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

husky whisper: "Ho, are you there, Tenar?"
The child did not reply.
A head poked in the doorway, a strange head, hairless as a peeled potato,
and of the same yellowish color. The eyes were like potato-eyes, brown and tiny.
The nose was dwarfed by great, fiat slabs of cheek, and the mouth was a lipless
slit. The child stared unmoving at this face. Her eyes were large, dark, and
fixed.
"Ho, Tenar, my little honeycomb, there you are!" The voice was husky, high
as a woman's voice but not a woman's voice. "I shouldn't be here, I belong
outside the door, on the porch, that's where I go. But I had to see how my
little Tenar is, after all the long day of it, eh, how's my poor little
honeycomb?"
He moved towards her, noiseless and burly, and put out his hand as if to
smooth back her hair.
"I am not Tenar any more," the child said, staring up at him. His hand
stopped; he did not touch her.
"No," he said, after a moment, whispering. "I know. I know. Now you're the
little Eaten One. But I..."
She said nothing.
"It was a hard day for a little one," the man said, shuffling, the tiny
light flickering in his big yellow hand.
"You should not be in this House, Manan."
"No. No. I know. I shouldn't be in this House. Well, good night, little
one... Good night."
The child said nothing. Manan slowly turned around and went away. The
glimmer died from the high cell walls. The little girl, who had no name any more
but Arha, the Eaten One, lay on her back looking steadily at the dark.



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The Wall Around the Place
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 As she grew older she lost all remembrance of her mother, without knowing
she had lost it. She belonged here, at the Place of the Tombs; she had always
belonged here. Only sometimes in the long evenings of July as she watched the
western mountains, dry and lion-colored in the afterglow of sunset, she would
think of a fire that had burned on a hearth, long ago, with the same clear
yellow light. And with this came a memory of being held, which was strange, for
here she was seldom even touched; and the memory of a pleasant smell, the
fragrance of hair freshly washed and rinsed in sage-scented water, fair long
hair, the color of sunset and firelight. That was all she had left.
She knew more than she remembered, of course, for she had been told the
whole story. When she was seven or eight years old, and first beginning to
wonder who indeed this person called "Arha" was, she had gone to her guardian,
the Warden Manan, and said, "Tell me how I was chosen, Manan."
"Oh, you know all that, little one."
And indeed she did; the tall, dry-voiced priestess Thar had told her till
she knew the words by heart, and she recited them: "Yes, I know. At the death of
the One Priestess of the Tombs of Atuan, the ceremonies of burial and