"Robert Holdstock - Mythago Wood" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

Edward Wynne-Jones Esq. 15 College Road Oxford

Edward -

You must come back to the Lodge. Please don't delay for even an hour! I have discovered a fourth
pathway into the deeper zones of the wood. The brook itself. So obvious now, a water track! It leads
directly through the outer ash vortex, beyond the spiral track and the Stone Falls. I believe it could be
used to enter the heartwoods themselves. But time, always time!

I have found a people called the shamiga. They live beyond the Stone Falls. They guard the fords on the
river, but to my great satisfaction they are willing story-tellers, which they call 'life-speaking'. The life-
speaker herself is a young girl who paints her face quite green, and tells all stories with her eyes closed so
that the smiles or frowns of those who listen cannot effect a 'shape-change' upon the characters within the
story. I heard much from her, but most important of all was a fragment of what can only be Guiwenneth's
tale. It is a pre-Celtic version of the myth, but I am convinced that it relates to the girl. What I managed to
understand of it goes thus:

'One afternoon, having killed a stag with eight tines, a boar twice the height of a man, and cured four
villages of bad manners, Mogoch, a chieftain, sat down by the shore to rest. He was so mighty in deed and
build that his head was half-covered by clouds. He spread his feet out in the sea at the bottom of the"
cliffs to cool. Then he lay back and watched a meeting take place between two sisters upon his belly.

'The sisters were twins, equally beautiful, equally sweet of tongue, and skilled with the harp. One sister,
however, had married the warlord of a great tribe, and had then found herself to be barren. Her
complexion had become as sour as milk left too long in the sun. The other sister had married an exiled
warrior, whose name was Peregu. Peregu held his camp in the deep gorges and deadwoods of the far
forest, but came to his lover as a nightbird. Now she had produced his child, which was a girl, but because
of the exile of Peregu, her sour-faced sister and an army had come to claim the infant.

'A great argument occurred, and there were several clashes of arms. The lover of Peregu had not even
named the child when her sister snatched the tiny bundle in its heavy cloth wrappings and raised it above
her head, intending to name it herself.

'But the sky darkened as ten magpies appeared. These were Peregu and his nine sword-kin, changed by
forest magic. Peregu swooped and caught his child in his claws, and flew upwards, but a marksman used
slingshot to bring him down. The child fell, but the other birds caught her and carried her away. Thus she
was named Hurfathna, which means "the girl raised by magpies".


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 Mythago Wood


'Mogoch, the chieftain, watched all this with amusement, but had respect for the dead Peregu. He picked
up the tiny bird and shook the human form back into it. But he was afraid that he would crush whole
villages if he prodded out a grave in the country with his finger. So Mogoch popped the dead exile into
his mouth and twisted out a tooth to stand as a monument. In this way Peregu was buried beneath a tall
white stone, in a valley which breathes.'

There can be no doubt that this is an early form of Guiwenneth's tale, and I think you can see why I'm