"Esther M. Friesner - A Pig's Tale" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

A Pig's Tale
Esther M. Friesner
After he escaped from Alice's clutches, the first thing the piglet did was to rub that annoying baby
bonnet off his head against the bole of a tree. Free at last, he clipped through the dark woodland as fast
as four trim little trotters would carry him. He was not a very big piglet at first, but the Wonderland wood
was as full of acorns and beech mast as any other, and the piglet had an inherent knack for knowing
which mushrooms were good to eat and which were someone's idea of a joke.
Time means nothing to a pig, as the old rouser goes, so it was no wonder (even for Wonderland)
that for this little piggie the years did not pass but the meals did. At length there came a time when acorns
were at a premium, and the woodland did not seem either so dark or so cozy. This was disquieting, to be
sure. The misshapen birds and uncanny cats who haunted the leaf-strewn forest alleyways seemedтАФto a
pig's perception, at leastтАФto be fewer and farther between and occasionally beside themselves. Not
good.
It was all rather sad, really. Pigs are as subject to free-floating anxiety attacks as humans, and since
this pig had been human once (or as human as one could get, considering his environment) one fine
afternoon he found himself plunged into the murkiest depths of Byronic angst and melancholia.
Byron really should have been a pig. (Lady Caroline Lamb said that he was, the minx.) It would
have perked him up no end. For pigs possess a certain native intelligence and common sense by and
large missing from our greater poets. When despair lays its clammy paws across their fevered porcine
brows, they do not slump about composing sonnets; they take action.
The only action the pig could think of taking was to go home and see about things.
It was the first time in years he'd thought of Home and Hearth and Mother. He recalled the sounds
of crashing crockery and clanging pots, the voices of women raised in strident quarrel. Pigs lack the
proper dentition to pronounce the word "dysfunctional," so he went home anyhow.
Home was gone.
The pig stood in a little clearing, gazing at the ruins of what must have been a fairly pleasant little
cottage in its day. He snorted and stamped his hoof, much put out by the thoughtless nature of
Circumstance, which had so dared to discommode him. Then he decided to investigate more closely.
Snuffling and rooting around the ruins filled his snout with the lingering odor of woodsmoke. Charred
timbers protruding from a mishmash mess of broken furniture and other domestic effects were another
surefire (indeed) indication that someone had not closed cover before striking.
Accidents happen. The pig was not unhappy, merely disappointed. It would have been nice to see
his mother again, he fancied, for nice belonged to the same class of words as interesting and we'll be in
touch and your child has great potential. It carries little meaning other than the vague sense that no one
is going to be hit with anything heavy.
There being nothing else to do, he turned himself back into a boy.
It was in this state that the Mad Hatter found him. Or rather, he found the Hatter, who was, as ever,
ensconced at the tea table. "Have some tea!" that worthy cried when the boy stepped out of the bushes.
The pig in boy's formтАФif not boy's clothingтАФsaid, "I'd rather have some britches."
It was a good thing that the Mad Hatter also dealt in miscellaneous haberdashery on the side. This
revelation might have boggled Alice, but the pig accepted it as Q.E. very D. How else to explain the
neatly tailored accoutrements of Wonderland's ill-sorted mob of zanies, beast and human? It wants a job
of custom tailoring to fit a rabbit with a waistcoat or a frog with footman's livery. Accidents happen;
clothing does not. Some people just don't stop to think; they're too busy swallowing nightmares whole.
Before long, the Hatter had the pig turned out in a dapper schoolboy style that would be the envy of
any Eton scholar. "There!" he said, tying the lad's tie. "Now you're ready to leave."
"Leave?" the pig echoed. "But I just got here."
"Then it's past time you got out," the Hatter replied. "Save yourself, lad! It's too late for me, but
save yourself while you can."
"Save myself from what?" the pig asked. A vase sailed across the sitting room of his memory and