"Robert F. Young - L'Arc de Jeanne" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

things and kept it slung over her shoulder except when she slept at night; then she kept it hanging on the
bedpost next to her head, beside the golden bow.
 When she was sixteen, Rachel and Joseph set her to work on an even more fascinating projectтАФthe
manufacturing of a doll. Jeanne Marie was enchanted; she had never had a doll before, and wanted one
more than anything else in the world. Day by day the doll grewтАФnot rapidly, but very very slowly, for it
was an extremely complicated piece of work. Jeanne Marie had had no idea it was so difficult to make a
doll, not even such a big one, or that so many different things went into' one. The list of elementsтАФeven
the few she could identifyтАФmade her head swim. But such a doll it turned out to be! No girl had ever
had a doll that could remotely compare to it. Its very uniqueness was probably the reason that Rachel de
Feu told her to enlarge the cave and set aside a special secret place for it. Jeanne Marie did better than
that: she made a regular little room and furnished it with a bed, two chairs, a vanity, a dresser, and a little
throwrug. By the time the project was completed, she was eighteen years old and had almost, but not
quite, outgrown her need for dolls.
Her next project was a suit of armor, and compared to the doll-project was a relatively simple one.
The purpose of the suit, Joseph "said," was twofold: to protect her from harm and to exert a
psychological influence on the enemy. She made it out of stardust and metal and a hundred other things
and when it was finished, she tried it on. It was as bright as the sun and as weightless as a cloud.
And now, Joseph and Rachel "said" in unison, the time has almost come, and you must go into the
village of Baudelaire and take with you one of the golden combs you made for your hair and trade it for
the most beautiful black horse you can find. And Jeanne Marie did, and she named the horse after St.
Hermann O'Shaughnessy, the second Psycho-Phenomenalist saint. Then she thought-made a stable for
him in the side of the hill next door to her own cave, and everyday, except when it rained, she went riding
in the woods.
And now, Joseph Eleemosynary "said" one day, the time has come; and Jeanne Marie, knowing full
well what he meant, had donned the shining suit of armor, mounted St. Hermann O'Shaughnessy, and
ridden proudly over the Provencal Plateau and entered the city of Fleur du Sud. Up and down the
streets she rode in the morning light, crying, "Come and follow me, and I will lead you to victory over the
forces of O'Riordan that threaten from the south. Come and help me save the Church of the
Psycho-Phenomenalists from the powers of darkness." And St. Hermann O'Shaughnessy pranced and
danced, and the people came out into the streets and cheered and when she set out toward Le Fleuve
d'Abondance, they formed a ragged vanguard for her; and when the time came, she rode through the
vanguard and launched a shining arrow into the sky, and the rain had come down in great torrents and
washed the enemy away. And Jeanne Marie had returned to her cave in Le Bois Feerique to await her
next Call.
One expected woods to be lovely in spring, but not as lovely as these woods were. D'Arcy, clad in
Ciel Bleu peasant garb, still shivering from the pre-dawn dampness, rejoiced.
Leaving the clearing in which the pilot of the ship-to-ground sled had deposited him just before the
passage of the dawn belt, he set forth into pleasant shadows and warm shafts of sunlight. Some of the
trees were like fathers and some were like mothers and some were like little boys and girls. All lived
together in a big happy family, green arms intertwined or green fingertips touching. Dawn dew was
scattered like diamonds on the forest floor, and in the branches, real birds sang.
He proceeded on a straight course till he came to a brook; then he turned right and began walking
upstream. The brook came from the hills, and it was in the hills, overlooking the little stream, that Jeanne
Marie's cave was. The three ship-to-ground agents who had made the reconnaissance had briefed him
before he departed and told him everything he needed to know.
About the terrain, that is.
Oh, they had told him about Jeanne Marie Valcouris, too, but he suspected that there were many
things they hadn't told him about her because there were bound to be many things they hadn't found out
about her.
She liked to walk, they had said, and she liked to run and play. She loved to go horseback riding