I thought
to buy a ribbon from the peddler, but that would need explanations when I
returned home, and somehow I didn't think Mama would approve of her clients
giving me money. Lessons and food were different. Food! I nad just reminded
myself I was hungry. I looked up at the sun: an hour before noon. Still, if I
bought something now I needn't hurry home, and Mama could enjoy her sleep. I
peered at the tray in the bakers. Ham pies, baked apples, cheese pasties .. .
The pies looked a little tired and I had had an apple for breakfast, so I
carried away two cheese pasties.
One had gone even before I reached the lane again,
Pics DON'T FLY
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but I decided to find somewhere to sit in the sun and thoroughly enjoy the
other. There was a bank full of sunshine a quarter mile from the cottage just
where the lane kinked opposite one of the rides through the forest, and I seated
myself comfortably and enjoyed the other pasty down to the last crumb, wiping my
mouth thoroughly to leave no telltale grease or crumbs. I found a couple of
desiccated mint leaves in the hedge behind and chewed those too, just in case
Mama spotted the smell of onions, then burped comfortably and lay back in the
sunshine, the scent of the mint an ephemeral accompaniment to the background of
autumn smells: drying leaves, damp ground, wood smoke, fungi, a gentle decay.
I sniffed my fingers again, but the scent of mint had almost gone; strange how
the pleasant smells didn't last as long as the stinks. I must put that thought
down in my book. "Perfumes are nice while they last, but foul smells last
longer"? Clumsy. What about: "Sweet smells are a welcome guest, but foul odors
stay too long." Still clumsy; it needed to be shorter, more succinct, ana could
do with some alliteration. "Sweet smells stay but short: foul odors linger
longer." Much better.
As soon as I had time to spare I would write that down. The trouble was that it
took so long; not the actual writing, now that I was more used to it, but the
preparation beforehand. First, I had to be sure I had at least a clear hour
before me, then the weather had to be right: too hot and the ink dried too
quickly; too wet and it wouldn't dry at all. It had to be mixed first of course
to the right color and consistency, and the quills had to be sharpened and the
vellum smoothed and weighted down and the light just right.
But then what joy! I scarcely breathed as I formed the letters: the the
full-bellied downward curve of the /, the mysterious double arch of the m, the
change of quill position for the s, the cozy cuddle of the eЧ-each nad its own
individual pattern, separate symbols that together made plain the things I had
only thought before.
Magic, for sure. First the letters themselves, precise in shape and order, then
the interpretation into words
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Mary Brown
and meaning and lastly the imagination engendered by the whole. The old priest
had once given me a saying: "God created man from the clay of the ground: take
care lest you crack in the firing of Life." I had dutifully copied this down,
but once it was there it took on a new dimension. In my mind I could actually