"Mercedes Lackey - EM 4 - Phoenix and Ashes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

So if the names of the inhabitants are not consistent with the conventions of 1917, that is why.




And

Thanks to Richard and Marion van der Voort (www.atthesignofthe dragon.co.uk), who vetted my
historical and colloquial accuracy.

And

To Melanie Dymond Harper, who, when I lost my map and pictures of Broom, went out into wretched
weather to recreate them for me.
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December 18,1914

Broom, Warwickshire

HER EYES WERE SO SORE and swollen from weeping that she thought by right she should have no
tears left at all. She was so tired that she couldn't keep her mind focused on anything; it flitted from one
thought to another, no matter how she tried to concentrate.

One kept recurring, in a never-ending refrain of lament. What am I doing here? I should be at Oxford.

Eleanor Robinson rested her aching head against the cold, wet glass of the tiny window in the twilight
gloom of her attic bedroom. With an effort, she closed her sore, tired eyes, as her shoulders hunched
inside an old woolen shawl. The bleak December weather had turned rotten and rainy, utterly
un-Christmas-like. Not that she cared about Christmas.

It was worse in Flanders, or so the boys home on leave said, though the papers pretended otherwise.
She knew better. The boys on leave told the truth when the papers lied. But surely Papa wouldn't be
there, up to his knees in the freezing water of the trenches of the Western Front. He wasn't a young man.
Surely they wouldn't put him there.

Beastly weather. Beastly war. Beastly Germans.

Surely Papa was somewhere warm, in the Rear; surely they were using his clever, organized mind at
some clerking job for some big officer. She was the one who should be pitied. The worst that would
happen to Papa was that he wouldn't get leave for Christmas. She wasn't likely to see anything of
Christmas at all.

And she should be at Oxford, right this minute! Papa had promised, promised faithfully, that she should
go to Oxford this year, and his betrayal of that promise ate like bitter acid into her heart and soul. She'd
done everything that had been asked of her. She had passed every examination, even the Latin, even the
Greek, and no one else had ever wanted to learn Greek in the entire village of Broom, except for little