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

up from the basket, though to Waverly it was ages and ages earlier.

Where, they wondered, is the sweet-smelling, charming, compliant infant we fell
in love with? And who is this loud, boisterous, dirty boy who has taken his
place! And slowly, though they certainly didn't mean to, they all fell out of
love with him. Just a little.

Just enough.

Now Waverly did not know what was happening, but he certainly felt that
something was. One moment everyone -- Lady and unicorns and breezes --had all
been lovely to him, giving him whatever he asked for and praising him. And then
suddenly they said "No!" all the time. "No, you cannot make a fortress in the
rockery garden." "No, you cannot put a house up in the apple tree." "No, you
cannot scale the wall." "No, you cannot . . . must not . . . shall not . . . may
not..." to everything that seemed even the slightest bit interesting or exciting
or dangerous.

So Waverly did what every child at ten does. He did it all anyway.

Neither the Lady nor the unicorns knew the slightest thing about giving out
punishments. It was not in their makeup. So they did what they had done before
Waverly had ever arrived. Wishart started listening only to the sound of the
sea. Tartary, listened only to the Lady's voice. Infanta listened only to the
sounds of the earth growing. And the Lady -- she worked in the garden, she kept
the great house clean, and she spoke to Waverly only when forced to. When forced
to say, once again, "No!"

So it should not have been surprising -- though it was -- that on the morning of
Waverly's sixteenth birthday (or at least the morning of the anniversary of the
sixteenth year he had been drawn up out of the sea) they were all awakened by
the sound of loud chopping. When they got out to the garden, there was Waverly,
an axe in hand. He had just finished cutting down the apple tree and hollowing
it into a boat.

"A boat?" the Lady asked for she knew right away what he was doing, her
prescience working as well as her eyes. "And where did you learn about boats?"

"Where I learned about the Ocean and where I learned about the World," Waverly
answered sensibly. "In your library."

"But the apple tree is the oldest thing of all," the Lady said.

"And I am the newest," Waverly said. "Would you have had me make a boat from
stone?"

"We wouldn't have you make a boat at all," the Lady said. "Would we?" she asked
the unicorns.

Wishart did not answer, for he was listening only to the sea which was issuing a