"Ursula K. LeGuin - Unlocking The Air" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

Unlocking The Air
fiction By URSULA K. LE GUIN


THIS IS A FAIRY TALE. People stand in the lightly falling snow.
Something
is shining, trembling, making a silvery sound. Eyes are shining. Voices
sing. People laugh and weep, clasp one another's hands, embrace.

Something shines and trembles. They live happily ever after. The snow
falls on
the roofs and blows across the parks, the squares, the river.

This is history. Once upon a time, a good king lived in his palace in a
kingdom far away. But an evil enchantment fell upon that land. The
wheat
withered in the ear, the leaves dropped from the trees of the forest
and
nothing thrived.

This is a stone. It's a paving stone of a square that slants downhill
in
front of an old, reddish, almost windowless fortress called the Roukh
Palace.
The square was paved nearly 300 years ago, so a lot of feet have walked
on
this stone, bare feet and shod, children's little pads, horses' iron
shoes,
soldiers' boots; and wheels have gone over and over it, cart wheels,
carriage
wheels, car tires, tank treads. Dogs' paws every now and then. There
has been
dogshit on it, there has been blood, both soon washed away by water
sloshed
from buckets or run from hoses or dropped from the clouds.
You can't get blood from a stone, they say, nor can you give it to a
stone; it takes no stain. Some of the pavement, down near that street
that
leads out of Roukh Square through the old Jewish quarter to the river,
got dug
up, once or twice, and piled into a barricade, and some of the stones
even
found themselves flying through the air, but not for long. They were
soon put
back in their place, or replaced by others. It made no difference to
them. The
man hit by the flying stone dropped down like a stone beside the stone
that
had killed him. The man shot through the brain fell down and his blood
ran out