"Jane Yolen - Briar Rose" - читать интересную книгу автора (Yolen Jane)

Editor, The Fairy Tale Series
Devon, England, and
Tucson, Arizona, 1992
 HOME

But far above these as a source of myth, are the half-heard scraps of
gossip, from parent to parent, neighbour to neighbour as they whisper
across a fence. A hint, a carefully garbled disclosure, a silencing flnger
at the lip, and the tales, like rain clouds, gather. It could almost be
said
that a listening child has no need to read the tales. A keen ear and
the power to dissemble-he must not seem to be listening-are all that
is required.

-P.L. Travers: About the Sleeping Beauty

Everyone likes a fairy story because everyone wants things to come
right in the end And even though to tell a story is to tell some kind
Of untruth, one often suspects that what seems to be untruth is really
a hidden truth.

-Ralph Harper.- The Sleeping Beauty
 CHAPTER

1

"Gemma, tell your story again," Shana begged, putting her arms around
her grandmother and breathing in that special smell of talcum and lemon
that
seemed to belong only to her.
'Which one?" Gemma asked, chopping the apples in the wooden bowl.
"You know," Shana said.
'Yes-you know, " Sylvia added. Like her sister, she crowded close and let
the talcum-lemon smell almost overwhelm her.
Baby Rebecca in the high chair banged her spoon against the cup. "Seepin
Boot. Seepin Boot. "
Shana made a face. Even when she had been little herself she'd never
spoken in baby talk. Only full sentences; her mother swore to it.
"Seepin Boot. " Gemma smiled. "All right. "
The sisters nodded and stepped back a pace each, as if the story demanded
their grandmother's face, not just her scent.
"Once upon a time," Gemma began, the older two girls whispering the
opening with her, "which is all times and no times but not the very best
of
times, there was a castle. And in it lived a king who wanted nothing more
in the world than a child.
" 'From your lips to God's ears/ the queen said each time the king talked
of a baby. But the years went by and they had none."
"None, none, none," sang out Rebecca, banging her spoon on the cup
with each word.