"R. Garcia y Robertson - Firebird" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robertson R Garcia Y)

Firebird
R. Garcia y Robertson
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R. Garcia y Robertson lives in the charming Victorian town of Mt. Vernon, Washington. His
novels to date include The Spiral Dance (1991), The Virgin and the Dinosaur (1996), Atlantis Found
(1997), American Woman (1998), and Knight Errant (2001). His stories have appeared in F&SF and
AsimovтАЩs with some regularity for the last fifteen years and are characterized by their broad range
of concerns, stylistic sophistication, and attention to historical detail. Garcia has tended toward
time travel or historical settings for both his fantasy and SF stories. Some of these stories are
collected in The Moon Maid and Other Fantastic Adventures (1998). His fiction has been relatively
under appreciated since the small flash of critical and peer attention garnered by his first novel,
The Spiral Dance.

тАЬFirebird,тАЭ which appeared in F&SF, is set in his fantasy alternate world of Markovy, a world
with a history similar to our own but tweaked in ways that make for great fantasy adventures. As
in a fairy tale, a young girl is apprenticed to a witch. One day she sees a knight riding through the
forest. Here, mythic and magical elements such as the Firebird of the title coexist with nifty
details from real historyтАФthe bone witchтАЩs hut appears to be made of mammoth bones.

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Witch-girl

Deep in the woods, gathering fungus for the Bone WitchтАЩs supper, Katya heard the firebird call her
name. тАЬKatea-katea-kateaтАжтАЭ Brushing tangled black hair from sea-green eyes, she searched for the
bird, seeing only tall pine trunks and blue bars of sky. Her bright homespun dress had the red-orange
firebird embroidered on the bodice, done in silk from Black Cathay, and the Barbary cloth called
Crimson. She had stitched it herself on sunless winter days. Katya called out, тАЬHere I am. Come tell what
you see.тАЭ

She listened. Insects hummed in hot pine-scented air. Farther off she heard a woodpecker knocking. She
called again, тАЬCome to me. Come to me. Come tell what you see.тАЭ

Now that she was fully grown, Katya never feared the woods by daylight. Leopards, troll-bears,
lycanthropes, and forest sprites lurked between the trees, waiting to make a meal of the unwary. But by
day the woods had a hundred eyes alert for any suspicious movement. No lynx or leopard could stir a
foot without birds calling and squirrels chattering. All Katya need do was listen. Night was another
matter. But the Bone Witch did not let her out at night. Nor would the Witch let her leave the hut without
her slave collar and protective rune. Each morning she made Katya repeat her invisibility spell. She was
valuable property, the Witch told her. тАЬI have not raised you to feed some hungry troll-bearтАФnot when
you are finally becoming useful.тАЭ

Katya saw things differently. She began life as a girl-child thrown away in time of war and famine.
Survival taught her to make the best of today, for tomorrow was bound to be worse. It taught her to lie
instinctively, and never to shit where she meant to sleep. And to trust in her luck, which had kept her
from the fate of hundreds like her. Death had had ample chance to take her, making Katya think she was
being saved for something special. Like to be a princess.

At nine she was given to the Witch for two handfuls of salt and a cattle pox cure. The family feeding her