"CHARLES COLEMAN FINLEY - A democracy of trolls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Finley Charles Coleman)

"People," her mother aimed her finger at Maggot, rolling around with the girls, "did that. Afterward, the winners--the newcomers--came into the high reaches and hunted us. We moved north, and once again men entered the low valleys, and once again hunt us. They killed Mosswater, who was a fine troll almost ready to father children."
"So?"
Her mother's face tightened into a sharp knot. "So? You bring one to live among us. It's wrong. It should be destroyed."
"No!" Windy rose abruptly with her fists clenched. The trollbird whistled and flew off into the night.
Her mother stared at her, as cold as ice. She was the First of the band after many votes, its leader. "You listen to me. You need to get rid of that animal. Then you need to have another child, and by darkness and dew, let us hope it's a boy who can breed with those young girls down there as soon as they're big enough."
"Mother--"
"I'm not done yet!" Windy tensed, but her mother kept on speaking. "Our people have few children and we grow fewer each year. There were fifty-three in our band when you were a baby, and before that there were seventy-one at one time. Seventy-one! How many do you see now?"
Windy couldn't help herself. She lifted her head and counted. Ragweed and seven others, mostly men, down where the blueberries were thickest, another group of ten over on the next hill, and little clusters of two and three scattered in between. Maggot and the two girls. Her and her mother. "Thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four. Thirty-four."
"Thirty-three," corrected her mother.
"That's not a fair question. Frosty took her band and moved away, and--"
"Because the people moved in! They eat all our food and kill us and hunt us away!" The anger faded out of her mother's voice, replaced by weariness. "I see the nights of all trolls drying up, like dew beneath a Sun that never sets." As Windy watched her mother's face intently, understanding for a moment her sense of loss, the old troll chuckled. "Look! The children are playing catch the snake. You loved that game when you were a little girl."
The two girls were running, tossing a snake back and forth between them. Maggot chased after, grabbing at it, as the girls threw it to each other over his head.
Windy laughed too. It was a good-sized serpent--two, maybe three feet long-- with its mouth wide open and fangs snapping at the children's arms. Rocky and Blossom were good girls. Windy was so glad Maggot finally had someone his own age to play with.
The snake twined in the air, looping itself in an echo of the crisscross pattern marking its back--the kind that caused sickness if it bit, which made the game more fun. The risk was small because a fast bite couldn't break a troll's skin and if the snake fastened on an arm and bit slowly, there was always plenty of time to grab the head and pull it off it. Windy remembered one time....
Maggot! "No!"
She drummed a short warning on her chest and ran down the slope. All three children froze in fear, and the snake twisted in Blossom's hand, biting down sharply on her arm. "Ow!"
"I've got it," cried Maggot. He grabbed it behind the head and pulled it off.
Windy faltered, then lunged forward. Maggot held the snake up toward her, its long length squirming and twisting around. He kept his grip on it for a second, then let go, and hopped out of the way. Its head turned to strike at him just as Windy's foot came down, smashing it into the ground.
"I caught it eight times," said Rocky, smiling.
"But I caught it eleven!" screamed Blossom.
"But you dropped it four times," Maggot said, "and Rocky picked it up again, and she didn't miss any catches."
Windy patted him on the head. "But Blossom caught it more times, so she wins the game." The snake squirmed frantically in the soft ground beneath her foot.
"But if you take away the times she dropped it, then Rocky wins," Maggot insisted.
Windy wrinkled her thick brow and started unfolding her fingers. Eleven catches, then one, two, three, four drops, that was fifteen. The snake struggled harder so she arched the front part of her foot. When the head squeezed out between her toes, she crossed them and snapped its neck. She lifted the limp snake with her foot to her hand, then offered it to her mother.
"We found it," Rocky complained.
"It's our food," said Blossom.
"You should have eaten it while you had the chance then," said Windy's mother as she took it and bit off half. The bones crunched in her jaw. With a wink, she tossed the other half to the girls. Maggot snatched it first and led them on a chase for it. After she swallowed, she looked up at Windy. "You can't buy my vote with fresh meat, you know."
"I wasn't trying to."
"Leastway, not that little bit." Her eyes grew wistful. "Now a nice bit of rotting carrion --"
"You'll vote however you think best."
"I've already talked with Ragweed, and he's gathering up votes among the men. We'll have enough to exclude it--Maggot- -from the band."
"We'll leave then," said Windy.
"Not you, just it."
"Whatever you vote for him, you vote for me. You vote to kill him, you'll have to kill me first. He's my son."
"He could end up carrion," her mother said. "Maybe he'll have an accident. Yes, that could happen. Then you could have more children. We have too few children."
Windy didn't say anything. She noticed the men moving off to the east. The women pounded on the ground and the girls came running. Maggot followed them until Windy beat her knuckles into the sod and told him, "Stay."
He sprinted to her side. "What is it, Mom?"
"Stay with me."
"But Mom!"
She bared her teeth and he quieted down, clambering up her outstretched arm to cling around her shoulder. Sometimes she recalled the way her daughter's fingers and toes dug into her wrinkles and under the cracks in her skin, but she'd grown accustomed to the way Maggot scooted up the outside. She searched through the blueberries until she found his skin, some strange-smelling thing they had scavenged from people, and handed it to him. He wrapped it over his back.
Her mother looked at her in disgust. "Ughh! Why do you carry that stinking thing?"
"Maggot'd be cold without it."
"Then let him be cold. Let him die."
Before Windy could answer, Maggot laughed. "But Grandma! I don't want to die. You're silly."
She grunted and moved off. They needed to be safely underground before the Sun rose to blind and immobilize them.
"Mom," said Maggot, "I want to walk."
"No dear, we're in a hurry." They had lingered almost too long, lethargic in the summer heat. Even so trolls moved quickly when the scent of dawn electrified the air and there was no way Maggot could keep up with the others over this rough terrain for long. She'd learned that the hard way these last few years. Only because of Maggot's recent increase in size and speed had she finally relented and let Ragweed lead her back to troll country.
"But Mom, I want to talk to the other kids."
"I'll catch up with them."
When she did, the girls' mothers scowled at her, their brow ridges sagging like tree branches covered with ice. Windy tried to find words to ease their disapproval, but they ignored her. She lapsed once more into the canyon of silence that had first appeared between her and Ragweed. Whispers and giggles told her that the girls would not be stifled by the awkwardness of the older women.