"Robin McKinley - Deerskin" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinley Robin)

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Deerskin
Robin McKinley

To Mary, Mary, Barbara, Susan, Alex, Steve, Andrea and George: thanks.

Author's note:
There is a story by Charles Perrault called Donkeyskin which, because of its
subject matter, is often not included in collections of Perrault's fairy tales. Or, if it
does appear, it does so in a bowdlerized state. The original Donkeyskin is where
Deerskin began.

PART ONE
ONE
MANY YEARS LATER SHE REMEMBERED HOW HER PARENTS HAD
looked to her when she was a small child: her father as tall as a tree, and merry and
bright and golden, with her beautiful black-haired mother at his side. She saw them,
remembered them, as if she were looking at a painting; they were too splendid to be
real, and always they seemed at some little distance from her, from all onlookers.
They were always standing close together as she remembered them, often gazing into
each other's eyes, often handclasped, often smiling; and always there was a radiance
like sunlight flung around them.
 Her mother had been the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms, and seven
kings had each wanted her for himself; but her father had won the priceless prize,
even though he had been only a prince then, and his father hale and strong.
When the old king fell from his horse only a year after his son married, and died
of the blow, everyone was shocked and surprised, and mourned the old king
exceedingly. But he was forgotten soon enough in the brilliance of the young king's
reign, and in the even brighter light of his queen's beauty. When the worst grief was
spent, and such a joke could be made, some people laughed, and said that the most
beautiful woman in seven kingdoms had the luck of seven kingdoms as well, for she
was now queen of the richest, and for a mere year's wait.
It was the princess's nursemaid who told her this story, and told it often. It was
the nursemaid's favorite, and became the little girl's, the long story containing many
stories, of her parents' courtship and marriage. This story was better than uuytlung
read draggingly out of a storybook-for the nursemaid was uneasy with her letters,
but as the ability to read was one of the requirements of her post, she was extremely
anxious that no one should find this out. She told the princess that there was no need
for dull stories out of heavy hard books, and as she made the storybook stories dull
and the stories she herself told interesting, the princess came readily to agree,
perhaps because her parents were only a little more real to her than the characters in
the storybooks.
"Your lovely mother cast her eyes down when her new people said such things to