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

"The havoc he's wrought! The simple, homespun pandemonium! Oh, it was fine, at firstтАФa book
for children, harmless, charming. But thenтАФmeddlers! Not enough to occupy them, turning over every
rock in their heads to see what hideous crawlies haunt the undersides, no! They must invade the nursery
bookshelf and read, and read into everything they find."
The pig looked up from the book. He didn't understand much of what the Hatter was saying, but he
dismissed it as madness. After allтАФ! No need to have recourse to the cake knife. "Scone?" he
suggested, passing the plate and pronouncing the word to almost rhyme with done.
"Yes, it is," said the Hatter, glancing at the plate. "Although I prefer to pronounce it so it rhymes
more nearly with alone, which is what I have been ever since they invaded." He helped himself to sugar.
"The hare was the first to go," he told the swirling depths of his tea. "They called him a rampant
pagan fertility symbol and he never got over it. So much to live up to, and he a Methodist bachelor! The
dormouse, on the other hand, was a dream of the womb. How clearly I recall his words of farewell:
'When they can't tell Assam tea from amniotic fluid, it's time to move on,' he said."
"Have they all gone, then?" asked the pig. His gaze weighed the all-surrounding woodland. At the
Hatter's words it seemed to have put on the bleak aspect of a deserted house, dust on the oak leaves,
cobwebs veiling the bark of the walnut trees.
"The Queen of Hearts is still around," the Hatter said. "I see her sometimes when she stops by to
drop off a platter of tarts and to ask me whether I've yet been able to find out what, precisely, a symbol
of Woman as Castrating Bitch (capital w, capital c, capital b, no less) is supposed to do all day.
Noblesse oblige and all that. She feels the responsibility. Responsibility for what remains the question.
The King tells her it was just an idle compliment, but she's a stickler. The distraction has sweetened her
temper no end. She's no fun anymore."
"At least it doesn't seem to have affected you," the pig offered by way of consolation.
"That's because I may be mad, but I'm not a weathercock. I've steadfastly refused to let them make
me mean anything at all. Oh, they tried to have at me, lad, don't doubt it for a moment!" He waved a
teaspoon in the pig's face. "I've been called everything from an icon of the ultimate tragedy of the
Industrial Revolution to a fragment of embedded Masonic code. Do you know what you get when you
rearrange the letters in the words Mad Hatter?"
"Nnnnno," the pig admitted with some reluctance.
"You get Rhatemtad, which some idiot decided was the name of a heretical Egyptian pharaoh of
the Old Kingdom who did odd, un-Christian things with trowels and whose monuments were therefor
suppressed." The Hatter's head fell forward heavily. "Get out, boy. There's nothing left for anyone here.
They've stripped the flesh from the bones, sucked the blood and licked out the marrow."
"But where shall I get out to?" the pig asked.
"Their world. What else is there?" The Hatter sipped his tea morosely, then suddenly demanded,
"Why is a raven like a writing desk?"
"Who cares?" the pig replied. "How do I get there from here?"
"With an answer like that, you're halfway there," said the Hatter. "Although the usual method of
transportation is to wake up."
"Wake up? But I'm not even asleep," the pig said, pinching himself to make sure.
"Then fall asleep, you tollywug," the Hatter snapped. "And wake up in a better world than this.
That's how the rest of 'em did it."
 The pig thanked the Hatter and took his leave. "And whatever you do," the Hatter shouted after
him, "don't mean more than you are!" He backed up this advice by flinging a teacup at the pig's head.
This caused the pig to feel the prickle of nostalgic tears in the corner of one eye (the left one) and the rise
of a lump in his throat that turned out to be a poorly chewed piece of scone (pronounced however you
damn well like). He returned to the forest, retreated to the shade of an ancient sycamore, curled up at the
roots, and went to sleep.
He awoke in the shade of an ancient sycamore, but that was as far as Coincidence was willing to
carry him without a supplemental fare being paid. Wonderland had vanished.