"Yolen-TheLadysGarden" - читать интересную книгу автора (Yolen Jane)

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.

And the Lady? She was old but she never seemed to age. Except her eyes, which
were once the deep, rich blue of a Spring sky and were now faded like the skies
over Winter.

Now the way that trouble came to the garden was this. It was a small thin& but
the Lady should have known that small things carry the greatest dangers. Didn't
a tiny viper bite the heel of the hero and bring him low? Didn't ants tunnel
through the great walls of Cathay and grind whole sections to dust?

For the first time in years -- in centuries, actually -- there was a strange
sound outside one of the gates in the wall. Those gates, normally so overgrown
with bramble hedge and briar on the World's side and so besieged by the Ocean on
the other, needed no guards or wards. In fact, the Lady and the unicorns
scarcely remembered from one year to the next that the gates existed. But this
one lambent spring day, right after the hour's rain, there was something rather
like the wailing of a discontented child by the Northeastern gate. No, exactly
like the wailing of a discontented child. The wailing went on from the moment
the rain ended until quite past tea time, or about three hours. At that point,
Infanta stomped three times with her left fore foot and shook her head until the
white mane flew about as light as milkweed milk.

"What is that noise?" she asked.

Neither Tartary -- who listened to the Lady -- or Wishart -- who listened only
to the sea -- bothered to answer. But Infanta asked anyway. "It is louder than
grass growing. Louder than a gully full of Queen Anne's Lace and campion. Louder
even than the bursting open of marigolds, which is very loud, indeed." And she
went to complain directly to the Lady, who had heard the sound already.

"If I didn't know any better," said the Lady, "I would say it is a child -and a
very young child at that -- lying in a reed basket washed up upon the Ocean's
small shingle." And because the Lady was blessed with a certain amount of
prescience, which is another way of saying she could see a bit into the future,
Infanta knew exactly what they would find.

The Lady sent one of her most trusted winds to leap over the wall and report
back. It was a very small wind, hardly more than a breeze, really. When it
returned, it reported in a voice made sweet with baby's breath and tart with
brine. "It is a very young child lying in a basket."

"A reed basket," the Lady said, a great deal of satisfaction in her voice.

"Well, nettles and linen, actually," the breeze answered. Breezes, for all they
are lightweight, insist on being factual. It is the habit of preachers and
politicians as well.