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

"No killing!" Frosty told Stinker. "You'll fight until I say stop." She stepped back with her arm outstretched, dropped it suddenly, and cried, "Go!"
The first exchange happened quickly. Stinker charged with his arms upraised to strike; Maggot dropped to the ground and kicked Stinker's ankles out from under him. As Stinker crashed into the dirt, Maggot attempted to leap past him for the poles he carried the deer carcass in on -- going for his sharpened sticks, Windy realized-- but Stinker lurched to his feet and thrust his hand out wildly. Maggot smacked into the giant forearm and flopped on his back with a sharp cry of pain.
Stinker took a running leap high into the air so he could crush Maggot. Windy gasped aloud, but her son rolled out of the way and Stinker slammed hard into the ground. Maggot came up with a handful of dirt and flung it into Stinker's face.
When Maggot made another dash for his sticks, Little Thunder moved to intercept him. The delay allowed Stinker, howling and blind, to lurch after Maggot's scent. His flailing hand caught her son's ankle and tripped him. Maggot fell down and Stinker fell on top.
Her son's pale skin glistened in the bright moonlight as he wriggled half-free. He and Stinker roiled over several times in their struggle. The lopsided little circle of hooting spectators moved with the pair as they tumbled down the slope to the side of the pool below the waterfall. Stinker ended up on top, spit flying out of his mouth as he pounded his hands at her twisting, dodging son. Windy's fingers kneaded her breast anxiously. Maggot groped in the mud, then smashed his fist into Stinker's nose. She assumed he had picked up a rock as a weapon, but he hadn't. Instead, Maggot shoved a big ball of mud up Stinker's nostrils, choking him. As the troll curled away gagging, Maggot squirmed free.
Or almost free. Stinker grabbed Maggot's foot with one hand while the other clawed at his clogged nose. Maggot whipped around and she heard a snap followed by a howl of pain -- he broke Stinker's finger to break his grip.
"Run," she whispered, hoping he would hear her. "Run, run far away, run fast, and I'll come find you when it's safe."
But he didn't run. He pounced on Stinker's back, slipping his arm under the troll's and pressing his forearm down on the back of Stinker's neck. Windy's eyes went wide. This was a practical joke that Maggot played on her often, holding her arm out of the way so he could tickle her.
"Run," she pleaded.
Then Maggot did the same with his other arm, something he'd never done to her. Stinker spun in a circle, unable to reach Maggot, who perched on his back like a trollbird.
"Rip the maggot's head off!" screamed Little Thunder, and the other trolls screamed with him, slapping their hands on the ground. The uproar made Windy tremble.
"Bite him!" cried Rose. "Bite him really hard!"
"Fall on him!" yelled Big Thunder.
The last suggestion made the most sense, and someone had just suggested that they vote on it when Stinker took the initiative into his own hands -- or rather legs, as his hands flapped uselessly over his head -- and flopped backward. Windy plunged her fingers into the loam and groped for bedrock to root herself to. She wanted to run to Maggot's aid, but knew she could not. Not yet. But as soon as the two hit the ground, she would rush in ....
They did not hit the ground.
Maggot had anticipated Stinker's move. As the troll fell back, Maggot kicked his legs out and landed upright. With his feet planted firmly, he bent Stinker's chin into his chest. Then, with a heart-wrenching cry, he folded the troll over double.
Stinker's skin turned a darker shade of gray. He couldn't breathe. The veins stood out on Maggot's head, like ridges in the moonlight. Windy held her place. All fell silent except for the rush of the waterfall as they watched her son strain his long legs to snap Stinker in half and grind him into the dirt.
Surely, Windy thought, looking at her son, his heart will burst. If his didn't, hers would.
That's when the girl shrieked and rushed forward. She leapt on Maggot's back, slapping and clawing him. "You beast! You, you animal!"
Maggot let go instantly and fled across the glade for one of the trees. He dashed in among the branches and climbed above the height of the trolls. "Hey, Fart," he taunted, between loud, ragged breaths. "Your mama had to run and save you!"
It was all the more effective as an insult because Windy sat there and did nothing. The other trolls howled with laughter, even Little Thunder, as the girl cradled a sulking, weary Stinker in her arms.
"Look at Mama Troll with her baby!"
"Better clean his nose, Mama, it's a mess!"
Windy let go of the dirt, brushed it off her fingers, and relaxed. They'd ridicule Stinker for years for losing a wrestling match to her boy.
Frosty lumbered over and sat down beside Windy. Neither one said a word. Then Frosty reached out and started grooming her, picking off loose scales of skin and crawling bugs. Windy sighed in contentment.
"That was good fun," said Frosty, crunching a big tick between her molars. "Your son, he fights like a troll."
"He's a good troll," Windy said.
Little Thunder overheard and grunted his approval. "He brought us some fresh rotten meat. That was good. You and your son, you can come visit our band any time you want."
"Visit, but not stay," said Frosty firmly. "We can take a vote, and you and he can argue otherwise, if you insist. But I won't support it."
Windy didn't insist. She'd heard the same thing many times before, from the Sulphur Springs down south to Deep Hole Gorge in the east. "We're just glad for your hospitality. Maybe I could come to your den to sleep for the day and tomorrow night I can tell you what I've seen in the seven bands."
"That smells good. And your son? Where will he spend the day?"
Even Frosty knew that it would not be safe for Maggot to stay there, not until Stinker got over his anger. "He can take care of himself," she said loudly. "He's a grown troll."
She glanced over. Maggot smacked his lips at her, and descended from the tree. His skin looked like dropped fruit in the moonlight, covered with dark bruises and deep cuts. As he ran off into the woods, she worried less than she had only two nights before. He'd proven that he could take care of himself. She was proud of him, prouder than ever. So why did she feel so sad?
THE AIR OUTSIDE the cave blew wonderfully cold in the mercifully short daylight. In the summertime, cool air inside the cave refreshed her; now it felt warm compared to the winter wind, almost enough to make her feel sluggish. Windy longed to run out and roll in the snow to wake up, but the last wings of daylight still feathered the cave's entrance.
Some of the other trolls walked up from the deeper recesses of the caverns, rubbing their eyes. "Is he back yet?"
Windy opened her mouth and thrust out her tongue.
The trolls frowned, but not much. One of them chewed on a big-eared bat that had fallen from its perch high up in the cave. Sometimes the trolls threw stones at the bats to knock them down. Thousands hung upside down on the tall ceilings of the caverns, night creatures like the trolls and hard to catch in the summer when they flitted around too fast for the eye to follow. They seemed to sleep all winter long and were easy to capture. One in the mouth melted away to nothing like snow. A whole pile of them didn't add up to a decent meal though it was something crunchy to snack on.
Windy sighed. Winter was the best time of year for a troll. It was easier for her to stay active in the cold, and the nights were so long that there was enough time to eat and play. Best of all, it was the season of meat: weaker animals succumbed to the harsh temperatures and foundered in the deep drifts, leaving plenty of carrion for the trolls. She scratched the back of her neck, then her elbow. Scales of gray skin floated through the air like snow. That was the only problem -- their thick skin dried up and came off in big flakes that left the skin beneath pink and raw.
She thought of Maggot's thin skin, no longer so white, scorched brown by the Sun, rubbed raw by the wind, with so little fat beneath it she wondered how he stayed warm at all. In comparison, her own itchiness didn't seem like such a big problem.
The last trolls straggled up from their day's sleep. There were no children in this band -- the last had been killed by a cave bear during the summer -- and none of the females were pregnant. Yet these seventeen individuals constituted the largest remaining band of trolls in all the eastern mountains. Windy knew of nine at Blackwater Falls, and seven each in the bands at Deep River Gorge and Sulphur Springs. There were some farther north in the Black Rock country, some said, or toward the Big Deep Water. The Piebald Mountain remnant from way down south had moved north a few winters before, looking for a place without people. It was believed that there were many far to the West in the mountains beyond the sunset, but no one living had ever seen them.
A shadow fell across the cave's entrance. As the trolls surged toward the promise of darkness, a thin, almost skeletal figure entered.
One of the girls gasped. "What an ugly troll!"
"He's beautiful!" snapped Windy. The girls dissolved in giggles, and she realized she'd been had.
Maggot was still short, not quite six and a half feet tall, and painfully thin at a little over two hundred pounds, but he had grown as big as could be expected. He was eighteen or nineteen winters old now -- Windy had lost count of the years. His pale skin was covered with more scars than she could count or remember. The new and fading marks overlapped each other, from the numerous deep scratches left by the nails of other trolls to two long purple worms across one thigh left by a big-toothed lion he'd killed. Some of them he'd never explained to her, nor had she asked him to.
Ragweed snorted. He was the biggest male in the band, grown round-bellied with age and presumably wise. He stood next to his current mate, a pretty young girl named Cliff, and glared balefully at Maggot. His nose wrinkled and he shouldered his way forward.
Windy sniffed and smelled the same odor, of many people, but no one stood there except her son. "Maggot?"
He stepped out of the light into the dark and she saw him clearly then. He wore something on his feet, not just wrapped animal skins but things shaped from the forelegs of deer. They had the people scent on them, as did the skin across his shoulders.
"Showing his true odors," said Ragweed, looking over to Windy. "And this is the troll -- I use the term loosely -- you want to be First?"
Before she could answer, one of the younger trolls called out. "Got any ripe meat, Maggot?"
Her son inclined his head toward the cave entrance. "Part of a humpback."