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

country, likely to be teased into mischief. It was so common an occurrence as to
occasion no remark when a new-sown field began coming up quite obviously as
something other than what was planted, and by a week later to have reverted to
what the farmer had put in. But while, like the pansies and the thimbles, this
kind of magic was only a temporary aberration, it could be very embarrassing and
onerous while it lasted. Farmers in that country worried more about falling
asleep during the birthing times of their stock than they worried about the
weather; the destruction a litter of baby taralians caused remained, even after
it had reverted to piglets.
No one knew how the wild birds and beasts negotiated this, but human
parents-to-be would go to extreme lengths to ensure a fairy was on hand to say
the birth-words over their new little one.
Generally speaking the more mobile and water-dependent something was, the more
likely magic was to get at it. This meant animalsЧand, of course, humansЧwere
the most vulnerable. Rocks were pretty reliably rocks, except of course when
they were something else that had been turned into rocks. But rocks themselves
sort of slept through magic attacks, and even if some especially wild and
erratic bit of magic decided to deck out a dry-stone wall as a marble fountain,
you could still feel the dry-stone wall if you closed your eyes and touched the
fountain, and the water would not make you wet. The lichen that grew on the
rock, however, could be turned into daisies quite convincing enough to make you
sneeze if real daisies did so; and the insects and small creatures that crept
over the lichen were more susceptible yet. (There was an idea much beloved and
written about by this countryТs philosophers that magic had to do with
negotiating the balance between earth and air and water; which is to say that
things with legs or wings were out of balance with their earth element by
walking around on feet or, worse, flying above the earth in the thin substance
of air, obviously entirely unsuitable for the support of solid flesh. The
momentum all this inappropriate motion set up in their liquid element unbalanced
them further. Spirit, in this system, was equated with the fourth element, fire.
All this was generally felt to be a load of rubbish among the people who had to
work in the ordinary world for a living, unlike philosophers living in
academies. But it was true that a favourite magical trick at fetes was for
theatrically-minded fairies to throw bits of chaff or seed-pods or conkers in
the air and turn them into things before they struck the ground, and that the
trick worked better if the bits of chaff or seed-pods or conkers were wet.)
Slower creatures were less susceptible to the whims of wild magic than faster
creatures, and creatures that flew were the most susceptible of all. Every
sparrow had a delicious memory of having once been a hawk, and while magic
didnТt take much interest in caterpillars, butterflies spent so much time being
magicked that it was a rare event to see ordinary butterflies without at least
an extra set of wings or a few extra frills and iridescences, or bodies like
tiny human beings dressed in flower petals. (Fish, which flew through that most
dangerous element, water, were believed not to exist. Fishy-looking beings in
pools and streams were either hallucinations or other things under some kind of
spell, and interfering with, catching, orЧmost especiallyЧeating fish was
strictly forbidden. All swimming was considered magical. Animals seen doing it
were assumed to be favourites of a local water-sprite or dangerously insane;
humans never tried.)
There did seem to be one positive effect to living involuntarily steeped in