"Charles De Lint - A Pattern of Silver Strings" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Lint Charles)

A Pattern of Silver Strings
by Charles de Lint

For Mary Ann

Nagakaramu Kokoro mo shirazu
Kurokami no
Midarete kesa wa
Mono wo koso omoe
Lady Horikawa
[Will he always love me?
I cannot read his heart.
This morning my thoughts
Are as disordered
As my hair.]

Meran Gwynder was the daughter of an oak king and the wife of a harper, though neither her royal green
blood nor her marriage seemed very real to her just now. Loss filled her heart and she could find no way
to deal with it. The sadness of what seemed a broken trust shared an uneasy rule with her unending
questions. If she could know whyтАж

"He left without a word," she said.

Bethowen the hillwife clicked her teeth in reply, though whether the sound was meant to be sympathetic
or was only a habit, re-mained debatable. They sat on a hilltop, under the guardianship of an old
longstone, with the stars glimmering pale in the night skies above and the fire between them throwing
strange shadows that seemed to echo the whisper of the wind as it braided the hill's grasses. Stirring the
fire with a short stick, Bethowen looked through the glitter of sparks at her guest.

Meran had nut-brown skin and brown-green hair. She was slim, but strong-limbed. Her eyes were the
liquid brown of an otter's. The hillwife could see none of this in the poor light. Those images she drew up
from her memory. What she saw was a troubled woman, her features strained and wan in the firelight. At
the oak-maid's knee the striped head of Old Badger looked up to meet the hillwife's eyes.

"Men will do that," Bethowen said at last. "It's not a new thing, my dear."

"Not him."

"What makes me wonder," the hillwife continued as though she'd never been interrupted, "is what brings
one of the treefolk so far from her tree." Ogwen Wood was a good two hours south and west across the
dark hills, a long distance for an oakmaid.

"My tree fell in a storm years agoтАФyou never heard? I shouldтАФ would have died but for him. As the
green blood spilled, he drew me back. With his harpmagic. With his love."

"And you have no more need of your tree?"

"He made me charms. Three talismans."

Meran could see his quick sure hands working the oakwood as surely as though he were beside her