"Nancy Springer - Isle 05 - The Golden Swan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Springer Nancy)

downs even as far as the Westwood.

"Wanderlust," Trevyn grumbled. "Dair, you young fur-brained fool, would you please be careful? I
worry about you when you are out alone." There was still much hard feeling against wolves hi Isle. It had
been only a few years since the war when evil sorcery had turned them to a horror, and even Trevyn's
good magic could not erase that memory.

No one can come near me, Ibragged. Igo like a shadow on the wind . I was well grown, strong and
swift as mountain water.

"Indeed." Trevyn sat back studying me, and for some reason he sighed. He had a human child now, an
infant, his legal heir, but always he greeted me with warmth and joy. Truly, I had not meant to go so far
from him. But fate had its finger on me. My second snowy winter came and my unrest deepened as the
snow.

Sometime after the solstice of that winter I left. The dream of the bond brother was on me, I felt the
focus of his coming in the east, and I ran that way to meet him.

I journeyed far faster than any horse. I needed only a coney caught in the snow or a mouse or two and
then I was off, padding, night and day, slipping like a slate blue shadow across Isle. For some weeks I
went straight as an arrow, straight as arrowflight in silence, until I came to the eastern shore. There on the
shingle beach I sat, trying to whiff the smell of destiny in the wind that came across the salt water. Finally
I lay down, curling my warm tail over my nose. I lay there for three days.

I was stubbornly waiting. I would not move to hunt for food even though deer ran by within a hundred
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feet. Snow fell and covered me. Then the clouds drew away and a cold, cold night came. Every star
showed, and all the stardark between, and all the warmth of earth seemed to have vanished into that
void. There was a looming feeling in the night or hi me. I got up and stretched myself for a moment and
looked out over the dim ocean, feeling myself tiny in the sight of those twin eyes, sea and sky. There was
a steady lapping sound out on the far water that I could not identify. Even my nose told me nothing. All
night I sat and watched the dark water and saw nothing. I remembered such dark water from an old
woman's loom.

In the morning some instinct sent me northward a little way, and there he lay, naked, the salt spray
turning to white rime ice on him.

Frain. The Swan Lord. I did not yet know him by those names, but I knew how important he was to me,
and for a horrible moment I thought he was dead. He was lying on the hard, seawashed sand below the
high tide ledge, his red hair snarled like wrack, his face far too paleтАФas pale as sand and snow. But he
still breathed, I saw. I lay down right on top of him, trying to warm him with my thick fur, and at that
touch a pang of yearning made me howl aloud and the change came on me all in a moment.

It was not of my doing or deciding. These things are often awkwardтАФI might have been of more use to
him as a wolf. But it came on me willy-nilly, amid a welter of emotions, compassionтАФit is the most
human of emotionsтАФand longingтАФI wanted his smile,I had come all this way to meet him, to be his