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

but some were of a solid cloth Bridget had never seen before, fastened with
large, rough thongs. Bridget's whipstitching looked delicate and sophisticated
by comparison, and to her relief, Mora smiled broadly.
Bridget spent the rest of the day with the women, who told her that
the men were out hunting. She learned to milk a goat and to tell time from a
stone's shadow. Mora had an ancient, crack-faced watch, and Bridget wound it for
her, as amazed that they had forgotten this simple thing as they were that she
did not know what animal skin was.
When the men returned, Mora told her she was to see the priest-king.
Frightened, she struggled a bit as she was brought to the largest hut, this one
made of blocks of earth with a woven grass roof, and she sat trembling by its
cold fire hole, looking at the priest-king. He was almost bald, with one green
eye and one milky blue one, and a great mauve splotch over half his face. He
leaned down and untied Bridget's chafed wrists, then sat and kindled a fire,
filling the room with a pleasant, turfy smoke.
"My daughter tells me you are a mender," he said quietly.
Shy and intimidated, though no longer shaking, Bridget looked down. "I
want to help. Don't hurt me."
He did not answer, but his craggy, discolored face was somehow both
grave and merry. "Do you know what a seanchaэ is?" he asked then, in English.
"A storyteller," she answered.
"And more than that, as well. The books were all burned for fuel long
ago, in the cold time; the seanchaэ remembers all the stories and all the
history, and recites them so the people will know their past. There are tales of
the Tuatha Dщ Danann, gods who went into the earth thousands of years ago; there
are many who think that is who you are, but more who say your people have arisen
from the earth not as gods but as our true enemies who cursed and abandoned us."
He seemed to see that she could not follow even his English, and frowned with
the effort of simplification. "We mean you no harm, but we do not know your
people. We took you out of fear that they would attack us, from similar
ignorance. If you truly want to help, you will go home tomorrow and give your
people a message of peace from us. It is very important and you will have to
learn a lot of words, just like a seanchaэ. Will you do that?"
Bridget nodded, the responsibility making her solemn. He left her then
so she could sleep. There was no guard, and her hands were free; she curled up
against the room's emptiness and the embers' unearthly glow, and thought hard
about peace and Mam and the caps and what was real and what were stories, until
at last she fell asleep.


***


Shay came for her that night. She woke to feel him bundling the furs
around her and carrying her to the window. The fire pit was full of ashes, and
from far away came the sound of many voices arguing. She tried to struggle as
Shay lifted her out to the ground and jumped down beside her, but she was
half-asleep, and by the time she untangled herself from the covers he had half
carried, half dragged her well out of sight of the ring of houses. "Shay, let me
down," she protested. He let her stand but would not let her go. "I don't want