"Wentworth-AsYouSow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wentworth K D)

Pulling his shirttail out, he made a makeshift sling to carry the three downy
chicks to the drying shed where Sonya wouldn't see them. Perhaps, he told
himself as he cradled the soft, warm bodies against his chest, the sack had held
a variety of seeds. Perhaps the rest of the hatchlings would be songbirds,
wonderful ones with soul-lifting melodies no one around here had ever heard
before.

Perhaps tomorrow would be better.

More awkward, long-necked chicks hatched the next day, and again the next. Each
time, he quickly bundled them up and hid them in the shed by the pond.

On the fourth day, he stopped to chop some kindling before joining his brothers
in the fields. One minute, he was swinging the axe at the block of wood on the
old stump, grunting a little with each blow, the next, he was running trying to
locate the source of Sonya's piercing screams.

"What -- what is -- that?" One hand to her mouth, she pointed at a honking
long-necked chick as it waded into the pond's green water on legs that looked
like stilts.

"Oh, that." Ungern noticed how her staring eyes were practically all whites.
"That's one of our new -- ,,

"New what, Ungern?" Gathering up her long skirts, Sonya ventured nearer to the
muddy edge of the pond.

The sound of menace in her voice made his skin crawl. "New birds."

"Our new birds!" She moved in closer. "Are you trying to tell me these misshapen
things are my nightingales?"

"Well . . ." He watched helplessly as two more downy, long-legged chicks
squirmed through a crack in the drying shed and ambled toward the pond. "The
peddler didn't have any nightingales, and besides, prices were up. Songbirds
cost at least two coppers this year. This was all I could get, but he did say
they were very special."

"Those monstrosities are the ugliest things I've ever seen!" She shuddered as
one chick inverted its down-bent bill and plunged its head beneath the water.

"They're not that bad." Ungern reached down as a dozen or so white chicks
gathered around his knees. "And after all, see how many we got, a lot more than
last year."

Sonya grabbed a chick by its skinny legs and held it up while it squawked and
thrashed its wings. "I suppose I could try cooking one." She plucked a feather.
"They might at least be good to eat."