"Marina Fitch - The Scarecrow's Bride" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fitch Marina)

edge of the fields, we stopped.
Squat and white, the house crouched before the field and sky, its thatched
roof darker than the rich, sprouted earth. A tangle of vine clung to one wall. I twisted
the folds of my white dress. This forlorn cottage was no longer Mollie Scarecrow’s.
It was mine.
While the other man reached for the scarecrow, Thomas Halpern helped me
from the cart. A stout middle-aged man with a nimbus of white-blond hair, he
gestured for me to lean forward. His hands locked around my waist and he lifted me
from the seat. He stroked the small of my back with his fingertips. I trembled,
imagining those hands caressing my cheek, my shoulders, my breasts. I grasped his
arms. He looked down at me and the arch smile faded from his lips. Pity muted his
eyes. He set me down, then reached for my crutch and handed it to me. I tucked it
beneath my arm. Lifting my chin that I might appear tall and straight, I nodded to
him. “Thank you,” I said.
He looked away. “Not at all.”
I turned and walked up the path.
Emma Grey and Thomas Halpern’s wife, Nora, met me at the door. Nora
bobbed her fair head, blinking her tiny eyes so that she looked like a hare. I brushed
past her without a word. A table stood at the window, set with a vase of milkmaids
and blue-eyed grass. At the hearth, a fire flickered red and inviting, its flames curled
along the sides of an iron pot. A bed nestled against the far wall, the bedclothes
folded back, dried rose petals scattered across the pillow. I pressed my hand into
the pillow. The crushed petals burst with scent. “Welcome home,” Emma said.
I drew back my hand and went to the window. In the field, the men clamored
around the pole, pushing and pulling the new scarecrow into place. Emma said, “The
pantry is well-stocked. You won’t want for anything. Someone will stop in each day
to see to your needs.”
The men bound the scarecrow’s shoulders to a crossbar so that his arms
hung from the elbows as if broken. “My needs?” I said. “And will you send a young
man?”
The wind caught the scarecrow’s head and flung it to one side. The men
laughed. “To see to your material needs,” Nora said. “And what would you want
with a man? Someone to scold you and pull at you, to wink at the girls behind your
back?”
There were nights of pain in Nora’s eyes. I looked away.
“You will have many husbands, Chloe Scarecrow,” Emma said. “A new one
each year who requires only that you mend his clothes when the birds pluck at them
or the winds tear at them.”
The men stepped back from the pole. “And after this one,” Emma said, “each
will be your own creation.”
****
The field flourished under my care of the scarecrow. Early on, I learned how
little attention the straw man required: a patch here, another there, a bit of straw to
plump its arms. Whenever a rip appeared, I had but to ask the men to lower the
scarecrow from the pole for an hour or two. During the day, people worked within
shouting distance and many stopped by briefly to gossip. Even Ger stopped by
once or twice. Perhaps, I prayed, my residence here would be a short one. But in the
dark hours of the night, with nothing but the wind for conversation, I thought about
Mollie Scarecrow.
Mollie Scarecrow was a hunchback with a club foot. As children, we sang