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

She learnt bottling and beer-making from an old woman who had been a farm wife, while her ex-racing
hound made a glossy, beer-coloured hump under the kitchen table. She took the legal papers she was
not sure she understood to a man whose elegant, lame black mare had foaled all four of his undertaker
sonтАЩs best funeral carriage team. Another man, whose five cowardly hounds bayed tremendously at any
knock at the front door from a vantage point under his bed, taught her how to harness a horse, how to
check that its tack fitted, and the rudiments of how to drive it; and a friend of his saddled up his very fine
retired hunter, the whites of whose eyes never showed anymore, and went to the big autumn horse fair to
buy her a pair of pulling horses and a suitable waggon.
She came home from these small adventures with her head ringing with instructions and spent the
evenings writing up notes, listening to the silence, trying not to be frightened, and wondering wearily what
she was forgetting.
/ can teach you to remember, the elderly salamander said to her.
тАЬOhтАФoh no,тАЭ said Beauty. тАЬOh no, that wonтАЩt do at all. But thank you.тАЭ
Your other friends are giving you gifts, said the salamander, gifts of things you need, things you
ask them for, but sometimes things they know to offer you. Why may not I also?
тАЬIt is very kind of you,тАЭ said Beauty, тАЬbut I have no claim on you.тАЭ
You have the claim of friendship, said the salamander. My master, since he retired, is interested
only in counting his money. I shall miss you, for you have been my friend. Let me give you
something. It will be a small something, if you prefer, something smaller than memory.
тАШI would rather forget how to smoke meat and brew beer and saw and nail if I might also begin to
forget the last few weeks,тАЭ said Beauty simply.
The salamander was silent, but she saw by the flicker in its cloudy eyes that it was thinking.
Pick me up, it said at last, so that I may took into your eyes.
Beauty picked it up gently, in a hand that shook only a very little.
This is more difficult than I expected. We saltunanders rarely give gifts, and when we do, they
are rarely small. It made a faint, dry, rattling sound Beauty recognised as salamander laughter. This will
have to do.
Abruptly it opened its eyes very wide, and Beauty was staring into two pits of fire, and when she
sucked in her breath in shock, the air tasted hot and acrid with burning. Listen to me, my friend. I give
you a small serenity. I would give you a large one, but I am uncertain of human capacity, and I
furthermore believe you would not wish it. This is a serenity you can hold in the palms of your two
handsтАФeven smaller than I am. And she heard the rustling laugh again, even through the thunder of the
fire. / think you may find it useful. It hooded its eyes. You may put me down.
Beauty set it back down on the pillar where it spent its days watching the townsfolk and pretending
to be a garden ornament. It turned suddenly, like the lizard it almost was, and touched her hand with its
tongue. / did not mean to frighten you, it said, and its voice was tinny and distant, like the last
reverberation of an echo. Cup your hands and look into them now.
Beauty did so and at once felt heat, as if she held a small glowing sun in her hands. She looked down
and again saw fire, red and hot and bottomless. тАЬItтАФit doesnтАЩt look very serene,тАЭ she quavered.
Trust me, said the salamander, and curled up and became the statue of a salamander.

Chapter 2
in six weeks from the day the news was first heard that the wealthiest merchant in the city had
resigned his post in disgrace, his daughters had packed up what few goods remained to themтАФincluding
himselfтАФand begun the long journey to their exile near a village with the outlandish name of Longchance.
Everyone knew the old manтАЩs health had broken with the ruin of his fortunes and that the girls were
left to rescue themselves by what devices they could themselves contrive. While no one in the city was
moved to offer them any financial assistance, there was a kind of cool ruthless pride in them that they had
risen to the challenge. BeautyтАЩs negotiating skills had won, or been allowed to win, by the thinnest margin,
the ultimate round, and their father was to be spared the final misery and disgrace of prisonтАФnot because