"S. P. Somtow - The Fallen Country" - читать интересную книгу автора (Somtow S. P)

"Of course not."

Pause. "See you next week," I tried a noncommittal half-smile.

"Sure," And suddenly he was gone, leaving me alone to hunt for shadows in the shadowless
sunshine.

The following week, Billy said, "I wait until it builds up, until I can't stand it any more. And then it
bursts out of me and I'm free to enter the fallen country. And afterwards, I find myself in bed or
maybe in some strange place, and sometimes IтАЩll be blue with cold and my joints will feel like icicles
and I'll be shaking all over ..."
I found the mother, Joan, at a desk in an office in a huge building, coffined in by expanses of naked
glass, always reaching for the phone.

I said, "You know there's at least one way of ending the problem, don't you?"

She said, "Yes." When she looked at me she reminded me of myself, and I was unnerved by this.
She was a dark-haired, slight woman, who didn't look like Billy at all тАФ well, that was only to be
expected. Unlike her stepson, she did not hide her feelings well. I saw her guilt very clearly.

I said, "Then why don't you get rid of the man?"

She paused to take an appointment A crisp, mediciny odour wisped by for a moment. Outside,
palm-fringed concrete paths criss-crossed a carpet of harsh, brash green. But I was thinking of
snow, of cold, numbing snow. Finally
she answered me, speaking with difficulty.

"I can't, I can't!" She was crying a little, and I found myself turning away, embarrassed- "What can I
do, Mrs. Marx? He's a force, not a person тАФ he's not human. And what about Billy's lies? Will they
suddenly end?"

"By imagining that Pete is not human." I said cruelly, "you make it a lot easier on yourself, don't
you?" Mustn't lose control ...

Feeling very foolish, I turned around and walked out. I don't know what I was trying to accomplish.
All I knew was that I was well past my good years, and that I longed for the snow, for the fallen
country that we all keep locked in our hearts. I wanted to be like Billy. I was looking forward to his
next appointment, even as I felt guilty, because I had been spying on another's pain.

Then there were the princesses: some were in dungeons, buried neck-deep in the snow; others were
chained in the topmost turrets of candycane castles of intertwisting tourmaline and olivine,
half-veiled by the clinging whiteness.

Billy saved a princess the second or third time he came to the fallen country.

They were swooping down from where the sun should have shone, and Billy saw the castle, a forest
of ice-caked spires, mist-shrouded, dull grey in the unchanging cold light of the fallen country.

"Time to rescue a princess!" said the dragon.