"Robin McKinley - Spindle's End" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinley Robin)

to bear it. "And I think we should invite at least one man.
Male fairies are underappreciated, because almost no one remembers
they exist."
"You must be the first of the godmothers, dear," said the queen,
but Sigil shook her head.
"No . . . no," she said, although the regret was clear in her voice.
"I thank you most sincerely. But. . . I'm already too bound up in the
fortunes of this family to be the best godmother for the new little
one. Give her one-and-twenty fresh fairies, who will love the tie to
the royal family. And it can be quite a useful thing to have a few
fairies on your side." The king remembered a time when he was still
the prince, when one of the assistant chefs in the royal kitchens,
who was also a fairy, was addressed by a mushroom, fried in butter
and on its way to being part of a solitary late supper for the king,
saying, "Don't let the king eat me or I'll poison him." There was always
a fairy or two in the royal kitchens (the rulers of this country
did not use tasters) and while it took the magicians to find out who
was responsible for the presence of the mushroom, it was the fairy
who saved the king's life.
Sigil took the queen's hands in her own. "Let me look after the
catering. What do you think the cradle should be hung with? Silk?
And what colours? Pink? Blue? Lavender? Gold?"
"Gold, I think," the queen said, glad to have the question of the
fairy godmothers agreed upon, but disappointed and a little hurt that
Sigil refused to be one of them. "Gold and white. Maybe a little
lavender. And the ribbons should have pink and white rosettes."

2
The shape of the country was rectangular, but there was a long
wiggling finger of land that struck down southeast and a sort of
tapering lump that struck up northwest. The southeast bit was called
the Finger; the northwest lump was called the Gig, because it might
be guessed to have some resemblance to the shape of a two-wheeled
vehicle with its shafts tipped forward to touch the ground. The royal
city lay a little north of the Finger, in the southeast corner, nearly a
month's journey, even with frequent changes of horses and a good
sprinkling of fairy dust for speed, to the base of the Gig.
The highways that bound most of the rest of the country together
gave out at the beginning of the Gig. The local peer, Lord
Prendergast, said, reasonably, that he (or his forebears) would have
built a highway if there had ever been any need, but there never had
been. Nothing exciting ever happened in the Gig, or at least hadn't
since the invasion of the fire-wyrms about eleven hundred years ago,
before the days of highway-building. So if you wanted to go there
you went on cart tracks. (The lord's own travelling carriages were
very well sprung, and he would upon occasion send them to fetch his
less well equipped, or more easily bruised, friends and associates
outside the Gig.)
And what you needed, muttered the royal herald, bearer of a
little pouch of cheat-proof lots (almost empty now) and important