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

Rocky was the first to run along at her heels. "Hey there, baby," she taunted Maggot. "Baby riding on your mama's neck."
"Baby, baby, baby," cried Blossom. "Watch out! There's a snake crawling on your back!" She jumped up and tried to snatch away Maggot's skin, but missed, dissolving in laughter.
Windy couldn't see Maggot's expression, but his grip tightened on her and she smelled his uncertainty. "One time, down-down-down," he stuttered, talking to the girls, "in the valleys by the big people caves, we'd been out hunting for food all night and we found a nice big dead humpback."
"A whole humpback?" asked Rocky eagerly.
"Yeah, and Ragweed ate soooo much, he got really tired, and he fell asleep, and I put my skin over his face, so he wouldn't know that it was getting light out, and then, when the Sun came up, he'd turn into stone."
"No you didn't," said Blossom.
"Did too!"
"He's not a bunch of stones," argued Rocky.
"No. Mom took the blanket off his head and woke him up."
Windy smiled. That's exactly what she did do, every single time Maggot played that trick on Ragweed. As the children continued to talk, she admired the way Maggot stopped the teasing by distracting the girls. Then, like darkness failing after a flash of light, she realized that Maggot was taunting them back, reminding them that he'd been all sorts of places they never had. For the first time it occurred to her that he was already smarter than she was -- if you counted backward from eleven, take away four, that was seven. Less than eight. He was at least five or six years old, big enough to live on his own. She'd done everything she could, taught him how to find carrion and other food, how to dig and climb, and all about the history and customs of her people. He sucked all of it in like a lake drinking up a river. But the one thing she couldn't do was make him grow any bigger, any faster.
Reaching up, she took hold of Maggot and swung him down to the ground. "Go on then," she said, picking up his people-skin as it fell.
"Thanks, Mom!" His face beamed at her like the Moon, so bright she almost had to shield her eyes, and then he took off running beside the girls as fast as his little legs could carry him. He looked funny moving upright on his two feet and swinging his arms even though they didn't touch the ground. The girls slowed down a bit to match his pace.
"He's a freak," hissed her mother, slipping up beside her. "An animal."
Windy's gaze never strayed from him. "Whatever you want to call him, he's still my son."
They trotted steadily downhill for several miles along a trail that offered glimpses of the river valley far below and a constant view of the mountains in the distant west. They were almost done when Maggot ran up and tugged at her hand. "Mom, I'm tired."
"Here, I'll carry you." She held out her arm and he tugged on it again, but didn't climb up. If he was too tired to climb, then he was exhausted. She lifted him and draped him over her shoulder. He clung to her neck, twining and locking his hands together.
"Where are we going?" he asked.
"To spend the day in caves, at the bottom of these cliffs."
"What cl --"
The word dropped off in midair as they came to the top of a steep wall of rock nine hundred feet high.
"Wow." He said that last so quietly she felt only the air of it stirring against her neck.
A trail wound back and forth down the cliff's face. The older trolls descended quickly, digging their toes and fingers in the rock for vertical shortcuts in the places where the rock allowed. Those who left the blueberry patches earliest were already at the bottom when Windy began her climb, pressed against the wall of stone. "Hold on tight," she told Maggot.
He smacked his lips for yes, rubbing his forehead against the back of her neck as he squeezed tight.
She took the easiest path down this wall sacred to the trolls. The story her mother told was that the trolls were born underground, of the Earth itself, in the deep caves when all the world was covered with snow, living in the water and eating the fish and bugs that swam there. Most believed that the caves at the bottom of this cliff were the ones that trolls emerged from, like infants from their mother's womb, when they came out into the wider world.
Windy wondered about the story as she made her way down the trail. It was too dry a place to live and few things swam in the cavern waters. The redwall and the mountains beyond it held back the clouds in the sky so that almost no rain fell here. But it was still a safe place: the caverns stretched back for miles beneath the mountains, so deep that no people or other predators could ever find them there. All the things that trolls had ever stolen from people were stored there, in hordes cached in such odd comers that some of them had not been counted in a span of lifetimes.
"Hey, Mom," said Maggot.
"Yes?"
"Hey, Mom."
"Yes?"
"Hey, Mom, look at that."
"Look at what?" asked Windy, face against the stone, as her feet reached out to find the next toehold.
"The girls're daring me to join them. Can I?"
She twisted her head around to see them. The girls were showing off, getting back at him for his adventures by climbing straight down the wall. Every young troll did that at least once, usually about the time they were as big as the girls. But Maggot was not every young troll. "No," Windy said firmly. "You can't do that."
"Aw, Mom," he said, but he didn't budge.
"You're a good boy."
"I'm not a boy. I'm almost old enough to be a grownup, even though I'm as small as a baby. That's why Grandma wants to me to die and all the other grown-ups want me to go away."
Something as big as a rock caught in her throat. "What do you think about that?"
"I tell them you won't let anything hurt me." He nuzzled his face against her. "'Cause you don't."
The burden on her shoulders grew heavier as she continued her downward trek. The air around her changed, charged with the tingling feel of daybreak. When she reached the bottom of the slope, she looked up and saw the Sun shining high on the very top of the cliff face. The wall had lost the blue-gray tones of night and turned into startling shades of red and orange, streaked with white near the very top. It glowed like fire.
Then she noticed the two girls. They'd also seen the light, before she did, and they'd frozen in a spot some fifty or sixty feet up the wall, one above the other.
"Come on down!" she yelled at them. "Hurry!"
"I can't!" cried one. The other just cried.
Their mothers had noticed them missing also and paused on the trail down to the caves. Blossom's mother, Laurel, shouted to the other trolls, calling for help. Windy didn't know her too well, but she'd been friends as a child with Rocky's mother, Bones. Bones ran to Windy's side and called up at the girls. "Come on down! The mouth of day is chasing you!"
And indeed it was. The Sun trickled down the face of the rock and the night at the bottom grew thin, an insufficient darkness. Windy paced nervously.
Bones tried to scale the cliff but the lower reaches were climbed over. The rocks were loose and dusty, and the slope of debris more difficult to climb than the bare rock farther up. It couldn't support the weight of a full-grown troll. She was no more than twenty feet up when the rock gave way underneath her and she slid down in a shower of gravel and stone.
"Don't look up!" Windy yelled to the girls, but it was hopeless. Their eyes were fixed on the sky as the teeth of the Sun closed already over all the uneven upper reaches of rock. Her heart pounded rapidly with worry, but when she turned to the other trolls she found them arguing.
"Someone needs to go up the trail and climb out across to them," said one of older males, a big troll named Stump.
"And get caught in the Sun?" someone answered. "Not likely!"
"Leave 'em there," offered someone else. "They'll come down before the Sun reaches them."
"What if they don't?" asked Blossom's mother, Laurel.