"Tepper, Sheri S - A Plague Of Angels - plangel4" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

She refused to be diverted. "As a librarian, there's only one thing I can do. Make a record of what's happened, of course. Write an Olly Longaster song, and have the men's societies create a three-thrones dance. And have a sandpainting designed, with a story to go with it. And refer the question of who and what they were to our philosophical society. All ways of remembering. Why else was a librarian present?"
Abasio stood watching while she went down the winding road to join her people.
Later that day the Artemisians broke camp and began their trek eastward, the last of the armies to depart. Orphan's Hero, who had survived along with about half of his colleagues, had learned of a maiden who was to be sacrificed to a giant sea creature in a seaside town far to the west, and he had ridden off posthaste to take care of the matter. He had taken Oracle with him, for the people needed an Oracle where he was going. Before she left, Oracle explained that the villages were breaking up everywhere, and all the archetypes were going off to find their proper places. Princesses to kingdoms or towers. Misers to greasy old houses along slimy waterfronts. Ingenues into troupes of traveling players. This one here and that one there, as needed.
"What are you going to do?" Qualary asked Abasio when she found him still wandering disconsolately about the Place. "Go back to the farm with your grandpa'?"
"I don't think so," he said reluctantly. He didn't know what he did want to do, though he was certain of what he didn't. He didn't want to live in Artemisia, though Arakny had invited him. He didn't want to return to the farm. He wasn't going to Abasiostown to steal CummyNup's thunder. If there had been another shuttle, he'd have gone off in it in a moment, on Olly's trail, hopeless though that no doubt was.
He tried to explain himself to Qualary. "I don't know who she was," he said. "I loved her, but I never knew who she was. The whole world turned on her, but to me she was just the person I loved."
"None of us knows who other people really are," said Qualary, plaintively. "I think there must be some part of all of us that others never get to. Sometimes we don't get to that part ourselves. Sometimes the feelings I get make me know I have such a part in me: a dreadful strangeness, one that goes back, way back."
Abasio did not find this comforting.
It was during this time of confusion that Coyote limped three-legged in through the open gate in the late afternoon, sniffed his way about the Place, until he came upon Abasio's trail and eventually Abasio himself.
"Big Blue's wondering what happened to you. If it wasn't for Bear and me, he'd have starved to death."
Abasio wiped his face with his sleeve and tried to think of a reply. "Who


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS
417 bandaged your leg?" he asked. "I thought you were dead! I thought Bear
was dead!"
"Well, we're not. No thanks to you. My leg's broken. The Artemisians set it. Besides, I was talking about your horse!"
"I heard," mumbled Abasio. "Is he all right'?"
"He's all right," drawled Coyote. "Bear and I took him up where the wagon is before that last batch of earthquakes happened. Nice grass ther ."
Abasio considered the ·
wagon. With Olly's things in it. He didn't know if he could bear to see them
wagon. It was h~s and Olly's wagon. Their dy~[s'
again.
Farmwife Suttle, who had been listening to Coyote with amazed interest, interrupted Abasio's cogitations. "The mention of Big Blue reminds me that Cermit and I should be getting back to our farms. Winter has set in, no doubt, and the folk there will have need of us. Burned Man and Drowned Woman will go with us."
"You're not paying attention," Coyote yapped, nosing Abasio sharply. "Do you have anything here you need to retrieve?"
Abasio had nothing he needed to retrieve. When he came to this place, he had carried only a few things. The important ones were all in the pack on his back or in his pockets. Enough to go... where? The only thing he could decide was not to decide.
He bade his grandpa farewell. "Was your wife's name Hunagor?" he asked.
"Odd you should mention that," Grandpa replied. "I always called her Honey. But since being here, hearing that other name, it's sounded familiar to me and I've wondered if she was related to this Hunagor I keep hearing about. Why do you ask?"
"Just interested," .said Abasio. "I wondered the same thing."
And finally, having worn out all his delays, he stumbled through the gates
and down the road behind Coyote's limping form. Behind him he heard the industrious babble of people unsettling themselves, the shouts and orders and grumbling of a people cleaning up one mess and moving out to start another. Perhaps not. Maybe not this time.
On the roadway, Abasio's shadow stretched eastward before him, so slen-
der and attenuated that its head fell off the road and bounced along the trees below, a black dot against the yellowish dust that blanketed the forest. As he shuffled along, slowly, so Coyote could keep up, a little wind gusted up to fling the dust along, like clouds of blowing gold, letting it settle again, farther down.
"It'll take rain to settle that," he said to Coyote.
"One w' '
toter s snow," muttered Coyote. "Most things settle with one
toter s snow.


Sheri S. Tepper

"I guess," said Abasio.
"So Oily fulfilled her prophecy," commented Coyote. "Five whole armies of champions."
Abasio stopped still in the middle of the road. "I just thought of something! What happened to her guardian-angel?"
"It went with the ship. To help her when the job was done," said the Coyote.
"I don't know where she is," gasped Abasio, feeling the words as pain. "I don't know where she went."
"You do," said Bear, joining them from among the trees along the canyon side. "She went to the sky. She became a star. She will be there always. We will sing songs about her!"
Bear had wounds upon his shoulders and painful-looking lacerations on his back. Withal, there was an air of contentment about him.
As the sun fell below the hills behind them, they reached the gravel run that led from the road back behind the bulwark of stone, the place they had left the wagon hidden. It stood now in full view with Big Blue between the shafts, his harness gleaming, even his hooves oiled and shining as he pawed the ground in welcome. The animals couldn't have done it. Someone with hands had been busy here.
"Your mother," said Coyote, reading his mind. "She doesn't remember