"Lord Dunsany - Time And The Gods" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

They clustered together on the threshold and peered into the
dark, but saw no golden ball. And leaning forward They
cried out to the bat as he passed up and down: "Bat that
seest all things, where is the golden ball?"
And though the bat answered none heard. And none of the
winds had seen it nor any of the birds, and there were only
the eyes of the gods in the darkness peering for the golden
ball. Then said the gods: "Thou hast lost thy golden ball,"
and They made her a moon of silver to roll about the sky.
And the child cried and threw it upon the stairway and
chipped and broke its edges and asked for the golden ball.
And Limpang Tung, the Lord of Music, who was least of all
the gods, because the child cried still for her golden ball,
stole out of Pegana and crept across the sky, and found the
birds of all the world sitting in trees and ivy, and
whispering in the dark. He asked them one by one for news
of the golden ball. Some had last seen it on a neighbouring
hill and others in trees, though none knew where it was. A
heron had seen it lying in a pond, but a wild duck in some
reeds had seen it last as she came home across the hills,
and then it was rolling very far away.
At last the cock cried out that he had seen it lying
beneath the world. There Limpang Tung sought it and the
cock called to him through the darkness as he went, until at
last he found the golden ball. Then Limpang Tung went up
into Pegana and gave it to the Dawnchild, who played with
the moon no more. And the cock and all his tribe cried out:
"We found it. We found the golden ball."
Again Inzana tossed the ball afar, laughing with joy to
see it, her hands stretched upwards, her golden hair afloat,
and carefully she watched it as it fell. But alas! it fell
with a splash into the great sea and gleamed and shimmered
as it fell till the waters became dark above it and could be
seen no more. And men on the world said: "How the dew has
fallen, and how the mists set in with breezes from the
streams."
But the dew was the tears of the Dawnchild, and the mists
were her sighs when she said: "There will no more come a
time when I play with my ball again, for now it is lost for
ever."
And the gods tried to comfort Inzana as she played with
her silver moon, but she would not hear Them, and went in
tears to Slid, where he played with gleaming sails, and in
his mighty treasury turned over gems and pearls and lorded
it over the sea. And she said: "O Slid, whose soul is in
the sea, bring back my golden ball."
And Slid stood up, swarthy, and clad in seaweed, and
mightily dived from the last chalcedony step out of Pegana's
threshold straight into ocean. There on the sand, among the
battered navies of the nautilus and broken weapons of the