"Charles Coleman Finlay - A Democracy of Trolls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Finley Charles Coleman)

amber-colored ampules strung around the dead man's neck. They were magic,
sunlight trapped in warm ice. If either one cracked accidentally it could kill
them both. She hopped backward so fast the baby lost the nipple. Its eyes flew
wide open.
"You'll have to share it now," Ragweed said.
Windy kept one eye on Snapper's body as if he might leap up and attack her.
The baby stretched its neck, trying to get its mouth back on her breast.
"Share what?"
"The live meat."
"No!" She dodged his sudden grasp, bolted out the door and into the yard. He
chased after her.
"We always share meat," he said.
"This isn't meat -- it's a baby!"
He slouched back on his haunches and laughed. "Don't be crazy! You're just sad
because you lost your girl. You don't mean to keep that thing."
She hadn't realized that was exactly what she meant to do until she heard him
say it. "I can. And I will."
He thumped his knuckles on his chest to frighten her. She wasn't impressed and
frowned at him until he gave it up. "If that's how you feel," he said, pacing
in a circle around her, "then we'll just have to take a vote. All those in
favor of eating the live meat, raise your hand."
He threw his hand up into the air, looking around the way he always did at
meetings to see who was voting with him. She ignored him, and, gently as she
could, switched the baby around, so it could drink from the other sore and
swollen breast.
"All right then, everybody in favor of keeping the meat for a baby, raise your
hand."
Windy lifted hers as she looked down, making a kissy mouth at the child. It
stopped sucking long enough to laugh and reached up to touch her face.
"That's two against one," she said. "We win."
"It can't vote!"
"Well, it raised its hand." She really just hoped to confuse and distract
Ragweed, because even if Mosswater was still alive and they both outvoted her,
she wasn't about to give up this new baby. She reached down to tickle its
belly and saw it was a boy. "He heard you, and he raised his hand. So there."
"But --!" Ragweed sputtered off, then slammed his hands down, splattering mud
everywhere.
The baby jerked at the sound, but she made another kissy mouth and a smoochy
sound and he giggled again. His eyelids seemed very heavy as he swallowed gulp
after gulp.
"You aren't going to keep that thing, are you? It's an animal."
"Is not." He had eyes just like her darling girl, she decided. Whatever he was
-- whatever people were -- they were more than animals, even if they weren't
trolls.
Ragweed circled her. "It's a maggot, that's what it is."
"He's a big strong baby." To be truthful, he wasn't big or strong. But he was
a baby and now he was her baby.
"It's a maggot. It's little, white, and it wouldn't make a mouthful, and you
found it crawling on a dead body. Maggot, maggot, maggot!"
"He is not a maggot!" She threw a clump of mud at Ragweed but it missed and