"Charles Coleman Finlay - A Democracy of Trolls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Finley Charles Coleman)

smacked wetly against the side of the turtle shell.
"Well, it ain't a slug." Ragweed hurled a mudball back at her, with better
aim. She ducked, blocking it with her free arm, as he wandered over to the
garden and shoved a half-ripe gourd into his mouth. He turned over some leaves
near the bottoms of the plants. "Slugs have stripes," he said sullenly around
a mouthful of pulp and seeds. "Least some do. The tasty ones."
He grazed through the garden without offering anything to her. Windy rocked
her massive forearm until the baby fell sleep. After a while she rose and ate
a little also. Her hunger had returned. "What are you going to do about
Mosswater?" she asked.
Ragweed looked up at the sky. It was getting late. He shrugged. "Thought I'd
drag him back up to our cave, shove him in the back."
"Maybe tomorrow night?" Windy hated this time of year, when the nights were
too short and too warm without enough time to do anything but eat.
Ragweed knuckle-walked over to his brother's corpse. "I don't want to come
back here tomorrow."
"Maybe we could put him in the turtle shell with Snapper."
"Huh." Ragweed poked the dead body. "We could do that."
Windy felt so relieved she paused to empty her bladder. She didn't want to
come back here tomorrow night either. She helped Ragweed drag and push
Mosswater's body through the narrow doorway. While Ragweed laid his brother in
the corner farthest from the door and window, she picked up her daughter and
placed her beside the dead woman. She tucked the hand with the missing fingers
under the little girl, and draped the other arm across her body. She carefully
avoided Snapper's body.
Ragweed waited in the doorway. "You done?"
She nodded and walked outside with him. He stood upright on his hind legs and
craned his neck around, looking for stones. "Let's seal up the whole cave,"
she said.
"With what?"
She waved her hand at the mounds of wood and thorn that surrounded the little
cottage. He grunted and set to work. Windy moved the smaller pieces for fear
of disturbing the baby, slight though he felt in her arms. They filled in the
little hole and the big hole, and heaped mounds around the walls. Windy
scooped up clumps of mud with her free hand and packed it in tight around the
holes. When they finished, Ragweed walked around it, lifting his leg and
spraying. The scent would scare off scavengers and protect their dead.
"Now we have to hurry if we aren't going to get caught out in the Sun," he
said.
She looked up. He was right. They raced across the high ridge and she could
smell dawn in the air. They halted briefly in the meadow to drink from the
swollen pond and she noticed the lion's scent. It too had been here to drink
in the night. She decided to blame it for her daughter's death. Then she
looked at the child she held.
It's going to be all right, she told herself. Ragweed will let me keep the
baby. They would return to the mountains among the hot springs and the good
smell of sulfur, away from all the people. Things would be just like they were
before.
"We should leave this valley," she said. She thought about her own mother. "We
should go home."