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

I draw back and turn away. "You still don't find me attractive."
 "That isn't fair."
And even now I do not look at her, thought I know she is right. "You've accepted their rules. Nothing
holds us to them."
"Do you think not?"
"What keeps you from loving me?"
"We love, or we do not love."
"We let them control us."
"We cannot stop them," she says, and again I know she is right. Between the times of their coming I
want to believe we could all resist them, if we tried, and I blame our obedience on our weaknesses and
our guilt, our willingness to be controlled and thereby absolved of all responsibility. But when the
compulsions come to me--
Elfleda touches my arm and I start violently. She jumps back, as surprised as I, her other hand still
raised, pointing toward the sky where she sought to draw my attention.
"Look."
Darkness has fallen. I look at the stars and see a brilliant multicolored light approaching. Above us, our
masters ride in a great dirigible that floats majestically over the crest of the mountains. Its engines are
nearly silent. Lights festoon its cabin and illuminate the tree-tops below. It passes directly over us and we
hear music and faint laughter. I look down at Elfleda. The lights paint her, red, violet, blue, green. Her
expression is wistful, hopeful. She does not look at me.
A sharp cry of delight or distress draws my attention back to the dirigible. When I look down again,
Elfleda is gone.
But what does it matter? What does she matter? Others desire me, if she does not. If I felt tired and
spent a moment ago, I am excited and powerful now. Half the forest lies between me and the meadow,
and if I do not hurry I will be late. But the distance is nothing. Evergreen branches brush me with their
fragrance as I run. The ache in my hoof is no more than an insect bite.
All of us gather in the meadow, beast and beast-human alike. The little pegasoi cavort and scamper
among us and over us, while the flightless ones display their plumage. A gryphon sitting on its haunches
on a boulder roars and screeches, and the unearthly light of the aircraft shimmers around us all. The
dirigible descends slowly, so immense it blots out the stars. I catch one tether-rope and the centaur
Hekate takes another. Hekate pulls harder than I, the muscles in her haunches bulging like fists. The
dirigible tilts down on her side and she laughs. We drag the craft to earth against its lifting force, glorying
in our strength, and bind the ropes to trees. Our masters step down upon the ground.
They are ordinary humans, as ordinary as we were before they changed us. They look so strange,
walking normally on two legs, hoofless, clawless, hairless. They are small, weak, omnipotent. They smile
on us and we wait, hoping to be chosen. They are all as beautiful as flowers. The gryphon bounds down
and rubs felinely against their legs.
A silhouetted figure stands in the hatchway of the aircraft, hanging back. He steps down and hesitates
with the light flowing across him. His face is coarse, his expression uncertain. He is both curious and
frightened.
"Hekate!"
The ugly boy vanishes from my mind. One of our masters is calling dark Hekate, and she obeys, her
black hair streaming in the wind of her speed. Her great hooves plough the ground as she stops before
the slender young woman. Her horse-part is heavy through the shoulders and haunches, powerful and
immense, ebony highlighted through the spectrum by the dirigible's illumination. In her other life she must
have been a formidable and stunning woman, for she is a compelling myth. The young human leaps upon
her back and drums her bare heels against her sides, laughing. Hekate wheels and bolts across the
meadow, her tail held high like a plume. The vibration of her hoofbeats echoes around us.
Two satyrs bound along beside her, as fleet and randy as goats. Their musk mingles in the air with the
pungent sweat of Hekate.