"Michael McCollum - Who Will Guard the Guardians" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCollum Michael)

With

Catherine McCollum



Immortality must be purchased for a price.

Perhaps that price is too high.



The dream came again, once more full of greens and reds, and children's faces. There were
hundreds of them! Some wore ugly, teasing, taunting, hating faces. Others were beautiful. Their
peaches-and-cream complexions were split by broad smiles as the faces' tiny owners laughed and
shouted with joy. Others were indistinct faces, while still others stared at her with sad, longing
eyes...

Fria opened her eyes with a start, frightened to discover that she had not been sleeping after all. She was
lying in a large meadow of yellow wild flowers that had somehow escaped her goats and sheep. She had
been staring up at the cloud-strewn sky when she had drifted off to ... where? She shivered at the
thought. The doctors of so long ago had warned her about hallucinating. Hallucinations, they had told
her, would be the first sign of the impending end. When she began to see things that were not there, that
would be hard evidence that all human beings are mortal, even Fria and those like her.

Nothing, it seemed, is forever.

She sat up and then quickly got to her feet. For the first time in many minutes, she could again hear the
faint hum of wild bees and the quiet whisper of the wind blowing across the hillside. Exasperated, she
bent down to brush the yellow pollen from her long woolen skirt, before turning and starting up the trail
that led toward the top of her mountain. As she left the meadow, a dark shape burst from the
underbrush to trot beside her.

Her dog was a nameless mongrel of uncertain parentage, one of the periodic houseguests who drifted
into her life, stayed awhile, and then drifted out again. She sighed, and spoke for the first time in several
hours. The dog pricked up its ears at the sound.

"Hopefully it is too late for her to come tonight," Fria mused. "Help me gather in my sheep and I'll share
my supper with you!"

By the time she had penned the sheep, milked her two goats, and shooed the chickens back into the old
shed, there were three new dogs sitting in front of her stoop. They were thin and scraggly. One had half
its ear gone and was marked by the diagonal line of a long healed scar across its muzzle. The scar gave
the animal a mean look that the wagging of its tail belied.

Ever since the Destruction, dogs had not been kept much as pets. That unhappy time had apparently
severed the age-old bond forever. Any stray canine that wandered into the village at the foot of her
mountain was more likely than not to end up in the community stew pot. Save for the few relics like
herself, no one now alive remembered the time when dogs had been "man's best friend."