"Patricia A. McKillip - The Gorgon in the Cupboard" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

The Gorgon in the Cupboard
PATRICIA A. McKILLIP




HARRY could not get the goat to stay still. His model, who was an aspiring actress, offered numerous impractical
suggestions as she crouched beside the animal. In fact, she rarely stopped talking. Harry didn't like the look in the
goat's eye. It wasn't very big, but it seemed to him arrogant beyond its age, and contemplating mischief.
"Give it something to eat," Moira suggested. "Goats eat anything, don't they? That old leather sack, there."
"That's my lunch," Harry said patiently. "And the less we put into the goat, the less will come out of it. If you get
my meaning."
She giggled. She was quite charming, with her triangular elfin face, her large green eyes with lashes so long they
seemed to catch air like butterfly wings as they rose and fell. She dealt handily with the goat, who was eyeing Harry's
lunch now. It strained against the rope around its neck,occasionally tightening it so that its yellow eyes verged on the
protuberant. A bit like hers, Harry thought.
"Try to remain serious," he pleaded. "You're a scapegoat; you've been falsely accused and spurned by the world.
Your only friend in the world is that goat."
"I thought you said you were just sketching the outlines today. Putting us in our places. So why do I have to be
serious?" The goat, in whose rope her wrists were supposedly entangled, gave an obstinate tug; she loosed one hand
and smacked it. "You should have gotten a female. They're sweet-natured. Not like this ruffian." She wrinkled her
nose. "Stinks, too, he does. LikeтАФ"
"This one was all I could borrow. Please."
They were still for a miraculous moment, both gazing at him. He picked up charcoal, held his breath and drew a
line of the goat's flank onto the canvas, then continued the line with her flank and bent knee. She swatted at a fly; the
goat bucked; they both seemed to baa at once. Harry sighed, wiped sweat out of his eyes. They had been there half the
morning, and little enough to show for it. The sun was high and dagger-bright; the tavern yard where he had set his
poignant scene was full of sniggering critics. Idlers, he reminded himself, resuming doggedly when the pair settled
again. They wouldn't know a brush from a broom straw. Still. He paused to study his efforts. He sighed again. There
was something definitely wrong with her foot.
"It's hot," she said plaintively, shaking her heavy hair away from her neck, disturbing the perfect, nunlike veil
across her face.
"Ah, don'tтАФ"
"And I'm starving. Why can't you paint like Alex McAlister? He lets me sit inside; he dresses me in silks; he lets
me talk as much as I want unless he's doing my face. And I get hung every time, too, a good place on the wall where
people can see me, not down in a corner where nobody looks."
The goat was hunkered on the ground now, trying to break its neck pulling at the rope peg. Harry glanced
despairingly at the merciless source of light, looked again at his mutinous scapegoats, then flung his charcoal down.
"All right. All right."
"You owe me for Thursday, too."
"All right."
"When do you want me to come again?"
He closed his eyes briefly, then fished coins out of his pocket. "I'll send word."
One of the critics leaning against the wall called, "Best pay the goat, too; it might not come back otherwise."
 "I might have work," Moira reminded him loftily. Mostly she worked early mornings selling bread in a bakery and
took elocution lessons in afternoons when she wasn't prowling the theaters, or, Harry suspected, the streets for work.
"That goat won't get any younger neither," another idler commented. Harry gritted his teeth, then snapped his
fingers for the boy pitching a knife in a corner of the yard. The boy loosened the goat from the peg, got a good grip on
its neck-loop to return it to its owner. He held out his other hand for pay.
"Tomorrow then, sir?" he asked indifferently.