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

not dead, but alive. Her clothes were soaked, but she was lying on dry sand. She sat up and looked
around. She saw a dim, pale light to one side of her. It was just enough for her to make out the black
water that stirred at her feet, and the black rock all around her and over her. Somehow she had been
washed up in a small cave whose entrance was beneath the water.
тАЬBeside her was a small sea chest of the sort that the People had used to store their possessions for
the voyage. With numbed fingers she opened it and found that it had been well packed, with all its
contents wrapped tight in oilskins. There were dry clothes, far too large for her, but she stripped off,
spreading out her own clothes to dry on the rocks, and wrapped herself in these others, layer on layer,
and nursed her body back to warmth.
тАЬNow she began to wonder what had happened to her and how she had come to this cave. She
remembered the sinking of the ship, and herself being tumbled into the sea and tangled in the sail, and
remembering that she saw that the sail was lying half out of the water, over against one wall of the cave.
So she supposed that some current had washed her in here, and the sea chest too, and the tide had then
gone out and left her in air. But why was it not dark? The light came from the other side of the cave, low
down, and when she went to look she found that the water washed in along that wall, making as it were
an inlet in the waterline, and partway up this was a pool where lay a coiling fish like a great eel, which
shone with points of light all along its flanks. It stirred when it saw her and the light grew stronger, and
now she saw that it was trapped in that place by a wall of small boulders, piled neatly against one another
across the inlet.
тАЬThen she grew afraid, for she could see that the wall had not come there by chance. She searched
the cave, looking for a place to hide, but there was none. Only she found that the inlet was formed by a
little stream of water, sweet to drink, that ran down the back of the cave. After that she prayed and sang,
and then fell asleep, weeping for the mother and father she would never see again.
тАЬWhen she woke she knew before she opened her eyes that she was not alone. She had heard the
whisper of a voice.
тАЬShe sat up and looked at the water. Two heads had risen from it. Four eyes were gazing at her. She
could not see them well in the faint light, but her heart leaped and her throat hardened. Then one of the
heads spoke, in a weak human voice, in a language she did not know, though she understood it to be a
question.
тАЬтАШWho are you?тАЩ she whispered, and they laughed and came further out of the water, so that she
could see that they were human-shaped, pale-skinned and dark-haired, wearing no clothes but for what
seemed to be collars or ruffs around their necks. She stood and put her palms together and said the
LordтАЩs Prayer in her mind while she crept down to the waterтАЩs edge. As she came, the creatures used
their arms to heave themselves up through the shallows. Closer seen, she thought they were children of
about her age, until she saw that instead of legs each had a long and shining tail, like that of a fish. This is
what Charity Goodrich said she saw, Pitiable. Do you believe her?тАЭ
тАЬIf you believe her, I do too.тАЭ
тАЬThen you believe her. Now it came to her that these two were children of the sea-people, and the
cave was a place they had found and made their own, as children like to do. They had caught the fish and
prisoned it here to give light to the cave, for their own amusement, and in the same way they had found
Charity and brought her here, and the chest, floating them in when the tide was high and dragging them
onto dry land.
 тАЬThey fetched the sail and by signs showed her that somehow a pocket of air had been caught in it
with her, allowing her to breathe for a little beneath the water. All this and other things Charity learnt as
the days passed. She could count those days by the coming and going of the tide.
тАЬThey had brought food for the shining fish, so she made signs that she wanted to eat and they swam
off. She was afraid that they would bring her raw fish, but instead they came with human stores from the
wrecked ship. Some were spoilt with salt, but some were in canisters that had kept the water out, wormy
bread and dried apples and oatmeal which she mixed with fresh water from the stream at the back of the
cave.