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

and the smells coming from the cauldron are delicious; Alfreida is much too busy to cook, and the task is
left to her servant.
For illumination mere are candles in tilting sconces tacked to the walls wherever there is room for mem,
and so haphazard are they that their flames appear to lurch around the room, from hearth to door to table
to bed and back to the hearth again. Little wax stalagmites rise under the candles, their relative heights
revealing how long the sconce above has been there.
A BAROQUE FABLE 3
Alfreida herself is busy at the table sorting out cobwebs. She is a fine, scrawny ruin of a woman, with
bones poking at her skin like unfriendly tenants. This afternoon she is wearing a splendid, ancient dress of
a rusty, muddy shade that might once have been dark blue. The brocade taffeta is shapeless and without
shine, and the scraps of lace at the corsage and the cuffs only serve to make the whole ensemble appear
more bedraggled. Over the years she has lived alone, she has got into the habit of talking to herself. It is
quite useless to talk to Liripoop, who rarely pays attention to anything except his own vanity.
"Bats' toes, bats' toes, where arc they? What sly things they are, oh, yes." With a cry she seizes a lump of
a jar and pulls the stopper out. "There. Theretherethere!" Delightedly she drops some small, anonymous
bits into the pot sitting by her right elbow. "Now for the kernels of gallowsbane fruit!" Her twiggy fingers
hover over the confusion and she clicks them with impatience.
On the windowsill, Liripoop regards her contemptuously. He stretches out his front paws, crosses them
just so, and lets his claws out to their full, glorious, scimitar length.
"And now, wartflower. Where's the wartflower. No good reason for it to be missing, that's what I say."
She reaches down, pushing several containers aside, but finally stands back in vexation. "There are some
things that don't know when funny is funny."
From the distance, the Trolls can be heard singing. They usually start about this time every afternoon and
have sometimes kept at it all night.
"Gruesomefy churns the water down
Bringing us victims, hey-hof Horses and riders washed down
Who simply forgot to say woah! Murky and damp our houses are
Deep in the slime and mud cavesтАФ"
Alfreida grits her teeth and makes a face in the direction of the horrible song. "Some peopleP she
mutters.
"While to the tune of frightened screams Our mummy whimpers andтАФ"
4 Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
"Liripoop, can't youтАФ" Alfreida complains, as she always does.
тАФraves... Chorus: LoUopping, slobberingтАФ"
"тАФdo something toтАФ"
"тАФmonstrous Trolls!
We hide under bridges, we hide in deep holes!
We gibber and scribbleтАФ"
Alfreida takes up the largest bottle she can easily reach and heaves it in the general direction of the
sounds. The bottle smashes satisfyingly and sends a thin, noxious odor through the room to blend with the
others.
"тАФour names in the ooze!
We feast on whomever, whenever we choose!"
"They'll be at it all night at this rate!" Alfreida shouts to the ceiling. She claps her hands on her hips and
glares at Liripoop. "You could do something; you know you could. But there you sit! Some people don't
know what lucky is."
Ever so delicately, Liripoop yawns, taking great care to show all of his long, pointed teeth. The tip of his
plume of a tail gives one ominous twitch.
"It's all very well for you," Alfreida rails at him. "All you ever have to do is sit there and wait for the mice
to come. You're not so put upon as others I could name." She reaches for a featherduster made with