"Ursula K. LeGuin - Earthsea 2 - The Tombs Of Atuan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

TheTombs of Atuan
Ursula K. Leguin
1970




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Prologue
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"Come home, Tenar! Come home!"
In the deep valley, in the twilight, the apple trees were on the eve of
blossoming; here and there among the shadowed boughs one flower had opened
early, rose and white, like a faint star. Down the orchard aisles, in the thick,
new, wet grass, the little girl ran for the joy of running; hearing the call she
did not come at once, but made a long circle before she turned her face towards
home. The mother waiting in the doorway of the hut, with the firelight behind
her, watched the tiny figure running and bobbing like a bit of thistledown blown
over the darkening grass beneath the trees.
By the corner of the hut, scraping clean an earthclotted hoe, the father
said, "Why do you let your heart hang on the child? They're coming to take her
away next month. For good. Might as well bury her and be done with it. What's
the good of clinging to one you're bound to lose? She's no good to us. If they'd
pay for her when they took her, that would be something, but they won't. They'll
take her and that's an end of it."
The mother said nothing, watching the child who had stopped to look up
through the trees. Over the high hills, above the orchards, the evening star
shone piercing clear.
"She isn't ours, she never was since they came here and said she must be
the Priestess at the Tombs. Why can't you see that?" The man's voice was harsh
with complaint and bitterness. "You have four others. They'll stay here, and
this one won't. So, don't set your heart on her. Let her go!"
"When the time comes," the woman said, "I will let her go." She bent to
meet the child who came running on little, bare, white feet across the muddy
ground, and gathered her up in her arms. As she turned to enter the hut she bent
her head to kiss the child's hair, which was black; but her own hair, in the
flicker of firelight from the hearth, was fair.
The man stood outside, his own feet bare and cold on the ground, the clear
sky of spring darkening above him. His face in the dusk was full of grief, a
dull, heavy, angry grief that he would never find the words to say. At last he
shrugged, and followed his wife into the firelit room that rang with children's
voices.



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The Eaten One
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