"George R. R. Martin - Ice Dragon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

Later that winter it returned, and Adara touched it. Its skin was very
cold. She took off her glove nonetheless. It would not be right otherwise. She
was half afraid it would burn and melt at her touch, but it did not. It was
much more sensitive to heat than even the ice lizards, Adara knew somehow. But
she was special, the winter child, cool. She stroked it, and finally gave its
wing a kiss that hurt her lips. That was the winter of her fourth birthday,
the year she touched the ice dragon.
The winter of her fifth birthday was the year she rode upon it for the
first time.
It found her again, working on a different castle at a different place
in the fields, alone as ever. She watched it come, and ran to it when it
landed, and pressed herself against it. That had been the summer when she had
heard her father talking to Hal.
They stood together for long minutes until finally Adara, remembering
Hal, reached out and tugged at the dragon's wing with a small hand. And the
dragon beat its great wings once, and then extended them flat against the
snow, and Adara scrambled up to wrap her arms about its cold white neck.
Together, for the first time, they flew.
She had no harness or whip, as the king's dragonriders use. At times
the beating of the wings threatened to shake her loose from where she clung,
and the coldness of the dragon's flesh crept through her clothing and bit and
numbed her child's flesh. But Adara was not afraid.
They flew over her father's farm, and she saw Geoff looking very small
below, startled and afraid, and knew he could not see her. It made her laugh
an icy, tinkling laugh, a laugh as bright and crisp as the winter air.
They flew over the crossroads inn, where crowds of people came out to
watch them pass.
They flew above the forest, all white and green and silent.
They flew high into the sky, so high that Adara could not even see the
ground below, and she thought she glimpsed another ice dragon, way off in the
distance, but it was not half so grand as _hers_.
They flew for most of the day, and finally the dragon swept around in a
great circle, and spiraled down, gliding on its stiff and glittering wings. It
let her off in the field where it had found her, just after dusk.
Her father found her there, and wept to see her, and hugged her
savagely. Adara did not understand that, nor why he beat her after he had
gotten her back to the house. But when she and Geoff had been put to sleep,
she heard him slide out of his own bed and come padding over to hers. "You
missed it all," he said. "There was an ice dragon, and it scared everybody.
Father was afraid it had eaten you."
 Adara smiled to herself in the darkness, but said nothing.
She flew on the ice dragon four more times that winter, and every
winter after that. Each year she flew further and more often than the year
before, and the ice dragon was seen more frequently in the skies above their
farm.
Each winter was longer and colder than the one before.
Each year the thaw came later.
And sometimes there were patches of land, where the ice dragon had lain
to rest, that never seemed to thaw properly at all.
There was much talk in the village during her sixth year, and a message