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

тАЬShe tried to talk with the sea-children. Their voices were weak, and they could not breathe for long
out of the water. What she had thought to be ruffs around their necks were plumy growths with which
they seemed to breathe the sea-water, as a fish does with its gills. Their language was strange. She told
them her name, but they could not say it, nor she theirs. Instead they sang, not opening their mouths but
humming with closed lips. You have often heard me humming the song of the sea-people.тАЭ
тАЬThis one?тАЭ said Pitiable, and hummed the slow, wavering tune that she had heard so often. Mercy
joined her, and they hummed it together, their voices twining like ripples in water. When they finished,
Mercy smiled.
тАЬThat is how I used to sing it with my own mother,тАЭ she said. тАЬAnd then with yours. It needs two
voices, or three. So Charity sang it with the sea-children in their cave, and they hummed the tunes she
taught them, The Old Hundredth and Mount Ephraim and such, so that they should be able to praise
their Creator beneath the waves. So as the days went by a kind of friendship grew, and then she saw that
they began to be troubled by what they had done. At first, she supposed, she had seemed no more than
a kind of toy, or amusement, for them, a thing with which they could do as they chose, like the shining
fish. Now they were learning that this was not so.
тАЬThey made signs to her, which she did not understand, but supposed them to be trying to comfort
her, so she signed to them that she wished to return to her own people, but they in their turn frowned and
shook their heads, until she went to the place where the shining fish was trapped and started to take
down the wall they had built. They stopped her, angrily, but she pointed to the fish as it sought to escape
through the gap she had made, and then at herself, and at the Avails that held her, and made swimming
motions with her arms, though she could not swim. They looked at each other, more troubled than
before, and argued for a while in their own language, the one trying to persuade the other, though she
could see that both were afraid. In the end they left her.
тАЬShe sat a long while, waiting, until there was a stirring in the water that told her that some large
creature was moving below the surface. She backed away as it broke into the air. It was a man, a huge,
pale man of the sea-people. If he had had legs to walk upon, he would have stood as tall as two grown
men. She could feel the manтАЩs anger as he gazed at her, but she said the LordтАЩs Prayer in her mind and
with her palms together walked down to the waterтАЩs edge and stood before him, waiting to see what he
would do.
тАЬStill he stared, furious and cold. She thought to herself and closed her lips and started to hum the
music the sea-children had taught her, until he put up his hand and stopped her. He spoke a few words of
command and left
тАЬShe waited. Twice he came back, bringing stuff from the wreck, spars and canvas and rope, which
he then worked on, in and out of the water, making what seemed to be a kind of tent which he held clear
of the water and then dragged back in, with air caught inside it, so that it floated high. He then buoyed it
down with boulders to drag it under. He took it away and came back andтАФworked on it some more,
and then returned, having, she supposed, tried it out and been satisfied. Meanwhile she had gathered up
her own clothes and wrapped them tightly in oilskin, and stripped off the ones she was wearing, down to
the slip, and tied her bundle to her waist
тАЬWhen he was ready, the man, being unwilling himself to come ashore, signalled to her to break
down the Avail that held the shining fish, which she did, and it swam gladly away. So in utter darkness
she walked down into the water, where the man lifted his tent over her and placed her hands upon a spar
that he had lashed across it for her to hold and towed her away, with her head still in the air that he had
caught within the canvas and her body trailing in the water. She felt the structure jar and scrape as he
towed it through the opening and out into the sea. By the time they broke the surface, the air had leaked
almost away, but he lifted the tent from her and she looked around and saw that it was night
тАЬThe storm was over, and the sea was smooth, with stars above, and a glimmer of dawn out over the
ocean. Charity lay along the sea-manтАЩs back with her arms around his shoulders as he swam south and
set her down at last in the shallows of a beach. Oyster Beach we call it now.
тАЬShe waded ashore, but turned knee-deep in the water to thank him. He cut her short, putting the flat