"Fear" - читать интересную книгу автора (McGarry Terry)

from them but was driven off with stones that thudded with a rustle into the
bracken after hitting him. She drew breath to shriek and inhaled only the stench
of the hairy hand that clamped over her mouth and nose. She had never passed out
before; she struggled violently against it, with bursting lungs, until the
glittering blackness filled her mind and she couldn't see Shay anymore.


***


Bridget had never before felt anything like the cold terror that
filled her when she came to. She told herself that these short, ragged men were
trouping fairies, friendly folk who wanted perhaps to swap a fairy baby for a
real one. But their hands were too rough, their voices too harsh, and they had
tied her up as if she were a bag of mending. She was carried through the forest,
through darkness so complete that she wondered if she'd really woken up. After a
while--perhaps a hundred precious breaths--a flickering light began to grow, and
she heard voices. She was dropped to the ground, dragged past a huge, scorching
fire, and left in a damp stone structure. A man stationed himself at the
opening; in the firelight, his white hair and pale eyes made her cringe.
Shay had not followed them. By dawn, that realization ached inside her
almost as much as her need for Mam. But she looked up from her misery and saw
that the guard had gone, and she was able to roll herself to the opening and
look out.
There were eleven other huts, no two alike, standing in a ring around
the hole where the fire burned. Near it, animals picked and grazed and several
tiny children played.
She found that someone had left her some food, but she was sick after
she ate it. Her retching drew a group of silver women to hover over her, and she
felt comforted when they stroked her hair and cooed over its red color.
"Are you banshees?" she asked in Irish. They drew back in surprise at
these first words from her. One of them, apparently the youngest though they
were all wizened and hollow-eyed, offered her a carved bowl of water and sat
before her as she drank.
"We are not banshees," she said slowly, as if sensing Bridget's
newness to their tongue. "I am Mora. Are you of the Tuatha?"
Bridget thought about the legend of the Tuatha and said she didn't
know. "Bridget is my name."
This elicited a solemn nod. "They said you would return and take the
land one day."
Bridget remembered what her mother had said and stared at the
wrinkled, pale face before her. She thought desperately of something to say with
her small store of words that would show she was a friend; then she remembered
her leprechaun swatch, and reached out with her bound hands to tug at the
woman's rags. "More, I can fix these," she said, and managed to draw the small
needle from its sheath in her pocket. Mora's eyes grew wide at the sight of the
gleaming stainless steel, and she watched in fascination as Bridget unraveled a
long strand from her embroidery and threaded the needle deftly, barely hampered
by her bonds. "Look," Bridget said, and stitched up the largest hole in Mora's
tunic as neatly as she could. "See? Better." Some of Mora's clothes were woven,