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

leave the dishes unwashed and the hearth unlaid.
тАЬThe Lord spoke to me in the night,тАЭ he said. тАЬWe must be first down on the shore, for this is the day
on which He will provide.тАЭ
The town was barely stirring as they hurried towards the harbour, and left up Northgate to the
beaches. On Home Beach there were men about, seeing to their boats, many of which, though drawn
well up above the tide-lines, had been tossed about by the storm, overturned, piled together or washed
inland. Probity hurried past, and on over Shag Point to Huxholme Bay, which was steep small shingle.
Here they stopped to search. The waves had brought in a mass of new stuff, piles of wrack and
driftwood, tangles of half-rotted cording, torn nets, broken casks and crates, as well as sea-things, shells
and jellyfish and small squid and so on. Probity had a piece of chalk with which to mark anything he
wanted to collect on his way back, but he was not looking for timber or firewood to-day and marked
nothing.
Next came Watch Point, both sandy and rocky. Here Pitiable picked out of the sand an ancient
leather boot with a spur, which Probity tested with his jack knife to see if it might be silver. It was not,
but he put it in his sack and poked around with his staff in the sand, in case it might be part of some
buried hoard exposed by the storm, but again it was not.
Beyond Oyster Bay lay the Scaurs, two miles of tilted rocky promontories with inlets between, like
the teeth of a broken comb, and beyond them black unscalable cliffs. The Scaurs were the best hunting
ground, but slow work, full of crannies and fissures where trove might lodge. If Pitiable had been less
sore from last nightтАЩs beatingтАФlengthy and savage after Probity had been nine days cooped up by the
stormтАФshe might have enjoyed the search, the jumping and scrambling, and the bright sea-things that
lurked in the countless pools. As it was, she searched numbly, dutifully, her mind filled with the dread of
their homecoming, having found nothing. That failure would be made her fault, reason enough for another
beating.
She searched the upper half of the beach and Probity the lower. They were about half way to the
cliffs, and could already hear the screaming of the tens of thousands of gulls that nested there, when her
way was blocked by the next jut of rock, a vertical wall too high for her to climb. She was hesitating to
go shoreward or seaward to get past the barrier when she heard a new noise, a quick rush of water
followed by a slithering, a mewling cry and a splash. After a short while the sounds were repeated in the
same order. And again. And again.
They seemed to come from beyond the barrier to her right, so she turned left, looking for a place
where she could climb and peer over without whatever was making them becoming aware of her. She
came to a pile of rocks she could scramble up. The top of the barrier was rough but level. Crouching, she
crept towards the sea and discovered a large, deep pool, formed by the main rock splitting apart and
then becoming blocked at the seaward end by an immense slab, trapping into the cleft any wave that
might be thrown that far up the shore. The seal at the top end wasnтАЩt perfect, and enough water had
drained away for the surface to be several feet down from the rim, leaving a pool about as wide as one of
the fishing boats and twice as long, or more.
As Pitiable watched, the surface at the seaward end of the pool convulsed and something shot up in a
burst of foam. She saw a dark head, a smooth, pale body, and a threshing silvery tail that drove the
creature up the steep slope of the slab that held the pool in. A slim armтАФnot a leg or flipper but an arm
like PitiableтАЩs ownтАФreached and clutched, тАЬuselessly, well short of the rim, and then the thing slithered
back with its thin despairing wail and splashed into the water. From what Mercy had told her of Charity
GoodrichтАЩs adventure, Pitiable understood at once what she had seen.
Amazed out of her numbness, she watched the creature try once more, and again, before she silently
backed away and looked down the shore for her grandfather. He was standing near the waterтАЩs edge but
gazing landward, looking for her, she guessed. She waved to him to come and he hurried towards her.
She held her finger to her lips and made urgent gestures for silence with her other hand. By now he must
have heard the sounds and understood that something living was concerned, which must not be alarmed,
so he made his way round and climbed cautiously up the same way that she had. She pointed and he