"Vonda N. McIntyre-Elfleda" - читать интересную книгу автора (McIntyre Vonda N)

Elfleda
by Vonda N. McIntyre
This story copyright 1997 by Vonda N. McIntyre. This copy was created for Jean Hardy's personal use.
All other rights are reserved. Thank you for honoring the copyright.

Published by Seattle Book Company, www.seattlebook.com.

* * *


I love her. And I envy her, because she is clever enough, defiant enough, to outwit our creators. Or
most of them. She is not a true unicorn: many of us have human parts, and she is no exception. The
reconnections are too complicated otherwise. Our brilliant possessors are not quite brilliant enough to
integrate nerves directly from the brain.
So Elfleda is, as I am, almost entirely human from the hips up. Below that I am equine: a centaur. She
is a unicorn, for her hooves are cloven, her tail is a lion's, and from her brow sprouts a thin straight spiral
horn. Her silver forelock hides the pale scar at its base; the silver hair drifts down, growing from her
shoulders and spine. Her coat is sleek and pale gray, and great dapples flow across her flanks. The hair
on the tip of her tail is quite black. For a long time I thought some surgeon had made a mistake or played
her a joke, but eventually I understood why this was done, as from afar I watched her twitching her long
black-tipped tail like a cat. My body has no such artistic originality. I hate everything about me as much
as I love everything about Elfleda.
She will talk to me from a distance; I think she pities me. When the masters come to our park she
watches them, lashes her tail, and gallops away. Sometimes she favors them with a brief glimpse of her
silver hide. Her inaccessibility makes her the most sought-after of us all. They follow after her, they call
her, but only a few can touch or move her. She is the only one of us who can ever resist their will. Even
this freedom was their creation; they are so powerful they can afford to play with the illusion of defiance.
But the rest of us, the other centaurs, the satyrs, nymphs, merfolk, we strut and prance across the
meadows or wait in the forest or gently splash the passersby, hoping to be noticed.
We dare not complain. Indeed, we should not; we should be grateful. Our lives have been saved.
Every one of us would have died if the masters had not accepted us and taken us in. We owe them our
lives, and that is the payment they exact. Sometimes I think the price too high, but though nothing
prevents me from leaping off the mountainside or eating poison flowers, I am still alive.
The noon sun is warm in the meadow, so I walk toward the forest through the high grass. A small
creature leaps from his sleeping-place and flees, as startled by me as I by him. Galloping, he surges into
the air: one of the small pegasoi. His feathered wings seem much too large in proportion to his body. That
is the reason only the smallest pegasoi can fly at all. This one is a miniature appaloosa pony, not as tall as
my knee. Half the meadow away he touches down and trots off, folding his blue-gray wings against his
spotted sides.
The larger pegasoi, the ones my size, are spectacular but earthbound; they seek flight but never find it.
I have watched one standing in the wind, neck arched, nostrils flaring, tail high. She spread her wings and
raised them, cantered against the wind, galloped, rain, but the wings were not large enough to lift her. Our
masters use their beasts as they use those of us part human: for amusement, for beauty. It would not
occur to them that a flying horse's heart might break because she could not fly.
The shade of the forest envelops me with a cool scent of pine and humus. The loam beneath my
hooves is soft. I can feel its resilience, but not its texture. When first I rose, after the operations, the
healing, the pain, I could not walk properly. I stumbled and fell and was threatened with punishment if I
scarred my bright bay hide. After that I walked slowly but learned quickly. Human beings did not evolve
to articulate six limbs, but we are adaptable. I learned to talk, to trot, to run, and I even learned to move
my arms simultaneously, with not too much gracelessness. I did not scar myself, and now my skin-- my