"Chelsea Quinn Yarbro - A Baroque Fable" - читать интересную книгу автора (Yarbro Chelsea Quinn)

THIS STORY TAKES place once-upon-a-time; not a real time that has come and gone, or a time dial
has yet to happen, or even quite a high-and-far-off (-out) time where so many stones take place; this is a
time that never happened but ought to have, in one of those places that are called fabulous since, of
course, they exist only in fables.


Because this is one of those tales, it must begin with a proper little verse, something pompous and
frivolous, to set the tone of the thing and to bow to tradition.


That special once-upon-a-time is here
When wonders and nostalgic dreams abound
When aggravations of this world all leave
And for a while care knits up its sleeve.
Here you may gather cherished memories around
And merrily indulge, your conscience clear,
The special whimsy and delight you found
When younger, in the realms of make-believe.


So much for tradition.


Now that you are in the mood, think of towering powdered wigs and cascades of lace, of adorable
heroines and staunch heroes, of mighty wizards and malefic sorcerers, of perspicacious kings and odious
tyrants, of soothsayers and enchantments, and all the other stuff of faery, for this is that
once-upon-a-time, where even witches had a sense of fashion.


1
We begin in the darkest pan of the Woebegone Wood, a place known as the Wailing Gorge. Trees
unlucky enough to grow here are festooned with so much moss that it is difficult to know what they are
like underneath. There is very little light here, and what small amount of it reaches down through the
overgrowth is a murky color, as if it had run out of breath. A river rushes down from the craggy heights in
a hurry to get away, and it has very little manners about how it goes. Everything here is dank and the
smell is miasmic.
There are two sets of inhabitants here. One is a large family of Trolls who roister much of the time. They
live in the caves behind the falls and it is rare that anyone sees them, which is probably just as well. The
other is an elderly witch (who nonetheless has some pretentions to beauty of a particular sort), her
abominable familiar who is an obnoxious floofy cat, and her servant (more about her in a moment).
Alfreida Broomtail, the witch, lives in a hut, one of those low-slung hovels with a thatched roof that has
things growing out of it. There are very few windows, all of mem tiny and hard to see through, and
generally one of them is full of Liri-poop who spends most of the time polishing his claws with his tongue.
There are excellent reasons not to disturb him. Beneath one of the windows is a large, rickety table that
takes up most of the wall and about a quarter of the floor. It is covered with jars and bottles and vials
and sachets and boxes and small cooking pots that send off various dreadful odors. This is where
Alfreida spends most of her time when she is not too busy with her personal toilette. Occasionally she
sweeps everything off the roughhewn surface, and so there are heaps and piles of unidentified debris on
the floorтАФthe rats and spiders are very territorial about them. Naturally there is a fireplace, with the
traditional cauldron hanging on a blackened iron hook over the glowing coals. The hearth is very neat,