"Robin McKinley - Rose Daughter" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinley Robin)

lifeтАФtoddling down a long dark corridor, only vaguely lit by a few candles set too far into their sconces,
too high up in the walls. The shadows stretched everywhere round her, and that was terrible enough: and
the silence was almost as dreadful as the darkness. But what was even worse was that she knew a
wicked monster waited for her at the end of the corridor. It was the wickedest monster that had ever
lived, and it was waiting just for her, and she was all alone.
She was still young enough to be sleeping in a crib with high barred sides; she remembered fastening
her tiny fists round the wooden bars, whose square edges cut into her soft palms. She remembered the
dreamтАФshe remembered cryingтАФand she remembered her mother coming, and bending over her, and
picking her up, whispering gently in her ear, holding her against her breast, softly stroking her back.
Sitting down quietly on the nurseтАЩs stool and rocking her slowly till she fell asleep again.
She woke in her crib in the morning, just as usual. She asked her nurse where her mamma was; her
nurse stared and did not believe her when she tried to tell her. in the few words she was old enough to
use, that her mamma had come to her in the night when she had cried. тАЬIтАЩdтАЩve heard you if you yelled,
miss,тАЭ said the nurse stiffly, тАЬAnd I slept quiet last night.тАЭ
But she knew it was her mother, had to have been her mother. She remembered the sweet smell of
her perfume, and no one but her mother ever wore that scent.
Her perfume smelt of flowers, but of no flowers the little girl ever found, neither in the dozens of
overflowing vases set in nearly every room of their tall, magnificent town house nearly every day of the
year, nor anywhere in the long scrolling curves of the flower-beds in the gardens behind the house, nor in
the straight, meticulous rows within the glasshouses and orangeries behind the garden.
She once confided to a new nurse her wish to find the flower that had produced her motherтАЩs scent.
She was inspired to do so when the nurse introduced herself by saying, тАЬHello, little one. Your daddy has
told me your name, but do you know mine? ItтАЩs Pansy, just like the flower. I bet you have lots of pansies
in your garden.тАЭ
тАЬYes, we do,тАЭ replied the little girl politely. тАЬAnd theyтАЩre my favouriteтАФalmost. My favourite is a
flower I do not know. It is the flower that my motherтАЩs scent comes from. I keep hoping I will find it.
Perhaps you will help me.тАЭ
Pansy had laughed at her, but it was a friendly laugh. тАЬWhat a funny little thing you are,тАЭ she said.
тАЬFancy at your age wanting to know about perfume. YouтАЩll be a heart-breaker in a few years, I guess.тАЭ
The little girl had looked at her new nurse solemnly but had not troubled to explain further. She could
tell Pansy meant to be kind. It was true that she had first become interested in gardens as something other
than merely places her nurses sometimes took her. in the peremptory way of grown-ups, when she had
made the connexion between perfume smells and flower smells. But she had very soon discovered that
she simply liked gardens.
Her motherтАЩs worldтАФher motherтАЩs houseтАФwas very exciting, but it was also rather scary. She liked
plants. They were quiet, and they stayed in the same place, but they werenтАЩt boring, like a lot of the
things she was supposed to be interested in were boring, such as dolls, which just lay there unless you
picked them up and did things with them (and then the chief thing you were supposed to do with them,
apparently, was to change their clothes, and could there be anything more awfully, deadly boring than
changing anyoneтАЩs clothes any more often than one was utterly obliged to?). Plants got on with making
stems and leaves and flowers and fruit, whatever you did, and a lot of them were nice to the touch: the
slight attractive furriness of rabbitтАЩs-ears and CupidтАЩs darts, the slick waxy surfaces of camellia leaves
and ivyтАФand lots of them had beautiful flowers, which changed both shape and colour as they opened,
and some of them smelt interesting, even if none of them smelt like her motherтАЩs perfume. And then there
were things like apples and grapes, which were the best things in the world when you could break them
off from the stem yourself and eat them right there.
From the nursesтАЩ point of view, the youngest girl was the least trouble of the three. She neither went
out seeking mischief, the more perilous the better, the way the eldest did, nor answered impertinently
(and with a vocabulary alarmingly beyond her age), the way the second did. Her one consistent
misbehaviour, tiresome enough indeed as it was, and which no amount of punishment seemed able to