"Theodora Goss - The Rose in Twelve Petals" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goss Theodora)

running quickly enough. He has smelled them in their burrows
beneath the summer grasses, beneath the poppies and
cornflowers, tantalizing, inaccessible.
This morning he has smelled something different, pungent,
like spoiled meat: the smell of enchantment. He has left the
road and entered the forest, finding his way through a tangle
of briars. He has come to the village, loped up its cobbled
streets and through the gates of the palace. His claws click on
its stone floor.
What does he smell? A fragrance, drifting, indistinct,
remembered from when he was pup: bacon. There, through
that doorway. He lopes into the Great Hall, where breakfast
waits in chafing dishes. The eggs are still firm, their yolks
24 The Rose in Twelve Petals
by Theodora Goss
plump and yellow, their whites delicately fried. Sausages sit in
their own grease. The toast is crisp.
He leaves a streak of egg yolk and sausage grease on the
tablecloth, which has remained pristine for half a century, and
falls asleep in the Queen Dowager's drawing room, in a
square of sunlight that has not faded the baroque carpet.
He lives happily ever after. Someone has to. As summer
passes, he wanders through the palace gardens, digging in
the flower beds and trying to catch the sleeping fish that float
in the ornamental pools. One day he urinates on the side of
the tower, from which the dark smell emanates, to show his
disapproval. When he is hungry he eats from the side of beef
hanging in the larder, the sausage and eggs remaining on the
breakfast table, or the mice sleeping beneath the harpsichord.
In autumn, he chases the leaves falling red and yellow over
the lawns and manages to pull a lobster from the kitchen
tank, although his teeth can barely crack its hard shell. He
never figures out how to extract the canary from its cage.
When winter comes, the stone floor sends an ache through
his damaged paw, and he sleeps in the King's bed, under
velvet covers.
When summer comes again, he is too old to run about the
garden. He lies in the Queen Dowager's drawing room and
dreams of being a pup, of warm hands and a voice that
whispered тАЬWhat a beautiful dog,тАЭ and that magical thing
called a ball. He dies, his stomach still full with the last of the
poached eggs. A proper fairy tale should, perhaps, end here.
25 The Rose in Twelve Petals
by Theodora Goss
XI. The Prince
Here comes the Prince on a bulldozer. What did you
expect? Things change in a hundred years.
Harry pulls back the break and wipes his forehead, which
is glistening with sweat. He runs his fingers through blond
hair that stands up like a shock of corn. It is just past noon,