"Esther M. Friesner - A Beltaine And Suspenders" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

the tale. "The last entries were very telling."



"There are parts of this country where the Old Ways survive," Father Herrick

pronounced. "Places off the beaten path where the ancient forces hold sway,

where jealous gods of old demand blood-sacrifice at the price of their continued
indulgence, where the paramount fertility of the earth is to be purchased at

whatever price, where Christianity is but an empty word in the mouth of a local

clergyman whose true robes of office are white and who knows his mistletoe,

where the newly reaped field drinks the blood of the Summer King, where the

Great Mother in her many forms demands the seed of heroes, where --"



"And do you mean to say that Greater Ambrose is such a -- such a socially

undesirable place? Really, Vicar!" Lady Battle-Purfittwas pleased to look smug.

"I have come and gone from that village a score of times in the past year alone,

and I have never come away with anything worse than a touch of dyspepsia.

Rationing or no rationing, those ladies simply do not know how to make a decent

toad-in-the-hole."



"Toads indeed," said Father Herrick darkly. "And snakes no doubt, and other

creatures whose natural construction places them in unremitting physical contact

with the Goddess' fertile bosom. My lady, I have observed danger lies not so

much in where one goes as in when. Our unhappy London brethren learned that one

may walk a certain street a hundred times with no harm done, yet walk that same

street at the moment when a stick of incendiaries is en route earthward and the

results will be quite strikingly different. The pagan year has its festivals

just as we have our Christian feasts. It was, in fact, in an attempt to hold