"Geoff Ryman - Was" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ryman Geoff)

got to burn your clothes."

"My clothes," Dorothy whispered. There seemed to be no point crying.

"I am going to have to scrub the skin off my own hands after dealing with
you. It just ain't clean."

"It's cleaner than this place," said Dorothy, numb.

"I expect my sister didn't have to cope with a valley full of dust or mud,"
said Aunty Em. She swung open the red rusty door of the stove. Dorothy
saw the fire. She saw her white theater dress, sequins flickering in firelight.
Dorothy grabbed it and ran, wet and naked. She jumped sprawling down
from the front door and fell onto the ground. The dust was splattered with
drops of rain.

Toto was gasping. There was a rope around his neck, and he had pulled and
pulled against it. He tried to bark and could only cough. Dorothy tried to
untie the rope. It hurt her hands. She saw Uncle Henry on the doorstep.
She screamed as if she had seen a monster. He came down the steps
toward her.

Dorothy turned and ran. She knew she had lost. Her clothes would be
burnedтАФexcept for the white dress that had been worn only once by a fairy
in a play.

It was night now, black. Dorothy ran clothed in darkness, as the rain came,
hard. "Dorothy!" called Uncle Henry.

"Dorothy!" called Aunty Em.

Down in the fields, there was death. Dorothy ran uphill, feet pat-tering in
mud. She slipped and the mud peeled away in a damp layer, like flour. She
stood, coated in mud, still clutching the fairy dress, now besmirched.

Sssssh, said the rain, as if comforting her.

Suddenly branches clawed at her face, catching her half-chopped hair. She
plunged through a thicket, her face scratched, and her hands were suddenly
scrabbling at the rough bark of a tree trunk. She went deeper into the
woods. She would stay in the woods; she would live there like an Indian;
she would never go back.

"Do-ro-thee!" called a voice down the valley.

"Holy Jesus," said a voice closer at hand.

Dorothy stopped running and looked around her. Rain ran over her face. She
imagined wolves or giants.