"Patricia A. McKillip - The Old Woman and the Storm" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

Arram drew breath soundlessly and decided to tell her about the rock in the river, which surely had to be
the simplest thing in the world. "In the heart of the river beside my home there is a great rock. It is very
old, old as the First Morning. It is very peaceful, so peaceful sometimes you can hear it dreaming."

"You can?"

"Yes. It is hard and massive, so hard the river itself scarcely wears away at it. Only one thing ever came
close to cracking that rock, and that thing was light as a breath. A butterfly. You ask me," Arram said,
though the Old Woman hadn't, "how such a light thing could├С"

"Get on with it."

"It's a simple tale."

"It doesn't sound simple."

"It's just about an old rock in a river. Anyway, one day the rock decided it was tired of being a rock."

"How do you know?"

"How do I know? I don't know. Someone told me the story. Or else I heard the rock remembering. It
was very young then, and many things were still new. Caterpillars were very new. One big purple
caterpillar fell out of a tree onto a leaf floating on the river. The leaf carried it downriver, where it bumped
against the rock and the caterpillar crawled off with relief, thinking it had found land. But it toiled up a
barren mountain instead. The hairs on the caterpillar's body tickled the rock, waking it, and it wondered
what strange little being was trudging up its side. After a time, the little being stopped trudging and started
spinning, for its time for change was upon it. The rock went back to sleep. For a long time there was
silence. A star shone, a leaf fell, a fish caught a fly. Then one morning, the shell that the caterpillar had
spun around itself broke open. The rock felt feet lighter than bubbles walking about on the warm stone.
Their dreaming merged, for the butterfly was half-asleep, and the rock half-awake. And the rock realized
that the purple hairy being which had crawled up its side was now a fragile, gorgeous creature about to
take to the air. And the rock was so moved, so amazed, that it strained with all its strength to break out
of its own ponderous shell to freedom in the light. It strained so hard that it nearly cracked itself in two.
But the butterfly, who felt its longing, stopped it. 'Rock,'it said gently, 'you can live, if you wish, until the
Final Evening. You saved my life and sheltered me, so I will give you a gift. Since you can't fly, I will
return here on my Final Evening and bring you dreams of all the things I have seen along the river, in the
forest and desert, as I flew. And so will my children. You will not need to fly, and you will not need to
die.' And so, even to this day, butterflies rest in the warm light on that rock and whisper to it their
dreams."

Arram stopped. They were both silent, he and the Old Woman. She puffed her pipe and blew smoke out
of the cave, and far away a forest fire started. "I don't know this world," she said slowly. "This is the
world She knows. The Sun. The world I know is harsh, noisy, violent. Tell me a story with me in it
instead of her. And make me beautiful."

Arram accepted another puff from her pipe. His ears hurt from the thunder, his voice ached from his
storytelling. He couldn't remember whether it was day or night; he couldn't guess whether he would live
or die. He supposed he would die, since there was no way in the world to make the Old Woman
beautiful. So he decided, instead, in his last moments, to tell her about the one he loved most in the
world.