"Ursula K. LeGuin - Earthsea 4 - Tehanu" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

When they woke in the cold before the dawn, she made a small fire and heated a pan of water to make
oatmeal gruel for the child and herself. The little ruined butterfly came shivering from her cocoon, and
Goha cooled the pan in the dewy grass so that the child could hold it and drink from it. The east was
brightening above the high, dark shoulder of the mountain when they set off again.
They walked all day at the pace of a child who tired easily. The womanтАЩs heart yearned to make haste, but
she walked slowly. She was not able to carry the child any long distance, and so to make the way easier
for her she told her stories.
тАЬWeтАЩre going to see a man, an old man, called Ogion,тАЭ she told her as they trudged along the narrow
road that wound upward through the forests. тАЬHeтАЩs a wise man, and a wizard. Do you know what a wizard
is, Therru?тАЭ
If the child had had a name, she did not know it or would not say it. Goha called her Therru.
She shook her head.
тАЬWell, neither do I,тАЭ said the woman. тАЬBut I know what they can do. When I was young-older than you,
but young--Ogion was my father, the way IтАЩm your mother now. He looked after me and tried to teach me
what I needed to know. He stayed with me when heтАЩd rather have been wandering by himself. He liked to
walk, all along these roads like weтАЩre doing now, and in the forests, in the wild places. He went
everywhere on the mountain, looking at things, listening. He always listened, so they called him the Silent.
But he used to talk to me. He told me stories. Not only the great stories everybody learns, the heroes and
the kings and the things that happened long ago and far away, but stories only he knew.тАЭ She walked on a
way before she went on. тАЬIтАЩll tell you one of those stories now.
тАЬOne of the things wizards can do is turn into something else-take another form. Shape-changing, they
call it. An ordinary sorcerer can make himself look like somebody else, or like an animal, just so you donтАЩt
know for a minute what youтАЩre seeing-as if heтАЩd put on a mask. But the wizards and mages can do more
than that. They can be the mask, they can truly change into another being. So a wizard, if he wanted to
cross the sea and had no boat, might turn himself into a gull and fly across. But he has to be careful. If he
stays a bird, he begins to think what a bird thinks and
forget what a man thinks, and he might fly off and be a gull and never a man again. So they say there was
a great wizard once who liked to turn himself into a bear, and did it too often, and became a bear, and
killed his own little son; and they had to hunt him down and kill him. But Ogion used to joke about it, too.
Once when the mice got into his pantry and ruined the cheese, he caught one with a tiny mousetrap spell,
and he held the mouse up like this and looked it in the eye and said, тАШI told you not to play mouse!тАЩ And
for a minute I thought he meant it.
..


тАЬWell, this story is about something like shape-changing, but -Ogion said it was beyond all shape-
changing he knew, because it was about being two things, two beings, at once, and in the same form, and
he said that this is beyond the power of wizards. But he met with it in a little village around on the
northwest coast of Gont, a place called Kemay, There was a woman there, an old fisherwoman, not a
witch, not learned; but she made songs. ThatтАЩs how -Ogion came to hear of her. He was wandering there,
the way he did, going along the coast, listening; and he heard somebody singing, mending a net or
caulking a boat and singing as they worked:

Farther west than west beyond the land
my people are dancing on the other wind.

тАЬIt was the tune and the words both that -Ogion heard, and he had never heard them before, so he asked
where the song came from. And from one answer to another, he went along to where somebody said, тАШ-
Oh, thatтАЩs one of the songs of the Woman of Kemay.тАЩ So he went on along to Kemay, the little fishing
port where the woman lived, and he found her house down by the harbor. And he knocked on the door