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

"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,

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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.