"Gardner Dozois - Fairy Tale" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

FAIRY TALE
By Gardner Dozois
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It wasnтАЩt a village, as is sometimes said these days, when weтАЩve forgotten just how
small the old world was. In those days, long ago in a world now vanished with
barely a trace left behind, a village was four or five houses and their outbuildings. A
large village was maybe ten or fifteen houses at a crossroad, and perhaps an inn or
gasthaus.
No, it was a town, even a moderately large one, on the banks of a sluggish
brown river, the capital of a small province in a small country, lost and nearly
forgottenтАФeven thenтАФin the immensity of the Central European steppes that stretch
endlessly from the Barents Sea to the Black, and from the Urals to France. The
nearest electric light was in Prague, hundreds of miles away. Even gaslighting was
newfangled and marvelous here, although there were a few rich homes on the High
Street that had it. Only the King and the Mayor and a few of the most prosperous
merchants had indoor toilets.
The Romans had been here once, and as you followed the only road across
the empty steppe toward town, you would pass the broken white marble pillars they
had left behind them, as well as a vine-overgrown fane where, in another story, you
might have ventured forth at night to view for yourself the strange lights that local
legends say haunt the spot, and perhaps, your heart in your throat, glimpsed the
misty shapes of ancient pagan gods as they flitted among the ruined columnsтАжbut
this isnтАЩt that kind of story.
Further in, the road would cut across wide fields of wheat being worked by
stooped-over peasants, bent double with their butts in the air, moving forward a step
at a time with a sort of swaying, shuffling motion as they weeded, sweeping their
arms back and forth over the ground like searching trunks, making them look like
some strange herd of small double-trunked elephants, or those men who wear their
heads below their navels. The bushes are decorated with crucified rabbits, tarry
black blood matting their fur, teeth bared in death agony, a warning to their still-living
brethren to stay away from the crops.
As the road fell down out of the fields and turned into the High Street of the
town, you would see old peasant women, dressed all in black from head to foot,
spilling buckets of water over the stone steps of the tall narrow houses on either side
of the narrow street, and then scrubbing the steps with stiff-bristled brooms.
Occasionally, as you passed, one or another of the old peasant women would
straighten up and stare unwinkingly at you with opaque agate eyes, like a black and
ancient bird.
At the foot of the High Street, you would see a castle looming above the river,
small by the standards of more prosperous countries elsewhere in Europe, but large
enough to have dominated the tactical landscape in the days before gunpowder and
cannon made all such places obsolete. ItтАЩs a grim enough pile, and, in another story,
cruel vampire lords would live thereтАФbut this isnтАЩt that kind of story either. Instead
of vampires, the King lived there, or lived there for a few months each year, anyway,
as he graciously moved his court from province to province, spreading the
considerable financial burden of supporting it around.
He was what was called тАЬa good King,тАЭ which meant that he didnтАЩt oppress
the peasants any more than he was traditionally allowed to, and occasionally even
distributed some small largess to them when he was able, on the ancient
principleтАФsound husbandryтАФthat you get more work out of your animals when