"Patricia A. McKillip - The Lion and the Lark" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

sudden, incomprehensible violence. Dimly, she heard her father sobbing.
He was on his knees, his face buried in her skirt. She moved finally,
unclenched one hand, allowed it to touch his hair.

"What is it, Father?" she whispered. "Why have you killed the lark?"
He made a great, hollow sound, like the groan of a tree split to its
heart. "Because I have killed you."

In the kitchen, Pearl arranged burnt tea cakes on a pretty plate. The
maid who should have opened the door hummed as she dusted the parlor,
and thought of the carriage driver's son. Upstairs, Diamond woke herself
up midsnore, and stared dazedly at Lord Moselby's famous words and
wondered, for just an instant, why they sounded so empty. That has
nothing to do with life, she protested, and then went back to sleep.

Lark sat down on the steps beside the mess of feathers and silver and
blood, and listened to her father's broken words.

"On the way back . . . we drove through a wood . . . just today, it was
. . . I had not found you a lark. I heard one singing. I sent the post
boy looking one way, I searched another. I followed the lark's song, and
saw it finally, resting on the head of a great stone lion." His face
wrinkled and fought itself; words fell like stones, like the tread of a
stone beast. "A long line of lions stretched up the steps of a huge
castle. Vines covered it so thickly it seemed no light could pass
through the windows. It looked abandoned. I gave it no thought. The lark
had all my attention. I took off my hat and crept up to it. I had it, I
had it . . . singing in my hat and trying to fly.... And then the lion
turned its head to look at me."

Lark shuddered; she could not speak. She felt her father shudder.

"It said, 'You have stolen my lark.' Its tail began to twitch. It opened
its stone mouth wide to show me its teeth. 'I will kill you for that.'
And it gathered its body into a crouch. I babbled--I made promises--I am
not a young man to run from lions. My heart nearly burst with fear. I
wish it had . . . I promised-"

"What," she whispered, "did you promise?"

''Anything it wanted."

"And what did it want?"

"The first thing that met me when I arrived home from my journey." He
hid his face against her, shaking her with his sobs. "I thought it would
be the cat! It always suns itself at the gate! Or Columbine at worst--she
always wants an excuse to leave her work. Why did you answer the door? Why?"

Her eyes filled with sudden tears. "Because I heard the lark."