"Jane Yolen - The Lady's Garden" - читать интересную книгу автора (Yolen Jane)

THE LADYтАЩS GARDEN
By Jane Yolen
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IN THE LADYтАЩS GARDEN lived three unicorns. They were all old тАФ Lady,
garden, and unicorns тАФ having been there from the beginning of things. The garden
was kept from the sight of the World by a very large stone wall which was
overgrown with spindly weeds and thistles, and hairy moss plugging up the chinks.

When the sun shone down, the unicorns liked to lie under the apple tree,
which was the oldest thing of all in the garden. Its branches hung down to the
ground, gnarled and misshapen, but covered with the most delicious red apples the
year round.

When it rained, which was an hour every other day and twice on Tuesdays,
regular as clockwork, the unicorns would stay in the stone barn, snugged together in
the sweet-smelling hay. The patter on the barn roof then took on a soporific rhythm,
and often the unicorns would doze and dream. Their dreams were always about
running over great green swards, the wind through the white manes. Always.

If the Lady dreamed тАФ or even she napped тАФ no one knew for sure, for she
only spoke of waking things: tide and sun and wind and rain and the changing of
seasons.

On one side of the garden was, as I have said, the World. On the other was
the Great Ocean. It was the OceanтАЩs tide which was often the subject of the LadyтАЩs
discourse. And though she may have thought any trouble to the garden would come
to it from the WorldтАЩs side, it was the Ocean that did, in the end, bring about her
direst time.

Now, though the unicorns were all terribly old, they were not the same age.
The oldest was Wishart, whose skin was almost translucent; it was a kind of pearly
white, like the inside of certain shells. When he walked тАФ and he never ran тАФ he
moved with an ancient grace. His breath studied musty, like a bowl of crushed
flower petals. He rarely listened to anything but the sound of the Ocean outside the
wall.

The second oldest was Tartary. Her skin was like vellum and looked brittle
but wasnтАЩt. In fact it was as soft as an infantтАЩs and smelled that sweet. sour infant
smell, as if talc and sour milk had been mixed together. Tartary listened only to the
LadyтАЩs voice.

The third oldest тАФ they called her Infants when they called her anything at all
тАФ still had a bit of spirit to her walk, and a bit of flint in her amber eyes. Even her
horn was still the gold of new-minted coins, while the other unicorns had horns more
like the color of the full moon.
 If Wishart listened only to the sound of the Ocean, and Tartary listened only
to the Lady, Infants heard the sounds of the earth growing: grass and leaves and
timothy in the fields. She could distinguish between oak and ash on the rise, though
the sound of rowan growing made her tremble all over.