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

knife if they saw her twice on their street.
Toward late afternoon she was too exhausted to feel hungry. She had money for one more night's lodging, or
money for food. Not both. After thatтАФshe didn't think about it. That would be tomorrow, this was not. Now she had
her two coppers, her two choices. And she had the stone in her pocket. She drifted, waiting for night. ' When the street
lamps were lit, she made up her mind. Just in that moment. She was sitting in the dark, finally safe because nobody
could see her nursing her blistered, aching soles. Nobody threatened, yelled, or made lewd suggestions; for a few
precious moments she might have been invisible.
And then the gas lamps went on, showing the world where she was again. Caught in the light, she didn't even
think. She was on her feet in a breath, hand in her pocket; in the next she had hurled the broken stone furiously at the
light. She was startled to hear the satisfying shatter of glass. Someone shouted; the flare, still burning, illumined a
couple of uniformed figures to which, she decided with relief, she would yield herself for her transgression.
There was a sudden confusion around her: ragged people rushing into the light, all calling out as they surrounded
the uniforms. Jo, pushing against them, couldn't get past to reveal herself to the law.
"I did it," a woman shrieked.
"No, it was me broke the lamp," somebody else shouted. The crowd lurched; voices rose higher. "Give over, you
great cowтАФit was me!"
"I did it!" Jo shouted indignantly. "It wasn't them at all!"
The crowd heaved against her, picked her off her feet. Then it dropped her a moment later, as it broke apart. She
lost her balance, sat on the curb staring as the uniforms escorted the wrong woman entirely out of the light. She went
along eagerly enough, Jo noted sourly. She pulled herself up finally, still smarting over the injustice of it all.
Then she realized that her purple shawl was gone.
She felt her throat swell and burn, for the first time in forever. Even when her mother had died she hadn't cried.
Not even when the baby had died. She had taken the shawl off her mother, and then off the baby. It was all she had left
to remember them by. Now that was gone. And she was blinded, tears swelling behind her eyes, because the tattered
shawl had borne the burden, within its braided threads, of her memories.
Now she was left holding them all herself.
 She limped to find some private shred of shadow, refusing to let tears fall. All the shadows seemed occupied;
snores and mutterings warned her before she could sit. She wandered on and on through the quieting streets, unable to
stop the memories swirling in her head. Her innocent young self, cleaning the ashes out of the fireplace in the fine,
peaceful library. The handsome stranger with the light, easy voice, asking her name. Asking about her. Listening to
her, while he touched her cuff button with his finger. Shifted a loose strand of her hair off her face. Touched her as no
one had, ever before. Then gone, nowhere, not to be seen, he might have been a dream. And she, beginning to wake at
nights, feeling the panic gnawing at her until she could bear it no longer, and upped and ran.
But there was something else. A street name dredged it up as she walked. Or the night smell of a great tree in a
line of them along the street. She had run from someone else. Oh, she remembered. Him. The young painter. He had a
gentle voice, too, but he only touched her to turn her head, or put her loose hair where he wanted it. He paid well, too,
for the random hour or two she could spare him. It was his money she saved to run with, when she knew she could no
longer stay. When her skirts grew tight. When the other girls began to whisper, and the housekeeper's eyes drew up
tight in her head like a snail's eyes at the sight of Jo.
What was his name?
She walked under the great, dark boughs that shielded her from the streetlights. She could sleep under them, she
thought. Curl up in their roots like an animal; no one would see her until dawn. The street was very quiet; a sedate
carriage or a cab went by now and then, but she heard no voices. He lived on a street like this; she remembered the
trees. She'd walk there from the great house, his housekeeper would let her in, and she would climb the stairs to hisтАФ
his what was it? His studio. He painted her with that strange fruit in her hand, with all the rows of little seeds in it like
baby teeth.
He told her stories.
You are in the Underworld, he said. You have been stolen from your loving mother's house by the King of Hades.
You must not eat or drink anything he offers you; if you refuse, he will have no power over you, and he must set you
free. But you grow hungry, so hungry, as you waitтАж