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

figured they were doing everyone a favor. тАЬThe Witch can better provide for you. We are poor,тАЭ the
father informed herтАФas if she had somehow not noticed, sleeping on straw between the hearth and the
hogsтАФтАЬwhile you are stubborn and willful.тАЭ His wife agreed. тАЬGetting you to obey is like trying to teach a
cat to fetch.тАЭ Had Katya been a boy, it would have been different. But she was a girl, naturally wanton,
unruly, frivolous and amoral, a growing threat to their sonтАЩs virtue. They were duty-bound to keep her
chaste and ignorant, then give her to some man in marriageтАФa dead loss to the family. Better by far to
give her to the Bone Witch.

Only their lazy son objected. Not the least threatened, he wanted her around. Without her, who would
do his chores? Who would he spy on in the bath? He had promised to rape her when they got bigger.

Katya herself had said nothing. Even at nine, she had a stubborn sense of self-worth that regularly got her
whipped. People called her changeling and worse, with her pert ways and wicked green eyesтАФa girl
switched at birth for a defiant demon-child. Bundling up her straw doll and wooden spoon, she took a
seat in the fatherтАЩs cart. They lurched off, crossing the Dys at Byeli Zamak, headed for the Iron Wood.
All she could think was that she was to become a witch-girl. And witches were burned.

But that was years ago. And she had not been burnedтАФ not yet at least. By now she had spent half her
life in the woods. She knew which mushrooms were food, and which sent you on flights of fancy. Which
berries were sweet and which were deadly nightshade, which herbs cured and which herbs killed. Having
nothing of her own, she happily appropriated all of nature, making these her woods. Every screech and
cry in the trees spoke to her. When it was safe, she spoke back.

тАЬKatea-katea-kateaтАжтАЭ The call came closer. Like her, the firebird was a curious soul, and could be
coaxed with low soft calls. He hated to think of anything happening in his woods without him telling the
world about it.

Picking up her bark basket, she headed for the sound, fording a shallow stream to enter a fern-choked
glade ringed by stands of slim silver birch. Birches loved the light and fought to fill any sort of clearing. At
the far end of the glade she skirted a pond frequented by red deer and herons. On the bare bank she saw
pug marks.

Kneeling amid the bracken, she felt the tracks with her fingers. The ground was hard, and the claw prints
worn and splayed with age. Three nights ago, after the rain when the moon was full, an old female
leopard came from the same direction she had, stopped to drink, then headed up the ridge, aiming for the
thickly wooded crest separating the forest from the cultivated lands beyond. Any leopard with business
beyond the ridge could easily be a stock thief or man-eater.

Not a cat she cared to meet. Stomach tensed, she looked about. Mossy patches shone like polished
jade. The protective rune on her armlet shielded Katya from magicтАФbut not from fang or claw.
Straightening up, she set out again, keeping the breeze at her back. Leopards did not know humans have
no sense of smell, and never stalked from upwindтАФso she need only worry about what lay ahead. These
were her woods. Let some old leopard scare her, and she would never go out at all.

тАЬKatea-katea-kateaтАжтАЭ She spotted a flash of orange among the pine trunks. The bird waited at the crest
of the ridge.

And not just the firebird, but a fire as well. Black oily smoke billowed from beyond the ridge crest,
smearing clear blue sky. Hairs rose at the nape of her neck. She had not smelled the smoke because the
wind was behind herтАФbut she knew where it came from. Byeli Zamak was burning.