"Fancher, Jane S. - Moonlover and the Fountain of Blood" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fancher Jane S)

"That won't work." Mother's voice, and Mother herself, perched on the side of the pool.
"What. . ." My voice was little more than a hiss. "What, then, can I do?"
"Tend them. Love them."
"The soil has no life. Without the lifeblood, the water is impotent. Your truth, Mother, not mine."
"Leave, then. Find Love. Assume your true form and return to feed the Fountain."
"And in the meantime, the garden dies."
"Perhaps."
"And perhaps I'll remain here and die with it."
"A compromise. I give you the night. You shall have your true form back, but only at night. And you will have no more substance than the greater moon. When it is new, you will be nothing but shadow. As the moon increases, so shall you. Only when the moon is full will you be solid flesh. Only then can you feed the Fountain."
"The roses will die."
"Not if you control the lifeblood's flow more carefully. The roses need little merely to survive. You were profligate with the Fountain's essence with your glamours and your parties, your gifts to your lovers. Conserve. Wait. Find love for you, not your gifts."
"You ask the impossible. No human, man or woman, could love what I've become. What you have made me."
"And that, child, is where you do me an injustice."
"How?"
"One day, you'll understand."
My life became a morbid dance of hope and disappointment. Travelers passed through my gates, took advantage of my shelter and my generosity . . . then left, never to return. I tried, oh, how I tried, to be the gracious host, but my form was frightening, even to myself. I banished all mirrors from the house, and ultimately all objects with a polished surface. I avoided looking at myself . . . I didn't have to, I saw Mother's truth in the eyes of the travelers.
Finally, I shut my gates. Not all Mother's insults could make me reopen them. Without my tapping the Fountain for human comforts, the garden did well enough. I survived off the woods. I became more and more a creature.
And thus did I exist, growing darker and more bitter with each passing breath . . . until he came into my garden.
But again, I skip too far. It was the merchant, first. The merchant and his servant boy.
I saw them first in the woods. The merchant was in the cart, the servant at the donkey's head when the wolves attacked. The boy tried to ward them off with his puny stick. The merchant wielded a heavy whip that hit the boy as much as the wolves.
It was obvious who would win that fight. I turned my back, content in the knowledge that had I not been there, they'd have died anyway.
But the boy's cry proved my undoing: I looked back. He was down, with the pack leader's teeth reaching for his throat.
I was there, and because I was there, I couldn't pretend otherwise. Before I thought again, my claws were digging into the pack leader's scruff. I pulled him off the boy and thrust him into the woods, hissing and snapping my teeth. The pack leader challenged; I threw him back again.
In my hunting, I'd grown wise in the strengths of my inhuman form. I used those strengths to liberate the merchant and the boy, and knew satisfaction for the first time, as the pack slunk off into the shadows.
I turned back ... to an all too familiar fear on the merchant's face.
I approached the cart, slowly, palms upturned, so as not to frighten. The donkey had a laming wound in its hindquarters, the boy lay still on the ground.
I thought to help.
The bite of the merchant's whip ended any such inclination.
Without a word, I escaped into the woods, glad to see the last of this ungrateful pair. I ran through the woods that day, ran and ran, trying to escape the face of the servant boy, the fear and the pain that changed, or so I wanted to believe, to hope and gratitude as I freed him from the pack leader's weight.
Night fell. A clear but moonless night, and so I became shadow.
It was, perhaps, the strangest of my forms to comprehend. I existed. I saw, I thought, I moved through the landscape. But I could not touch or speak.
I returned home . . .
To find it invaded. The merchant was there, eating-gorging himself on food I hadn't created. Mother's doing, I thought, though I hadn't seen her since I closed my gates.
But the boy was not in my house, not gorging on Mother's food. I thought myself through the door and into the courtyard, where I found the cart, but no donkey, no servant boy. Traces, a veritable trail of blood led through the maze and into my garden, all the way to the Fountain.
I found the servant collapsed on the ground beside the donkey, a bloodied rag in his hand. The ugly wound I'd seen on the donkey's hindquarters at the last was half-healed. The boy leaked a steady stream into the thirsty soil.
Dying. Trying to help the beast while his master stuffed his face inside.
I knew if I could get him into the Fountain, he would not die, but I had no substance. I couldn't so much as dip fingers into the pool.
I could, however, direct the flow of the lifeblood. That was a feat of will, not of substance. I sank my insubstantial fingers through the boy's body and into the soil. I sensed the flow. I called it to me, drew it up and into the body, to that wound in his side.
I knew, when the long-lashed eyelids flickered, that I had succeeded. I kept drawing, feeding the slender body, restoring the lifeblood lost.
It was, Mother would say, profligate spending of the Fountain. But I knew the limits of the Fountain now, understood the needs of the garden. The roses would suffer, but they wouldn't die.
The boy shuddered to life, curled into a ball, shivering in his thin tunic.
Cold, but he would live. There was nothing more I could do for him.
Dawn approached. Soon, I would resume my reptilian form. I returned to the house . . . where I found the merchant awake and stealing jewelry.
Not that I particularly minded: the jewels had been gifts to my lovers. The merchant had slept in one of the rooms vacated in that last hurried exodus. I didn't mind the theft, but somehow, the ingratitude overwhelmed me. Anger flared with the dawn, and I descended on him in fury, as my claws and scales glittered into substance in the light from the window.
The merchant cowered, dropped to the floor, pleading innocence. I called him liar and coward, and thinking of that boy left to die, raised a hand to even the score.
"Stop! Please!" A voice from the doorway stayed my hand. A deeper, richer voice than I'd expected the boy to have. But not a boy, seen on his feet and in dawn's light. A young man. A young man covered in blood and dirt, his long hair in tangles about his face, but with a dignity utterly lacking in his master.
A sigh heaved beneath the dirty tunics as I lowered my hand.
"Thank you." The young man stepped into the room and moved toward me, carefully avoiding the carpet with his filthy feet. "He didn't mean to hit you yesterday, my lord. He was frightened. If he'd understood, he'd have thanked you. I'm certain of it."
"Thanked me. And is stealing another way he ... shows his gratitude? Is leaving you outside to die while he feeds his overstuffed face?"
"He was very hungry, my lord. It's been days since we ate a real meal. He came in to find help. I imagine he was . . . distracted."