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

"No. It."
Other trolls hulked through the blueberry patches, eating steadily without
talking, filling their bellies while the darkness lasted. The children strayed
farther away in their play. Maggot was a delicate child, his skin so thin she
could practically see through it. The risks he took could stop her heart. She
followed after them, conveniently escaping the prick of her mother's comments.
A rock outcropping capped the slope. Windy waded free of the blueberry patch
and went to sit by the stones. "Talking with the stupid dead" they called it,
because the stories said that these rocks were trolls that let themselves get
caught out in the Sun. The best thing about the stupid dead, Windy thought,
was that their mistake was always worse than yours.
"Hi, stupid," Windy said, patting the rock as she sat.
Distant mountains formed walls on either side of the high plain and the dark
sky, close enough to touch, gave it a comforting cavelike roof. Bringing her
son up here for the first time brought back all the memories of her own happy
childhood: the bleak beauty of long winter nights -- her favorite season
before she became a mother -- when clusters of the bitter berries on mountain
ash gleamed bright against the white skin of windswept snow; the scents of
rhododendrons blooming under slivered spring moons, laurel at midsummer;
huckleberries, blueberries, teaberries, and cranberries, each in its season,
as many as she could ever eat; fogs so dense she could open her mouth and
drink water straight out of the air, with unexpected frosts even in the summer
that cooled her toes while she foraged. She hadn't realized how much she
missed the smell of bobcat spray until she came up here and caught a whiff of
it again tonight.
Maggot played with the girls on the slope below the blueberry bushes along the
edge of the bogs where cranberries grew and the grasses turned all
shadow-tipped in autumn. Windy looked beyond him. A herd of giant elk grazed
about a mile away, their wide flat antlers rising and falling in silhouette
against the sky. She counted seventeen elk before their heads jerked up in
unison and they darted away. Leaning forward, she saw a dyrewolf bolt out of
the grasses where the elk had been.
Dyrewolves hunted in packs. Where there was one, there were more. "Maggot,"
Windy said. She didn't speak loudly. Her son's ears were as powerful as a
troll's eyes.
He stopped playing and waved to her. The two girls looked up the hill,
confused by his actions.
"Stay close by," she said, for his ears only. "There are dyrewolves hunting."
He smacked his lips with a nod of his head, as if he already knew. Then he put
his hands to his mouth. "Awroooooooo!"
It sounded enough like a dyrewolf's cry to send a chill up her spine. He could
mimic almost anything. She saw his head turn first, and then the girls'. When
she followed their eyes and concentrated, she heard, faintly, the dyrewolf
howling in return. "Stay close!" she shouted at the top of her voice.
He waved to her again and she felt better. After that the girls pretended they
were scared, running away as he howled like a dyrewolf and chased them. The
sight of him and the sharp faint shriek of their laughter made Windy smile.
But she remained wary. A pack of dyrewolves could bring down a solitary
full-grown troll. Her son was so much smaller and weaker than the other
trolls.