"Esther M. Friesner - Helen Rembembers the Stork Club" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

from a lone bulb, slightly loose in its socket, blooms over a pair of magnificent wings. Stored away with
love and just a hint of mothballs, they hang encased in a clear plastic garment bag from B. Altman's. The
plastic's yellowing and the zipper balksтАФthat cherished old department store is now a library, offering
books instead of ballgownsтАФbut the wings retain the whiteness of Zeus's own thunderbolt.

Standing naked in the middle of her bedroom floor, at the heart of her first and greatest and only place of
power, Helen sweeps them around her like a cape and lets them settle lightly onto her back as if it were
the most natural thing in the world for a woman to wear the plumage of a swan. For her, it is. This is her
birthright as Zeus's child, the wings he wore when in swan's shape he took Leda's love by storm. Now
they're Helen's keepsake. Daddy always was one to give strange gifts. Just because you're the king of
gods and men doesn't mean you know how to shop.

Helen sighs happily despite the pain she feels as the wings take root. The thousand hungry, thrumming
fibers that pierce her flesh tell her that there's still enough power in the great pinions to serve her purpose.
(A pity they're so impossibly uncomfortable for long hauls, or Miami winters wouldn't be beyond her
reach. A shame she can never be Florida's first literal snowbird.) They'll carry her swiftly where she
needs to go, but she'll feel each beat of the great wings as an echoing ache in her bones. Every
powerтАФmyth or magic, legend or loveтАФdemands its sacrifice.
This one is worth it.

What's magic but the gift to transform reality? Helen's beauty is her magic, her immortality, fading but not
yet gone. Now, with wings in place, she closes her eyes, spreads her arms wide enough to embrace the
world that is already her unknowing slave, and invokes the full measure of her power. Gold flashes at her
neck and wrists and waist and ankles. A diadem radiating glory equal to Apollo's own tries and fails to
outshine the splendor of her hair. She's been alive long enough to know that it's not just what you can do,
it's how good you look while doing it: Silver and gold, spangles and glitter, flags and fireworks.
Appearances do count, often for everything. All women guard the same dark mystery, the source of life
within them, but men and gods don't spill roses into the lap of the girl with the pilly sweater, the scruffy
hair, the dull skin and the great personality. Go figure. Go learn the hard way.

Helen steps through a window that is suddenly a door and takes flight. The air above the island is cold,
but she rejoices in it. Old's not dead, and every sensation that the waking world can throw her way is
further proof that she's alive to relish it. She exults in the icy light of the Artemis-abandoned moon. The
blend of blood and ichor in her veins is a crimson river holding far greater powers than silly parlor tricks
like swan-winged flight. Even at this height it's no trouble at all to track him, to find him, to hunt him
down. His scent is a beacon that broadcasts his presence until she pinpoints it, folds her wings, and drops
back to earth with the swiftness and grace of a spear. In next to no time she's standing on the sidewalk
outside the bar that reeks of his raw youth. There's only a door between them now.

Helen, is this wise?

She stops in her tracks, one hand extended to push the door open. Mortals are lucky: All they've got to
deal with is an Inner Child. Helen's saddled with an Inner Athena. It wouldn't be so bad if it were the
Voice of Reason, but like her haploid half-sister it's closer to being the Voice of I Know Better than You.

(It could be worse. It could be Athena in person, forever flaunting her knowledge, eternally arrogant in
her virginity. How it must have rankled that dried-up bitter husk of a goddess to know that all her
intellectual allurements couldn't bribe Paris into forking over the golden apple of Discord! Hera offered
him dominion over the world, Athena tried tempting him with the gift of wisdom, but when Aphrodite
promised him the high road to Helen's thigh-warded paradise, he tossed her the prize with one hand