"Pat Murphy - Iris versus the Black Knight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Pat)

Her tears fell on her dress, and where they fell the fabric changed from dull gray to bright blue, the color of the
sky on a sunny day. The color spread; her dress was blue again. When she looked up, one of the gray
banners had become a beautiful blue. The banner that had been striped with red had a blue stripe as well.
The knight moaned. He had fallen too. He sat with his back against the courtyard wall, and he looked smaller
than he had before. Or maybe she had grown bigger. As she stared at him, it seemed to her that she knew
him from somewhere.

"Who are you?" she asked the knight. "I think I know you, but I can't remember. I don't know. . . . "

"You don't know who I am?" The knight's voice was barely a whisper, but it grew stronger as he spoke. "And
you don't know who you are. I'll tell you who you are. You are a stupid little girl. You are. . . . "

Iris frowned at him, then looked up at the banners that flew overhead. The fog was swirling, growing paler and
thinner. She caught a glimpse of blue sky between the tatters of fog. The colors were returning. He had taken
the colors, and she had brought them back.

She smiled -- though her arm ached and she shivered in the cold and her stomach hurt and her face was wet
with tears. "I'm Iris," she said in a tone of surprise. "I'm the goddess of the rainbow."

The sun broke through the clouds and filled the courtyard with golden light. Where the light touched her, it
warmed her, soothed her pains. Sunlight washed the last black banner with gold and added a golden stripe to
the rainbow banner.

She was Iris, a messenger of the gods who had followed the rainbow down to earth and lost her way. She
was the goddess of color and the protector of beauty. She was a little girl in a blue dress, sitting in a
courtyard made of clouds, clutching her wounded arm.

She recognized the black knight now. He was the god of the Underworld, a place of darkness, a colorless
place inhabited by the souls of the people who had died without hope. She had been carrying a message to
him when she lost her way.

"You are just a weak little girl," he was whispering. "You have no power, you . . . "

"Give it up," Iris said, grinning at him. "You've lost. I brought the rainbow back."

"You've won this battle," the knight whispered. "But I'll be back." The sunlight did not touch the courtyard
around him; he lay in a puddle of shadow. His shape was blurring, his outline becoming less distinct. But he
continued to whisper as his body swirled and flowed. "Darkness always wins in the end," he whispered.
"Remember that, Iris."

"I think it's time you went back where you belonged," Iris said impatiently. At a wave of her hand, the
courtyard began to blur around him, dissipating like fog on a sunny day. The floor thinned, then broke beneath
the knight. As the floor gave way, he changed -- his arms stretched and broadened, his body shrank. A black
buzzard swooped away on outstretched wings, gliding downward toward the earth.

Iris watched him fly away. He would be back to fight again, and that was all right. That was the way things
were, the battle went on forever. Light against darkness; joy against sorrow. But this time she had won.

Iris heard a screeching cry overhead. The seagull circled her once, then flew upward. He plucked the rainbow
banner from the pole with his beak and flew down to drop it at her feet.